There's one in every family or group of friends: A photographer who?willing or not?spends most of their time behind the lens, and ends up conspicuously absent from nearly every photo. It's inevitable. Well, not anymore. The Duo, a working concept camera, splits in half to capture both photographer and photographee at the exact same instant.
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Source: http://inlandsocal.com/2013/06/29/nurses-gather-in-murrieta-to-support-or-boot-out-union/
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Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
IRA FLATOW, HOST:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. It's been almost three years since astronomers found the first planet outside our solar system they called a Goldilocks planet, meaning that it's not too close, not too far, but just the right distance from its sun to potentially sustain life. And since then, more of these just right planets have been found, one at the time.
But a couple of months ago, the Kepler telescope found two in a distant solar system. And just this week, researchers announced they had found three habitable planets orbiting just one star and it's only 22 light years away from us. So how did the scientists manage to find three Goldilock planets at once? What is the potential for life on these planets? Can we detect their atmosphere? Presence of water just yet?
Joining me now to talk more about it is my guest, Rory Barnes is research scientist at the University of Washington, member of the NASA Institute of Astrobiology's virtual planetary laboratory. He joins us from KUOW there in Washington. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
RORY BARNES: Thank you, Ira.
FLATOW: How - tell us how do you discover these planets?
BARNES: Well, these biplanets, in particular, were discovered through an approach known as the radial velocity method. And this is a method by which we observe the star, actually, move in response to the gravitational pull of the planet. So we've monitored the position of the star, and if we see it start to move and those movements seem consistent with the presence of a planet, then we can say, aha, there is, in fact, a planet there. And in this case, we saw lots of different signals. And so we were able to determine that they were, in fact, three of these planets in the Goldilocks zone.
FLATOW: How many total planets did you find at that star?
BARNES: So we know for sure there are six. There's very good evidence for a seventh. So it's certainly a full system. There's a lot of planets already in this particular star.
FLATOW: Wow. And what makes these three Goldilocks planets?
BARNES: Well, it's just what you said in the intro that they are the right distance from the star where we think the energy from the star is such that it cannot overheat the planet and not, you know, leave it too cold so that the water on the surface can actually be in a liquid form. And we think that on - we know on Earth that all life requires liquid water. And so these planets being in sort of this sweet spot makes us excited as astronomers and astrobiologists, because we think that these planets, therefore, have the potential to host liquid water and therefore, maybe life.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number, if you want to talk about these Goldilocks planets. You can also tweet us, @scifri. Do the planets have to be a certain size or composition to be these just right planets?
BARNES: We think so. So these - the critical thing about some of these planets, as opposed to others that have been found before, is that they seem to have a low mass. And low is, of course, relative. These are all more massive than our Earth, but these are all less than 10 times as massive as the Earth. And we think that that's an important range because if they were larger, we might think they'd be more like Neptune or Jupiter, and where they'll have these very large atmospheres made of hydrogen. But these planets look like they have a low-enough mass that maybe they can't hold on to that hydrogen. And so they might have atmospheres that are more similar to the Earth.
FLATOW: Mm hmm. Do they have any moons around any of these planets?
BARNES: Almost assuredly no.
FLATOW: No.
BARNES: These - it's particular to this kind of configuration. These planets were found around a low-mass star. It's about a third the mass of our sun. And because they were close to their star, there's actually some gravitational forces that would likely remove any moons that might have formed, originally, from the planets. They would either have been repelled away and sort of lost into space or they would've, actually, collided with the planets themselves over time.
FLATOW: Mm hmm. The study calls these planets super-Earths. What does super-Earth mean?
BARNES: Yeah. It does not mean that they are better than the Earth.
(LAUGHTER)
BARNES: Although they might be. We don't really know yet.
FLATOW: We don't know.
BARNES: But they don't want to - we don't want to exclude that possibility.
FLATOW: All right.
