New research suggests your quality of sleep can be measured through metabolic changes in your saliva.

Swiss scientists studied 20 healthy young men who normally sleep seven to nine hours a night. The men underwent three experimental conditions in random order: one night without any sleep, four consecutive nights of six hours' sleep, and a control condition with the usual eight hours of sleep.

The researchers then analyzed participants' saliva using high-resolution mass spectrometry and employed machine-learning methods to identify molecular patterns associated with acute sleep deprivation.

"We found that acute sleep deprivation affects about 10% of all biomolecules in saliva," said study coauthor Michael Scholzat at the University of Zurich.

With further development, the researchers hope to develop a simple saliva-based assessment to reliably detect sleep deprivation in a range of everyday situations involving shift work, alcohol, medications and other factors.

Body of Knowledge

Because atoms are roughly 99.999999999% empty space, compressing all the matter in every living human would shrink the entire global population to the size of a single sugar cube.

Mark Your Calendar

July is awareness month for Group B strep, juvenile arthritis, sarcoma, cord blood, cleft and craniofacial prevention, and UV safety. Be safe out there. Wear sunscreen.

Doc Talk

Athelia: the absence of a nipple. A generally rare phenomenon, but a distinguishing feature for some heritable conditions, such as some types of ectodermal dysplasia.

Phobia of the Week

Aphenphosmphobia: Fear of being touched

Never Say 'Diet'

The Major League Eating speed-eating record for watermelon is 13.22 pounds in 15 minutes, held by "Buffalo" Jim Reeves, who wasn't even the top-seeded contestant.

Best Medicine

A man visits an urgent care after experiencing symptoms of a heart attack.

"I had taken our cat to the vet," he tells the attending nurse, "and while I was there, my chest got tight, I had trouble breathing, and later, my left arm began aching."

The nurse looks at the man with great concern.

"What was wrong with the cat?"

Observation

"I walk around like everything's fine, but deep down, inside my shoe, my sock is sliding off." — Anonymous

Medical History

This week in 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur and his colleagues injected the first of 14 daily doses of rabbit spinal cord suspensions containing progressively inactivated rabies virus into 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been severely bitten by a rabid dog two days before.

The immunization was successful, marking the beginning of the modern era of immunization, which had been presaged by Edward Jenner nearly 100 years earlier with his smallpox vaccine. Pasteur's rabies immunization procedure was rapidly adopted throughout the world. Meister grew up to eventually become a caretaker of the Pasteur Institute until his death at age 64 in 1940.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

In 2014, the Ig Nobel Prize in psychology went to a trio of researchers who found that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

Sum Body

Recommended hours of quality sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by age.

— Newborns (0-3 months): 14-17 hours

— Infants (4-12 months): 12-16 hours (including naps)

— Toddlers (1-2 years): 11-14 hours (including naps)

— Preschoolers (3-5 years): 10-13 hours (including naps)

— School-age children (6-12 years): 9-12 hours

— Teenagers (13-18 years): 8-10 hours

— Adults (18-64 years): 7-9 hours

— Older Adults (65+ years): 7-8 hours

Curtain Calls

American author Olivia Goldsmith (1949-2004) became well known after publication of her debut novel, "The First Wives Club," which in part satirized cosmetic surgery. She died at the age of 55 after suffering complications following cosmetic surgery.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Isabella Fischer at Unsplash