Comment to "Impact of Daylight Saving Time in Circadian Timing System: an expert statement"

Comment letterComment letter to the edito

Los españoles no viven con un jet-lag permanente

La idea de que la hora de Berlín ha perjudicado la vida en España ha hecho fortuna en los últimos años, sin embargo, la comparación correcta de nuestras actividades diarias y las europeas muestra patrones coincidente

Riesgos de accidentes de tráfico en localidades ultraoccidentales de una zona horaria: no tan elevados

Letter to the editor (600 words) commenting a manuscript by Gentry et al.Carta al editor (800 palabras) comentando un artículo anterior de Gentry et al

¿Puede la situación geográfica de España explicar las aparentes anomalías de sus horarios sociales?

Se analizan los horarios de inicio y fin de jornada de los trabajadores de regiones de España, Italia, Reino Unido e Irlanda a partir de datos obtenidos de sus respectivas Encuestas de Uso del Tiempo. Los horarios civiles españoles de fin de jornada muestran su característica tendencia a ser tardíos mientras que los matinales tienden a ser más coincidentes. Corregidos por longitud geográfica y huso horario los horarios civiles se convierten en horarios solares, que presentan un comportamiento más homogéneo. Particularmente su dependencia con la latitud muestra que las actividades principales, singularmente la entrada al trabajo, se realizan bajo las mismas condiciones ambientales de luz en los países analizados

Traffic accident increase attributed to Daylight Saving Time doubled after Energy Policy Act

On January 30, 2020 Current Biology released the report "A Chronobiological Evaluation of the Acute Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk" doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.12.045 by Fritz, et al., where it was argued that fatal traffic accident risk increases by 6% in the US due to Daylight Saving Time spring transition. This manuscript is a 1000 word correspondence showing that the bulk of this reported risk comes from the transition dates mandated by the Energy Policy Act in 2007.Comment: 1100 words comment letter. This is the accepted manuscript of a correspondence published by Current Biology (2020

Scandinavian bed and rise times in the Age of Enlightenment and in the 21st century show similarity, helped by Daylight Saving Time

A Letter to the Editor published in the Journal of Sleep ResearchComment: 3pages, 1figure, 740 words, RevTeX RMP format, longbibliograph

Thermodynamic study of commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions in Rb2ZnCl4

We have performed simultaneous measurements of heat capacity and dielectric constant on a high-quality single crystal of Rb2ZnCl4 near the commensurate-incommensurate transition area. Maximum heat capacity is found to be at a higher temperature than the maximum dielectric constant, both for heating and cooling and in the area of a jump-wise change of the refractive index found earlier. When measuring heat capacity a peak-type anomaly was detected and the enthalpy of transition was measured. We compare our heat-capacity data with those for the powder samples and both sets with a phenomenological theory. We concluded that the Curie law for heat capacity predicted by the theory is observed in both cases with reasonable values for the Curie constant. We were unable to discriminate latent heat as in previous experiments with the powder sample; however, we estimated an upper limit for the latent heat by subtracting the contribution of specific heat to the enthalpy transition. The latent-heat value estimated both from the Clapeyron-Clausius formula and the phenomenological theory is qualitatively in accordance with the upper limit of this value found in our results.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia PB-95- 054

Scale-invariant avalanche dynamics in the temperature-driven martensitic transition of a Cu-Al-Be single crystal

We have combined high sensitivity, extra-low differential temperature scanning rate calorimetry, and acoustic emission (AE) measurements to study avalanches during the cubic ↔ 18R martensitic transition of a Cu-Al-Be single crystalline shape memory alloy. Both AE and calorimetry corroborate a good power-law behavior for cooling with an exponent ε 1.6. For heating, a slope is observed in the maximum likelihood curves, which confirms that our data are affected by an exponential cutoff. An effective energy exponent, ε ∼ 1.85, and a cutoff, λ −1 = 0.115(38)E-3 aJ, were determined by fits of power-laws with exponential damping. The long tail observed in the low-temperature region by calorimetric measurements suggests the existence of significant elastic effects that constrain the progress of the transformation at low temperatures. While thermodynamic features such as transformation enthalpy and entropy are those expected for Cu-based shape-memory alloys undergoing a cubic ↔ 18R transition, the critical behavior deviates from the corresponding behavior expected from this symmetry change. These deviations are a consequence of the elastic hardening induced by the interplay of the transformation with dislocation jamming, which has the effect of effectively reducing the number of pathways connecting the parent and martensitic phaseMinisterio de Ciencia,Innovación y Universidades (MAT2016-75823-R)Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P024904/1

Deuteration effect on tricritical phase transition of triglycine selenate: Calorimetric and dielectric measurements analyzed in the framework of Landau theory

The ferroelectric phase transition of three single crystals of TGSe1−x DTGSex has been described by using specific heat, latent heat, and dielectric permittivity measurements. Pure, half-deuterated, and highly-deuterated TGSe single crystals were analyzed. Transition temperature and latent heat increase with increasing deuteration. Irrespective of the degree of deuteration, a 2-4-6 Landau model is suitable to describe the phase transition. The fourth-rank prefactor in Landau potential is found to be very sensitive to deuteration while the second-rank and the sixth-rank prefactors smoothly change with composition. The pyroelectric figure of merit for these materials has also been derived from the theoretical model.Gobierno de España-FIS2006-0404