BARNES: But all we mean by super-Earth is it's something that is larger than the Earth. So in this case, these planets are between about two and 10 times the mass of the Earth. And so they're super-Earths, but we want to make that distinction that they are - we use that term Earth because we don't want people to think of them as being gas giants...
FLATOW: Yeah.
BARNES: ...like Jupiter and Neptune in our solar system.
FLATOW: And how old is that solar system compared to our solar system?
BARNES: Well, that's a great question. I don't think we really have a good handle on it. It turns out that measuring the ages of stars is an extremely challenging endeavor. I can say, with good confidence, that they are between two and 10 billion years old. So that's a nice wide range for you.
FLATOW: That's pretty wide. Yeah.
BARNES: Yeah. So that's unfortunately just where we're at. I think a lot of indicators that we found for this system suggest that it's probably older than our own sun.
FLATOW: Huh.
BARNES: But, you know, again, I don't want to speculate too much. But, you know, I - we do know its old, but we just don't know how old.
FLATOW: Well, the fact that it's old, at least, let's say our - let's give it a, right in the middle, a ballpark of our age, of our solar system.
BARNES: Sure.
FLATOW: And it's only 22 light years away, and you'll see what I'm driving at here - could it have intelligent life there that we might - in 22 years, you could get a signal back and forth in one lifespan.
BARNES: Right.
FLATOW: Yeah?
BARNES: You know, sure, there could certainly be intelligent life there. We don't see any evidence for that at this point, so I don't want to get anybody's hopes up but, you know, sure. I mean, it probably is old enough that, you know, there has been time for intelligent life to develop. But again, you know, we don't know how intelligent life develops in general. We see - have one example, and we don't really know how we developed intelligence. So it's hard to speculate exactly on another planet like that.
But it is old enough that perhaps if we had been living on one of these planets that, you know, we would have had enough time to form into developed intelligence.
FLATOW: Todd in St. George, Utah - let's go to the phones - welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
TODD: Thanks. Hey, I was wondering, if you were on another planet or if you were on that star looking at the Earth, would Venus be in the Goldilocks zone?
FLATOW: Of our solar system.
TODD: Yeah.
FLATOW: Yeah, great question.
BARNES: Yeah. That is a great question. And I - but in our understanding, you know, we kind of define the habitable zone based on our own solar system because we have our own knowledge of what planets are habitable in our solar system. And we often define sort of the most optimistic version of the habitable zone you can imagine as the orbit of Venus just because we know that it looks like - if you are at that distance, then you're fried.
You're in this runaway greenhouse state, and your surface temperature is hundreds and hundreds of degrees. So I think it would, you know, it's kind of an interesting question, but I think, at the same time, our definition of the habitable zone is driven by our own solar system. So I think it would depend what planets are habitable in that solar system is, what their definition of the habitable zone might be. So we - Venus would be borderline, though, I would say, would be their guess.
FLATOW: Good question. Thanks for calling, Todd.
TODD: Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
FLATOW: Yeah, yeah. If we were to look up at the night sky, could we see these planets ourselves?
BARNES: Yeah, maybe. If you had really great vision and were in a very, very dark site and waited all night, you might be able to see it. It's sort of right at the edge of what's visible to the human eye. But I still think it's fascinating to go out at night. It's a really easy location in the sky to find.
FLATOW: Where is it?
BARNES: It is right in front of the Stinger and Scorpio. And so by chance right now, Scorpio is up and visible from most of the Northern Hemisphere. So if you go out tonight and it's clear, go and look just in front of the Stinger and Scorpio. Scorpio is one of the easier constellations to find at night. It's just right in front of it. So it's in a really cool spot at the sky.
FLATOW: And the star is called?
BARNES: Gliese 667C. Isn't that exciting?
FLATOW: Another romantic name.
BARNES: I know.
FLATOW: Yeah. Do you ever change the names?
BARNES: We're scientists.
