If you want to get ahead in life, then you’ll need to work hard, be disciplined, and sacrifice sleep. If you’re asleep, you’re not working, and if you don’t work constantly, you can never manage a successful company or create the art that will make you famous. It’s not just your success on the line, either. Your country’s economy is counting on you to be a productive member of society. Besides, there will be plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.
If you’re thinking these old saws sound dull, you’re right, and the data agree with you. Insufficient sleep has been linked to a slew of health issues, such as obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. It can also cause mood disorders and is a main contributor to poor work-life balance.
Workers pay and pay often for their poor sleep habits, but since the best-known ailments of sleep deprivation are personal in nature, employers and society do little to properly incentivize good sleep hygiene. But according to a study by Rand Europe, sleep-deprived Americans will cost the United States economy up to $434 billion by 2020, and the tab gets larger after that.
Sleep pays for itself
Based on survey data from 62,000 people, Rand Europe created a bespoke macroeconomic model that stimulated the interactions of economic agents (workers, companies, governments, etc.). They ran the model through three scenarios, and the results for 2016, the year of the study’s release, were staggering.
The United States proved the biggest economic loser, with losses between $281 and $411 billion. Japan, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom were also modeled, and researchers estimated that all five countries lose “up to $680 billion dollars of economic output every year.”
That’s the bad news. The worst news is that these economic losses increase slightly in magnitude over time, meaning we forfeit more every year we don’t devise solutions for our societal sleep deprivation. In 2020, the U.S. is estimated to lose between $299 and $434 billion. By 2030, the amount will be between $330 and $468 billion.
Invested properly, these amounts could easily fund tuition-free public colleges and provide health care coverage for uninsured families, with change to spare (or, you know, it could develop one-third of an F-35 fighter jet).
Productive postmortem
Commuters sleep in a metro car in Moscow on May 23, 2018. (Photo by Mladen ANTONOV / AFP)
We lose more year after year because of how insufficient sleep drains productivity from the labor supply — namely, through lower productivity levels, negatively affected skill development, and higher mortality risks.
The study found that less sleep increased absenteeism (due to illness) and presenteeism (that is, being physically at work but mentally checked out). Workers who slept less than six hours a day averaged a 2.4 percentage point loss of productivity compared to healthy sleepers. That may not seem like much, but it adds up to 6 working days lost per year per sleep-deprived worker.
Expand that number across the U.S., and the country loses the equivalent of 1.23 million working days a year. Days that, once lost, are gone.
Insufficient sleep also drains talent from the labor supply by hindering the skill development of school children, preventing them from properly acquiring the skills necessary to grow their productivity once a part of the workforce.
Finally, the study looked at the link between sleep deprivation and death. Poor sleepers have a 13 percent higher mortality risk from all causes of death, including, but not limited to, health-related issues and accidents caused by drowsiness. The CDC cites drowsy driving as responsible for 72,000 crashes, 44,000 injuries, and 800 deaths in 2013 alone.
Workers who die particularly impact economic losses, as their removal from the labor supply doesn’t just affect the year they died. It also removes all their future productivity, as well as the productivity of potential future children.
Even if there is time to sleep when you’re dead, there isn’t time to do much else.
Make sleep a priority, not a luxury
Good sleep hygiene improves your health and work-life balance, so it is to your benefit, not just the benefit of your employer or the country’s economy, that you sleep and sleep well.
Here are some tips to help you get a good night’s rest:
- Rest up. The National Sleep Foundation recommends working-aged adults (26–64 years old) get between seven and nine hours of sleep a night. Less or more sleep may be appropriate depending on personal needs. Women, for example, need more sleep than men on average.
- Figure out your circadian rhythm. Try to go to bed and wake up at times that feel natural to you (but still net you the hours you need). Once you find that rhythm, be consistent. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
- Don’t acquire sleep debt. Your weekend catch-up sessions will credit you a bit, but it’s usually not enough. Creating a consistent sleep schedule is the only way to stay in the black.
- Don’t consume nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, or sugary drinks before bed. Alcohol may help you fall asleep faster, but it reduces rapid-eye movement, curbing the quality of your sleep.
- Silence is golden. Your brain needs silence to recover from the day. Schedule your phone to be silent during your sleep hours, and try to fix any household intermittent noises that you can (looking at you, leaky faucet).
- Be in balance. Your room should be neither too warm nor too cold. Your body has to work to maintain a regular temperature in extreme conditions, making it difficult to rest.5
- Darkness, my old friend. Night lighting may not be very bright, but it is significantly more so than the natural light of the moon and stars. Remove LEDs from your room and block out street lighting to help regulate your sleep-wake cycle.
