EL SEGUNDO HERALD December 22, 2016 Page 11 Seniors Looking Up Four Tips for Better Sleep (BPT) - It’s no secret sleep is critical to one’s overall health and well-being. We’ve all heard getting six to eight hours of sleep is recommended, but busy work schedules and ongoing personal commitments make it difficult to make sleep a priority. So how can you ensure you’re getting quality shuteye? Next time you’re ready to crawl into bed, apply these four tips to help get better sleep. Harness the power of light: Light plays a critical role in producing melatonin, the hormone that helps induce sleepiness and regulate your sleep/wake cycle. Setting the right ambiance in your living room or bedroom with warmer, sunset-like shades of white light when you are ready to unwind can help support melatonin production and promote better sleep. With this in mind, Philips Hue White Ambiance offers a ‘Relax’ mode that delivers a warm, amber-toned light designed to help you unwind and prepare for an undisturbed sleep. The connected lighting system also has a ‘Nightlight’ mode that delivers a dim level of amber-reddish light designed to help you navigate the room to care for a crying child or go to the bathroom with minimal disruption to your sleep cycle. Keep a consistent sleep schedule: Oftentimes, we tend to sleep less during the work week and make up for it over the weekend. By constantly shifting our sleeping patterns, we subject ourselves to jet-lag-like symptoms. We are creatures of habit and establishing a consistent time to go to bed helps your body react in kind. The Philips Hue app offers routines to help you maintain a natural rhythm with the right shade of white light. Just set the time you want to start your go to sleep routine and select how long you want your lights to fade out in the app. Your lights will gradually dim until they turn off, helping to gently ease your body into a peaceful sleep. Pay attention to how you wake up: Exposing yourself to bright daylight is just as critical for regulating your sleep cycle and supporting better sleep quality. Try to make sure you get enough light in the first one or two hours after waking. Light that emits cooler blue tones can help you feel refreshed, be more alert and improve your mood. Philips Hue White Ambiance’s “Energize” mode, which emits cooler blue tones of light, is designed with this in mind. Tone down the use of technology before bed: In order to prepare yourself for a good night’s sleep, you should try to avoid intense light with cooler blue tones, which suppresses melatonin production. Relax an hour or two before going to bed - tucking away your mobile phone, computer or tablet, which might cause stress or overstimulate you prior to bedtime, disrupting your ability to sleep. Every day brings new opportunities and challenges, all of which are more easily faced if you’ve had a great sleep. Apply these tips, and you’ll be rested and refreshed, ready for whatever tomorrow throws at you. • Cassini Makes First Ring-Grazing Plunge Based on a Press Release from JPL, Provided by Bob Eklund NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has made its first close dive past the outer edges of Saturn’s rings since beginning its penultimate mission phase on November “Launched in 1997, Cassini has been touring the Saturn system since arriving there in 2004 for an up-close study of the planet, its rings and moons.” 30. Cassini crossed through the plane of Saturn’s rings on December 4 at a distance of approximately 57,000 miles above Saturn’s cloud tops. This is the approximate location of a faint, dusty ring produced by the planet’s small moons Janus and Epimetheus, and just 6,800 miles from the center of Saturn’s F ring. About an hour prior to the ring-plane crossing, the spacecraft performed a short burn of its main engine that lasted about six seconds. About 30 minutes later, as it approached the This graphic shows the closest approaches of Cassini’s final two orbital phases. Ring-grazing orbits are shown in gray (at left); Grand Finale orbits are shown in blue. The orange line shows the spacecraft’s Sept. 2017 final plunge into Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. ring plane, Cassini closed its canopy-like engine cover as a protective measure. “With this small adjustment to the spacecraft’s trajectory, we’re in excellent shape to make the most of this new phase of the mission,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. A few hours after the ring-plane crossing, Cassini began a complete scan across the rings with its radio science experiment to study their structure in great detail. “It’s taken years of planning, but now that we’re finally here, the whole Cassini team is excited to begin studying the data that come from these ring-grazing orbits,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. “This is a remarkable time in what’s already been a thrilling journey.” Cassini’s imaging cameras obtained views of Saturn about two days before crossing through the ring plane, but not near the time of closest approach. The focus of this first close pass was the engine maneuver and observations by Cassini’s other science instruments. Future dives past the rings will feature some of the mission’s best views of the outer regions of the rings and small, nearby moons. Each of Cassini’s orbits for the remainder of the mission will last one week. The next pass by the rings’ outer edges is planned for December 11. The ring-grazing orbits—20 in all—will continue until April 22, when the last close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan will reshape Cassini’s flight path. With that encounter, Cassini will leap over the rings, making the first of 22 plunges through the 1,500-mile-wide gap between Saturn and its innermost ring on April 26. On September 15, the mission will conclude with a final plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere. During the plunge, Cassini will transmit data on the atmosphere’s composition until its signal is lost. Launched in 1997, Cassini has been touring the Saturn system since arriving there in 2004 for an up-close study of the planet, its rings and moons. During its journey, Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean with indications of hydrothermal activity within the moon Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on another moon, Titan. •
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