(LAUGHTER)
BARNES: You know, we don't do romance.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: We're scientists. We don't do romance. I know. I've seen Sheldon Cooper. He can tell you a lot about that. How easy is it? How do you go searching? What - was this discovered by accident, or is there a certain spot in the sky say, hey, you know, it's like going through a fishing pond, I know this is where they're biting?
BARNES: Well, there's a few reasons why this particular star was looked at. One, as you mentioned, it's only 22 light years away. So it's, in fact, quite close. Relatively speaking, you know, I know 125 trillion miles doesn't sound so close in our everyday experience but, you know, astronomically speaking, it is quite close. So it's one of our solar neighbors. So that made it an interesting target. Additionally, this star has been examined for years. And this wasn't the first time that any planets were discovered around this particular star.
A couple of years ago, two or maybe three stars were discovered. There was one that was a little bit iffy that we confirmed in this study. So this was one that we already found a potentially habitable planet orbiting, and so it then became - it took the subject of more intense scrutiny and so it was - after the accumulation of more and more data that we were able to determine that there were more than just one planet in the habitable zone here but in fact three.
FLATOW: Ricky in New York, hi. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. Hi, Ricky.
RICKY: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
RICKY: So one of the big reasons that we're looking for Goldilocks planets is, of course, to see if there's other life there. And if there is other life there and it's more advanced than ours, then they - why haven't they already found us? Why aren't they doing the same things looking for other Goldilocks planets and, I guess, contacted us then?
FLATOW: Yeah.
BARNES: Yeah, alien sociology is not my specialty. I don't really know, you know, what's going on. I mean, this is a classic problem in astronomy known as Fermi's Paradox. There should be lots of planets throughout the galaxy that are significantly older than the Earth by billions of years. And so, you know, this is a question that's been posed for 50 or 75 years or so now about well, if life is out there, why haven't they found us already 'cause they presumably had billions of more years to evolve and develop technology. So, you know, I don't know.
FLATOW: Good question. Thanks for calling, Ricky. Maybe you can go up and take a look at - well, in New York it's tough to see it, streetlights (unintelligible)
BARNES: Yeah, it's a little low from there, but yeah, you can see it from there.
FLATOW: Thanks, Ricky. Have a good weekend. 1-800-989-8255. Let's to got the phones. To Tom in San Anton(ph). Hi, Tom.
TOM: Hey, Ira.
FLATOW: Hey, there.
TOM: Hey, you know, I know you're all talking about supersized planets and all that, and I'm know I probably not, you know, not catching up just quite yet but, I mean, is it considered a class-M planet? I mean, is that a term that means...
FLATOW: What - Tom, what does that mean to you, a class-M planet?
TOM: A class-M planet would support life. And who knows what life it could be? You know, I mean...
BARNES: Yeah. So we...
TOM: Like, I mean, like what kind of life lives on liquid methane on Titan? I don't know. It's...
BARNES: Yeah. Well, the short answer is we don't know either. There's a lot of possibilities out there, but what I can say is that these - that we think that life requires a whole lot of ingredients and phenomena to occur to allow the formation and evolution of life. And we don't have all the information yet on these planets. What we do know is that they look like they have about the right mass, and they're about the right distance from their star.
So these are sort of - you should think of these as the first couple boxes you might check in your laundry list for how to form an M-class planet. So we don't know if they even have water on them yet. We just - we don't know if that's the case.
So all we know is that, hey, the things that we can see today, they have at least met those requirements. And from now - from here on out, we need to try and figure out to more of these issues and hopefully we can resolve them and keep checking boxes and hopefully figure out if they are, in fact, habitable planets and maybe even inhabited.
FLATOW: Hmm. It's something to think about tonight.
TOM: Absolutely. I hope.
FLATOW: Yeah, yeah. That wouldn't - that would be fun, Tom, wouldn't that?
TOM: Right.
FLATOW: Yeah. Thanks for calling.
TOM: I appreciate it.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. We're talking about extrasolar planets on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm talking with Rory Barnes.
