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As the H1N1 swine flu pandemic swept the world in 2009, China saw a spike in cases of narcolepsy -- a mysterious disorder that involves sudden, uncontrollable sleepiness. Meanwhile, in Europe, around 1 in 15,000 children who were given Pandemrix -- a now-defunct flu vaccine that contained fragments of the pandemic virus -- also developed narcolepsy, a chronic disease.

On a typical seven-to-eight-hour sleep schedule, known as monophasic, most people will spend one-third of their lives in bed.

But by switching to polyphasic sleep — like Russia-based project manager Eugene Dubovoy did — you could gain back decades of time with your eyes open.

He and his team hoped to create an app, named Smart Sleep, that could help others make the switch. Unfortunately, they didn't acquire the money needed from Kickstarter.

But we can still learn from the app. Let these charts teach you how to sleep less.

Please note that doctors as well as practitioners we've interviewed say to proceed with caution when trying a new sleep schedule, especially if you have health problems. We also don't know enough about sleep and its benefits to say that sleeping less won't have negative health effects.

If you want to experiment with polyphasic sleep schedules, we recommend not driving, operating heavy machinery, or making any important decisions until you determine how fewer hours of sleep affect you personally.

Step One: Consistent Sleep

Initially, you simply need to make your sleep schedule regular. For example, start going to bed at 12:30 a.m. and waking up at exactly 8:00 a.m. every day. Eventually, your body will recognize the plan.

"This increases the quality of your sleep. You can wake up very quickly and without any alarm clocks or stimulants," Dubovoy said.

Step Two: Biphasic Sleep

Next, you need to switch to biphasic sleep (two sleep periods) without changing the amount of sleep you get. You'll need to sleep in two cycles with a 1.5 hour break in the middle. But make sure you use your mid-night awake-time productively.

"I used to read books or study or do something that I didn't manage to do during the day," Dubovoy explained. "The point is that you should know what you need to do during those couple hours between sleep. You should do something that will switch your brain on."

Since he didn't lose any sleep, Dubovoy didn't experience any negative side effects. He completed this step in about a week. Recent research actually suggests that everyone used to sleep in two segments until the invention of electricity. Step Three: Slowly Decrease Sleep Time During The Night

Then, you'll make the jump from biphasic sleep to polyphasic by adding more sleep periods — the "tricky part," as Dubovoy admitted. Start decreasing the time you spend in bed at night just slightly in exchange for a nap during the day.

"When you aren't used to sleeping in the daytime and falling asleep quickly, it's really hard. I started to feel the effects of sleep deprivation. But eventually, your body knows when it's nap-time," Dubovoy said.

As the chart below shows, cut off half-an-hour from your second nighttime sleep period and take a half-an-hour nap around 6 p.m. instead.

Step Four: Polyphasic Sleep With Optimal Decrease In Sleep Time

After you switch to polyphasic sleep, you should start decreasing your nighttime hours even more and add a couple naps during the day.

The most attainable of all polyphasic sleep schedules, shown below, is called the Everyman. You experience a "core" night sleep from 12:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. and three 20 minute naps at 5:40 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m, which total 4.5 hours.

How It Works

Normal sleep involves four cycles of around 90 minutes total of non-rapid eye movement. A brief period of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when we dream, follows. We end up staying in bed for up to eight hours a night to fit in all this sleep.

Dubovoy claims that early in the night, slow-wave sleep (stages three and four) occurs for the longest period, while in the morning, REM sleep takes over more of the cycle. Therefore, on a polyphasic schedule, you'll receive slow-wave restoration during a "core" night sleep of only 3.5 hours. This tricks your body into immediately entering REM during daytime naps to make up for the loss of the last sleep cycles during the night.

"That's the idea behind polyphasic sleep — we still get our normal portion of short-wave sleep and REM sleep. You just get rid of these intermediate stages in the morning. In fact, we do not need them," Dubovoy suggests.

To clarify, the idea that we don't need these sleep stages is purely theoretical. "I probably have a more cynical view than most, but I don't think that we know what part of sleep is the most restful," said Matt Bianchi, director of the sleep division at Massachusetts General Hospital. Most likely, different phases of sleep have different restorative effects. 

The top timeline depicts a regular, monophasic sleep pattern, with the grey as non-REM sleep. Dubovoy and other polyphasic proponents claim we don't need certain potions.

The bottom timeline shows a polyphasic "core" night sleep, minus those stages deemed "unnecessary."

Dubovoy has slept on this schedule for over two years. And he has no plans to stop.

