Astronauts Measure Sleep in Orbit

A new study will track astronaut's sleep patterns while in space.

BRITTANY SAUSER 

Getting a good night's rest can be difficult in your own bed, but imagine being over 200 miles from home, sleeping strapped down in a spacecraft orbiting Earth, and at any moment's notice, you could be asked to perform a critical mission operation. Under such conditions, astronauts onboard the International Space Station spend 14 days to 6 months. Now, NASA is conducting a study to monitor the sleep-wake patterns of crew members while onboard the space station in hopes of improving the quality and duration of sleep in space—a gravity-free environment.

Astronauts will wear a wristwatch called an Actiwatch that monitors their sleep/wake activity using accelerometers, sensors that record movement. The device will also measure ambient light conditions. In addition, astronauts will have to keep a daily sleep log. At least 20 crew members are expected to participate in the study. Before launching into space, each crew member will submit baseline data from her sleep patterns on Earth.

Sleep deprivation has a real effect on human health, a person's ability to focus and perform tasks, and his or her mental state. Medical research has also shown that chronic sleep loss can lead to hypertension, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and multiple psychiatric disorders. The manager of the Behavioral Health and Performance Element Human Research Program Space Medicine Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Lauren Leveton, points out the importance of the impact of sleep loss to the crew in the agency's press release. "When you consider the risky business of spaceflight," said Leveton, "We want to reduce the risk of performance decrements and optimize people's performance capabilities."

NASA says that data and feedback from a few astronauts already using the device has lead to changes in schedule and countermeasures like naps or caffeine intake. The agency hopes that the information they gather can be used for planning future exploration missions that could last twice as long and in more constrained environments. The data will also be valuable on Earth to improve the sleep of police officers, shift workers, and military personnel, for example.

MRI Reveals Tarantula's Double Beating Heart

Studying live animals via MRI can shed new light on their biology.

EMILY SINGER

An MRI image of a tarantula colored to highlight the heart in the posterior part of the body. Credit: Gavin Merrifield

By putting a live tarantula into a special MRI scanner designed for rodents and other small animals, researchers discovered that the spider appears to have a unique heart beat. 

"In the videos you can see the blood flowing through the heart and tantalisingly it looks as though there might be 'double beating' occurring, a distinct type of contraction which has never been considered before. This shows the extra value of using a non-invasive technique like MRI," said researcher Gavin Merrifield, in a press release from the Society for Experimental Biology. Merrifield presented the research today at the society's annual conference in Glasgow.

Researchers say that using this technology to study live animals could bring greater insight into their physiology and behavior. "One potential practical use of this research is to ascertain the chemical composition of spider venom," says Mr. Merrifield. "Venom has applications in agriculture as a potential natural pesticide. On the more academic side of things if we can link MRI brain scans with a spider's behavior, and combine this with similar data from vertebrates, we may clarify how intelligence evolved."

Samsung Windfall: All of South Korea's Textbooks to Go Digital by 2015

South Korea will redefine primary school education within three years while creating a massive market for home-grown electronics

CHRISTOPHER MIMS 

By 2014, all of South Korea's elementary-level educational materials will be digitized, and by 2015, the entire school-age curriculum will be delivered on an array of computers, smart phones and tablets. While the country's education ministry is yet to announce the make or model of the devices it will purchase, it has revealed it will spend $2.4 billion buying the requisite tablets and digitizing material for them.

Some schools on the peninsula are already using textbooks displayed on notebook computers, but when it comes to choice of tablets, how likely is it that the government will choose the iPad or any other tablet other than those manufactured by South Korean electronics giant Samsung, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab or some larger variant of it?

This move also re-ignites the age-old debate about whether or not students learn better from screens or printed material. Equally important, there's the issue of whether or not devices with smaller form factors are as effective as current textbooks, which tend to have significantly more area on each page.