How does this one compare to other Goldilocks planets, for example, how do you - how do this relate to the Kepler findings? This was not made with Kepler, right?
BARNES: That's correct. It was not made with the Kepler telescope. It's, in fact, quite a different process by which these planets are found as compared to Kepler. The Kepler spacecraft look specifically to see if planets cross in front of their stars as seen from the Earth. This is a phenomenon that we call a transit.
So what the Kepler spacecraft does is it just looks at these stars and looks for a periodic dimming of light. And that might be the telltale signature of a planet.
So in that case, you determine the period of the orbit, how - what the year on a planet is, and you also determine its physical size. But for these planets that we've discovered, it's kind of completely, you know, perpendicular kind of discovery and that we just measure the period again, the year of these planets but we - well, we can't tell their size. What we can tell is their mass.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
BARNES: So that's two different bits of information that we'd really like to know. If you have both of those bits information then you can determine the density, and then you can make that really critical step, which is are these planets made of rock or are they made of gas. So what we really want is to find the planet that is the perfect marriage of these two discoveries that we can both see the radius and the mass of them.
FLATOW: All right. Let's go back to Texas. To Joshua in Austin. Hi, Josh.
JOSHUA: Hey. How it's going?
FLATOW: Hey there.
JOSHUA: You actually just answered my question. To some degree, I was really curious about the transit thing. I didn't know if you (unintelligible) can lead to the other, if you can find these starts initials by, you know, the wobble technique but then watch them typically to see, you know, any of the planets' transit.
FLATOW: Could - yeah, could Kepler look at this now?
BARNES: Well, unfortunately, Kepler can't for two reasons: One is that it stares at one particular point of the sky so - and it's not going to move. And, of course, the other reason is that it died. So right now it's not working so we can't do that either.
It's possible that it could be resurrected and maybe use to look at some - look at the system. But what we - but you really want - but hit the nail on the head that we do really do want to try and put the two together in trying - put the two methods together and try and see if we can determine at these planets' transit.
And then that gives us a lot more information, and it also provides with us with a great opportunity to try and follow up and check out the atmospheres of these planets and see if they do have the right ingredients for life.
FLATOW: Do you have the tools to be able to do that with the way you look at it?
BARNES: Sure. Yeah. So the next step will be to actually try and search for these transits of these planets. So that probably has to be done from space. And there are spacecraft that have the capabilities to detect to transit. So at this point we don't if they are transiting but that will be something we're going to be following up on.
FLATOW: So it'll be great to have another Kepler up there somewhere.
BARNES: It'd be great to have lots of Keplers up there. But, yeah, right, it would be - yeah, like - and, in fact, there's a plan to do that. NASA's next Kepler-like mission is called TESS. And it is scheduled to launch in about four years, and it's going to basically do Kepler kind of observations over the entire sky. So we should get a lot more planets from that method soon.
FLATOW: And just looking at these other exoplanets, help us understand anything about ourselves or they just still hunting for extra life out there?
BARNES: Well, I think to some are both, I mean, they are certainly oddities in some way, but then at the same time it does help put our solar system and ourselves into context in the galaxy.
When we find these other planets and we see their myriad of properties, we can start to see how does the Earth fit in, how is the Earth special and how is it common. And hopefully, over time we can find enough of these planets in the Goldilocks zone where we can start to figure out, well, what really are the requirements for life, what - where do we really want to focus our efforts because, you know, at this point our technology is not advanced enough that we can just go and make these observations of atmospheres and discoveries of exoplanets cheaply. It's a really challenging endeavor.
FLATOW: Yeah.
BARNES: And so anything we can do to kind of help guide our search for life in the universe is helpful. And I think as we make that journey towards finding life beyond the Earth, that'll only necessary reflect back on us and make us understand where we're coming from and what really it means to be here on planet Earth and be alive and intelligent.
