Astronaut

What does spending more than a year in space do to the human body?

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Frank Rubio is lifted from the Soyuz MS-23 capsule after returning to Earth (Credit: Nasa/Getty Images)

Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio has just returned from a record-breaking 371 days in space onboard the ISS, but the trip may have altered his muscles, brain and even the bacteria living in his gut.

With a few handshakes, a brief photoshoot and a wave, Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio bid farewell to the American-football-field-sized collection of modules and solar panels that has been his home for the past 371 days. His departure from the International Space Station (ISS) and return to Earth marks the end of the longest single spaceflight by an American to date.

His time in orbit – which surpassed the previous US record of 355 consecutive days – was extended in March after the spacecraft he and his crewmates had been due to fly home in developed a coolant leak. The extra months in space allowed Rubio to clock up a total of 5,963 orbits around the Earth, travelling 157.4 million miles (253.3 million km). But it still means he is around two months short of the record for the longest ever spaceflight by a human – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spent 437 days onboard the Mir Space Station in the mid 1990s.

With a huge grin on his face, Rubio was carried from the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft after it bumped safely back to Earth in a cloud of dust near the town of Zhezkazgan in the Kazakhstan Steppe. Spending so much time in the low gravity environment of the ISS will have taken a toll on his body, so he had to be lifted out of the capsule by the recovery teams.

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‘It’s good to be home,’ after 371 days in space

His extended trip in space, however, will provide valuable insights into how humans can cope with long-duration spaceflight and how best to counteract the problems it can present. He is the first astronaut to participate in a study examining how exercising with limited gym equipment can affect the human body.

It is information that will prove vital as humans set their sights on sending crews on missions to explore deeper into the Solar System. A return journey to Mars, for example, is expected to take around 1,100 days (just over three years) under current plans. The spacecraft they will travel in will be far smaller than the ISS, meaning smaller lightweight exercise devices will be needed.

But problems keeping fit aside, just what does spaceflight do to the human body?

Muscles and bones

Without the constant tug of gravity on our limbs, muscle and bone mass quickly begins to diminish in space. The most affected are those muscles that help to maintain our posture in our back, neck, calves and quadriceps – in microgravity they no longer have to work nearly as hard and begin to atrophy. After just two weeks muscle mass can fall by as much as 20% and on longer missions of three-to-six months it can fall by 30%.The journey back to Earth from the ISS can be pretty rough, despite boosters and parachutes slowing the descent (Credit: Nasa/Getty Images)

The journey back to Earth from the ISS can be pretty rough, despite boosters and parachutes slowing the descent

Similarly, because astronauts are not putting their skeletons through as much mechanical strain as they do when subject to Earth’s gravity, their bones also start to demineralise and lose strength. Astronauts can lose 1-2% of their bone mass every month they spend in space and up to 10% over a six-month period (on Earth, older men and women lose bone mass at a rate of 0.5%-1% every year). This can increase their risk of suffering fractures and increase the amount of time it takes to heal. It can take up to four years for their bone mass to return to normal after returning to Earth.

To combat this, astronauts undertake 2.5 hours a day of exercise and intense training while in orbit on the ISS. This includes a series of squats, deadlifts, rows and bench presses using a resistive exercise device installed in the ISS’s “gym”, alongside regular bouts tethered to a treadmill and on an exercise bike. They also take diet supplements to help keep their bones as healthy as possible.

A recent study, however, highlighted that even this exercise regime was not enough to prevent losses in muscle function and size. It recommended testing whether higher loads in resistance exercises and high intensity interval training might help to counteract this muscle loss.

The lack of gravity pulling down on their bodies can also mean that astronauts find they grow a little taller during their stay on the ISS as their spines elongate slightly. This can lead to issues such as back pain while in space and slipped disks once back on Earth. During a briefing onboard the ISS ahead of his return to Earth, Rubio himself said his spine was growing and said it might help him to avoid a common neck injury that astronauts can suffer when their spacecraft hit the ground if they try to crane out of their seats to see what is happening.

“I think my spine has extended just enough that I’m kind of wedged into my seat liner, so I shouldn’t move much at all,” he said.

