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I am the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science). My job is to try to motivate you to comment on the papers there. My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com

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Rhythmic Human:

Time Perception news

Carl Zimmer: How Your Brain Can Control Time: For 40 years, psychologists thought that humans and animals kept time with a biological version of a stopwatch. Somewhere in the brain, a regular series of pulses was being generated. When...

When Clocks Go Bad

Today in PLoS Genetics: a nice review of some interest to my readers: When Clocks Go Bad: Neurobehavioural Consequences of Disrupted Circadian Timing by Alun R. Barnard and Patrick M. Nolan: Progress in unravelling the cellular and molecular basis of...

'Ecology' of human light exposure and circadian disruption

In the Journal of Circadian Rhythms: A new approach to understanding the impact of circadian disruption on human health (pdf): Background Light and dark patterns are the major synchronizer of circadian rhythms to the 24-hour solar day. Disruption of circadian...

Yes, Seasonal Affective Disorder is real

No matter how cutesy the acronim SAD is. Joseph reports on a study that links SAD to serotonin. But serotonin itself may not be necessary to understand how SAD works, though an intimate link between serotonin and melatonin (the former...

The Amplitude Problem

If you are one of the few of my readers who actually slogged through my Clock Tutorials, especially the difficult series on Entrainment and Phase Response Curves, you got to appreciate the usefulness of the oscillator theory from physics in...

Development of the human sleep patterns

What it really means when we are talking about babies "sleeping through the night"

When Should Schools Start in the morning?

The fourth part of a four-part series on the topic, this one from April 02, 2006.......

More on sleep in adolescents

This is the third part of the series on the topic, from April 01, 2006......

Sleep Schedules in Adolescents

Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26,...

Adolescent Sleep Schedule

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...

Books: "Snooze...Or Lose! - 10 "No-War" Ways To Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits" by Helene A. Emsellem, MD

My regular readers are probably aware that the topic of adolescent sleep and the issue of starting times of schools are some of my favourite subjects for a variety of reasons: I am a chronobiologist, I am an extreme "owl"...

'Insomnia: A Cultural History'

Book excerpt in today's Wall Street Journal: Chapter 6: Wired: It is likely that insomnia will increase with the expansion of the 24-hour economy into more and more lives, and more of each life, because wakefulness and the wired world...

Shift Work labeled as a Probable Cause of Cancer

Shift Work May Be Cancer Risk: In an announcement to be published Saturday in the journal Lancet Oncology, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, will label shift work as a "probable cause" of...

Daylight Savings Time worse than previously thought

I am sure I have ranted about the negative effects of DST here and back on Circadiana, but the latest study - The Human Circadian Clock's Seasonal Adjustment Is Disrupted by Daylight Saving Time (pdf) (press releases: ScienceDaily, EurekAlert) by...

Anyone going to this?

Symposium Light, Performance and Quality of Life is on Thursday, 8 November 2007 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands: Introduction The ancient Greek already referred to the wholesome effects of the (sun)light on mankind. Ever since the industrialization, more and more people...

Yes, delay the school starting times

From the Independent: The head has identified research which says that teenagers would be more likely to take in what they are learning if they started school two hours later. He is considering changing the school timetable for sixth-formers as...

Phase-Response Curves to Melatonin

NBM found an excellent online article (which I have seen before but I forgot) depicting Phase-Response Curves (PRC) to injections of melatonin in humans, rodents and lizards. Note how the shape is roughly opposite to that of a PRC to...

Are you SAD?

Why are Orli and Joseph thinking about this in the middle of the summer? I am happy (and South enough). I am wondering if people with SAD living in the high latitudes either moved South or, being all gloomy, had...

The Amplitude Problem

If you are one of the few of my readers who actually slogged through my Clock Tutorials, especially the difficult series on Entrainment and Phase Response Curves, you got to appreciate the usefulness of the oscillator theory from physics in...

Sleep News

More stuff from SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies: Sleep Deprivation Affects Eye-steering Coordination When Driving: Driving a vehicle requires coordination of horizontal eye movements and steering. Recent research finds that even a single...

Rotating shifts shorten lives

This is the first study I know that directly tested this - the effects of rotating shifts on longevity - in humans, though some studies of night-shift nurses have shown large increases in breast cancers, stomach ulcers and heart diseases,...

The Owls Of The World, Unite!