FLATOW: Great Kepler for the weekday and something to thing about this weekend. Rory, thank you for taking time to be with us today.
BARNES: That was my pleasure, Ira. Thank you for having me.
FLATOW: You're welcome. Rory Barnes, research scientist at the University of Washington, member of the NASA Institute of Astrobiology's Virtual Planetary Laboratory.
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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/06/28/196594980/not-one-but-three-goldilocks-planets?ft=1&f=1007
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Nokia's Lumia phones show promise despite the company's dwindling overall sales, and now's your chance to nab one at more affordable prices -- if you're willing to trade in an old phone, that is. The Finnish company's new trade up program in the US will take in old mobile devices and send back up to $300 loaded on a Visa prepaid card, so long as you also purchase a Lumia. A lot of brands and models are accepted (check out if yours is via the trade up portal linked below), but popular ones like the iPhone 4S, the Galaxy S 4, and the HTC One will net you the most money. So, if you're sick of being lost in a crowd of Androids and iPhones, now's the time to give WP8 a whirl.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? From Stonewall in New York in 1969 to the marble walls of the Supreme Court, the push to advance gay rights has moved forward, often glacially but recently at a quickening pace. A look at episodes in the modern history of that movement and how attitudes have changed along the way in the larger culture:
FLASH BACK
Fifty years ago, gay sex was a crime in almost every state, homosexuality was designated a mental disorder, federal workers could easily lose their jobs for being gay and only the outliers were out of the closet, a risky if not dangerous place to be.
FLASH FORWARD
Gay marriage is legal in a dozen states and the District of Columbia, and could soon be again in California after the court's ruling Wednesday.
Gays can serve openly in the armed forces and do so in high office, including Congress. Eight people who have served as a U.S. ambassador or been nominated for that post are openly gay. Openly gay entertainers are commonplace, athletes less so.
It can still be dangerous to be out of the closet, which is why Congress expanded federal hate-crimes legislation in 2009 to cover crimes motivated by bias against gays, lesbians and transgender people. The law is named after Matthew Shepard, a gay college student tied to a fence, beaten and left to die in a 1998 case that sparked hate-crimes laws around the country.
IN THE COURT
The Supreme Court turned a stone cold face to Frank Kameny in 1961, declining to hear his appeal after he was fired as a government astronomer for being gay. It did so again in 1970, dismissing an appeal by two men in Minnesota who fought for the right to marry. And in 1986, the court upheld a Georgia law criminalizing sodomy, part of a patchwork of laws around the nation that once made gay sex a crime coast to coast.
The tide began to shift in the 1990s. In 1996, a ruling by the high court opened an avenue for states to protect gays as a class against discrimination. It struck down a Colorado measure that sought to bar homosexuals from gaining protections that are extended to other groups based on their race or religion.
In 2003, 10 years to the day before Wednesday's rulings, the Supreme Court stripped away the taboo at the heart of gay relationships, ruling that consensual sex between adults was not a crime so state sodomy laws could not stand. The court reversed its ruling of 17 years earlier on the Georgia law, and Justice Antonin Scalia, in a pointed and seemingly prophetic dissent, predicted it would clear the way for same-sex marriage.
Two years before his death in 2011, Kameny received an apology from the government for firing him. The apology came from John Berry, then director of the Office of Personnel Management, now nominated as ambassador to Australia, himself openly gay.
The rulings Wednesday extend federal recognition to gay marriages in the states where they are legal and seem bound to add California back into that category. But they leave same-sex marriage prohibitions standing in 35 states ? 29 under state constitutions, six under state laws ? and the overarching question of marriage equality as a national right unresolved. Two states, New Mexico and New Jersey, neither approve nor ban gay marriage.
IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
In 1996, when the Defense of Marriage Act became law, the University of Chicago's General Social Survey reported that 60 percent of respondents considered homosexual sex "always wrong." With political opinion closely tracking public sentiments in that election year, the ground was hardly fertile for something as far-reaching as gay marriage.