- No screen time before bed. The blue light of electronic screens prevents your pineal gland from releasing melatonin. Melatonin helps reduce alertness and mellow you out. Without it, your brain stays alert and awake.
- Stop the snooze cycle. Using a snooze button wrecks your pre-waking REM and blunts your morning brain.8 If you’re waking up tired, you need to adjust to get more sleep.
- Stay healthy. Exercise will also help you sleep by burning off excess energy earlier in the day.
Of course, our jobs will often add stressors that put mental relaxation out of our control. Commutes, financial concerns, unrealistic deadlines, irregular hours, and our always-on work culture are all cited by the authors of the Rand Europe study as sleep deterring qualities of the modern work environment.
As such, it may be worth having a talk with your manager about how to properly address deficiencies that deprive employees of sleep. Remember, it’s not just about your health, but your ability to perform productively for your employer. As the study’s authors note, “Solving the problem of insufficient sleep represents a potential ‘win-win’ situation for individuals, employers, and the wider society.”
U.S. Navy ships
The U.S. Navy controls patents for some futuristic and outlandish technologies, some of which, dubbed "the UFO patents," came to light recently. Of particular note are inventions by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, whose tech claims to be able to "engineer reality." His slate of highly-ambitious, borderline sci-fi designs meant for use by the U.S. government range from gravitational wave generators and compact fusion reactors to next-gen hybrid aerospace-underwater crafts with revolutionary propulsion systems, and beyond.
Of course, the existence of patents does not mean these technologies have actually been created, but there is evidence that some demonstrations of operability have been successfully carried out. As investigated and reported by The War Zone, a possible reason why some of the patents may have been taken on by the Navy is that the Chinese military may also be developing similar advanced gadgets.
Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve this by creating a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically decrease any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.
Not only that, if the vacuum-creating technology can be engineered, we'd also be able to "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," states the patent. This would lead to major advancements in aerospace propulsion and generating power. Not to mention other reality-changing outcomes that come to mind.
Among Pais's other patents are inventions that stem from similar thinking, outlining pieces of technology necessary to make his creations come to fruition. His paper presented in 2019, titled "Room Temperature Superconducting System for Use on a Hybrid Aerospace Undersea Craft," proposes a system that can achieve superconductivity at room temperatures. This would become "a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology," conveys Pais.
High frequency gravitational wave generator.
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
Another invention devised by Pais is an electromagnetic field generator that could generate "an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets." This shield could protect from threats like anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles that evade radar, coronal mass ejections, military satellites, and even asteroids.
Dr. Pais's ideas center around the phenomenon he dubbed "The Pais Effect". He referred to it in his writings as the "controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma) via accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration under rapid (yet smooth) acceleration-deceleration-acceleration transients." In less jargon-heavy terms, Pais claims to have figured out how to spin electromagnetic fields in order to contain a fusion reaction – an accomplishment that would lead to a tremendous change in power consumption and an abundance of energy.
According to his bio in a recently published paper on a new Plasma Compression Fusion Device, which could transform energy production, Dr. Pais is a mechanical and aerospace engineer working at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), which is headquartered in Patuxent River, Maryland. Holding a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Pais was a NASA Research Fellow and worked with Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. His current Department of Defense work involves his "advanced knowledge of theory, analysis, and modern experimental and computational methods in aerodynamics, along with an understanding of air-vehicle and missile design, especially in the domain of hypersonic power plant and vehicle design." He also has expert knowledge of electrooptics, emerging quantum technologies (laser power generation in particular), high-energy electromagnetic field generation, and the "breakthrough field of room temperature superconductivity, as related to advanced field propulsion."
Suffice it to say, with such a list of research credentials that would make Nikola Tesla proud, Dr. Pais seems well-positioned to carry out groundbreaking work.
A craft using an inertial mass reduction device.
Credit: Salvatore Pais
The patents won't necessarily lead to these technologies ever seeing the light of day. The research has its share of detractors and nonbelievers among other scientists, who think the amount of energy required for the fields described by Pais and his ideas on electromagnetic propulsions are well beyond the scope of current tech and are nearly impossible. Yet investigators at The War Zone found comments from Navy officials that indicate the inventions are being looked at seriously enough, and some tests are taking place.
If you'd like to read through Pais's patents yourself, check them out here.
Laser Augmented Turbojet Propulsion System
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
Megalodon attacks a seal.