Weight loss

Although weight means very little while in orbit – the microgravity environment means anything not tethered down can float around the ISS habitat freely, including human bodies – maintaining a healthy weight is a challenge while in orbit. Although Nasa tries to ensure its astronauts have a diverse range of nutritious foods, including most recently a few salad leaves grown on board the space station, it can still affect an astronaut’s body. Scott Kelly, a Nasa astronaut who took part in the most extensive study of the effects of long-term spaceflight after staying onboard the ISS for 340 days while his twin brother stayed back on Earth, lost 7% of his body mass while in orbit.

Researchers examining Scott Kelly after his trip to the ISS found that the bacteria and fungi living in his gut had altered profoundly compared to before he flew into space

Eyesight

On Earth, gravity helps to force the blood in our bodies downward while the heart pumps it up again. In space, however, this process becomes messed up (although the body does adapt somewhat), and blood can accumulate in the head more than it normally would. Some of this fluid can pool at the back of the eye and around the optic nerve, leading to oedema. This can lead to changes in vision such as decreased sharpness and structural changes in the eye itself. These changes can start to occur after just two weeks in space but as that time goes on, the risk increases. Some of the vision changes reverse within about a year of astronauts returning to Earth, but others can be permanent.

Exposure to galactic cosmic rays and energetic solar particles can also lead to other eye problems. The Earth’s atmosphere helps to protect us from these but once in orbit on the ISS, this protection disappears. While spacecraft can carry shielding to help keep out excess radiation, astronauts onboard the ISS have reported seeing flashes of light in their eyes as cosmic rays and solar particles hit their retina and optical nerves.

Neural shuffling

After his long stay on the ISS, however, Kelly’s cognitive performance was found to have changed little and had remained relatively the same as his brother’s on the ground. However, researchers did notice that the speed and accuracy of Kelly’s cognitive performance did decrease for around six months after he landed, possibly as his brain readjusted to the Earth’s gravity and his very different lifestyle back home.

A study on a Russian cosmonaut who spent 169 days on the ISS in 2014 also revealed some changes to the brain itself seem to occur while in orbit. It found there were changes in the levels of neural connectivity in parts of the brain relating to motor function – in other words, movement – and also in the vestibular cortex, which plays an important role in orientation, balance and perception of our own motion. This is perhaps unsurprising given the peculiar nature of weightlessness while in space; astronauts often have to learn how to move efficiently without gravity to anchor them to anything and adjust to a world where there is no up or down.Scott Kelly's 340 day trip to the ISS allowed researchers to study how space affected him compared to his twin brother back on Earth (Credit: Nasa/Getty Images)

Scott Kelly’s 340 day trip to the ISS allowed researchers to study how space affected him compared to his twin brother back on Earth

A more recent study has raised concerns about other changes in brain structure that can occur during long-term space missions. Cavities in the brain known as the right lateral and third ventricles (responsible for storing cerebrospinal fluid, providing nutrients to the brain and disposing of waste) can swell and take up to three years to shrink back to normal size.

Friendly bacteria

It is apparent from research in recent years that a significant key to good health is the make up and diversity of the microorgansims that live in and on our bodies. This microbiota can influence how we digest food, affect the levels of inflammation in our bodies and even alter the way our brains work.

Researchers examining Kelly after his trip to the ISS found that the bacteria and fungi living in his gut had altered profoundly compared to before he flew into space. This is perhaps not entirely surprising, given the very different food he was eating and the change in the people he spent his days with (we obtain a horrifying amount of gut and oral microorganisms from the people we live alongside). But exposure to radiation and the use of recycled water, along with changes to his physical activity could all also have played a role. (Find out more about how exercise affects your gut microbes.)

Skin

Although there have now been five Nasa astronauts who have spent more than 300 days in orbit, we have Kelly to thank again for insights into how his skin fared while in orbit. His skin was found to have heightened sensitivity and a rash for around six days after he returned from the space station. Researchers speculated that a lack of skin stimulation during the mission may have contributed to his skin complaint.The microgravity environment of the ISS can have significant affects on the human body that will be a challenge as humans explore farther into the Solar System (Credit: Nasa)

The microgravity environment of the ISS can have significant affects on the human body that will be a challenge as humans explore farther into the Solar System

Genes

One of the most significant findings from Kelly’s prolonged journey into space were the effects it had on his DNA. At the end of each strand of DNA are structures known as telomeres, which are thought to help protect our genes from damage. As we age, these get shorter, but research on Kelly and other astronauts has revealed that space travel seems to alter the length of these telomeres.

