Visible from the heights..

Daibutsu

Originally uploaded by eroku

Went to Kamakura this last weekend for a day trip. It is about an hour train ride from Shinjuku and is near the beach. There are even a few famous temples and a lot of surfers.

This is one of the largest Buddha’s in the world, at Kotoku-in. It is in the mountains and is quite peaceful. Amazing that it is so close to Tokyo, yet so far away.

All in all, I was able to hike in the mountains, look at the ajisai (hydrogenia) and chill out on the beach. Relaxing and refreshing! More pictures to come.

IMGP0020.JPG

Originally uploaded by eroku

The red dragonfly… scary looking, but not as cool as the onitanbo, which can be about the size of a softball.

Taken at Koganeikoen.

From Rush.edu.

Chicago - People who take small amounts of caffeine regularly during the day may be able to avoid falling asleep and perform well on cognitive tests without affecting their nighttime sleep habits.

Researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have discovered that caffeine works by thwarting one of two interacting physiological systems that govern the human sleep-wake cycle. The researchers, who report their findings in the May issue of the journal SLEEP, propose a novel regimen, consisting of frequent low doses of caffeine, to help shift workers, medical residents, truck drivers, and others who need to stay awake get a bigger boost from their tea or coffee.

“I hate to say it, but most of the population is using caffeine the wrong way by drinking a few mugs of coffee or tea in the morning, or three cups from their Starbuck’s grande on the way to work. This means that caffeine levels in the brain will be falling as the day goes on. Unfortunately, the physiological process they need to counteract is not a major player until the latter half of the day,” said James Wyatt, PhD, sleep researcher at Rush University Medical Center and lead author on the study.

Though many studies have measured caffeine’s sleep-averting effects, most do not take into account that sleep is governed by two opposing but interacting processes. The circadian system promotes sleep rhythmically—an internal clock releases melatonin and other hormones in a cyclical fashion. In contrast, the homeostatic system drives sleep appetitively—it builds the longer one is awake. If the two drives worked together, the drive for sleep would be overwhelming. As it turns out, they oppose one another.

Caffeine is thought to block the receptor for adenosine, a critical chemical messenger involved in the homeostatic drive for sleep. If that were true, then caffeine would be most effective if it were administered in parallel with growing pressure from the sleep homeostatic system, and also with accumulating adenosine.

To test their hypothesis, the scientists studied 16 male subjects in private suites, free of time cues, for 29 days. Instead of keeping to a 24-hour day, researchers scheduled the subjects to live on a 42.85–hour day (28.57-hour wake episodes), simulating the duration of extended wakefulness commonly encountered by doctors, and military and emergency services personnel. The extended day was also designed to disrupt the subjects’ circadian system while maximizing the effects of the homeostatic push for sleep.

Following a randomized, double-blind protocol, subjects received either one caffeine pill, containing 0.3 mg per kilogram of body weight, roughly the equivalent of two ounces of coffee, or an identical-looking placebo. They took the pills upon waking and then once every hour. The goal of the steady dosing was to progressively build up caffeine levels in a way that would coincide with—and ultimately, counteract—the progressive push of the homeostatic system, which grows stronger the longer a subject stays awake.

The strategy worked. Subjects who took the low-dose caffeine performed better on cognitive tests. They also exhibited fewer accidental sleep onsets, or microsleeps. EEG tests showed that placebo subjects were unintentionally asleep 1.57 percent of the time during the scheduled wake episodes, compared with 0.32 percent for those receiving caffeine. Despite their enhanced wakefulness, the caffeine-taking subjects reported feeling sleepier than their placebo counterparts, suggesting that the wake-promoting effects of caffeine do not replace the restorative effects gained through sleep.

“Our results highlight the impairments in cognition that accompany all work schedules that lie outside the usual 9 to 5 workday. In addition, they reveal an entirely new way to use caffeine to maintain alertness and performance in the face of sleep loss,” said Wyatt.

As the researchers hypothesized, the behavioral differences between the groups appear to be due to caffeine’s effects on the homeostatic rather than circadian system. Wyatt and his colleagues suggest that shift workers, medical residents, truck drivers, and others who need to stay alert consider taking frequent low doses of caffeine. “While there is no perfect substitute for sleep, our results point the way toward a much better method for using caffeine in order to maintain optimal vigilance and attention, particularly when someone has to remain awake longer than the traditional 16-hour wake episode,” said Wyatt.

If you have yet to see it, Hot Fuzz, get it now. By the guys that did Shaun of the Dead. Absolutely marvelous.

thats all.