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Missing out on sleep pretty much guarantees feeling crummy the next day. But it can also lead to dangerous or even disastrous decision making. Sleep-deprived operators failed to prevent the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

And during the Civil War, Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson was famously running on two hours of sleep when made a series of tactical errors and was ultimately shot by friendly fire.

When we lose sleep, it seems we lose our ability to think on our feet — to take in new information and adjust our behavior, according to a study published in the June issue of the journal Sleep.

Researchers at Washington State University figured this out by rounding up 26 volunteers. Half went without any sleep for two days, while the other half slept normal hours. Over the course of a week, the scientists tested everyone's ability to complete decision-making tests.

In one test, the volunteers had to click a button when they saw certain numbers and hold back when they saw others. Then the rule was switched.

The well-rested group did better on this task in general. But when the rule was reversed, none of the sleep-deprived volunteers were able to get the right answer – even after 40 tries.

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Skimping On Sleep Can Stress Body And Brain

"It wasn't just that sleep-deprived people were slower to recover," says Paul Whitney, a psychologist at Washington State University who led the study. "Their ability to take in new information and adjust was completely devastated."

Whitney says sleep scientists still don't understand why this happens. But it looks like the lack of sleep may be dulling the nervous system's response to new information. They found this out by hooking the volunteers up to electrodes that tracked their bodies' response to stimuli.

"Normally, the machine will pick up when people have a strong negative or positive response to something," Whitney says. "And we found that for the sleep-deprived group, the machine wasn't picking up much. Their reactions were completely blunted," Whitney says.

Sleep loss didn't affect all types of thinking. Everyone did pretty well on tasks that tested short-term memory, though the well-rested people did slightly better.

Since we can function fairly well in some aspects without sleep, people often don't realize just how much sleep deprivation can impair them, Whitney says.

If you can, he says, avoid making any high-stakes decisions when you're short of sleep, he says. And if you don't have a choice, take some extra time to make sure you're considering all the factors.

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For A Good Snooze, Take One Melatonin, Add Eye Mask And Earplugs

"The implication here is you should know that the most likely error you'll make when you haven't slept is that you're not going to second guess yourself as much as you probably should," he says.

Of course, this is only a preliminary study – it's one of the first to test how sleep affects high-level decision-making. And while the study subjects were up for two consecutive days, in real world situations people are more likely to get inadequate sleep over a long period of time, rather than no sleep over a short period.

Previous studies have shown that the effects of chronic sleep loss are similar to the acute sleep deprivation the subjects of this study experienced, Whitney says.

"It's hard to simulate in a lab the kind of decisionmaking that is predictive of what happens in a natural, real-world situation," says Charles Czeisler, head of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital and chairman of the board of the National Sleep Foundation, who wasn't involved in the recent research. "But this study does a really good job of getting at that."

It scientifically proves what we've known for a while – in high-stakes situations, sleep loss can be disastrous. "There have been many situations throughout history, particularly in military battles, where very highly capable individuals made mistakes when they were exhausted," Czeisler says. "This shows that when we practice disaster preparedness, we should think about how are we're going to rotate command and control."

And sleep is important even when you're not making life-or-death decisions, he adds. "People are increasingly burning the candle at both ends. And that's really not a good idea. It can even be dangerous."

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is casting his eye beyond the Big Apple — and is trying to cement his legacy as a progressive champion that could help boost his political future.

On Tuesday, de Blasio, less than two years into his first term as mayor of the country's largest city, will unveil at the U.S. Capitol his ambitious "Contract with America" for the left. Modeled after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's conservative promises of the same name, his 13-point plan will call for robust progressive policies, including universal pre-kindergarten programs, a $15 minimum wage, paid family leave, what he perceives as fairer tax plans and more.

After consulting on the plan with other progressive leaders at Grace Mansion, the mayor's residence in New York, last month he's now aiming to mark his turf early on these issues. By appearing alongside the progressive movement's other favorite champion, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at the National Press Club just before unveiling his own agenda later that afternoon, de Blasio is trying to send a message that he's a force to be reckoned with in the growing wing of the Democratic Party.

