Sleep Your Way To The Top

Working 9 to 5, or something similar? Find yourself sluggish about midday? Maybe you need a few more winks. Just an hour’s nap can make all the difference in your chances for success in your daily endeavors.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that napping an hour can dramatically restore and boost your brain power. Amazingly, they found a nap can actually make you smarter.

Apparently that brain sitting atop your shoulders needs sleep to clear its short-term memory storage so new information may be absorbed.

It’s something akin to when you download too many digital photos to an old PC; it just slows processing to a crawl.

“Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap,” says Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and lead investigator.

Based on the study, college students who pull “all nighters” cramming for finals aren’t doing themselves any big favors. The findings indicate this practice decreases the ability to learn by nearly 40 percent.

In the study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups — nap and no-nap. Both groups were given rigorous learning tasks at noon to stress the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Results in both groups were similar.

At 2 p.m., the first group napped for 90 minutes while the no-nap group stayed awake. At 6 p.m., both groups were subjected to a new series of learning exercises. Those who napped performed markedly better and actually improved their ability to learn.

“It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder,” Walker says.

In addition to boosting your brain power, one study showed that napping can reduce the risk of a fatal heart attack by 37 percent.

From My Notepad

As a young reporter, I once covered an elderly small-city mayor who could go 18 hours in a fast-forward schedule that would have hobbled a man half his age.

I asked him what his secret was to working from very early morning through late night, with few breaks in between.

His simple answer: “Cat naps.”

This mayor would take a half hour nap in the late morning and one in the late afternoon, spacing his downtime in such a way that he could cover administrative functions during the day and public meetings at night.

He always appeared refreshed, sharp, and his energy levels were astounding (btw: this public official lived to be nearly 100).

Some tips for an effective, refreshing afternoon nap:

• Best naptime is 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. when you experience a natural dip in energy.

• Get comfortable. If you have a couch or comfy chair, use them, says Salary.com. Otherwise, stash a yoga mat and pillow behind your desk.

• Draw the shades and wear a sleep mask to stimulate melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone, advises Body Ecology.

• Your body temperature may fall during sleep, so cover yourself with a light blanket.

• Set an alarm to make sure you don't oversleep.

Walker and his team plan to investigate whether the reduction of sleep experienced by people as they get older is related to the documented decrease in our ability to learn as we age.

Finding that link may be helpful in understanding such neurodegenerative conditions as Alzheimer’s disease, Walker says.

Ken Cocuzzo

ChinaWatch: Lessons In Life

U.S. Education Valued

Dozens of U.S. colleges and universities are seeing a surge in applications from students in China, where a booming economy means more families can pursue the dream of an American higher education, the New York Times reports.

But that success — following a 30 percent increase last year in the number of Chinese studying in the United States — has created a problem for admissions officers.

At Grinnell College in Iowa, for example, how do they choose perhaps 15 students from the more than 200 applicants from China? After all, the 11-member admissions committee cannot necessarily rely on the rubrics it applies to American applications (which are challenging enough to sort through).

Consider, for example, that half of Grinnell’s applicants from China this year have perfect scores of 800 on the math portion of the SAT, making the performance of one largely indistinguishable from another.

But the most accomplished applicants will have grades in the 70s or 80s, because Chinese schools tend to grade on a far less generous curve than American high schools.

Few will have had the opportunity to take honors or Advanced Placement courses to demonstrate their ability to do college work, since such courses are rare in China.

Foreign Investors Watched

China will launch a state-level investment review body to check that merger and acquisition deals struck by foreign firms in one of the world's fastest-growing economies do not endanger “national security,” says China's State Council, the cabinet, Reuters reports.

The new regulation, which will come into effect in March, is set to install a new red-tape barrier for doing business in China, the world's second largest economy where double-digit growth has attracted more than $105 billion in foreign direct investment last year.

Foreign investments in military, agriculture, energy and resources, key infrastructure, transport systems, key technology sectors and “important equipment manufacturers” may be subject to reviews, according to a statement published on the central government Internet portal.

Vying For Workers

China’s coastal and inland cities are fiercely competing to attract migrant workers as the nation’s labor shortage spreads to less-developed central and western regions, according to straitstimes.com.

In south-west China's Chongqing, many firms have set up booths at railway and bus stations to persuade workers to stay home instead of returning to the coast. Tens of millions of migrant laborers travel by train or bus during the Spring Festival break, which ends Feb 17.

At the city's North Railway Station, about a dozen workers told the China Daily that they will stay in their hometown if they can get similar wages.

Jiang Haitao, 21, who worked at Foxconn Technology Group's Kunshan plant in East China's Jiangsu province last year, says the corporation's Chongqing operation offers a base salary that is only “slightly less.”

“I'd feel happier working in my hometown,” he says, adding that earning 200 yuan ($38) more outside “cannot buy the same happiness.”

Migrant workers in the east earned an average of 5 percent more than those in western regions in 2009, yet the disparity was 15 percent five years earlier, show figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

ChinaWatch