The now-defunct Kno is the only tablet to take on the textbook in its original dimensions

That might sound like a trivial detail, but before it abandoned its hardware aspirations, the makers of the Kno tablet made a pretty good case that if we're going to replace textbooks with their digital equivalent, we need devices with something like four times the screen territory of the iPad:

What a student needs, according to Kno's research, is something that faithfully reproduces a full-size textbook, without compromise. In contrast, the attempt to cram a textbook onto a smaller screen is a primary reason that previous trials with replacing textbooks with e-readers such as the Kindle DX were abject failures.

Whatever happens, this is potentially a huge windfall for Samsung. Students and governments are the ultimate captive audience. As long as their hardware and software continue to improve, they might not have to compete with Apple; this is a whole other niche.

h/t Paul Biba and Chris Walters at Teleread

Solar Thermal Plants Losing out to Photovoltaics

Financing and environmental concerns have caused some solar plant developers to switch technology.

KEVIN BULLIS 

In the last several years costs for solar power have dropped significantly, driven by advances in manufacturing technology, improvements in efficiency, and government support, among other things. Apparently, that's led some solar power plant projects to switch from using solar thermal technology—which involves concentrating sunlight to generate high temperatures that can be used to generate electricity—for photovoltaics, solar panels that convert sunlight to electricity directly. At least that's what Reuters reported today.

Reading between the lines, the issue may also be something called bankability. Solar panels are established technology—banks have a pretty good idea how long they'll last and what the return on investment will be. Much of the solar thermal technology being deployed now hasn't been tested on a large scale for long periods of time, which can make financing harder. Indeed, in one case, "the company would have needed to secure loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy aimed specifically at new technologies," the report said.

Photovoltaics may have another advantage over at least one solar thermal technology called"power tower". The technology requires arranging a field of mirrors around the tower. The placement of the mirrors is critical, and in some cases requires bulldozing a large area, which can destroy animal habitats. Concerns over desert tortoises are slowing some solar thermal projects in California. There's more flexibility with the siting of solar panels. From the article,

Solar Millenium spokesman Edward Sullivan said PV arrays can be slotted into the most appropriate areas.

"Our [solar thermal technology] is a little bit more restrictive," he said. "We have to develop 250 megawatt chunks, so that requires us to develop large continuous swaths, whereas PV is much more flexible."

But solar thermal stands a chance, especially in light of a series of DOE loan guarantees announced in recent weeks (the DOE keeps a list here). The DOE is also helping out photovoltaics. Yesterday it announced a multibillion dollar guarantee to support solar farms that will use panels from Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar.

Virtual Grocery Shopping

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Shop and hop: Commuters in South Korea pick out the night’s groceries in a virtual mart; the content of their carts are waiting for them when get home.
Credit: Tesco

COMPUTING

International supermarket giant brings virtual goods to subway commuters in South Korea, eliminating the need for a physical store.

• TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2011
• BY KRISTINA BJORAN

Audio »

Where the rest of us see subway walls, Tesco's South Korean supermarket chain Home Plus sees grocery shelves. In a trial run, Home Plus has plastered a subway station with facsimiles of groceries, labeled with a unique code for each product. As commuters pass by on their way to work, they can use a mobile-phone app to take pictures of the products they want, then check out. The groceries are automatically delivered to their doorstep by the end of the work day.

The virtual grocery store has been a hit among more 10,000 customers, with Home Plus reporting a 130 percent increase in online sales. The experiment is just one of the increasingly innovative ways mobile devices are being used in retail. Location-based smart-phone advertising is seen as a potentially valuable way to reach new customers. Some companies in the United States are also using indoor positioning technology as a way to guide shoppers to products and show them special offers. And software makers are exploring different ways of paying for products by smart phone.

In Home Plus's virtual store, each image of a grocery item is accompanied by a quick-response (QR) code, a boxy geometric image that encodes data—the product and its price. When each code is scanned, the item goes into an online shopping cart. Customers then use their phones to pay before hopping the train to work.

People have long been able to scan QR codes with their smart-phone cameras to access whatever information the code holds. And online grocery shopping has been around even longer. Still, the grocery industry has seen little technological innovation since the implementation of the universal product code (UPC) bar code in the 1970s. As of 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that just 0.2 percent of the food and beverage industry's sales were made online. This new strategy could allow retailers to target highly specific audiences. The success of Home Plus's project may prompt other retailers to think about new approaches to shopping that could cut overhead expenses.

