A simple skin test could reveal if someone who hates getting up is lazy, or whether their body clock is badly out of step with that of other people.
In recent years, scientists have found that genes can influence a person’s preference for rising extremely early, when they are known as “a lark“, or late in the day, “an owl“.
Now a simple skin test to diagnose people with these genes has been devised which, in the longer term, could help develop new treatments, according to Telegraph.co.uk.
The reason that we want to go to bed or get up is to be controlled by a central circadian clock, a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.
Today, a study confirms the emerging view that almost every cell in the body also contains a clock and, in particular, shows that skin cells can be tested to reveal if a person has a genetic propensity to like lie-ins, burn the midnight oil or get up at the crack of dawn.
Prof Steve Brown and his colleagues at the Chronobiology and Sleep Research Group, University of Zurich, found that the brain’s hypothalamus acts as a central clock for the body, but does so by synchronizing all the individual cells, which have their own clocks.
Skin cells are much easier clocks to study than the one in the brain and the team obtained the cells from 28 volunteers and inserted a gene that glowed into them creating biological clocks that waxed or waned in brightness over 24 hours.
The researchers determined that the skin cells from extreme early-risers had the shortest glowing periods, whereas those from very late-risers had the longest. They conclude in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their work could lead to a clinical screen to identify treatments for patients with extreme circadian rhythms.
“People know whether they are larks or owls,“ says Prof Brown. “The interesting part is that they are not all larks or owls for the same reason, and this research addresses the molecular cause of their early or late behavior.“
“What is really nice here is that by looking at clocks in peripheral tissues, we have for the first time been able to look, by proxy, at the molecular mechanisms in different human individuals that allow them to sense time in the brain. All in all, I find it quite incredible that skin cells can tell us something about a process as complex as human behavior.“

Polaroid«s Mobile Photo Printer uses ZINK ("zero-ink") technology to print 2 x 3 color photos.

If you’ve ever wished you could print photos directly from your cell phone, a new mobile photo printer from Polaroid is coming that can do just that. Perhaps even more intriguing is the technology the printer uses: it«s inkless.
Designed by ZINK (“Zero-Ink“) Imaging, the ZINK printer concept doesn«t require ink cartridges or even dye rolls. Instead, it incorporates dye crystals inside the specially patented ZINK paper, secured underneath a glossy protective layer, Physorg.com reported.
When heat from the printer is applied to the cyan, yellow, and magenta crystals in the paper, the appropriate crystals are “melted“ to release color.
While ZINK Imaging has developed the technology (with more than 100 patents and counting), the company is partnering with others to build and release the actual products. The first products that will feature ZINK technology will be Polaroid«s Mobile Photo Printer and Integrated Digital Camera and Printer. Cell phones and cameras can be directly connected to the Mobile Photo Printer via Bluetooth or USB, providing 2 x 3 inch prints. (The printer itself measures just 4.7- by 2.8- by 0.9-inches.) The Mobile Photo Printer should be released sometime this spring, and Newsweek reports that it will sell for $150.
ZINK has recently announced partnerships with three other companies: Alps Electric Co, Ltd., Foxconn Technology Group, and TOMY Company, Ltd.
Most likely, future incarnations using ZINK technology will offer larger paper sizes (4 x 6 inches and beyond). As PC Magazine points out, ZINK also has the capabilities of creating ZINK printers embedded into not just cameras, but also cell phones and notebook computers, without adding much weight or bulk.
ZINK’s goals for its printers are to provide high quality photos at an affordable price, while incorporating the convenience due to its new technology. In the future, the company hopes to offer something for everyone.

People who snore are more likely to develop chronic bronchitis, the hacking cough most often associated with cigarette smoking or breathing polluted air, Korean researchers reported on Monday.
Why snoring might lead to bronchitis is not clear, said a team led by Inkyung Baik of Korea University Ansan Hospital in South Korea, Reuters said.
The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, covered 4,270 men and women between 2001 and 2006. Of the group, 314 came down with chronic bronchitis.
“We collected information on snoring at baseline and identified incident cases of chronic bronchitis during a four-year follow-up period,“ Baik’s team wrote.
After taking into account whether those in the study smoked or were otherwise at risk for bronchitis, the investigators concluded that people who snored five nights a week or less were 25 percent more likely to develop bronchitis than those who never snored.
The risk was 68 percent higher for those who snored six to seven times a week.
“Our findings provide support for the hypothesis that snoring is associated with chronic bronchitis,“ the researchers wrote.
It could be that snoring vibrates the upper airways, stressing them and leading to inflammation, the researchers said.

Researchers say delivering the flu vaccine under the tongue may not just scrap the need for needles, it could also provide more effective protection.
Experiments on mice showed that delivering the vaccine sublingually protected the rodents against flu without any obvious side-effects, BBC said.
It is thought this method may prove more effective than jabs as it protects the area where the virus first enters.
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The international team, comprising researchers from Korea, Japan and France, used a lethal dose of flu on the mice to determine how well their technique worked.
They found that two doses of either live or inactivated flu virus conferred protection.
Mucosal delivery, where the vaccine is administered in either the mouth or nose, is seen as the “holy grail“ by some health professionals - in part because it makes it so much easier to deliver.
For one it would cater to those who do not like needles, but more importantly it would make it possible to deliver immunizations to large numbers of people - perhaps in remote areas - without the need for specialists to administer injections.
Jabs can also carry side-effects, including painful inflammation.
Work has been done on a vaccine which is administered via the nose, but this can allow the virus to travel into the central nervous system, a rare but potentially serious complication.
This did not appear to happen when the researchers gave the vaccine to the mice under their tongues.
It is also a tried and tested technique for other treatments, the researchers said, and “its safety is now well established“.
They continued: “Our findings strongly suggest that sublingual delivery could be a more effective avenue than traditional approaches for vaccinating against both seasonal and pandemic flu“.
But Professor Karl Nicholson, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Leicester, said research on animals in this area did not always translate well when carried out on humans.
“It would be great to develop a vaccine which could be administered in this way. To eliminate the need for needles would be a major advantage--but it is very early days indeed.“

