pillow

A unique mattress and pillow system that uses heating and cooling to trick the human body into sleeping has been developed by engineers in the United States. Sleep is possible when the body temperature declines at night as part of the 24-hour cycle. Therefore, researchers explained this new mattress stimulates the body to trigger the sleepy feeling, helping people fall asleep faster and improving the quality of sleep. "We facilitate the readiness to fall asleep by manipulating internal body temperature-sensitive sensors…

This self-powering smart pillow can track the position and motion of the head during sleep. Credit: Haiying KouSleep is critical for good physical and mental health. Yet many people have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, resulting in not enough sleep. While recent research suggests that 7 hours is the ideal amount of sleep for adults, many people struggle to even get that much on a regular basis.Fortunately, scientists are working on the problem, and one of the ways is through better monitoring of sleep. A new…

How your body performs when your head hits the pillow can have just as much of an effect on your health as regular exercise routines. Smartwatches and fitness trackers can be leveraged to track sleep quality, but researchers from China have developed a more comfortable device for tracking sleep metrics: a smart pillow that doesn’t need batteries or access to an outlet.Bedtime is when most of us want to completely disconnect from the world, dropping our various devices onto their chargers and ignoringthem for the night.…

The children’s author, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, has said her elderly mother slept with a gun beneath her pillow.Wilson, creator of the Tracy Beaker series, told an audience at the Hay festival in Wales that she was the daughter of a character more colourful than any she had written – and that she was terrified her mother might shoot her by accident, and persuaded her to get rid of it.Speaking in a talk recorded for BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life, she recalled how she had made the discovery: “One time, when she was very…