Nobel Prize For Medicine Awarded For Insights Into Internal Biological Clock 36
Dave Knott quotes a report from The Guardian: The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to a trio of American scientists for their discoveries on the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms -- in other words, the 24-hour body clock. According to the Nobel committee's citation, the researchers were recognized for their discoveries explaining "how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth's revolutions." The team identified a gene within fruit flies that controls the creatures' daily rhythm, known as the "period" gene. This gene encodes a protein within the cell during the night which then degrades during the day. When there is a mismatch between this internal "clock" and the external surroundings, it can affect the organism's wellbeing -- for example, in humans, when we experience jet lag. All three winners are from the U.S. Jeffrey C Hall, 72, has retired but spent the majority of his career at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where fellow laureate Michael Rosbash, 73, is still a faculty member. Michael W Young, 68, works at Rockefeller University in New York.
Hall and Rosbash then went on to unpick how the body clock actually works, revealing that the levels of protein encoded by the period gene rise and fall throughout the day in a negative feedback loop. Young, meanwhile, discovered a second gene involved in the system, dubbed "timeless," that was critical to this process. Only when the proteins produced from the period gene combined with those from the timeless gene could they enter the cell's nucleus and halt further activity of the period gene. Young also discovered the gene that controlled the frequency of this cycle.
Hall and Rosbash then went on to unpick how the body clock actually works, revealing that the levels of protein encoded by the period gene rise and fall throughout the day in a negative feedback loop. Young, meanwhile, discovered a second gene involved in the system, dubbed "timeless," that was critical to this process. Only when the proteins produced from the period gene combined with those from the timeless gene could they enter the cell's nucleus and halt further activity of the period gene. Young also discovered the gene that controlled the frequency of this cycle.
Re:Congratulation to REAL scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
ask yourself: if it takes "scientists" to do your job, why can we outsource it to low-wage workers in the other side of the world with no loss whatsoever?
My language doesn't attach the word "science" to computer degrees, so we're ahead of you on that one (well, except for Bachelor and Master degrees, but those are international names so don't blame us).
As for the quoted statement, in my experience we can't. Any company I've been in that has outsourced, and every friend who has been in the know in his or her company, tells the same story: outsourcing looks great on paper, but is a pile of stinking poo in reality. Money saved on wages for developers, gets lost in the poor quality of the delivered product, and the extra resources needed to manage them.
The only remedy I've seen is to not rent resources but instead establish a local office, then send people there a lot in order to bring that culture more in line with our own. It takes a long time, and costs a lot of money, but eventually they might become productive. I can only think of one example of it working, and it took about a decade to get there.
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[Please] stop using terms like "computer science", it's low-grade engineering at best.
You have a point. Software is a combination of logic, planning, design, analysis, creativity, try-it-and-see, composition, original ideas, etc. -- and all to varying degrees. Perhaps there should be a new word for that. New things often borrow old forms, but at some point it's nice to have a proper name.
Anyone who knows their Latin or Greek or Sanskrit, are there any good words upoin which we could base the notion of a "code creator" ?
Maybe now they can find out why I'm an alien (Score:3)
My clock is definitively not set for 24 hours, and I don't mean off by a little. If I try to follow a rhythm of staying up until I'm tired and sleep until I wake by myself without caring about the outside world I'm closer to a 36 hour cycle, awake for 24 and sleep for 12. Obviously that's impractical so with a combination of alarms and feeling undernourished on sleep I mostly manage to keep regular hours, but if I turn off the alarm I not only oversleep for hours but the following night I got no chance to fall asleep at all. If they start to understand the working of the internal clock, maybe they can fix it on a more fundamental level than sleeping aids.
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Try getting outside.
That helps. Unless you live near the Arctic Circle or something like that.
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Absolutely, that sleep pattern indicates they aren't getting enough sunshine or exercise. We evolved on this planet and we're tied to it's cycles.
