My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
If you live in (most places in) the United States as well as many other countries, you have reset your clocks back by one hour last night (or last week). How will that affect you and other people? One possibility...
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...
Back in the late 1990s, when people first started using various differential screens, etc. looking for elusive "genes for sleep", I wrote in my written prelims (and reprinted it on my blog several years later): Now the sleep researchers are...
How does one fisk a medical quackery when there is no attempt whatsoever to explain what it is all about - not even a string of New-Age mumbo-jumbo, nonsensical, vaguely English-sounding words. All it says is: Buy The Book. Yeah,...
This is a story about two mindsets - one scientific, one not - both concerned with the same idea but doing something very different with it. Interestingly, both arrived in my e-mail inbox on the same day, but this post...
OK, it is a premise of a new SF novel. The book description does not look too promising, though I guess I should read it for professional reasons (I put it on my amazon wish-list for now): Last call from...
Nicole Eugene recently defended her Masters Thesis called Potent Sleep: The Cultural Politics of Sleep (PDF) on a topic that I find fascinating: Why is sleep, a moment that is physiologically full and mentally boundless, thought to be a moment...
For science bloggers, a study older than a week is often too old to blog about. For scientists, last five years of literature are the most relevant (and many grad students, unfortunately, never read the older stuff). I thought that...