"The biggest benefit is that I have about two months of extra time each year. Time is the most valuable resource in our lives," he said.

As the chart below shows, the extra time accumulates. In only six years, you'll have stayed awake for another whole year.

SEE ALSO: Scientists Finally Found The First Real Reason We Need To Sleep

Join the conversation about this story »

Valve recently sent out their prototype Steam Machines to a select few lucky Steam users. As can only be expected by PC enthusiasts, the first thing some of those testers did was go digging inside their new toy. Some even went as far as filming the whole experience, putting it online for other PC enthusiasts to salivate over. Sit down and get ready for some exquisitely managed cables and finely moulded plastic.

Was it everything you hoped it would be?

While the Steam Machines aren’t due to go on sale until next year, the beta release of SteamOS does open up the possibility of building your own. Despite that, it’s probably best to wait. Valve suggest that, at this stage, SteamOS is only of interest to the “intrepid Linux hacker”.

The post Steam Machines unboxing video shows snug components, hot cable management action appeared first on PC Gamer.

A sudden change in your vision could be an early warning sign of a craving for jelly donuts, two monster sized chocolate bars, a box of dates, some sand dunes and a tent or two.

Via YouTube.

I’ve not much sympathy for “things were better in the old days” reminiscing. For instance, those who prefer the twitch action of ‘old-school’ shooters still have valid options for their acrobatic rocket-spam. Far better then, are those retro-pastiche projects that filter the philosophy of nostalgia through something entirely more ridiculous. Take Half-Life 2: Deathmatch mod Jaykin’ Bacon 3. As you’ll see in this trailer, its Instagib mode will let you play a flying Solid Snake shooting his deadly electrified finger gun.

There’s no hint of a release date yet for the Jaykin’ Bacon Source sequel, so while we wait for the mod team to provide further instructions, you can check out their official site. Alternatively, head over to ModDB to see how the creators have incorporated Perfect Dark Zero into their mythology.

The post Half-Life 2: Deathmatch mod Jaykin’ Bacon 3 reveals its surprising weapons in Instagib trailer appeared first on PC Gamer.

Maybe you’ve spent the last couple of years Doing the Dotes*. You’ve gained an almost scarily obsessive knowledge on the many intricacies of Valve’s wizard-’em-up; and taken QoP to the top, Axe to the max, and Puck to… er, no. For all your successes, spare a thought for those on the wrong end of the queueing system that grated access to the game. Those who’ve never before had a chance to experience the thrill of sub-grouting a megascamp with a three-man sagwidget**. At least, they haven’t until now, as the digital gatekeeper formerly restricting access to the client has today been retired. Dota 2 is available to all.

“We’ve used this system to gradually increase the size of our playerbase, as we ramped up our infrastructure and improved the experience for new players,” write Valve. “As we have recently completed a set of server management upgrades as well as released a huge number of enhancements to the new user experience, we’re going to remove all restrictions to playing Dota 2.”

It’ll be interesting to see if this will spark a jump in player numbers. I suspect that most people who wanted to play Dota 2 already have access, but the promise of being instantly able to try the game might persuade those few people yet to push lanes into seeing what the fuss is about.

One thing of note in this announcement is Valve’s reveal of the game’s active monthly users. According to them, 6.5 million people are playing Dota 2 each month – which seems like a more representative figure than the easily available concurrent player total. To make the obvious comparison, in October last year, Riot announced that League of Legends was picking up 32 million active monthly users. Of course, with no solid data in the 14 months since then, it’s hard to know whether that number has grown, or whether Dota 2′s official release has dampened that figure.

*I have decreed: playing Dota 2 will henceforth be known as Doing the Dotes.
**Er, or whatever it is you actually do in this game.

The post Dota 2 scraps sign-ups, boasts 6.5 million active monthly users appeared first on PC Gamer.

Given that Starbound has both a grappling hook and the ability to create a cutesy rendition of the Morrowind theme, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s already finished. But no, those are just the most important features of a long and winding development road. In a new post on the game’s official site, designer Finn “Tiy” Brice has outlined some of the things planned for future updates.

“We have a lot more than this in store,” writes Tiy, “but Xealaz over at reddit compiled such a nice list of the stuff we HAVE discussed that I wanted to share it with you. As always, things are not set in stone.”

