Discovered: Researchers investigate service members' sleep habits; brain-imaging for zebrafish; why pigeons get lost in the "Bermuda Triangle"; cancer death rates are down.
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Sleep deprivation in the U.S. military. Readers of last year's best-selling Navy SEAL memoir?No Easy Day? got some insight into the sleeping habits of soldiers stationed abroad. The book made many references to Ambien, the sleep-aid that SEAL Team 6 took whenever they had time for some precious shut-eye. Now, thanks to a new study conducted at Madigan Army Medical Center and?published in?Sleep, we have hard numbers on the military's sleep deprivation problem. By reviewing charts from all the Center's admissions for sleep-related complaints, researchers were able to determine that two-thirds of soldiers with sleep problems get less than six hours of sleep per night. Forty-two percent got less than five. "It's really the first study to take a good epidemiological look at sleep in military personnel," comments University of Texas Health Science Center psychologist Alan Peterson. [Science News]
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Look at this video of a zebrafish's brain. Ever wondered what a zebrafish is thinking? You might not have, but neuroscientists sure do. And now, thanks to a new way of using green?fluorescent?proteins (GFPs), they can show when the fish's neurons are activated.?Koichi Kawakami?at the National Institute of Genetics in Japan and his colleagues developed the method and used it in young zebrafish, that are still transparent before maturing. "The sensitivity resolution of this new green fluorescent protein is amazing," comments Martha Constantine-Paton of MIT. Take a look at the method in action below.?[New Scientist]
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Why pigeons can't find their way home from this spot in New York state. Homing pigeons are famous for their ability to find their way back from points they've never visited before. But there's one spot in upstate New York where homing pigeons lose all sense of direction. Now, scientists may have solved the mystery of this "Bermuda Triangle" for homing pigeons.?The U.S. Geological Survey's Jonathan Hagstrum and his colleagues find that the birds use low frequency sounds to oriente themselves, and the geological features of this site prevent them from hearing them. "The temperature structure and the wind structure of the atmosphere were such in upstate New York that the sound was bent up and over Jersey Hill," says Hagstrum.?[BBC News]
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Cancer death rates are declining. In the last twenty years, death rates from cancer have gone down 20 percent.?CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians has issued its annual cancer mortality study, finding that prostate and breast cancer are more common than before, but cancer on the whole may be getting more manageable due to early detection and advances in treatment. John R. Seffrin, the CEO of the American Cancer Society says, "We must also recognize that not all demographic groups have benefitted equally from these gains, particularly those diagnosed with colorectal or breast cancer, where earlier detection and better treatments are credited for the improving trends."?This has nothing to do with rates of cancer development, and it doesn't mean that the sheer number of people dying from cancer is going down. [io9]
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/soldiers-not-sleeping-enough-231534271.html
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