https://sleepopolis.com/blog/us-army-ca ... alterness/
https://bigthink.com/stephen-johnson/us ... caffeine-2
Research from the CDC shows that 33 percent of Americans don’t get enough sleep. And for many in that group turn to the most widely used stimulant in the world: caffeine.
But instead of throwing back cup after cup, researchers backed by the US Army set out to find the most efficient way to consume coffee. They built a computer algorithm that studies sleep patterns to make recommendations about optimal caffeine intake.
“Currently there are no tools to guide the timing and amount of caffeine consumption to optimize its benefits,” researchers wrote in the summary of their paper.
“In this work, we provide an optimization algorithm, suited for mobile computing platforms, to determine when and how much caffeine to consume, so as to safely maximize neurobehavioral performance at the desired time of the day, under any sleep-loss condition.”
By monitoring an individual’s sleep patterns and caffeine intake, the researchers think they can improve the cognitive benefits of coffee consumption by as much as 64 percent.
The findings were published in the Journal of Sleep Research and will be used to enhance alertness for army workers.
“We found that by using our algorithm, which determines when and how much caffeine a subject should consume, we can improve alertness by up to 64 per cent, while consuming the same total amount of caffeine,” said study senior author Jaques Reifman, director of the Biotechnology High Performance Computing Software Applications Institute at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
“Alternatively, a subject can reduce caffeine consumption by up to 65 percent and still achieve equivalent improvements in alertness,” he told Science Daily.
As a real-world example, Reifman said students could use the algorithm to determine the best time to drink coffee so they’re as alert as possible during an exam or for truck drivers or even surgeons who need to stay alert for a specific period of time.
However, if you’re looking for a quick answer like “drink your first cup at 10:30 a.m.” or “two hours before an event,” you might be disappointed.
Instead, scientists hope to incorporate the algorithm into a pre-existing online tool called 2B-Alert to let people find out what’s best for them. While the Army intends to license the technology, according to The Independent, it also plans to release a corresponding 2B-Alert app so members of the public can take tests and input sleep and caffeine intake data to receive “sleep and caffeine schedules” to help them “optimize performance” in future.
https://nypost.com/2018/06/18/army-algo ... civilians/