“Most striking, however, was the finding of significantly longer telomeres during spaceflight,” says Susan Bailey, a professor of environmental and radiological health at Colorado State University who was part of the team studying Kelly and his brother. She has done separate studies with another 10 unrelated astronauts who have taken part in shorter missions of around six months. “Also unexpected was that telomere length shortened rapidly on return to Earth for all crewmembers. Of particular relevance to long-term health and ageing trajectories, astronauts in general had many more short telomeres after spaceflight than they did before.”

Exactly why this happens is still being unravelled, she says. “We have some clues, but additional long-duration crewmembers – like Rubio, who spent one year in space – will be critical to really characterising and understanding this response and its potential health outcomes.”

One possible cause could be exposure to the complex mix of radiation while in space. Astronauts who experience long-term exposure while in orbit show signs of DNA damage, she says.Astronauts can spend up to 2.5 hours a day working out on the ISS in an effort to maintain their muscle mass and bone density (Credit: Nasa)

Astronauts can spend up to 2.5 hours a day working out on the ISS in an effort to maintain their muscle mass and bone density

There were also some changes in gene expression – the mechanism that reads the DNA to produce proteins in cells – seen in Kelly that may have been related to his journey into space. Some of these related to the body’s response to DNA damage, bone formation and the immune system’s response to stress. Most of these changes, however, had returned to normal within six months of his return to Earth.

Immune system

Kelly received a series of vaccines before, during and after his trip into space and his immune system was found to react normally. But Bailey’s research has found that astronauts do suffer some decreases in white blood cell counts that fall in line with the doses of radiation they receive while in orbit.

There are still many questions to be answered, however, about what impact space travel can have on a bipedal, big-brained species that evolved to live on Earth. As Rubio recovers from his 371 days in space, researchers will doubtlessly be poring over his medical tests, blood samples and scans to see what more they can learn.

Scientists identify concerning changes that remain with astronauts between missions

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Scientists identify concerning changes that remain with astronauts between missions https://www.wionews.com/science/scientists-identify-concerning-changes-that-remain-with-astronauts-between-missions-477031 Download the Wion News App now: http://onelink.to/jksrch -Shared via WION

Scientists identify concerning changes that remain with astronauts between missions

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Scientists identify concerning changes that remain with astronauts between missions https://www.wionews.com/science/scientists-identify-concerning-changes-that-remain-with-astronauts-between-missions-477031 Download the Wion News App now: http://onelink.to/jksrch -Shared via WION

A new hibernation study is bad news for future space travelers

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Microbe Hunter Turned Astronaut Plies Her Trade In Space.

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NASA astronaut Kate Rubins floats in the International Space Station in September 2016, wearing a spacesuit decorated by patients recovering at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

A few months ago, at her office in Houston, Kate Rubins was feeling weird.

She was dizzy, she says — “staggering around like a 2-year-old who had just learned to walk.” She was constantly looking at her desk to make sure the objects on top weren’t floating away.

Rubins wasn’t going nuts. She was just readjusting to Earth after living without gravity for four months, hundreds of miles above the planet’s surface.

Floating around up there, with blood rushing to her head like she was hanging upside-down on monkey bars, had been disorienting at first, though she eventually learned to move around using all four limbs.

Rubins donned a spacesuit to install equipment on the outside of the International Space Station.

Coming back to Earth’s gravity at the end of October was even more disorienting.

But Rubins is used to drastic transitions. Oddly enough, her journey to space had started years before, in central Africa.

“If you put your finger on a map in the middle of Africa, that’s about where our field site was located,” says Rubins, a microbiologist as well as an astronaut.

It was 2007, and an airplane touching down on a grass runway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had brought Rubins and her colleagues to study a nasty outbreak of monkey pox in a remote village. She’d already spent time studying HIV, Ebola and smallpox in the lab.

This time the airplane wouldn’t be back for six weeks.

Rubins didn’t know it at the time, but that remote expedition gave her experience she’d eventually draw on during a much bigger journey — to outer space.

All that paperwork was “mind-numbing,” Rubins says. Just to get a break, a colleague suggested they try filling out a different sort of application — to become NASA astronauts.