Apparently, in Denmark, the 'larks' (early-risers) are called 'A-people' while 'owls' (late-risers) are 'B-people'. We all know how important language is for eliciting frames, so it must feel doubly insulting for the Danish night owls. Today, in the age of...

A potential animal model for Bipolar Disorder

It has been known for quite a while now that bipolar disorder is essentially a circadian clock disorder. However, there was a problem in that there was no known animal model for the bipolar disorder. Apparently that has changed, if...

Daylight Saving Time

This is the time when everyone is talking about the Daylight Saving Time and I always feel pressure to blog about it from a chronobiological perspective. And I always resist. As I will this year. So, here are a couple...

PERIOD clock gene variants affect sleep need in humans

The most exciting thing about this study is that this is, as far as I am aware, the first instance in which it was shown that a circadian clock gene has any effect on sleep apart from timing of it,...

Lesson of the Day: Circadian Clocks are HARD to shift!

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...

Seasonality of Pre-term Births

Matt found a conference paper that shows that the risk of pre-term birth is the lowest in spring, rising through summer and fall and the greatest in winter. The paper, IMHO erroneously, focuses on the time of conception (because it...

Greenwich time to remain Greenwich time

In light of my post earlier today about the discrepanices between 'real time' and 'clock time' (or 'social time'), it is heartening that the Parliament in the U.K. wisely decided not to switch their clocks to the time the rest...

New Model for Interval Timing

While study of Time-Perception is, according to many, a sub-discipline of chronobiology, I personally know very little about it. Time perception is defined as interval timing, i.e., measuring duration of events (as opposed to counting, figuring which one of the...

Sun Time is the Real Time

Time Zones as experimental tools - if you live in a Big City you are just like one of my experimental subjects!

New potential sleeping pill

If you discover a brain chemical which, when missing or malfunctioning (due to a mutation in its receptor) abruptly puts people and animals to sleep when they don't want to - a condition called narcolepsy - then you can work...

The Cultural Politics of Sleep

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...

This aired too early in the day for my adolescent brain...

I was too busy with the conference so I missed the NPR Morning Edition story on one of my favourite subjects: Adolescent Sleep, which was followed by two more stories on the same subject! I am glad to see this...

Sleep Number Bed?

Adjust your sleep number for the best performance! Or, what does your sleep number say about your performance?...

No, light behind the knee does NOT shift the clock!

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...

Sleep Deprivation - Societal Causes and Effects

Here is the second guest-post by Heinrich (from March 20, 2005):...

I Am Dangerous

Well, not me, but people who know what I know. Heinrich aka Sir Oolius explains how the US military uses the knowledge of circadian rhythms and sleep in applications to torture. Just place the prisoners in a state of perpetual...

New York Times Gets It Right, Just To Screw Up At The End In Blind Adherence To The He Said/She Said Journalism

Now behind the Wall, but plenty of excerpts available in this March 26, 2005 post......

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Affects The Basic Properties Of The Circadian Clock

How does that work? (April 03, 2005)...

Seasonal Affective Disorder - The Basics

This is an appropriate time of year for this post (February 05, 2006)......

Circadian Rhythm of Alcohol Tolerance

The original title of this post - "Diurnal rhythm of alcohol metabolism" - was more correct, but less catchy (from February 21, 2006)....

Circadian Rhythms in Human Mating

A short-but-sweet study (March 18, 2006):...

Does Tryptophan from turkey meat make you sleepy?

Does eating turkey meat make you sleepy? Some people say Yes, some people say No, and the debate can escalate into a big fight.

Circadian variation in athletic performance neglected by Beijing Games organizers

Apparently, the timing of sporting events in Beijing, probably driven by needs of American TV audiences, did not take into consideration the best time of day for athletic performance. But who cares about athletes, or even about breaking Olympic and...

Is Ramadan good for your health?

This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question is: A reader asks: Is severely regulating your diet for a month each year, as Muslims do during Ramadan, good for you? There is no way I can get out of this one! As...

Sleep in Infants

I tend to rant about sleep in adolescents for various reasons, but other people focus on other age groups. Infants are one such group, interesting because it takes a while for their circadian rhythms to consolidate resulting in "sleeping through...

What is a 'natural' sleep pattern?

Nothing too complicated today, but something you should all know.

Watch out for medical quackery!

Bill Bailey reports that an organization called 'Screening for Mental Health' offers free screenings for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). But then, they push drugs on people they "diagnose". The only problem - SAD is not treated with drugs!!! It is...