The list includes everything from fixes and balance tweaks, including a smoother difficulty curve and rebindable controls, to long-term planned features, like space combat and planetary modifications. You can see the full thing below:

• “NPC Spawners & Building Logic: NPCs will scan the structures you build around them and the contents of chests; they will have improved inventories/behaviors depending on how valuable their surroundings are.
• “Macro Terrain Changes: Affect an entire planet’s terrain and weather
• “More Planet Scanner Data: See details in the planet scanner like planet occupants/dungeons
• “Underground: More secrets will spawn below the surface
• “Space Combat: Way in the future, expect space combat and the ability to board other ships.
• “Spaceship Dungeons: Very large, size of a planet.
• “Biome Hazards: Sandstorms, icestorms, meteor showers, toxic planets, airless planets.
• “Ore & Difficulty: Higher difficulty planets will have improved ore distribution
• “Story Missions: Eventually each tier will end with a story mission that ends with the bosses you see now.
• “Ship Navigator Changes: Still not set in stone; but the new idea is to give a local map with fog of war. Instead of sector buttons you have to fly out of a sector and into the next one by uncovering more of the star map. The final sector would be infinite.
• “Smoother Difficulty Curve: Better indication of the difficulty of an area. Difficulty will change within tiers as well as between tiers. There will be fractional difficulty (for example, Difficulty 1.12 in tier 1 would be easier than Difficulty 1.52, while still in T1)
• “Monster Generation: Right now, monster parts just have stat boosts, but eventually rolled monster parts will affect their behavior and abilities. For example, monsters with spider legs can climb walls; fiery monsters inflict burning. You might get a burning spider dropping on you from the ceiling. Projectiles may be tied to specifically generated heads. Biome may influence monster part generation.
• “Mini-Map: Rotating circular map showing highlights only such as the location of friendly players, spawn points–but no major details. For the details you’d use a mapping item to create a map as you travel.
• “Teleporters: Stargates between planets and eventually between servers.
• “Dramatic Planet Modification: Not going to be implemented any time soon. Ability for players to modify huge chunks of planets through things like orbital bombardment; removing the entire first layer of a planet and leave behind a lifeless surface.
• “Tech Priority: Eventually all techs can be active at once, but a categorization system is in the works to assign priority to conflicting techs, preventing issues. A hotkey to switch the active tech will be added as a temporary workaround until the priority system is completed.
• “Server Commands: More server commands and control for chat and port listening.
• “Villager AI: Villagers will aggro when you steal from them and follow you more aggressively.
• “World Storage: Improve world storage and organize *.pak files to improve modding. Add launcher integration.
• “Spawn Points: Change spawn points on individual planets.
• “Controls: Reconfigure controls; keybinding.
• “Ship Size: Upgrade ship/increase size.
• “Racial Armor: Racial abilities will not be inherent but will be tied to racial armor. For example, Avian armor can glide downward.
• “Capture Pods & Mercenaries: May be able to capture NPCs with pods. Summon NPC Mercenaries by using the pod as a beacon.
• “Reduced Wipes: Working on a system to patch without requiring as many character wipes in the future. This will require one more wipe and that’s it.
• “Other Changes: Colorblind Mode & Engine Optimization. FTL animation being revamped to reduce memory strain.”

For more on Starbound, check out Cass’s largely enthusiastic early impressions.

The post Starbound’s future features outlined: includes space combat and story missions appeared first on PC Gamer.

I love the contrast here. First there was Typing of the Dead: Overkill’s Shakespeare DLC, classing up the faux-Grindhouse type-’em-up with phrases pulled directly from the bard. Now we’re taking a hard swing in the other direction, with the Filth DLC replacing the game’s many kill commands with some childish rudeness. Please note, the following post contains language that’s both stronger and more puerile than the phrase “arse elbow conundrum”.

Personally, I hope that SEGA’s next idea to extend the game is to join the two existing DLCs and release a pack full of sweary Shakespeare. “To seep, perchance to ream…” Aye, there’s the rub.

Yes, okay, the only reason I’m writing about this is so I could do that joke. Shut up and ‘enjoy’ these pictures.

Typing of the Dead: Overkill’s Filth DLC is out now. I’m so very sorry.

The post Typing of the Dead: Overkill’s Filth DLC is so very childish appeared first on PC Gamer.

When we last heard about Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare at E3 2013, PopCap described it as a combination of tower defense and third person shooters. That description, along with the E3 reveal trailer made it sound like other tower defense—shooter hybrids (Double Fine’s Iron Brigade and Robot Entertainment’s Orcs Must Die! come to mind).

I’m a sucker for the sub-genre, and so was already looking forward to seeing PopCap’s take on it—the newest trailer for Garden Warfare, which shows off its Gardens & Graveyards mode, makes it seem like a much deeper, and potentially much more interesting game.

