With most of us still struggling to adjust to “spring forward” daylight savings time, it’s hard to believe that some people may be blessed with the ability to thrive on only 4 hours of sleep.For a small group of people —perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population— sleep is a waste of time.
Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.
They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
While it's unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.
Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there.Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Normal Sleeper
Most adults have normal sleep needs, functioning best with 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and about two-thirds of Americans regularly get it. Children fare better with 8 to 12 hours, and elderly people may need only 6 to 7.
Wannabe Short Sleeper
One-third of Americans are sleep-deprived, regularly getting less than 7 hours a night, which puts them at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems.
Short Sleeper
Short sleepers, about 1% to 3% of the population, function well on less than 6 hours of sleep without being tired during the day. They tend to be unusually energetic and outgoing. Geneticists who spotted a gene variation in short sleepers were able to replicate it in mice—which needed less sleep than usual, too.
Dr. Ying-Hui Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight.
Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too.
News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common.
To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics."Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they've been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep," says Dr. Jones.
References:
the globe and mail
rem sleep labs
Cnn
Scientific American
The Wall Street Journal
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Here’s what you need
Let’s get to the fun stuff. In order to make a Naked Egg you will need the following items:
- Vinegar (at least 16 ounces)
- A couple of glasses or cups
- Raw eggs
The process is really very simple. Carefully place the egg in a cup and fill the cup with vinegar so that the egg is completely covered. Don’t worry if the egg floats a bit. Just get enough vinegar in the cup to mostly cover the egg.
An egg soaking in vinegar with part of it's shell dissolved.
Now the hard part – you will have to wait as the acetic acid in the vinegar begins to react with the calcium in the egg shell. In just a short while, you should see some bubbles appearing on the outside of the egg. These are bubbles of carbon dioxide gas from the reaction. It can take 12-24 hours before a good portion of the shell is removed. A good sign of progress is a white frothy scummy layer on the top of the surface of the vinegar.
After a day of soaking you can carefully remove the egg from the vinegar. I would suggest pouring the liquid into another cup and catching the egg in your hand. Using a spoon to fish the egg out might seem like a good idea, but I’ve seen a few eggs break or get damaged when using a spoon to remove them.
At this point you may be able to literally rub the shell off the egg with your fingers. It will rub off as a white powdery substance. Give it try, just be very careful, you don’t want to break the egg, it’s getting more fragile as the shell is slowly dissolved. Depending on your particular egg, you may already have a naked egg. However, I would suggest you fill a cup with fresh vinegar and soak the egg for at least one more day.
After two days of soaking you should have a pretty cool Naked Egg. Notice that the egg is a bit bigger than when you first started. This is because some of the vinegar (and some of the water in the vinegar) has moved through the membranes to the inside of the egg. The membranes are semi-permeable and allow water to move through them. This is called osmosis.
Not Recommended !
I would NOT recommend eating a naked egg prepared this way. Keep in mind you created your egg by soaking a raw egg in vinegar sitting at room temperature for a few days. That is not how to treat eggs you are going to eat! Even if you stored the egg in the refrigerator, I still would not recommend eating the raw egg.
A big thank you to one of our visitors who grabbed a great photo of what happens when you soak a naked egg in corn syrup for a few days. I might call it a “dehydrated naked egg.” And side-by-side is a brilliant red naked egg soaked in red food coloring.
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The United States and Canada, by and large, have been peaceful neighbors — especially since Canada became a de facto independent nation under the British North America Act in 1867. But while the two nations are friendly and, typically, allies, things can change. And in 1927, the United States planned for just such a scenario.
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Clean dirt and grime regularly off you’re numerical keypads otherwise it’s only a matter of time before a thief finds their way.
To see the fair market value for an item you want to purchase, run an advanced search on eBay checking only ‘completed listings’.
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1. The Cave Spider That Could Rip Your Eyes Out
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
What’s scary about the Trogloraptor marchingtoni isn’t that it’s pretty big for a spider or that it was found right here on our home turf (in a cave in Oregon), it’s that at the end of its six legs are barbed, scythe-like claws. Affectionately called the “cave robber” spider, its body isn’t much bigger than your garden variety spider, but when its legs are extended, it measures one and a half inches wide. And with those claws, entomologists suspect they are more predator than wait-and-grab. Should something touch its legs while dangling from the air, the spider may snap shut and grab its prey. Experts have never seen anything like this spider, which puts the cave robber not only into a new category of species, but in its own family of spiders. Which means there may be more where this came from.
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1. American Flags
According to the Flag Manufacturers Association of America the United States, we imported almost $22 million worth of American flags from 2005-2009. The majority of these flags came from China. In 2001 we imported $51.7 million in American flags, including $34.8 in October (the first full month after September 11th) alone.
2. Baseballs
I'm not talking about the origins of the game of baseball, which is hotly contested, but rather the actual balls used in the game. While 80% of the world's baseballs are made in China, every ball used in a Major League Baseball game is made by one factory in Costa Rica. Furthermore, almost every single baseball in the world is made by hand.
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In the northern port city of Thessaloniki in Greece, workers of Metro's construction company found ancient ruins during the building of a new subway. Archaeologists say the 230-foot section of uncovered road was built by Romans nearly 2,000 years ago.
The site was shown to the public on Monday, when it was announced the artifact would be raised and put on permanent display when the subway officially opens in 2016. People were able to see not just the street that was once a hub for travel, but also children's board games and horse-drawn carriage marks etched into marble stones, tools, lamps and the base of marble columns.
And if that isn't exciting enough, another road built by ancient Greeks 500 years prior to the first one was also discovered.
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The first iPhone was actually dreamed up in 1983.Naturally, this wasn’t anything like the rectangular cell phone we know today. It was a land line phone with, instead of a touch screen, a built in stylus controlled interface.
The phone was designed for Apple by Hartmut Esslinger, an influential designer who helped make the Apple IIc computer (Apple’s first “portable” computer) and later founded Frogdesign. The 1983 iPhone certainly fits in with Esslinger’s other designs for Apple. It also foreshadows the touchscreens of both the iPhone and iPad.
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Expiration Dates Refer to Quality, Not Safety
Generally, you'll see three types of expiration dates on your food, and they all mean slightly different things. However, contrary to popular belief, they refer to the quality of the food, not the safety. Here's what each one means:
- Sell By:This date tells the store how long to keep the item on their shelves. If it reaches the date before its sold, the store will pull it from the shelves. It represents the last day the food is at its peak quality of freshness, taste, and consistency. It will still be safe to eat after the Sell By date (how long? See the section below).
- Best If Used By: Again, this merely refers to when the quality of the item starts to go downhill. Generally, you may notice a difference in taste or consistency after that date, but it will still be safe to eat. For example, sour cream may become a bit more sour, or peanut butter may start to experience some harmless oil separation in the bottle.
- Use By: Yep, you guessed it—this is pretty much the same as "Best Used By". The Use By date is when the product loses its peak quality. It's still safe to eat for a little while.
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Peanut butter is a favorite breakfast and snack for many Americans, and not only for them. The food paste, made primarily from ground roasted peanuts, with or without added oil, was first used by the Pre-Columbian peoples of Mexico, who used it as a base for various "moles", meaning sauces.
Now, a team of scientists presented the most recent and spectacular use of peanut butter ever. They have proven it's possible to turn the common peanut butter into the most expensive gems in the world, diamonds.
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