In September of that year, the Senate backed DOMA and its prohibition of federal recognition of same-sex gay marriage by a lopsided 85-14 vote, and later that month President Bill Clinton signed it. Although he said he didn't like the law, he made clear ? as did almost everyone else in both parties ? that he considered marriage to be a union between a man and a woman.
That was the prevailing bottom line in Washington right up until last year, when President Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage in a flip-flop that he called an evolution.
Separately in 1996, a bill to establish anti-discrimination measures in the workplace for gays failed, though the vote was much closer.
Grim as the picture appeared then for gay rights activists, there were signs of a slow thaw in public attitudes. A few years earlier, fully 75 percent frowned on gay sex in the Social Survey. In 1996, more people thought extramarital sex was wrong than opposed gay sex.
Social scientists found that Americans were more open to a situation or a behavior when it was distant from their daily lives. So support for employment equality was stronger for the gay airline pilot than for the grade school teacher, stronger for gays in the armed forces than for gays adopting children, stronger for domestic partnership benefits in the workplace than for the right of a gay couple to get an apartment in your building.
Public attitudes have changed dramatically ? and in part for reasons that turn out to be close to home.
An Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll in the fall found 53 percent favored legal recognition of same-sex marriage and 63 percent favored granting gay couples the same legal benefits straight couples had. Other polls, too, pointed to a switch to majority support for gay marriage. In March, the Pew Research Center, which pegged support for marriage equality at 49 percent, found that support had grown in large measure because more people knew someone who was gay ? a family member, friend or acquaintance. Familiarity had bred acceptance.
MILESTONES
What became known as the gay liberation movement traces its roots to the 1969 police crackdown of patrons at the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York City and three days of riots that followed. Also in 1969, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling barred the firing of civil servants solely because they were gay.
By then, the Mattachine Society, considered the first national gay rights organization, had been around for nearly two decades but activists largely stayed out of the public eye until the 1970s, a decade of change, bold demands for more and the first national gay rights march on Washington.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder.
The decade saw the first openly gay people elected to public office as well as the election of other officials committed to the cause. In the 1980s, the spread of AIDS and its devastating toll among gay men galvanized calls for action, not just to control the epidemic but to redress the absence of legal protections for gays who could not visit their partners in hospital rooms, attend their funerals or keep shared possessions after death.
The election of a Democratic president in 1992 held out the promise of a change in course for gay activists frustrated by the years of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. But Clinton was not about to upend the social order.
As a leader promoting a "third way" somewhere between the usual politics of the left and the right, Clinton took measured steps on gay rights, perhaps most notably his compromise on gays in the military. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allowed gays to serve as long as they weren't open seemed to please no one on either side ? though for such an unpopular step, it survived a long time.
The pace of federally financed AIDS research picked up; Clinton established an AIDS policy office in the White House.
More politicians began supporting the recognition of same-sex civil unions while drawing a line against marriage equality. But a court case through the early 1990s in Hawaii, in which three same-sex couples fought for the right to marry, prompted a rush to the ramparts by opponents of gay marriage and set the stage for enactment of the law barring federal recognition of such unions.
That law and the swirling circumstances around it were a catalyst for action for supporters and opponents alike.
In 1998, Hawaii voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment giving lawmakers the power to deny same-sex marriage, making the court case irrelevant. Thirty other states would pass amendments against gay marriage in years to come. Among them: California, where the ability for gays to marry is expected to be restored because of the Supreme Court ruling.
Massachusetts, in 2004, became the first state to permit gay marriage. More followed suit.
In 2010, a court struck down Florida's three-decade-old ban on adoptions by gays.
In 2011, Obama ended the Clinton-era compromise in military policy by opening the forces to people who are openly gay.
In 2012, voters approved same-sex marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington state. This year, Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota are coming on board.
