Circadian desynchrony and metabolic dysfunction; did light pollution make us fat?

<p>Circadian rhythms are daily oscillations in physiology and behaviour that recur with a period of 24 h, and that are entrained by the daily photoperiod. The cycle of sunrise and sunset provided a reliable time cue for many thousands of years, until the advent of artificial lighting disrupted the entrainment of human circadian rhythms to the solar photoperiod. Circadian desynchrony (CD) occurs when endogenous rhythms become misaligned with daily photoperiodic cycles, and this condition is facilitated by artificial lighting.</p> <p>This review examines the hypothesis that chronic CD that has accompanied the availability of electric lighting in the developed world induces a metabolic and behavioural phenotype that is predisposed to the development of obesity. The evidence to support this hypothesis is based on epidemiological data showing coincidence between the appearance of obesity and the availability of artificial light, both geographically, and historically. This association links CD to obesity in humans, and is corroborated by experimental studies that demonstrate that CD can induce obesity and metabolic dysfunction in humans and in rodents.</p> <p>This association between CD and obesity has far reaching implications for human health, lifestyle and work practices. Attention to the rhythmicity of daily sleep, exercise, work and feeding schedules could be beneficial in targeting or reversing the modern human predisposition to obesity.</p&gt

Relativistic Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and Microquasars

Collimated outflows (jets) appear to be a ubiquitous phenomenon associated with the accretion of material onto a compact object. Despite this ubiquity, many fundamental physics aspects of jets are still poorly understood and constrained. These include the mechanism of launching and accelerating jets, the connection between these processes and the nature of the accretion flow, and the role of magnetic fields; the physics responsible for the collimation of jets over tens of thousands to even millions of gravitational radii of the central accreting object; the matter content of jets; the location of the region(s) accelerating particles to TeV (possibly even PeV and EeV) energies (as evidenced by (Formula presented.)-ray emission observed from many jet sources) and the physical processes responsible for this particle acceleration; the radiative processes giving rise to the observed multi-wavelength emission; and the topology of magnetic fields and their role in the jet collimation and particle acceleration processes. This chapter reviews the main knowns and unknowns in our current understanding of relativistic jets, in the context of the main model ingredients for Galactic and extragalactic jet sources. It discusses aspects specific to active Galactic nuclei (especially blazars) and microquasars, and then presents a comparative discussion of similarities and differences between them.Fil: Romero, Gustavo Esteban. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comision de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomia; ArgentinaFil: Boettcher, Markus. North-West University; SudáfricaFil: Markoff, Sera. University of Amsterdam; Países BajosFil: Tavecchio, Fabrizio. Osservatorio Astronomico Di Brera; Itali

EuCAPT White Paper: Opportunities and Challenges for Theoretical Astroparticle Physics in the Next Decade

Astroparticle physics is undergoing a profound transformation, due to a series of extraordinary new results, such as the discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos with IceCube, the direct detection of gravitational waves with LIGO and Virgo, and many others. This white paper is the result of a collaborative effort that involved hundreds of theoretical astroparticle physicists and cosmologists, under the coordination of the European Consortium for Astroparticle Theory (EuCAPT). Addressed to the whole astroparticle physics community, it explores upcoming theoretical opportunities and challenges for our field of research, with particular emphasis on the possible synergies among different subfields, and the prospects for solving the most fundamental open questions with multi-messenger observations