Scientists Describe Internal Clocks That Don't Follow Day and Night Cycles 91
sciencehabit writes "Almost all organisms, from bacteria to mammals, have a circadian clock—a mechanism in their cells which keeps them in sync with Earth's day-and-night cycle. But many organisms follow other rhythms as well. Now, new research provides the first evidence that animals have molecular cycles independent of the circadian rhythm. They include a sea louse whose swimming patterns sync up with the tides, and a marine worm that matures and spawns in concert with the phases of the moon. The discoveries suggest that noncircadian clocks might be common and could explain a variety of biological rhythms."
Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Funny)
My internal clock is based on a caffeine cycle.
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My manic/depressive system works on a weekly cycle. Except when I'm on holidays.
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Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Funny)
Warewolfs
If bitten you have an irresistable urge to download cracked pirate copies of the latest games? Or just want to hang around large empty buildings filled with shipping goods in transit?
The wearwolf, now that's far a more dangerous beast; it haunts the catwalks of Paris and Milan, possessed of an insatiable hunger and a suit with more dimensions than the eye can follow without watering.
Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot about the wherewolf. The poor thing gets constantly lost.
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There wolf! There castle.
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What about the airwolf?
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After I retired, it became clear my "natural" cycle was about 26 hours.
Annoying!
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It's even more annoying whilst in the midst of your career like I am. I have noticed I definitely do not operate on a 24 hour clock either and it is hell. Fortunately for me I telecommute. A few weeks ago I was going to bed at 4pm while waking up around 2am, and day after day it kept getting progressively later until I made my way all around the clock again. For the past few days I've been taking two 4~ hour naps. One around 3pm and one around 3am.
Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sleeping after lunch works well for a lot of people. I'm Spanish -- we know about our 'siesta'.
There's evidence that we naturally used to sleep in two phases [nytimes.com], and some people have suggested a similar pattern to yours [mrob.com].
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Unfortunately one could suggest that sleeping after lunch doesn't do much to improve the economy of a country.
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Well...
If everyone slept, then pay would be slightly less but things would cost less.
Or you might be able to have higher employment.
Seriously -- we don't have to run our economy at breakneck speed all the time. It wasn't anything like this back in the 80s when I started working.
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Yup, the countries that traditionally have the afternoon siesta and the countries that mandate by law long vacations have such awesomely low unemployment rates... As always, never let current facts get in the way of a good argument.
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Actually, I believe MOST people have a sun-independent rhythm of 24.5-27 hours. When placed in isolation from normal sunrise/sunset, nearly everyone drifts to a longer wake cycle resulting in an extended "day". I can't remember the specific paper I read.
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We must all be from Mars [wikipedia.org], then - a 24.67 earth-hour day.
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Well, "lunacy" is definitely a thing. People freaking out during full moons has happened since the dawn of man.
Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think there is a grain of truth in it, and my ex-wide who worked in ER for several years (as a cleaner) swears by it. However the moon doesn't actually create freaks from otherwise normal people, rather it provides just enough light for existing freaks to wander about at night and hurt themselves/others. I wouldn't expect the effect to be noticeable in a modern city hospital because city lights outshine the moon anyway. Weather also plays a huge role in the number of freaks wandering around at night, like everyone else, they (mostly) have enough sense to get out of the rain and are much more active on warm nights than cold. According to my ex-wife and her co-workers, a full moon on a hot and humid Saturday night is the perfect freak storm in a rural (or beachside) ER, statistically you're more likely to be murdered on a hot humid day than any other day.
There's a very good reason that virtually every ancient religion has a sun and/or a moon god, they were observed to rule the natural cycles around them. Modern city/urban life obscures most of those observations and people are left wondering why the hell stone age people went to the effort of building places like stone henge.
I think it's pretty much the same reason our modern society went to the effort of building the LHC or the Hubble telescope, ultimately they were trying to understand the world around them. Knowing where and when to turn up for an "all you can eat" buffet is a very deep behaviour in evolutionary terms, creatures as diverse as apes, jellyfish, corals, bears, and crocodiles make good use of it.
In most cases we are at a complete loss when it comes to explaining these things in detail. For example, how do crocodiles "know" to gather an hour or so before fish become trapped on a flooded river ford? - The brief event (filmed by Attenborough) only happens right at the peak of a king tide. AFAIK, nobody (including Attenborough) has a clue how the hell the crocs tell the difference between a high tide and a king tide BEFORE it arrives. In ancient times people just accepted that (say) the crocs inexplicable ability to predict king tides was due to "divine knowledge".
Humans are the undisputed masters of observing and exploiting patterns, however the root cause of the pattern is often irrelevant to it's utility. Ancient people would have simply observed the crocs (a wise defence behaviour anyway) and been alerted to the imminent fish bounty by their behaviour, some would have been mauled/taken by crocs when they went after the fish, lucky escape stories would abound, semi-random rituals would rapidly emerge to appease and thank the crocs. Next thing you know everybody wants a row of granite crocodile gods adorning their pyramid's driveway, and virgins are feeling nervous.
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Re:Lunar clocks? (Score:4, Informative)
I think that the female cycle is close to the lunar cycle, but not exactly synchronized with it. It would be similar to people having a 22 hour day cycle instead of 24.
