Bora's probably already aware of this, but the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies is currently underway in Minnesota. Like many professional society meeting, this has led to a giant blort of press releases on EurekAlert, as the PR office for the conference tries to drum up some attention.
The press releases in question came across my RSS feeds this morning, and they're notable for the "Well, DUH!" quality of the headlines:
- College students who pull 'all-nighters' and get no sleep more likely to have a lower GPA
- Students with medical-related majors more likely to have poor quality sleep
- Extended duration work shifts risky to the safety, well-being of medical interns, patients
- Going to bed late may affect the health, academic performance of college students
I am shocked-- shocked!-- at these results. So shocked, that I think I'll go take a nap.
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More stuff from SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies:
Sleep Deprivation Affects Eye-steering Coordination When Driving:
Driving a vehicle requires coordination of horizontal eye movements and steering. Recent research finds that even a single night of…
The SLEEP 2007 meeting is going on right now, so I have been trying to keep up with sleep-related news.
Here are two important stories:
First, college students who pull lots of all-nighters have lower GPAs:
A common practice among many college students involves "pulling all-nighters", or a single…
Circadian Math: 1 Plus 1 Doesn't Always Equal 2:
Like a wristwatch that needs to be wound daily for accurate time-telling, the human circadian system -- the biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours -- requires daily light exposure to the eye's retina to remain synchronized with…
Two news releases came across my EurekAlert feeds containing findings that I'm shocked-- shocked!-- to learn about. The first delivers the startling news that "A high percentage of young males appear willing to purchase alcohol for underage youth." They conducted a "shoulder tapping" study, in…
I am shocked at the headline about medical-related majors being more likely to have poor quality sleep. Where I am, it seems like the pre-meds party and drink every night while the non-medical and mostly research majors stay up late doing work.
Well, if the pre-meds are out partying all night, they can't very well be getting quality sleep, can they?
But the implication differs completely from the study! They say that STEM majors -- engineering, science... -- get worse sleep than humanities. Last I checked, most engineering/phys/chem students were frequently up late doing problem sets while premeds were up whining about memorizing F=ma for their physics for premeds course...
Then of course they claim that medical-related majors -- as if to suggest that every STEM major really is at heart a premed -- gets less sleep. Plus, they neglect the factor that plenty of premeds are in non-STEM majors.
The headline really should have been "science, engineering, and math students get less sleep than their counterparts."