Whether or not virtual markets catch on, some experts think radical changes in shopping are right around the corner. "For sure, your cell phone will be the graphical user interface to the shopping services," says Abel Sanchez, research lead at MIT's Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory. "Think of the early days of the Web versus today. In the early 1990s, the Web was one way, like a paper book. Today, the Web is full of interaction; it's how we do our jobs. I think the supermarket will go through a similar transformation."

Late-talking toddlers do fine

TELETHON INSTITUTE FOR CHILD HEALTH RESEARCH

The displayed behavioural and emotional problems tend not to continue beyond two years of age. Image: shalamov/iStockphoto A new study from Perth’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research has shown that late-talking toddlers are no more likely to experience behavioural and emotional difficulties during childhood and adolescence than children who have normal language development.   The study is the first of its kind to track language delay from two years of age through to late adolescence, using data collected from the long running Raine Study.   The results have been published in the August edition of the prestigious international journalPediatrics.   Study leader Associate Professor Andrew Whitehouse said that while late-talkers have increased levels of behavioural and emotional problems at two years of age, these problems tend not to continue.   “We assessed the children at two years of age and at several time-points up to 17 years and found that while the late-talkers had increased levels of psychosocial problems at age two, they were at no more risk for these problems at later ages,” said Dr Whitehouse.   “We suggest that the behavioural and emotional problems identified at two years are due to the psychosocial difficulties of not being able to communicate, such as frustration.   “However, when the late-talking children ‘catch-up’ to normal language milestones – which is the case for the majority of children by school-age – the behavioural and emotional problems are no longer apparent.”   The study examined 1387 children from the Raine study, with 1245 children achieving ‘normal’ language by two years of age and 142 classed as late-talkers (9.9 per cent). The analysis was drawn from a parent-completed Language Development Survey at two years of age and the Child Behaviour Checklist completed at 2, 5, 8, 10, 14 and 17 years of age.   Dr Whitehouse said the results offer reassurance to parents of late-talkers that their language delay is not in itself a risk factor for later behavioural and emotional problems.   “Having a child who is not talking as much as other children can be very distressing for parents. Our findings suggest that parents should not be overly concerned that their late-talking toddler will have language and psychological difficulties later in childhood,” said Dr Whitehouse.   “There is good evidence that most late-talking children will ‘catch-up’ to the language skills of other children. The best thing that parents can do is provide a rich language-learning environment for their children. This means getting down on the floor and playing their child, talking with them, reading to them, interacting with them at their level.”   However, Dr Whitehouse does warn that language problems do persist to the school-age years in a minority of children.   “We have good evidence that if language problems persist to the school-aged years, then these children are at increased risk of behavioural difficulties and appropriate help should be sought,” Dr Whitehouse said.   The next research goal for Dr Whitehouse and his team is to find a way to identify as early as possible the minority of late-talkers who do not ‘catch-up’ and might continue to have life-long language difficulties.  The earlier the intervention for these children, the better the outcome.   By two years of age, children will usually have a vocabulary of around 50 words and have begun combining those words in two or three word sentences.     Citation:  Whitehouse AJO, Robinson M, Zubrick SR (in press). Late-talking and risk for behavioural and emotional problems during childhood and adolescence. Pediatrics.