"He wants to be the gatekeeper and definer of who is progressive and who is not around the country," said New York Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who worked for one of de Blasio's 2013 primary opponents.

De Blasio didn't cut his teeth early on as a progressive voice, though. A longtime political aide and strategist, he worked in the Clinton administration before managing then-First Lady Hillary Clinton's successful 2000 bid for New York's open Senate seat.

Those connections helped him launch his own political career the next year. But when his former boss launched her second bid for the White House last month, he balked, declining multiple times to endorse Clinton, who's been under pressure from the left.

Sheinkopf argued that delicate dance would make his endorsement more valuable to Clinton later on. That neutrality, along with his new agenda he's touting, is together a way to protect his own brand he wants to take beyond the Big Apple.

"He appears to want to be the first mayor to get out of here alive," said Sheinkopf, noting other former New York City mayors like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg saw their onetime national ambitions evaporate.

"This is not by accident — this is purposeful and very smart," he added.

But casting his eye beyond his city has risks. The New York Times calculated he has spent a third of the last month on the road for political trips, from Iowa to Wisconsin to Silicon Valley.

De Blasio defended his out-of-state trips at a press conference Monday, saying he wanted to "use tools we have here to address income inequality and a whole host of other issues. But I also have to participate in changing the national debate, and changing the reality in Washington in a way that will have the support of people in New York City. We've got to do both at once."

A Marist poll last week showed there could be trouble brewing at home. Forty-nine percent of respondents said the city was going in the wrong direction, the first time the number fell below 50 percent since de Blasio took office. What's more, 56 percent said their quality of life in the city had gotten worse. While de Blasio's approval rating had ticked up five points to 44 percent since last year, and a majority of voters still had a favorable impression of the mayor, 53 percent said they didn't think his policies were transforming the city.

Marist pollster Lee Miringoff told NPR that in the poll, de Blasio's liberal base in still intact, but that New Yorkers as a whole were "very divided on his heading out to the national stage versus the job he's supposed to be doing as mayor."

Miringoff said, "He's coming out of the starting blocks fast, and he clearly sees there's a national stage for that kind of dialogue and that national Democrats are desiring that discussion."

It's a discussion national progressive leaders are anxious to hear more from de Blasio. He was the first mayoral candidate MoveOn.org ever endorsed, and Ben Wikler, the group's Washington director, said their members are looking for him to do even more over the next few years, starting with the plans he is releasing Tuesday.

He's a national progressive champion," Wikler said, "and he's demonstrating how you can run as a movement progressive, change laws and create a country we all want to live in."

But, challenges at home are still very real for de Blasio. Critics look at de Blasio and think he is being presumptuous, that he has not accomplished enough in his current job to think he deserves the national spotlight.

Though he was able to get one of his campaign promises through — universal pre-K — income inequality, the core of his progressive message, remains a big problem in New York, where the gap between the haves and have nots is as wide as anywhere in the country. He has faced criticism from community groups because, unlike past mayors, he has shied away from holding town halls or taking questions on radio programs. And though a supporter of de Blasio's, New York's public advocate called attention to the city contracting with a small percentage of minority-owned businesses. She went so far as to accuse de Blasio and the city of "institutional racism" and that "people of color need not apply."

It's a delicate balance politicians need to strike between the national stage and governing at home. Governors, including the current crop of presidential candidates, often face a similar dilemma. That's something de Blasio is going to have to keep an eye on, as he looks ahead — or it could be his undoing.

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Not far from the glitzy Mediterranean film festival venue of Cannes lies another town with a connection to cinema. There are no stars or red carpet, but La Ciotat has an even longer relationship with film, and boasts the world's oldest surviving movie theater.

Audiences are enthusiastic when the lights go down at the Eden. This historic cinema house has been showing movies for the last 120 years, which makes it the world's oldest cinema still in operation.

The Eden lies smack in the middle of the tiny town of La Ciotat, and in front of the Mediterranean Sea. As the story goes, one half of La Ciotat met the other half on its velvet benches.

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

Municipal employee Thierry Mabily says he's a pure product of the Eden. We sneak inside the cinema while a movie's playing so he can show me why.

