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Do many people sleep in such tall buildings? Obviously they exist, but I can't think of any over-20 story residential building I've ever been in. Office space, sure, but not residential.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pinnacle@Duxton
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This is a contentious theory with little actual historical backing. Most likely people have been sleeping in one block since forever.
But the article discussed here also points in that direction when it mentions the importance of people on the lookout at night. The article also mentions primitive tribes partying all night, so that is yet another direction.
That doesn't mean they didn't sleep all night, typically.
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People already live in different altitudes, ie with vastly different amounts of rock between themselves and the bits of the earth that produce her magnetic field. So colour me skeptical of this claim as well. And while I like going barefoot for other reasons, I don't think it makes much of a difference to the magnetic fields.
> People already live in different altitudes, ie with vastly different amounts of rock between themselves and the bits of the earth that produce her magnetic field. It's not really the same thing. Construction and especially the high content of charged metal (whether it's power conduits or plain old frame) may make a considerable difference.
That may make a considerable difference.
And I may be a 10,000 year-old alien.
> Some emerging research suggests Earth’s magnetism matters, as well. Being barefoot on the ground versus 30 stories high in a downtown skyscraper puts you in a completely different magnetic environment. Really? My instinctive reaction to this statement is that it's quackery. Would be very interested to see headlines appear about this if it's true.
There might be precedent for being able to detect changes in magnetic field https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/dogs-poop-in-alignment-... but then again maybe not https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15587...
Some animals - migrating birds, notably - can detect magnetic fields. IIRC, sharks have close-range magnetic sensors in their gumlines.
But these are extremely rare and niche adaptations to difficult problems.
>18 degrees Celsius is considered optimal for sleep depth I'm instantly skeptical of anyone making universal statements like this, because they're certainly not true for everyone, and having looked into these and similar (f/x "ideal room/office temperature"), are based on many entangled assumptions. Most of the time I expect it's just people making after-the-fact justification for doing (or imposing) what they most p…
Then its good night, Irene
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The fact they electrically signal via chemical analogs fuelled by immersion in nutrient bearing fluid that also accretes waste products, yet is kept separate from the primary loop of the cardiovascular system by the blood-brain barrier?
But why is that fundamentally different from the technobabble description of any other vital organ?
Form is shaped by function. The liver/pancreas are designed to handle the production of detoxifying/neutralizing agents that may in and of themselves kill nearby tissue, resulting in the propensity for notable regenerative capabilities. Kidneys/intestines are high surface area to provide more room for the physical processes driving selective permeability to occur, as well as habitable spaces for beneficial microbial symbiotes that aid in digestion. Skeletal/smooth cardiac muscles are optimized for energy burning to facilitate movement. Tendons/cartilaginous membranes are optimized for lubricating joints/connective tissue purposes. Tissues like the thalamus and tonsils, are there for immunity modulation and detection. Neural tissue however is all about signal propagation, and creating shifting networks of continuity that encode information and patterns, the tissue itself is just the medium, and that medium requires some process to clean out or reset the gradients in the synaptic gap. Otherwise, electrical charges cannot be consistently conveyed as flows of ions, actuated by releases of neurotransmitters into the bridge of the synaptic gap. The other constraint unique to neural tissue as well is it isn't motile, or capable of physical movement. All it can do is carry charge by a process of chemically modulated action potential building, yet also needs to have a means to carry out adjusting it's environment which coincidentally, tends to be filled with ions. Ions + coordinated patterns of charge propagation creates effective pumping infrastructure capable of creating overall fluid movement without the help of direct cardiovascular pressure, which can also facilitate the movement of non-charged molecules given sufficient ionic movement to disturb the neutral medium. However, this coordinated firing pattern to create overall ion flow isn't "information encoding to the cognitive process at hand" per se. It's just a bunch of cells getting fluid to move to get waste products to another location to get handled. None of those "knows" anything more than it's immediate environs, but based on things like quorum signalling in biofilms, it isn't outside the realm of possibility, that neural tissue has a completely chemically mediated process by which it knows "gradient blah can be shifted if everyone around me fires", and that given sufficient time and scope, you get an emergent quorum signalling based metabolic progress that selectively induces "coordinated garbage" from the information processing point of view, but very much not biologically/physically garbage point of view, in that that firing pattern clears the chalkboard so to speak for further processing.
So to answer your question: why do nerves seemingly need to stop what we want them to do (full time cogitation as directed by an emergent consciousness that their physical processes collectively facilitates)? The answer comes down to homeostatic maintenance, and work the tissue has to do because that's how it evolved. You use the same bunch of neurons, they fill the immediate space with metabolic waste products which makes further firing or usage more difficult until the waste products can be cleared. How do you clear them? Stop doing what you're doing & ion pumpas a group. Coordinated ion pumping isn't driving the pattern recognition/consciousness engine in ways that make any sense, it's just cycling fluid to refresh the operating environment to restore the substrate for unburdened cognition again.
Eukaryotic organisms are hard, maddeningly complex, and contain an astonishing amount of detail for something that for whatever reason, usually just seems to work. Could write volumes on these things for how deep the rabbit holes go.
>“No way. They’re partying all night.” But they can, because there’s no top-down pressure to go into the office at 8 a.m. They’re free to catch supplemental sleep as needed throughout the 24-hour period. This feels like the key point to me. These societies follow their body and go to sleep when they are tried, while us in the west have to sleep at a specific time to fit our schedules.
A single block of sleep is a relatively new behaviour, I suspect partially driven by the availability of cheap sources of light and heat. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieva...
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But the article discussed here also points in that direction when it mentions the importance of people on the lookout at night. The article also mentions primitive tribes partying all night, so that is yet another direction.
My boy when very young (just months) went thru a phase where in the middle of the night he would suddenly sit bolt upright, swivel his head to scan the room, and then conk out again. This was not caused by noises. I found this reassuring and slightly amazing, that he is wired to do his part as a nighttime lookout.
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> Most likely people have been sleeping in one block since forever. Does that have stronger historical backing?
There is a lack of historical writings clearly describing segmented sleep as a normal practice over monophasic sleep. If it had been the standard sleep pattern, one would expect abundant evidence for it. Roger Ekirch’s theory, meanwhile, is based on what one could call a biased interpretation of a hand-picked selection of ambiguous sources.
Point being, if one slept for 4-5 hours, wake up for a similar chunk, and slept the same amount again, then that'd be a great way to pass the time one could likely not use to do outdoor labor.