A Florida student figured out a way to more accurately measure the size of one of the largest fish that ever lived – the extinct megalodon shark – and found that it was even larger than previously estimated.
The megalodon (officially named Otodus megalodon, which means "Big Tooth") lived between 3.6 and 23 million years ago and was thought to be about 34 feet long on average, reaching the maximum length of 60 feet. Now a new study puts that number at up to 65 feet (20 meters).
Homework assignment leads to a discovery
The study, published in Palaeontologia Electronica, used new equations extrapolated from the width of megalodon's teeth to make the improved estimates. The paper's lead author, Victor Perez, developed the revised methodology while he was a doctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural History. He got the idea while teaching students, noticing a range of discrepancies in the results they were getting.
Students were supposed to calculate the size of megalodon based on the ancient fish's similarities to the modern great white shark. They utilized the commonly accepted method of linking the height of a shark's tooth to its total body length. As the press release from the Florida Museum of Natural History expounds, this method involves locating the anatomical position of a tooth in the shark's jaw, measuring the tooth "from the tip of the crown to the line where root and crown meet," and using that number in an appropriate equation.
But while carrying out calculations in this way, some of Perez's students thought the shark would have been just 40 feet long, while others were calculating 148 feet. Teeth located toward the back of the mouth were yielding the largest estimates.
"I was going around, checking, like, did you use the wrong equation? Did you forget to convert your units?" said Perez, currently the assistant curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland. "But it very quickly became clear that it was not the students that had made the error. It was simply that the equations were not as accurate as we had predicted."
Found in North Carolina, these 46 fossils are the most complete set of megalodon teeth ever excavated.Credit: Jeff Gage/Florida Museum
The new approach
Perez's math exercise demonstrated that the equations in use since 2002 were generating different size estimates for the same shark based on which tooth was being measured. Because megalodon teeth are most often found as standalone fossils, Perez focused on a nearly complete set of teeth donated by a fossil collector to design a new approach.
Perez also had help from Teddy Badaut, an avocational paleontologist in France, who suggested using tooth width instead of height, which would be proportional to the length of its body. Another collaborator on the revised method was Ronny Maik Leder, then a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum, who aided in the development of the new set of equations.
The research team analyzed the widths of fossil teeth that came from 11 individual sharks of five species, which included megalodon and modern great white sharks, and created a model that connects how wide a tooth was to the size of the jaw for each species.
"I was quite surprised that indeed no one had thought of this before," shared Leder, who is now director of the Natural History Museum in Leipzig, Germany. "The simple beauty of this method must have been too obvious to be seen. Our model was much more stable than previous approaches. This collaboration was a wonderful example of why working with amateur and hobby paleontologists is so important."
Why use teeth?
In general, almost nothing of the super-shark survived to this day, other than a few vertebrae and a large number of big teeth. The megalodon's skeleton was made of lightweight cartilage that decomposed after death. But teeth, with enamel that preserves very well, are "probably the most structurally stable thing in living organisms," Perez said. Considering that megalodons lost thousands of teeth during a lifetime, these are the best resources we have in trying to figure out information about these long-gone giants.
Researchers suggest megalodon's large jaws were very thick, made for grabbing prey and breaking its bones, exerting a bite force of up to 108,500 to 182,200 newtons.
Megalodon tooth compared to two great white shark teeth. Credit: Brocken Inaglory / Wikimedia.
Limitations of the new model
While the new model is better than previous methods, it's still far from perfect in precisely figuring out the sizes of animals which lived so long ago and left behind few if any full remains. Because individual sharks come in a variety of sizes, Perez warned that even their new estimates have an error range of about 10 feet when it comes to the largest animals.
Other ambiguities may affect the results, such as the width of the megalodon's jaw and the size of the gaps between its teeth, neither of which are accurately known. "There's still more that could be done, but that would probably require finding a complete skeleton at this point," Perez pointed out.
How did the megalodon go extinct?
Environmental changes that led to fluctuations in sea levels and disturbed ecosystems in the oceans likely led to the demise of these enormous ancient sharks. They were just too big to be sustained by diminishing food resources, says the ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research.
A 2018 study suggested that a supernova 2.6 million years ago hit Earth's atmosphere with so much cosmic energy that it resulted in climate change. The cosmic rays that included particles called muons might have caused a mass extinction of giant ocean animals ("the megafauna") that included the megalodon by causing mutations and cancer.
Scientists, led by Adrian Melott, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, estimated that "the cancer rate would go up about 50 percent for something the size of a human — and the bigger you are, the worse it is. For an elephant or a whale, the radiation dose goes way up," as he explained in a press release.
