Mis-clock-ceptions
A Blog Around The Clock
Category archives for Mis-clock-ceptions
Adolescent Sleep Schedule
Posted by Coturnix on September 10, 2006 This kind of ignorant bleating makes me froth at the mouth every time – I guess it is because this is my own blogging “turf”. One of the recurring themes of my blog is the disdain I have for people who equate sleep with laziness out of their Puritan core of understanding of the world,…
Deceptive Metaphor of the Biological Clock
Posted by Coturnix on July 19, 2006 Sometimes a metaphor used in science is useful for research but not so useful when it comes to popular perceptions. And sometimes even scientists come under the spell of the metaphor. One of those unfortunate two-faced metaphors is the metaphor of the Biological Clock. First of all, there are at least three common meanings of…
Circadian Quackery
Posted by Coturnix on July 3, 2006 Believe me, I love the word “circadian”. It is a really cool word, invented by Franz Halberg in the late 1950s, out of ‘circa’ (Latin – “about”) and diem (“a day”), to denote daily rhythms in biochemistry, physiology and behavior generated by the internal, endogenous biological clocks within living organisms. It’s been a while since…
All Politics Is Local
Posted by Coturnix on June 29, 2006 This week, it took me quite a while to figure out how to answer the Ask a ScienceBlogger question: “What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?” As a relative newcomer to the United States, and even more a newcomer to American politics, I was not…
Take a Merlot pill?
Posted by Coturnix on June 16, 2006 Interesting: Melatonin may be found in grapes MILAN, Italy, June 16 (UPI) — Scientists in Italy say they have discovered that the grapes used in popular red wines may contain high levels of the sleep hormone melatonin. Melatonin is naturally secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, especially at night, and it tells the…
Brain Region Linked To Fly Slumber
Posted by Coturnix on June 13, 2006 When a news release states that a brain region is crucial for something, one is led to believe that this is the MAIN center controlling that function. If it is crucial for thermoregulation than it is the center for thermoregulation and without it the animal does not thermoregulate. Or am I misunderstanding English (it is…
SAD is a different kind of depression
Posted by Coturnix on June 12, 2006 So, Wellbutrin is now officially a drug for treating Seasonal Affective Disorder. And chocolate is so unofficially. But, those may only take the edge off of the symptoms – they cannot affect the underlying causes.
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)
Posted by Coturnix on June 12, 2006 This post is perhaps not my best post, but is, by far, my most popular ever. Sick and tired of politics after the 2004 election I decided to start a science-only blog – Circadiana. After a couple of days of fiddling with the templae, on January 8, 2005, I posted the very first post, this…