Should variations in human sleep be targeted for medical interventions?Cross-posted with the Day In, Day Out series at Psychology Today Some thoughts on treating dleep maintenance insomnia (when you wake up a few hours after going to bed and cannot get back to sleep). BY MATTHEW J. WOLF-MEYER Something woke you up in the middle … More Insomnia? Or evolution?
Coming to terms with American expectations of normal sleep.Cross-posted with the Day In, Day Out blog series at Psychology Today Matthew Wolf-Meyer gives a brief overview of the history of sleep and its common misunderstandings. BY MATTHEW J. WOLF-MEYER You’re sitting at your desk, slowly reading through your response to a friend’s email, when … More How natural is human sleep?
BY MATTHEW J. WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz Over the past thirty years, there’s been a mounting body of evidence regarding changes in long-term sleep needs. Infants need a lot of sleep; children less so; adolescents need more; and adults, less, until our later years, when many require even less sleep. … More School start times: Why so rigid?
BY JANELLE A. SCHWARTZHamilton College This past May, I attended the 2012 North American Levinas Society conference held in Anchorage, Alaska. Playing on its location in the Last Frontier, the conference was particularly interested in research focusing on “Levinas, the environment and the cultures of place,” and so it afforded me the opportunity to expand … More Frankenstein and the worm: Not "just" another essay on Frankenstein
We are not biologically programmed to rest a full night of consolidated sleep. In fact,some societies favor shorter periods of sleep, during both the day and night. Image via Creative Commons. BY MATTHEW J. WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz Have humans evolved to sleep in a consolidated, nightly fashion, … More On the evolution of sleep
Should you share your sleeping space with Fido? BY MATTHEW WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz Sure, sharing a bed can be a nuisance from time to time. And spending the night in a hotel alone while traveling can be a vacation in itself. But there’s been some recent attention … More The benefits of sharing a bed — with lovers, children, or dogs
Sleep: It might traditionally be relegated to the twilight hours.But that doesn’t mean it has to be. BY MATTHEW WOLF-MEYERAssistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz Slate & Survey Monkey just published the results of a poll on sleep, most of which is pretty innocuous. The two findings that work pretty … More Is a good night’s sleep legitimately possible?
BY JOHANNA DRUCKER Breslauer Professor of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles The basic challenge for humanists comes from adopting visualizations that don’t suit our fundamental epistemological values. Obviously humanism is not monolithic. But methods of statistical analysis and empirical observation are grafted onto the humanities, they were not created from within … More Representation and the digital environment: Essential challenges for humanists
From seventeenth-century broadsides about the handling of dead bodies, printed during London’s plague years, to YouTube videos about preventing the transmission of STDs, public health advocacy and education has always had a powerful visual component. Imagining Illness explores, through various essays, the diverse visual culture of public health, broadly defined, from the nineteenth century to … More "HPV Boredom 2" and the future of public service announcements
