Long flights across many time zones often leave us feeling fatigued, sleepy, irritable and generally out of sorts. And it’s not just because of poor sleep on the plane and dehydration from the altitude…
Big lights not inspiring nature.
Seattle Municipal Archives
Satellite images of the earth provide a striking picture of our planet during the hours of darkness. From space, the world at night appears as an intricate mass of tiny points of light, clustered into…
Sleeping on the plane is no jet lag cure.
Edward Simpson
Jet lag is a discomfort many of us will have experienced in the days following a long-haul flight across time zones. Mathematicians in the US may have a jet-lag cure in the form a new app called Entrain…
Adjusting back to standard time is easy for most of us and can happen in one or two days.
jamelah e./Flickr
Daylight saving time ends this weekend in most states and territories (barring Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory), meaning we’ll turn our clocks back by one hour on Sunday morning…
The advent of spring is associated with the prospect of increased sunshine, warmer temperatures and longer days. However, the enthusiasm for the start of British Summer Time (BST) is tempered by the inevitable…
You get hauled out of bed in the morning not just because of an alarm clock. We are genetically encoded with a 24-hour (circadian) body clock that allows us to live in harmony with our environment. But…
Good news for those who like a weekend sleep-in: lost sleep can be recovered.
Image from shutterstock.com
Ever have those moments on weekends or public holidays when you wake at your usual time, then realise there’s no pressing need to get up? If you go back for another couple of hours of shut-eye and use…
Waking up in the night is perfectly normal.
planetchopstick
We’re often told by the popular press and well-meaning family and friends that, for good health, we should fall asleep quickly and sleep solidly for about eight hours – otherwise we’re at risk of physical…
If any difference exists at all, it’s imperceptibly small, at less than 0.2°C.
Ms Cafe
Holding a body close to you, it’s easy to appreciate the warmth a human body can generate. Humans are “warm-blooded” animals. We’re able to effectively maintain a stable internal temperature, even on cold…
Plants both anticipate daytime raids by hungry insects and make sophisticated preparations to fend them off, using circadian-rhythm-regulated…
Dreamless hungers: chronic fatigue is associated not only with emotional volatility but with craving fatty and high-sugar foods. Flickr/Runs With Scissors.
Widespread sleep deprivation is driving police into rage, danger, and incompetence, with chronically fatigued officers self-reporting high rates of uncontrolled anger towards suspects and citizens, serious…
What we tweet, and when we tweet it, gives insight into global mood patterns.
joelaz
I know my mood over the course of a day and so, it seems, does Twitter. Over the years there’s been a lot of work on mood cycles. Much of it has been based on neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine…
Drinking alcohol is a pretty bad sleep aid and may become part of a cycle of decline.
kjmatthews
Sleeping is normally when our body sticks itself back together. Your breathing and your heart rate slow down, and gradually your body repairs itself, undoing all the damage you’ve done to yourself during…
Human sleeping patterns could be about more than light and dark.
Kristof Borkowski
Eyeless fish that have evolved underground, completely isolated from the day-night cycle, may offer clues to how our body clocks work up here on dry land. Authors of a report published today in the online…
Unconscious ups and downs are normal – and pretending otherwise is unhelpful.
sharmili r
Most people believe normal, healthy sleep should be long and uninterrupted from start to finish. Well, guess what? They’re wrong. This erroneous public perception of sleep was apparent in survey studies…
Wake up, it’s a beautiful … oh, shut up, let me be.
mislav m/Flickr
Feeling sluggish? Grouchy even? Difficulties getting out of bed? Mondayitis can happen to the best of us. But rest assured: it’s a phenomenon science can actually explain. In fact, there are a range of…
Late nights and jet-lag see us fighting our body clocks, but can we ever win?
fmgbain/Flickr
Do we control our body clocks or do those clocks, ticking imperceptibly, control us? It’s the kind of question that keeps sleep scientists awake at night. Rhythms are a good place to start. They are a…
Professor of Regulatory Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Adjunct Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at UCSD, University of California, San Diego