Scientists find a 'cure' for insomnia

LOG JAM:

If you were wondering why the Government has banned drivers from talking on mobiles – well now there's some scientific research to back it up.

A US team claims to have found a 'bottleneck in the brain' which explains why people struggle to do two things at once. The problem could be caused by a log-jam of nerve messages in the frontal cortex. Multi-tasking experiments on a computer found the brain slows down when given a second task within 300 milliseconds of the first one.

JUICES JOY:

Good news for smoothie lovers – the drinks are as good as whole fruit and vegetables at tackling cancer and heart disease, a study shows.

Drinks which are 100 per cent juice have equally beneficial effects when it comes to providing the antioxidants and fibre that are essential for health. It used to be thought that eating the whole fruit or vegetable was healthier than just drinking the pressed juice.

WEIGH IN:

How do you weigh something so small you can't see it? The answer used to be 'not easily' – but a machine resembling a tiny diving board has been built which can weigh items less than one millionth of one millionth of one millionth of a gramme.

It has a cantilever which vibrates when an object lands on it. When this happens, the object's natural vibration frequency changes by an amount proportional to its mass, enabling a weight to be calculated.

SLEEP EASY: It is a problem that could keep you awake all night. But scientists feel they may have found the key to curing insomnia by looking at a disease that causes people to suddenly drop off to sleep.

The presence of a blood peptide called orexin was important in keeping people awake, a Swiss team looking at narcolepsy found. If the brain's receptors to orexin are switched off then insomniacs would drop off to sleep more easily, they concluded.