Because of the Supreme Court's action Wednesday, 30 percent of Americans will live in states recognizing same-sex marriage once California legalizes it.
That's a long journey in time, and attitudes, from Stonewall 44 years ago. But these are far from the final steps for either side.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/long-way-stonewall-sometimes-slog-071317208.html
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June 27, 2013 ? Lying awake in bed plagues everyone occasionally, but for those with seasonal affective disorder, sleeplessness is routine.University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the Journal of Affective Disorders that individuals with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) -- a winter depression that leads to loss of motivation and interest in daily activities -- have misconceptions about their sleep habits similar to those of insomniacs. These findings open the door for treating seasonal affective disorder similar to the way doctors treat insomnia.
Kathryn Roecklein, primary investigator and assistant professor in Pitt's Department of Psychology within the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, along with a team of researchers from Pitt's School of Medicine and Reyerson University, investigated why, according to a previously published sleep study by the University of California, Berkeley, individuals with seasonal affective disorder incorrectly reported that they slept four more hours a night in the winter.
"We wondered if this misreporting was a result of depression symptoms like fatigue and low motivation, prompting people to spend more time in bed," said Roecklein. "And people with seasonal affective disorder have depression approximately five months a year, most years. This puts a significant strain on a person's work life and home life."
Roecklein and her team interviewed 147 adults between the ages of 18 and 65 living in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area during the winters of 2011 and 2012. Data was collected through self-reported questionnaires and structured clinical interviews in which participants were asked such questions as: "In the past month, have you been sleeping more than usual?" and "How many hours, on average, have you been sleeping in the past month? How does that compare to your normal sleep duration during the summer?"
In order to understand participants' ideas about sleep, Roecklein's team asked them to respond to questions such as "I need at least 8 hours of sleep to function the next day" and "Insomnia is dangerous for health" on a scale from 0 to 7, where 7 means "strongly agree" and 0 means "disagree completely."
Roecklein and her team found that SAD participants' misconceptions about sleep were similar to the "unhelpful beliefs" or personal misconceptions about sleep that insomniacs often hold. Due to depression, individuals with SAD, like those with insomnia, may spend more time resting in bed, but not actually sleeping -- leading to misconceptions about how much they sleep. These misconceptions, said Roecklein, play a significant role in sleep cognition for those with seasonal affective disorder.
"We predict that about 750,000 people in the Pittsburgh metro area suffer from seasonal affective disorder, making this an important issue for our community and the economic strength and vitality of our city," said Roecklein. "If we can properly treat this disorder, we can significantly lower the number of sufferers in our city."
Roecklein's research data suggests that addressing, understanding, and managing these "unhelpful beliefs" about sleep by way of psychotherapy could lead to improved treatments for seasonal affective disorder. One of the most effective treatment options for insomnia, said Roecklein, is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (known as CBT-I), which aims to help people take control of their thinking to improve their sleep habits as well as mood, behavior, and emotions.
Roecklein's next research project aims to improve treatment for seasonal affective disorder by studying light perception and biological clock synchronization. Light from the environment synchronizes internal biological rhythms with the timing of dawn and dusk, which naturally changes with the seasons. This synchronization allows people to be awake and alert during the day and to sleep at night. Roecklein will examine whether people with seasonal affective disorder perceive this light from the environment differently because of changes in the function of neurological pathways from the eye to the brain. This could help uncover reasons why people suffer from seasonal affective disorder and could suggest new treatment options.
Roecklein's research team included, Peter L. Franzen and Brant P. Hasler of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry, Pitt psychology graduate student Patrica M. Wong, and Colleen E. Carney from Reyerson University's Department of Psychology.
Their paper, "The Role of Beliefs and Attitudes About Sleep in Seasonal and Nonseasonal Mood Disorder, and Nondepressed Controls" was originally published online May 23 in the Journal of Affective Disorders.This work was partially supported by a National Institutes of Health grant.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/rkdVuc175Ek/130627142547.htm
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