“So, I found the application online,” Rubins says, and filled it out on a lark. “I’ll take this chance,” she figured, “and maybe it’ll be a good story someday of how I applied to be an astronaut.”

A few months later, she got a call from Houston asking her to come down for an interview.

Rubins doesn’t fit the normal astronaut profile. Many start out as military pilots, engineers or doctors — not microbiologists studying viruses. But she got the job.

“There’s been a lot of growth in people’s interest in doing biological research on the space station,” explains Julie Robinson, NASA’s chief scientist for the International Space Station program.

Rubins works on an experiment inside the station’s glovebox. Prior research has suggested that the microgravity of space can change gene expression in certain bacteria and make them more virulent.

Before the shuttle program ended in 2011, Robinson says, “our commanders and our pilots had to be ready to land the shuttle, so that implied a really strong piloting [and] aerospace background, and that isn’t as important now.”

But once NASA’s shuttle program ended and U.S. astronauts started hitching rides to space on Russian rockets, the focus for the American personnel shifted away from piloting skills — they no longer have to be counted on to land the shuttle.

“What’s more important now is the time they spend in orbit, when they’re carrying out a variety of experiments,” says Robinson. “We can take what we learn in space to help us understand aging, disease processes, and even the basic biology of cells.”

There’s another reason it’s useful to have molecular biologists and microbiologists in space: While there aren’t viruses like Ebola or monkeypox on the space station (astronauts get quarantined before liftoff to make sure of that), space travel has never been sterile.

Take this moment from the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, for example, when three astronauts on board notice a loose turd floating through their spacecraft.

Back then, a few astronauts were sealed in a small capsule for a few days. But now there’s the space station — a habitat the size of a six-bedroom house that circles the Earth, about 200 miles above our heads.

The station may have started out pristine, but its astronaut crews didn’t.

“We cannot send up a sterile crew,” says Sarah Castro-Wallace, a microbiologist at NASA Johnson Space Center. Astronauts need their gut bacteria and other friendly microbes to help keep them healthy.

And for 16 years straight, crew after crew has been sweating, pooping and puking inside the space station. The microbes they release tend to stick around, because the station is essentially sealed — like an airplane that never gets opened.

Today, it’s teeming with non-human life. It has its own unique microbiome.

“Staphylococcus aureus we’ll find once in a while; Staphylococcus epidermidis all the time,” says Castro-Wallace, running down a list of resident space station microorganisms. There’s also Staphylococcus hominis (usually harmless), Micrococcus luteus (lives in the mouth and throat), Burkholderia (common in soil; some types can cause lung infection), Sphingomonas (common in water, and rarely harmful), Penicillium (the fungus we find in bread mold) and Aspergillus (more mold), just to name a few.

Recently, an entire wall panel of the station turned green with mold.

“Imagine your shower curtain at its worst,” says Castro-Wallace, pointing out that the wall of mold happened on the Russian side of the space station.

She’s particularly interested in Staph. aureus; a strain of the bacterium that’s resistant to multiple drugs is a particular problem in hospitals, and can turn something as simple as a paper cut dangerous.

“If it got into a cut, it could be life threatening,” Castro-Wallace says.

It’s become clear that scientists need to know what else is living up there, she says — particularly because research suggests that microgravity can change gene expression in certain bacteria and make them more virulent. (Castro-Wallace has found that Staph. aureus changes color in simulated microgravity, an indicator that the bacterium might act differently in space than on Earth.)

Right now, astronauts swab surfaces of the station and send samples back to Houston for identification. But that can take weeks or months.

It’s a big reason why NASA hired Kate Rubins — and shot her into the sky.

Last July, after seven years of training at NASA — working at Mission Control, doing mock space expeditions underwater and flying supersonic fighter jets to keep her reflexes sharp — Rubins blasted off from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian rocket.

She had 115 days to help set up a microbiology lab on the station. She drew on her earlier experience studying viruses — working quickly in a remote place, with minimal equipment.

“There’s actually an incredible amount of parallels between working in central Congo in a remote, isolated village and doing research aboard the space station,” Rubins says.

When I called her in space, while she was on the station last fall, Rubins had just gotten the lab up and running and was really excited about it.

In July 2016, Rubins (left) and Jeff Williams (right), inside the International Space Station, maneuvered a supply spacecraft for docking.