The menstrual cycle can be anywhere from 25-35 days, with an average of 28 days.
The lunar cycle is 29.5 days.
On a sidenote, imagine the horror if all women of the world would have their period exactly synchronized!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cycle [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase#Overview [wikipedia.org]
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Animals that have a mating season, usually have no sex drive outside that season (that accounts for males and females).
Big difference with humans and certain other primates, where both sexes are always interested in sex.
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...both sexes are always interested in sex.
Until marriage.
[John]
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Still interested. Just not with each other.
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From what I've been reading lately—in recent books—about half of the crabbiness is due to women not eating enough to compensate for their increased metabolic rate during their periods. Men also get crabby when we don't eat enough to replenish our willpower reserves. It takes willpower to make the generous response rather than the first lizard response that enters our brain.
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Be like The Purge (decent flick), but worse...and more often.
Actually that'd be a great b or c movie.
Every 29 days men and children would lock themselves in bunkers while chaos and monsters roam the streets....
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It can be. I knew several practicing Wiccans who nightly observed the the moon phases (well, as 'nightly' as one can get in Seattle). After a couple of months their cycles somehow got synched to around the time of the full moon, and stayed that way until I moved out of town and lost contact with them a year or so later. None were on any artificial birth control and all were vegetarians or almost-vegetarians who cooked almost everything at home. A couple of them lived in the same house for a time (women
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Conclusion is a bit odd. As if it'd be a surprise.
First that comes to mind is indeed the human female menstual cycle.
Another is the yearly breeding cycle in most other animals, where they follow some yearly cycle (though that may not be a biological clock indeed).
I also wonder how animals that live their life underground, or in the deep sea (no sunlight) do. Do they also have a "day" rhythm, for example?
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It seems like women's body count 1-28 circadian cycles to form a pseudo-lunar cycle, rather than it being on an independent cycle.
News from 11 B.C. (Score:2)
More valuable research?
I hope no scientists were harmed in these experiments.
Was this from another of those fine 'scientific' journals?
If you think it was, good luck with 6th grade.
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Props to dice.com. This is actually 'News for Nerds'.
I don't put much into these cycles.. (Score:1)
Life on a submarine is an 18 hour day for months at a time. No sun, days, nights, weekends, not even the meals are in sync with the typical 12+6 work/sleep schedule. One cycle you wake up to dinner, the next time it's lunch, and then breakfast and so on. I don't know too many people that freaked out because of the strange schedule. Some faked or actually committed suicide but it was usually because of a wife/girlfriend.
Isn't the natural period of human clocks 27 hrs? (Score:3)
ISTR that the period of the human body clock is not 24 hours, but 27.
That is, if you remove the cues of time from someone, their natural sleep/wake cycle would rapidly approach 27 hours.
Something about it being based on a relaxation oscillator which means the day/night rotation of the earth actually resets it constantly...
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Different for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
My biological clock seems to run around a 26-30 hour cycle, which often makes it difficult for me to maintain "normal" work hours. Trying to go to sleep early is often fruitless so, eventually, I simply stay up all night and drag myself through the next day and then go to bed at an appropriate time to force reset my cycle. I've been this way for as long as I can remember - and I'm now 50. On the up side, I can (still) work productively for 36+ hours straight - I'm a senior mostly-Unix-ish system programmer/administrator btw.
Re:Different for me... (Score:5, Funny)
and I'm now 50.
On the plus side, that's only 43 in "you" years.
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During a few weeks in my life when I had nothing going on, no job, no commitments, I just went to bed when I felt tired – or rather when I'd had enough of that particular day – with no regard for the clock.
Over the space of a week, my living day had shifted by a full 12 hours. I found that quite amusing.
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You've had this non-24 condition since birth? That's tough. I can't imagine having that problem as a kid while in school. Damn. It only started for me after a head injury, but now my normal cycle is also around 25-27 hours. It does make it extremely difficult to lead a normal life.
I assume you've tried everything, but have you tried Dark Therapy? No artificial lighting after dark? It's kind of tough for me because it means I can't use a computer or read. I've sometimes listened to audio books though and a r
The most important cycle of all (Score:5, Funny)
The paycheck cycle.
My clock is psychotic (Score:2)
I haven't worked in over two years so, when I don't have to be synced with other people, I go to sleep when I get tired and get up when I'm done sleeping. When I get going on an interesting project, I might chug away for 30+ hours straight then sleep for 10-12 hours. Or I'll get in a cycle where I'm down for 3-4, up for 10-12. When I'm just chugging along, I'm usually up for 18-20 hours and sleep for 8-9 hours and I chase that around the solar cycle. Being able to go for months without setting an alarm
Useful, but not the first to test it (Score:1)
Plenty of people have been doing non-circadian clock work for years; I briefly worked in such a lab that had been investigating food- and sex-based timing mechanisms, but the non-circadian clock idea is at least as old as the seventies.[1][2]
[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/197/4301/398?ijkey=759219d8ce9c087620c8d8237098ff5956eeb489&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha [sciencemag.org]
[2] http://jbr.sagepub.com/co [sagepub.com]
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