The optimum ratio of the heater powers between the traveling wave stage and the standing wave stage was about 1.25, compromising the total efficiency with the dynamic pressure amplitude.
Orthogonal experiment design and variance analysis were adopted to investigate a miniature cascade thermoacoustic engine, which consisted of one standing wave stage and one traveling wave stage in series, operating at about 470 Hz, using helium as the working gas.
The total efficiency and the dynamic pressure amplitude increased when the traveling wave stage heater power increased.
They spent less time in both the light phase of sleep known as Stage 2 and the deep, slow-wave Stages 3 and 4. All of which meant that they experienced less sleep over all and took longer to drift off.
The goal of the study, carried out by researchers at Harvard Medical School and elsewhere, was to look specifically at the slow-wave stages of sleep, which make up about 90 minutes to two hours of a normal night's rest and represent the deepest hours of sleep.
Nightmares are different from night terrors, which typically occur in the first, slow-wave stage of sleep, and which tend to be plotless flashes of panic.
"Poetry needs to get back in touch with the human desire to kick the person in front of you in line," he said, adding that as you get older, "you make peace with your deeper meanness and get into the heavy cane-waving stage of your life".
Then a 2012 study by a US group reported that participants were more likely to correctly play a melody in a musical video game (similar to Guitar Hero) if the tune had been previously played to them during the slow-wave stage of a 90-minute nap.
We had Orlando remixed with laser beams and gold lamé, The Waves staged as a group requiem powered by Max Richter's mournful score and – best of all – Mrs Dalloway distilled as a breathtaking story ballet, with an unforgettable performance by Alessandra Ferri, who returned later in the year to excel in another literary role, the jilted courtesan in Colette's Chéri.