It's not the quantity, but timing

Study says no video games on school nights: According to Dr. Iman Sharif, the results were clear-cut. "On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said Dr. Sharif. Weekends were another matter, with gaming and TV watching habits...

Circadian Rhythm of Caffeine Effects

Since every chemical induces a different response in the body dependent on the time of day when it is administered, I am not surprised that this also applies to caffeine: A new study at the Université de Montréal has concluded...

Alternative sleep therapies

Over 1.6 Million Americans Use Alternative Medicine For Insomnia Or Trouble Sleeping: A recent analysis of national survey data reveals that over 1.6 million American adults use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat insomnia or trouble...

News on familial advanced sleep phase syndrome

So, is extreme "larkiness" due to overphosphorilation or underphosphorilation of PERIOD2? Hypotheses get tested, studies conflict with each other and, in the end, there is a resolution. In this case, we are still waiting for resolution. Science marches on....

A new Maryland school off to a healthy start

Indian Creek dedicates new Upper School: Mrs. Mattingly highlighted the major components of the college preparatory curriculum that fills the school day beginning at 8:50 a.m. and continues until 5 p.m. The hours are designed to accommodate teens' circadian rhythms....

Sleep Deprivation in the classroom, in the cockpit and on the space shuttle

Students not getting enough sleep: College students may believe they are being more productive when they sleep less, but in reality it is causing harm to their bodies. The National Sleep Foundation points out that receiving less than six hours...

When Should Schools Start in the morning?

The fourth part of a four-part series on the topic.

More on sleep in adolescents

This is the third part of the series on the topic.

ClockNews - Adolescent Sleep

The second post on the topic. A couple of links are broken due to medieval understanding of permalinks by newspapers, but you will not miss too much, I hope....

Sleep Schedules in Adolescents

The first in a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents.

Adolescent Sleep Schedule

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...

It's not just the amount of rest, but also the timing of rest

Do pilots get enough rest?: -------------------------snip--------------------- The federal rules on pilot duty hours and rest periods aren't the most comprehensible of reads. One rule allows airlines to schedule pilots to fly for eight hours or less during a 24-hour period...

Keep the Light-Dark Cycles in the hospitals for the sake of patients and staff alike

The Center for Health Design Research has issued its Report on The Impact of Light on Outcomes in Healthcare Settings. You can download the entire report as PDF: Light impacts human health and performance by enabling performance of visual tasks,...

Sleep in old age

This is a good article about changes in sleep patterns that occur with old age....

Some hypotheses about a possible connection between malaria and jet-lag

Hypotheses leading to more hypotheses.

Clock News

Melatonin improves mood in winter depression: Alfred Lewy and his colleagues in the OHSU Sleep and Mood Disorders Lab set out to test the hypothesis that circadian physiological rhythms become misaligned with the sleep/wake cycle during the short days of...

Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder

Three old posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the bipolar disorder.

Reading Recommendations: Books about Clocks and Sleep

Just a few recommendations, if you are interested in these topics.

Watch out for the Big Trucks....

Many Commercial Drivers Have Impaired Performance Due To Lack Of Sleep Truck drivers who routinely get too little sleep or suffer from sleep apnea show signs of fatigue and impaired performance that can make them a hazard on the road,...

Clock News

Different strokes occur at different times Different types of strokes occur most often at different times of day say scientists at Iwate Medical University in Iwate, Japan. The team based their findings on data from 12,957 cases of first-ever stroke...

Wearing blue-blocking eyeglasses a few hours before bedtime resets the internal clocks to an earlier hour.

This is an interesting idea: A novel way to advance the circadian cycle has been proposed as a way to solve the problem associated with the early starting times of middle and high schools. It has been recognized for some...

Recommended reading

Today's New York Times has a good article about jet-lag: The Science of Zzzzz's. I am glad to hear that JetBlue is using scientific advice in helping their pilots be fresh and alert, especially now that JetBlue has started flying...

Chronomodulated Cancer Therapy

Oversimplified, but much believed idea: Many cancer drugs target cells during cell division. Healthy cells divide at a particular time of day (exact timing may differ between cell types). Cancer cells are not under the control of the circadian clock...

Try to schedule your surgery for the early morning

A number of media outlets are reporting on the new Duke University study on the effects of time-of-day on the outcome of surgery: Patients who undergo surgery late in the afternoon are more likely to experience unexpected adverse events related...