PopCap describes the 24 player mode as a remix of Battlefield’s Rush and Conquest modes, with added PvZ flavor. A team of Zombies is tasked with taking over plant bases before starting a final attack on a Rush-like objective that changes with each map. The plants team, of course, plays defense, and is able to set up special plants to keep the zombies away.

The trailer is really impressive. The map, Driftwood Shores, is large, super colorful, and seems like it successfully translates PvZ’s flat, cartoon aesthetic to a 3D environment. What really surprised me is how deep the game seems. Different character classes have vastly different skills and attacks, which seem like they could inspire the type of silly, innovative strategies we see in Battlefield games. In general, the trailer made Garden Warfare seem less like a tower defense game and more like a multiplayer shooter that embraces the funny, silly aspects of those games.

I was particularly impressed by the zombie engineer, who can launch an aerial drone that can call in airstrikes, and the chomper plant, who can burrow toward the enemy à la Bugs Bunny.

I do wonder what kind of audience Garden Warfare will ultimately find. Surely it’s not for all PvZ players, many of whom play it very casually, and it’d be interesting to see if the same people who enjoy Battlefield will be interested in a similar multiplayer experience minus the guns and explosions. I’d like to see EA’s Venn diagram highlighting where those audiences overlap.

Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is coming to Xbox 360 and Xbox One on February 18. At Gamescom we learned that there will be a short delay between then and the PC release.

The post PvZ: Garden Warfare’s Gardens and Graveyards mode is the cutest Battlefield ever appeared first on PC Gamer.

It seems like Overgrowth has been in development forever. We’ve been covering it steadily since 2010, and while an alpha build was available to players for just as long, it might reach a much larger audience now that it’s available on Steam Early Access for $25, down for the first time from the usual $30 for a limited time. Players who already pre-ordered the game will be able to add it to their Steam library and use the auto update feature to keep up with the latest alpha build.

At its core, the game—from independent developer Wolfire—is a dynamic, complex fighting system which you can try out in the alpha’s battle arena mode. Rather than the lock-in and dial-a-combo method that is the standard for third-person brawlers, Overgrowth uses a contextual system that allows you to attack and defend in different directions.

Since the animation in Overgrowth is physics-driven, landing a hit and toppling and enemy feel really convincing and satisfying. If you sweep an enemy, you’ll see his legs pushed out from under him. Kick him really hard in the chest, and you’ll see him fly back from the impact appropriately. It looks cool, but also actually affects how you play, since you can do more damage by knocking your opponent into a hard surface. Add weapons and agile platforming to the mix and you start to see the potential.

The alpha also includes a two-player versus mode, an admittedly incomplete collection of challenge levels, and a level editor. The Overgrowth community has been building content for the game for several years now, so there’s a lot to explore there. However, Wolfire makes it clear that Overgrowth is still nothing like a complete game experience. Partake only if you don’t mind bugs and missing basic features.

The post Physics-based brawler Overgrowth released on Steam Early Access appeared first on PC Gamer.

It used to be that the creativity of the Minecraft community would regularly leave people speechless. It was all “Blimey! Look at that wall!”, and “Wowzers! There’s the USS Enterprise“”, and even “Hot diggity! A working computer!” Now, we’ve become somewhat desensitised. Unless you’ve fully recreated a country – real or fictional – you’ll barely raise an eyebrow. For your consideration, then: a working 3D printer has been created inside of the game.

Through 10 large chests, and a wool-dispensing control panel, the tool’s creator is able to define different layers of his creation in a 6x9x10 area. It’s another example of impressive technical mastery inside the game, and a testament to the flexibility of the game’s sandbox. And to think, I barely progressed past the build a nice house phase.

Ta, Reddit.

The post Minecraft continues to produce spectacular things: here’s an in-game 3D printer appeared first on PC Gamer.

The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod was released earlier this week, adding multiplayer support to the tropical island of Panau. It instantly became our mod of the week, and we jumped in together at lunchtime to see if we could survive the chaos.

No-one survives the chaos, it turns out, but that’s okay, because a barrage of ridiculous things are happening around you all the time. Here are but a few.

Andy grabbed onto someone’s chopper and wouldn’t let go

The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod lets you teleport to various checkpoints with a quick chat command. First stop: the airport. We’d played an early beta test of the JC2 multiplayer mod, and already knew that airports tended to be a hotspot. We were not disappointed. The sky was full of spiraling jets and attack choppers trying to shoot each other out of the sky – the perfect opportunity for a spot of trolling.