“It’s absolutely a working laboratory,” she told me, as she floated around, describing the scene. “We have experiments all over the place.”

Just weeks before, Rubins had sequenced DNA in space — the first time anyone had ever done that. The fact that the technology worked in microgravity showed that, in the near future, it should be possible to swab a moldy wall, for example, and immediately determine the type of mold.

She’d also grown stem cells into heart cells without gravity, and — peering through a microscope that she’d set up — watched them beat in unison.

Rubins has proved that it’s possible to do molecular biology at least 200 miles beyond Earth — and maybe 200 million miles away, too.

“The world of sequencing and molecular biology has opened up to us on the space station,” she says.

She and NASA’s Julie Robinson are the kind of people who start sentences with the words “When we go to Mars,” as if the journey to that planet is as inevitable as their next trip to the grocery store.

“It’s the plan,” says Robinson. “Absolutely,” says Rubins, who is now Deputy Director of Human Health and Performance at Johnson Space Center.

When — or if — that expedition happens, Mars-based biology labs will be crucial resources for astronauts there. They’ll need the tools of molecular biology to identify non-human life, so these emissaries from Earth can make sure that they aren’t contaminating Mars with their own microbes, and to be able to detect any new life forms they might encounter. They’ll also need the labs to diagnose sick space travelers, so they don’t waste precious antibiotics or antivirals.

And, of course, they’ll need the technology to figure out what’s growing on their walls. Because one thing is for sure: Any human-built Mars habitat will soon become at least as gross as the International Space Station.

SCOTT KELLY BECOMES U.S. ASTRONAUT TO SPEND THE MOST TIME LIVING IN SPACE

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Just before the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station, U.S. astronaut and commander of the current Expedition 45 crew, Scott Kelly, is breaking spaceflight records. On Friday, Oct. 16, Kelly will begin his 383rd day living in space, surpassing U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke’s record of 382 cumulative days.

Breaking such a record for time in space is important because every additional day helps us better understand how long-duration spaceflight affects bodies and minds, which is critical to advancing NASA’s journey to Mars. Fifteen years of living and working off the Earth also is improving the quality of our lives here on Earth as scientists and engineers apply the knowledge gained from investigations aboard the unique microgravity laboratory.

Kelly will break another record Oct. 29 on his 216th consecutive day in space, when he will surpass astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria’s record for the single-longest spaceflight by an American. Lopez-Alegria spent 215 days in space as commander of the Expedition 14 crew in 2006.

Each additional day in orbit as part of the one-year mission along with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, Kelly will continue to add to his record and to our understanding of the effects of long-duration spaceflight. The pair arrived at the space station in March and are participating in studies during their 342 days in space that provide new insights into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and stress of long-duration spaceflight. Kelly’s twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, will participate in parallel twin studies on Earth to help scientists compare the effects on the body and mind in space.

The investigations in progress on the space station will help scientists better understand how to protect astronauts as they travel into deep space and eventually on missions to the Red Planet. The strong U.S.-Russian collaboration during the one-year mission is an example of the global cooperation aboard the space station that is a blueprint for international partnerships to advance shared goals in space exploration. Strengthening international partnerships will be key in taking humans deeper into the solar system.

Kelly is scheduled to return to Earth on March 3, 2016, by which time he will have compiled 522 total days living in space during four missions.

Kelly is not the only human breaking records for time in space. Expedition 44 commander Gennady Padalka broke the 10-year-old record for the number of cumulative days in space June 28, as he reached 804 days in space. When he returned to Earth Sept. 11, Padalka had spent 879 days living and working in space.

Kelly, Padalka, and the more than 200 people who have visited the space station are contributing to the development of capabilities to enable a sustainable human presence in deep space.

To be a bee: This honey of a robot will fly like no other.

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The honey bee has a puny brain.

But man is that miniscule mound of gray matter finely tuned as the winged pollinator’s mission control center. It navigates better than a GPS. It unerringly returns the critter back to base every single time, after well-guided sojourns through unfamiliar flowery territory, using the sun and an acute sense of smell.

Couldn’t humans use some of that sweet neural intelligence?

Sure they could. Imagine a plane on a search and rescue mission, finding its way perfectly over unchartered terrain and back home. Or, sticking directly with the the bee’s reason to be, imagine putting such capability into a flying device that would mechanically pollinate crops.

