Sleep and Memory
Siesta is referred as a short sleep afternoon, which is believed by researchers, can transfer the shortterm memories stored in hippocampus to the long term memory storage in prefrontal cortex and
the transfer is occurred during stage 2 non-REM sleep. After the sleep of approximately 100 minutes
after lunch, the brain becomes refreshed and can take in new information easily. To confirm this
theory, research was done in University of California taking 40 participants where they had to take 2
lessons at different times. Half of the volunteers slept 1 hr after the lunch and half of them did not
sleep. After examining, the participants who slept remembered more of what they learned and viceversa, which confirms that siesta refreshes a human brain and catch the memories effectively.
The most profitable siesta can be distributed in 3 groups with 30 minutes each to rest the body, clear
the hippocampus and processing of the new memories consecutively. This method is argued to be as
effective as full night’s sleep.
The past below the waves
Due to the natural phenomenon at sea such as storm and accidents, more than 3 million ships are
destroyed and are on the bottom of the sea which has provided an opportunity to the marine
archaeologists to gain the knowledge various aspects of human civilization such as trade patterns,
culture, and technology. The depth of the sea is a hindrance to scuba divers while they cannot dive
beyond 50 meters which has restricted them to expand their research beyond coastline. Manned
submarines could be used to examine the deep sea sites (such as titanic) but the expensive nature of
these products has restricted its use widely, however this has been change due to the invention of
mini submarine called AUV(Automatic Underwater Vehicle) which has low cost, easily movable and
shouldn’t be controlled via mother-ship which is highly-priced. The invention of AUV has allowed a
group of American archaeologists to explore an area located on Egypt which is considered as a major
port for trading 4000 years ago.