'Smart' Alarm Clock Helps You Sleep

Reported February 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Not getting enough sleep at night can sap most of your energy during the day. About 60 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, causing a lot of sleepless nights, but your cell phone may be able to help you sleep better.

When sleeping soundly, there's nothing worse than hearing your alarm clock go off. It's even worse if you lost sleep the night before.

Busy grad student David Kidd has his share of sleepless nights.

"My sleep habits are really erratic," Kidd told Ivanhoe.

Now a new cell phone alarm clock application called Proactive Sleep, uses an algorithm developed by George Mason psychology PhD student Daniel Gartenberg, that may help you get some shuteye.

"Our main goal is to just help you understand your own sleep patterns," Gartenberg explained. "Once you understand your own patterns, hopefully you can make the appropriate behavioral modifications to have better sleep and live a healthier life."

Used with the iPhone or iPod touch, the application gives personalized information on how well you are sleeping, and offers sleep tips to promote a healthy, sleep-filled, lifestyle.

"It tells you how much you are sleeping, and it gives you averages of how much you are sleeping and how consistently your sleep is," Gartenberg said.

A task called the vigilance game helps rate your sleep. Right after waking up, users try and touch a moving target on the screen. If you slept well, you will be more alert and do better playing the game. A lower score indicates a poor night's sleep and grogginess.

"A good night's sleep, it's very important," Gartenberg said. "Even a half an hour of sleep deprivation has real consequences."

Research shows stimulating the mind when you first wake up can help you feel more refreshed, and be more alert during the day. David now has a better grasp on his own sleep patterns.

"It heightens your awareness of how much sleep you're getting," Kidd said.

And now Kidd says he's replaced counting sheep for some sweet dreams.

According to the national sleep research project, if it takes you less than five minutes to fall asleep at night that means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day. Proactive Sleep can be purchased for $5 from iPhone applications.

The American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Daniel Gartenberg
(732) 668-1250
gartenbergdaniel@gmail.com

Mike Breen and Annette Emerson
American Mathematical Society
Providence, RI 02904-2294
(800) 321-4267
http://www.ams.org
paoffice@ams.org

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Barry List
(443) 757-3560
http://www.informs.org
barry.list@informs.org

Ivars Peterson
Mathematical Association of America,
Washington, DC 20036-1358
(800) 741-9415
http://www.maa.org
ipeterson@maa.org

Lois Smith
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(310) 394-1811
http://www.hfes.org
lois@hfes.org

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