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Close enough at 63 degrees north, daylight is from 4.5 hours to 20.5 hours so not really getting much help there. Particularly in the winter when I work in the office from before sunrise to after sunset it's basically just Saturday and Sunday and in the middle of summer it doesn't get darker than twilight, the last 3.5 hours it's just slightly below the horizon. But even in the spring and autumn where we have "sane" daylight hours it doesn't really seem to make much of a difference.
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Well, I suppose you can try light therapy.
Other than that there isn't much one can do. In those kinds of places a lot of people have sleeping disorders because of that.
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That's normal.
Humans often assume an approximately 28-hour cycle if removed from all natural stimuli.
Personally, I wake when I want and sleep when I'm tired, modulo work. That often means staying up all night only to go back to work, and then sleeping longer the next night etc. I don't see any reason to be bound to a particular timetable. If I didn't need to go to work, I would literally be completely unpredictable and live as much during the night as during the day.
BUG 12387667381: body clock unstable (Score:2)
Description:
Body clock is unstable and the daily cycle extends as long as 36 hours unless reset. A proper quartz clock should be implemented.
Status:
REJECTED
Comment:
A more accurate body clock is not system critical. The timekeeping will be regularly reset by day/night cycle. If you stay away from light for a sufficiently long time for this problem to manifest, you are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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Do you exercise?
I find that If I don't exercise on a given day that I don't get very sleepy in the late evening. If I do exercise though then I fall asleep really easily and sleep really well that evening.
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I'm writing this for Kjella, who can skip to the bottom if TL;DR concerning his entire future life.
It's long, detailed, and lucid for a good cause.
I free ran with a 25.5 hour period not so long ago—for three years straight, like a metronome. During the year I recorded most assiduously, I didn't deviate from my period by more than +/- 4 hours.
Note that my cycle was somewhat elliptical. I advanced more slowly during the day portion of my cycle, and more quickly during the night portion of my cycle, b
IgNoble prize, then ? (Score:4, Funny)
I am much more interested in the IgNobel prizes than in the Nobel prizes, especially since Dunning and Kruger were awarded the IgNobel prize for their work.
I was so grateful that somebody finally did some research into a phenomenon I am encountering every day.
Cure for jet-lag? There's a precedent! (Score:3)
So I know this probably wasn't the prime motivation for their research but if it could please lead to a cure for jet-lag I would hope they would be showered with huge monetary awards as well! As I've gotten older, jet-lag has made long-distance flying a source of real debilitation. I know this is (mostly) a first-world problem but there are plenty of pilots/military/leaders for whom being able to arrive reasonably alert (or at least not literally feeling sick) would be quite valuable for them and for those that they serve.
It isn't unheard of for a Nobel prize in medicine to lead, relatively quickly, to a treatment or a new drug. I think the scientists who discovered vasoconstriction inhibitors(?) found that it could be used therapeutically and it was commercialized rapidly. I'm talking about Viagra of course and I just happen to know about this because I'm, uh... interested!
Take a very long trip (Score:1)
Actually, jet-lag happens to be worst in trans-Atlantic trips, where the time zone difference is about 5 hours and the flight time is about 7 hours. I once took a trip from the East Coast to Taiwan, 11 hours difference, 20 hours flight time.
Before the trip I was told that I will have no jet-lag and it turned out to be true. I was to exhausted after the trip and my internal clock was so messed up that I had a long sleep when I arrived at the destination and when I woke up I was fully adjusted to the new time
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To be honest, in the modern era is jet-lag even a thing? It's a disconnect between "visible daylight" and "time spent awake", and let's be honest - we're living more into the night now than we ever have in all of human history.
I don't know of anyone who suffers serious jetlag, because most of the ones who travel far are night-owls and easy-sleepers. I think that's got ten times more to do with things than anything you could take in pill-form or similar.
Myself, when I get off a plane, I'm just glad to be o
End DST now! (Score:1)
Nice to see they are being recognized for their important work!
Daylight Savings Time is causing health issues and should be abolished!
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]