"It was right here on this second-floor balcony, near that last pillar there, that my mother met my father," Mabily whispers as the film starts. "The year was 1958 and the film playing was The Four White Feathers."

La Ciotat is also the setting for some of the very first moving pictures, recorded by the pioneering Lumiere brothers on their invention, the cinematograph. Building on advances of the day by other inventors such as Thomas Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented their cinematographe, the first portable motion picture camera and projector.

Trarieux says the Lumiere family built a large mansion in La Ciotat when the brothers' father, Antoine, a successful photographer from Lyon, visited and fell in love with the Mediterranean light and color. One of the very first moving pictures, Arrival of a Train in La Ciotat, is said to have astounded Parisians when they saw it in 1895.

"That's the film of my grandmother coming on vacation," says Gilles Trarieux-Lumiere, Louis Lumiere's great-grandson. "Louis Lumiere took his camera, went on the platform and filmed his daughter arriving on the train."

The Lumiere brothers sent photographers carrying their cinematographes across the globe to record scenes of daily life. They were the first to project their films to audiences, in rooms that became known as cinemas. The screenings generated widespread excitement around the new technology.

During its heyday, and before television, the Eden played to packed houses, but by the 1990s, it had fallen into disrepair and closed. The building was nearly demolished, but a committee, led by Jean Louis Tixier, raised funds to save the Eden.

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Cannes film festival director Thierry Fremaux gives a speech at the Eden's official re-opening in 2013. Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

Cannes film festival director Thierry Fremaux gives a speech at the Eden's official re-opening in 2013.

Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

"Cinema should not be watched at home on a TV screen," Tixier says. "Cinema is about people breathing and having emotions together. Cinema is a collective, human experience."

Today the Eden's programming evokes the Lumiere brothers' spirit of exploration and sharing.

An enthusiastic Cesaria Granier has come with her mother to watch a documentary about a young man who sails to France from the Bay of Bengal on a sailboat that is its own ecosystem.

"We don't usually see films like this," says the 12-year-old. "It makes you realize, with ideas and the will, you can do anything."

"My dad was going to play banjo and he never got into it, so he advertised in the Palo Alto newspaper: 'Banjo for sale,'" Kreutzmann says. "One night there's a knock on the door. I open the door and Jerry Garcia was standing there."

A number of years later, Kreutzmann saw Garcia again, playing with Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, and was "completely taken away." That night, he swore to follow Garcia everywhere. Two weeks later, Kreutzmann got a phone call from Garcia asking if he'd like to be in a band.

"I thought that was a very good idea," Kreutzmann says. "Turned out to be a pretty great idea, don't you think?"

'It Can Be Like Fractals'

In the band's beginnings, altered states of consciousness fueled the Grateful Dead's creativity.

"Well, acid was the most beneficial drug," Kreutzmann says. "I jokingly refer to it as my college education, my graduate school, whatever. If I hadn't taken acid, I just would not be here talking to you today. It opens you up; it lets you see that what you're taught in school or what your parents have taught you, or society lays on you, isn't necessarily all there is to see. Your art can flourish and flourish and flourish. It can be like fractals, your art; it can just keep growing. That's what LSD did for me."

But drugs ate away at the band, even as the Grateful Dead grew into the biggest touring attraction in America.

"When cocaine came into the Grateful Dead, it really hurt us," Kreutzmann says.

Kreutzmann says that 1995, when Jerry Garcia died, "was a terrible year for me. I moved to Hawaii to get healing. I was in a really bad way—"

After a moment, Kreutzmann composed himself.

'He Was My Best Music Teacher'

The drummer and the bandleader had once made a pact: If the Grateful Dead ever came to an end, Bill Kreutzmann and Jerry Garcia would move to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, clean up and go diving. In the end, Kreutzmann moved there alone.

"I thank him. He was my best music teacher," Kreutzmann says of Garcia. "He taught me more about music than anybody else. And not necessarily just in words, but how he played. The way he played, you can learn so much from it. Doesn't matter what instrument you play.

"I [was] a senior in high school when he asked me to join the band; when that phone call came in. I knew how to play the drums just a little bit. I had the desire. The thing he said was, 'Bill, play full value. Make four beats be a really full four beats. Don't rush to the end of the bar.'"