Phonics not helping kids

UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

Children taught through phonics read at a much slower speed than those taught through a more book-centred approach. Image: marcelmooij/iStockphoto Ground-breaking research in learning has found that children are primarily geared towards learning to read through storing words in the brain, and that phonics, used for “sounding out” words, is not necessary past the initial stages of learning to read. The results of two research projects, conducted by Dr Brian Thompson, of Victoria University, and Associate Professor Claire Fletcher-Flinn of the University of Otago College of Education, will be announced at the 17th Biennial Australasian Human Development Association (AHDA) Conference in Dunedin . The AHDA is the preeminent think-tank in the area of developmental psychology in the Australasian region. In the first research finding, Dr Thompson, and Associate Professor Claire Fletcher-Flinn, and colleagues found that six-year-old Scottish children taught through phonics read at a much slower speed than comparable children taught through New Zealand’s more book-centred approach. They also performed more poorly in deciding whether words were real or not at ages eight and 11, with non-words such as ‘blud’ being picked more often as real words, for example. The researchers also found that Scottish university students who had been taught through phonics as children were worse at reading new or unfamiliar words that do not follow regular taught letter-sounds than their New Zealand counterparts. It is becoming clear that explicit phonics instruction leaves a ‘cognitive footprint’, resulting in a long-term disadvantage when the reader attempts new words. “These findings suggest that educators and policymakers need to look beyond any claimed short-term advantages of particular teaching methods, and take into account longer-term effects when considering the merits of different approaches to teaching reading,” says Associate Professor Fletcher-Flinn. The second finding stems from a study of Grade 1 Japanese Kindergarten children, Japanese adults learning to read and New Zealand students taking Japanese in high school as a second language. Associate Professor Fletcher-Flinn, Dr. Thompson and colleagues found that the same cognitive processes in learning to read words in a writing system based on the alphabet (letters), such as in English, occur in children learning to read a writing system based mainly on characters for syllables, called Japanese Hiragana. This means that the same process of learning to read occurs in both children learning English and those learning Japanese, despite these being two different writing systems. “This is a very important finding which suggests a general learning process for learning to read, regardless of the way the language is written,” says Associate Professor Fletcher-Flinn. Both researchers agree that from the beginning, teachers should strongly support the child’s storage of vocabulary of print words, which have been connected to words in their spoken vocabulary. This is already a feature of the Japanese teaching of beginning reading, and it is an important consideration for teaching here.

Lean storms, less rain

CSIRO

The drop in autumn and winter rainfall is likely to continue for another 50 years. Image: LPETTET/iStockphoto Decreasing autumn and winter rainfall over southern Australia has been attributed to a 50-year decrease in the average intensity of storms in the region – a trend which is forecast to continue for another 50 years. In an address today to the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics conference in Melbourne, CSIRO climate scientist, Dr Jorgen Frederiksen, said these changes are due to reductions in the strength of the mid-latitude jet stream and changes in atmospheric temperatures. The jet stream comprises fast moving westerly winds in the upper atmosphere.   "The drop in winter and autumn rainfall observed across southern Australia is due to a large downturn in the intensity of storm formations over at least the last three decades compared with the previous three decades, and these effects have become more pronounced with time," Dr Frederiksen said. "Our recent work on climate model projections suggests a continuation of these trends over the next 50 years." Dr Frederiksen's address was based on recent CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology research that has just been published in the International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses. The research, based on observations and climate modelling, centres on the changes in southern Australian winter rainfall linked to atmospheric circulation changes that are directly associated with storm formation, and particularly rain bearing lows and frontal systems crossing southern Australia. The most important circulation feature associated with winter storm formation is the strength of the sub-tropical jet stream. For example, winter storms give south-west Western Australia much of its rain. Between the 20-year periods 1949 to 1968 and 1975 to 1994 south-west WA rainfall reduced by 20 per cent. In south-east Australia, there were reductions of 10 per cent. "Our research has identified the historic relationship between the reduction in the intensity of storms, the southward shift in storm tracks, changing atmospheric temperatures and reductions in mid-latitude vertical wind shear affecting rainfall." Vertical wind shear is the change in the westerly winds with height. "We expect a continuation of these trends as atmospheric temperatures rise based on projections from climate models forced by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. "Trends during the 21st Century are likely to be similar to those observed during the second half of the 20th Century, when we saw substantial declines in seasonal rainfall across parts of southern Australia. "Indeed, reductions in projected southern Australian rainfall during the 21st Century, particularly over south-west WA, may be as much as, or larger than, those seen in recent decades," Dr Frederiksen said.