NATION : A Dream Job in Sleep Research
THE WOODLANDS, Tex. — Help Wanted. Baylor College of Medicine seeks 16 good sleepers to spend a month lying down. Salary uncertain, but benefits include breakfast in bed--lunch and dinner, too.
It sounds like a couch potato’s dream, but there’s a catch to the deal being offered by researchers David Cardus and Wesley McTaggart.
When they say the sleepers will be confined to bed, they’re not kidding. The people they select won’t be allowed to get up for the entire month, and they’ll spend part of their time spinning around in a space-age sleep chamber that looks like something straight out of the movie “Aliens.”
The experiments will also require the research subjects to be hooked up to sensors that monitor a dozen bodily functions.
Other than that, the job’s a snooze.
Cardus and McTaggart, using a $650,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, are involved in a three-year program to see if the physical strain can be eased on astronauts making lengthy space voyages.
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