Effect of night smoking, sleep disturbance, and their co-occurrence on smoking outcomes.

Recent evidence suggests that smoking during the night is an indicator of nicotine dependence and predicts smoking cessation failure. Night smokers are likely to experience disturbance to their sleep cycle when they wake to smoke, but we are not aware of the prevalence of night smokers' self-reported sleep disturbance. Because sleep disturbance also predicts smoking cessation failure, we examined how the pre-cessation risk factors of night smoking and sleep disturbance, and their co-occurrence, predict smoking cessation failure in a 6-week double-blind randomized controlled trial examining whether naltrexone augments the efficacy of the nicotine patch (O'Malley et al.

The breathing bear: an intervention for crying babies and their mothers.

The Breathing Bear, an optional source of rhythmic stimulation for infants, was investigated for its effects on full-term infants and their mothers. The Bear "breathes" like a normal infant at a rate matching the infant's. Previous studies have indicated that premature infants prefer a Breathing Bear over a Non-Breathing Bear, and they show neurobehavioral benefits from the exposure.