THIS WEEK ON 
SCIENCE FRIDAY...

Science Friday > Archives > 2000 > March > March 31, 2000:

Hour Two: Zero / Sleep and Memory

In this hour of Science Friday, we're going to be talking about...nothing. Nothing at all. Zero. Wait- don't touch that dial! That doesn't mean that Ira's on vacation, or that we couldn't line up any guests for this week -- we're going to be talking about the NUMBER zero.

Historians tell us that the ancient Babylonians (about 300 BC) may have used a concept of "absence of number,"  in their base-60 number system. The Mayans started each calendar cycle with a "day zero." The first real appearance of a zero-like concept in Western mathematics didn't come along until the rise of the Arabic number system around 200 AD Without something to hold a place for nothing, (107 = 1 hundred plus no tens plus seven ones), the Arabic base-ten counting system wouldn't have made much sense. And when Mahavira, an Indian mathematician, began to explain arithmetic operations involving zero (any number plus zero equals that number, any number minus itself equals zero, and so on)  the concept of zero really caught on.

Once people embraced zero, the idea spread from mathematics to other realms of thought as well, including philosophy, religion, and art. On this hour of Science Friday, we'll talk with Charles Seife, author of the recent book "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea," about the history of zero -- and about zero's influence on history.

We'll also take a look at something slightly more tangible -- recent studies into memory. The research, conducted by Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School and colleagues at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, suggests that after learning a new skill, it's best to sleep on it. Six to eight hours of sleep after learning appear to help the brain encode new skills and information into its memory banks. How and why does this happen? Tune in to this hour and find out -- and call in with your questions and comments.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:
Robert Stickgold
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts

Charles Seife
Author, "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea"
Reporter, Science
Washington, DC

Books/Articles Discussed:

"Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife. Viking, 2000. "Visual Discrimination Task Improvement: A Multi-Step Process Occurring During Sleep" by Stickgold et al, J. Cogn. Neurosci. 12 (2): 246

Search for books on:

This segment produced by:
Karin Vergoth
Web producer:
Charles Bergquist