That’s exactly what a group of artificial intelligence scientists in England have in, er, mind, the BBC reports. They’re building a computer model that unlike other AI projects does not mimic the brains of human, monkeys or mice. Rather, it takes its cues from the bee.

“Simpler organisms such as social insects have surprisingly advanced cognitive abilities,”  Dr. James Marshall of the University of Sheffield says. ”Because the honey bee brain is smaller and more accessible than any vertebrate brain, we hope to eventually be able to produce an accurate and complete model that we can test within a flying robot.”

The University of Sheffield is teaming with the University of Sussex to use graphics cards, rather than expensive supercomputers, to build a putative pilot that “can make decisions about what it senses rather than just carry out pre-programmed task,” the BBC writes.

Step aside pea brain. Hello bee brain. Warranty void after one sting.

Source: Smart Planet.

 

 

Echocardiography on the Space Station.

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How do you detect heart disease when you’re in space and the nearest cardiologist is 230 miles below? Cleveland Clinic’s James Thomas, MD, helped find a way.

There is no Cleveland Clinic in space. Yet. But today’s space travelers benefit from innovations led by Cleveland Clinic cardiologist James D. Thomas, MD. Back in 1997, Dr. Thomas received a grant from NASA to develop a digital echocardiology services for the International Space Station (ISS). He and his team developed the means to read echocardiograms from the space station, and today, ultrasound equipment is part of the medical monitoring gear on the ISS.

“Echocardiography stands out as the only thing that is going to work in space,” Dr. Thomas told theHeart.org in 1999, “It doesn’t have radiation, it doesn’t have a magnet. It’s relatively low power and it’s light-weight.”

Today, he is studying the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the astronauts’ hearts. “About once a month we can monitor echocardiograms being performed up in space as they are broadcast live via the secure NASA science network,” says Dr. Thomas. “This is going to teach us a great deal about what happens to the heart in space, and may explain why the astronauts have problems with low blood pressure when they come back to earth or difficulties exerting themselves. This is critical information that we need so that we can develop countermeasures that can keep astronauts healthy as we extend our reach ever farther from earth, perhaps even to Mars in the next few decades.”

In addition to being a staff cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Thomas is also Lead Scientist for Ultrasound at NASA.

Watch Dr Thomas on youtube:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f58Z2EHwEMM&feature=player_embedded

Source: Cleveland Clinic.

 

 

 

Sleeping in Space.

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How do astronauts sleep in space? A visiting sleep researcher is shedding light on the effects of spaceflight on astronauts’ sleeping patterns.

Dr Laura Barger, an instructor at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine and an Associate Physiologist at Brigham and the Women’s Hospital in Boston, investigated the sleep of astronauts on Space Shuttle and International Space Station missions over the past decade, and is bringing her expertise to Melbourne.

A former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Dr Barger’s research interests have focused on the health and safety risks associated with unusual and extended work hours. As part of the Harvard Work Hours, Health and Safety Group, she has also studied medical residents, police officers, firefighters, federal air marshals, and mission controllers supporting the Phoenix Mars Lander mission.

Dr Barger said astronauts face a number of challenges when trying to sleep in space including unusual shift patterns, which could have similar effects observed in some shift workers on earth, a 90-minute light-dark cycle for every time astronauts orbit the earth and the physical ‘free-fall’ sleeping environment.

“We studied sleep aboard Space Shuttle and International Space Station Missions and found there is a vast amount of sleep deficiency among astronauts and a widespread use of sleep promoting medications during spaceflight,” Dr Barger said.

Dr Barger is in Melbourne with the support of the Harvard Club of Australia Foundation. She will work with Monash University sleep researchers, including Associate Professor Shantha Rajaratnam, also a member of the Harvard Work Hours, Health, and Safety Group, on the association between work hours, sleep deficiency and motor vehicle crashes.

“Across all occupations, one safety outcome we measure is the incidence of motor vehicle crashes. One goal of the Harvard Work Hours Health and Safety Group is to come up with a strategy for future research examining drowsy driving,” Dr Barger said.

In addition to undertaking research, Dr Barger will conduct a series of lectures and seminars at Monash, sharing her insight into the effects of spaceflight on sleep and the circadian timing system and the effects of extended work hours and sleep loss on health and safety.

Credit: http://www.monash.edu.au