In Just Cause 2 you can press F to grapple distant vehicles. If you hit a chopper, you’ll dangle haphazardly beneath with a gun in your free arm. Normally choppers are piloted by passive NPCs, but in the multiplayer mod they’re piloted by angry, angry humans. There’s little a chopper can do with an illicit passenger, though. This person wobbled around trying to shake Andy off, and then tried flying low to scrape him against a building, to no avail. Andy was soon killed by stray bullets.

An army of jumbo jets tried to bring down the Mile High Club blimp

Our next stop was the Mile High Club blimp, a party boat suspended high above the archipelago. This place was so manic that we stayed there for the remainder of the hour.

You can’t bring down the Mile High Club blimp, but that didn’t stop players from trying. We were playing on a pretty lawless server, which means anyone can spawn any weapon or vehicle they wish from a menu. Naturally, players started spawning the biggest planes they could and repeatedly rammed them into the blimp. The blimp withstood the charge and gradually became enclosed in a collection of blackened jumbo corpses.

Tom outran a crashing jumbo jet

The last place you’d want to be during a jumbo jet vs. blimp free-for-all is on the deck of the blimp. It’s mostly given over to a snazzy neon bar, but there weren’t many drinkers around on account of the risk of being completely squashed. In an accidental moment of dramatic self-preservation, I zip-lined across the deck as one landed behind me. It screeched to a halt a few metres behind me in this picture, taken moments before I was shot by an attack chopper.

People start “dangle jousting” with machineguns

The skies are full of fire in the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, in the open server we played on anyway. Some servers require you amass points to purchase weapons, but with hundreds of players, each with their own attack chopper or rocket launcher, our collective hour was incoherent, but wonderfully manic. The carnage was so intense we felt a bit aimless at first, but as soon as you start setting challenges for one another the mod comes to life.

In a savvy move, Avalanche have knocked 80% off Just Cause 2 on Steam. The mod is free, and also on Steam, so there are few barriers if you want to try it out yourself, and I’d certainly recommend it. I’d also recommend turning off the chat with F3 if you do, though. It’s a bit of a free-for-all in there.

The post Ridiculous things that happened in the Just Cause 2 mulitplayer mod today appeared first on PC Gamer.

Australia may finally have an adults-only game rating, but that doesn't mean anything and everything is approved for consumption down under. Take the upcoming South Park game, for example, whose alien anal probe scene has had to be heavily censored for Australian release.

Read more...

[Photographs: Erin Jackson]

Homesickness for my native Canada always hits me the hardest during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Typically, I can dial it back by checking the Toronto weather forecast, but that doesn't stop the food cravings. Visions of honey dip Timbits, Voortman Gingerbread Kids, and heaping plates of poutine dance through my head nightly. So when I discovered that poutine is now available at Trader Joe's, I made scoring a bag my top priority.

The poutine ($3.99) consists of a bag of frozen, straight-cut french fries, packed with a baggie of frozen cheddar cheese curds and a baggie of frozen "beef sauce", the main ingredients in which are water, cornstarch, beef fat, beef, and yeast extract. There's also small amounts of salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and tomato paste for flavor.

Preparation is pretty simple: bake the fries in the oven, thaw the sauce and curds in simmering water, then put it all together on a plate. The final step (putting the assembled plate back into the oven for a few minutes) is essential. It warms the sauce and curds up a few important degrees—don't worry, the cheese won't melt.

So, how does it taste? Pretty delicious! The fries baked up beautifully, and while the sauce was slightly gelatinous, the balance between its muted beefiness and the extra boost of savory flavors from the onion and garlic powder made it tasty enough to satisfy my craving. Best of all: despite being thawed from frozen, the cheddar cheese curds had a mild tang and actually squeaked! This is the hallmark of quality poutine, and where most imitators fall short.

You could achieve much tastier results by making your own gravy from scratch, but even if you go that route, it's still worthwhile to buy the kit, especially if you live in a part of the country where squeaky curds are impossible to find. Four bucks for a bag of frozen fries and a generous handful of curds that squeak is still a solid deal in my book.

Trader Joe's poutine isn't on the level of the top poutineries in Montreal, but as an introduction to the dish, or a means to satisfy a craving (when the real thing isn't in reach), it's awesome. I'll be back to buy more, in bulk.

About the author: Erin Jackson is a food writer and photographer who is obsessed with discovering the best eats in San Diego. You can find all of her discoveries on her San Diego food blog EJeats.com. On Twitter, she's @ErinJax