A surgical gown has been developed to help medical students get a closer understanding of what it is like to go under the knife.
The gown is covered in nine zips showing where incisions are made for operations such as open heart surgery and removal of the appendix, according to BBC.
Its silk material is also more like human tissue than the plastic of traditional models.
It has been designed by teams at Durham and Ulster Universities.
The creators hope the gown, which goes on international display in the US this week, will significantly improve understanding, not only of where operation incisions are made, but also what they mean to the patient.
The idea is that it should be worn by students in the classroom, and supplement traditional teaching aids in helping to explain surgical procedures.
Plastic models can be used to show areas of the body where incisions will roughly be made, say the creators, but give no sense of empathy for the patient.
Potentially, the gown could also help explain procedures to patients.
Developer Professor John McLachlan said: “Current anatomical teaching aids describe but they don’t evoke.
“They take no account of emotional involvement or the feel of the body.
“The way medical students distance themselves emotionally from the patient’s body has long been seen as a desirable outcome of current modes of medical training.
“But this ’desensitation’ also brings with it the risk of objectifying the body. The patient becomes ’the liver in bed four’ rather than Smith.

Moderately happy people are wealthier--and maybe healthier--than extremely happy individuals, according to a psychologist who has researched happiness for more than two decades and his associates.
While people who are happy are certainly more healthy and successful than those who are angry and depressed, Dr. Ed Diener of the University of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told Reuters Health, people who are moderately happy may achieve more than those who are extremely happy. They might also live longer, Reuters said.
“Our findings suggest that extremely high levels of happiness might not be a desirable goal and that there is more to psychological well-being than high-levels of happiness,“ Diener and his team report in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
The researchers looked at six different studies of happiness and life outcomes to investigate the optimum level of happiness. One study, the World Values Survey, which included nearly 120,000 people from 96 countries, found that those who were moderately happy, rating their life satisfaction at 8 or 9 out of 10, made more money than those who rated their satisfaction level at 10. However, 10s and 9s were more likely to have stable intimate relationships.
Another study found that the happiest college students were also the most social, but they had lower grade-point averages than their slightly less happy peers.
In four studies that looked at individuals’ well-being several years after their happiness level was initially assessed, the happiest people wound up with less education and lower incomes than the moderately happy individuals.
While the current study didn’t look at happiness and health, Diener noted in an interview, other research has shown that the happiest people may not live as long as moderately happy individuals.
Extremely happy people may be less likely to follow-up on health concerns, he suggested. It’s also possible, he said, that being in an “aroused,“ extremely happy state can take a toll on one’s cardiovascular system. People for whom extreme happiness is a goal may also be thrill-seeking risk takers.
As far as achievement goes, Diener said, extremely happy people may be more satisfied with their lot in life and less likely to make efforts to change it by getting more education or finding a new job.

Yet another reason to get off the couch: physically active people don’t just look better, they appear to be biologically younger as well, a study published Monday has found.
British researchers examined 2,401 Caucasian twins and found that those who reported having an active lifestyle had biological markers which appeared to be as much as ten years younger than those of their more sedentary twins, according to AFP.
“A sedentary lifestyle increases the propensity to aging-related disease and premature death,“ wrote lead author Lynn Cherkas of King’s College London.
“Inactivity may diminish life expectancy not only by predisposing to aging-related diseases (like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease) but also because it may influence the aging process itself.“
Cherkas and her colleagues asked the twins to fill out a questionnaire on physical activity level, smoking habits and socioeconomic status and took a blood sample.
They then extracted DNA from the white blood cells and examined the chromosomes to determine the length of a genetic sequence called telomeres.
Telomeres play an important role in the cellular division and are found at the ends of chromosomes.
Their length decreased with age, with an average loss of 21 structural units per year, and they are believed to also play an important role in the aging process.
And these telomeres were significantly shorter in the men and women who were less physically active in their leisure time.
“Such a relationship between leukocyte telomere length and physical activity level remained significant after adjustment for body mass index, smoking, socioeconomic status and physical activity at work,“ the authors wrote.
The mean difference between the most active subjects, who averaged 199 minutes of physical activity per week, and least active, who averaged 16 minutes of activity per week, was 200 nucleotides.
“Which means that the most active subjects had telomeres the same length as sedentary individuals up to 10 years younger“ the authors wrote.
They found similar results when comparing twins with different levels of physical activity.
Inflammation and damage caused to cells by exposure to oxygen are likely mechanisms by which sedentary lifestyles shorten telomeres, the authors suggested.
Physical activity can also reduce psychological stress, which has also been linked to telomere length.
“The US guidelines recommend that 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity at least five days a week can have significant health benefits,“ the authors wrote. “Our results underscore the vital importance of these guidelines.“

Chameleons can signal others in a matter of milliseconds by brightening their flanks, which lowers the risk of being seen by a predator.

Chameleons are famed for changing color to blend in with their surroundings and hide from predators--but new research on chameleons in their native habitat shows some of their color changes evolved for exactly the opposite purpose--attracting attention.
African dwarf chameleons live in habitats in southern Africa ranging from grassland to rainforest.
They engage in complex social signaling, with bright color changes along their flanks used by females to signal interest or rejection to males, and by males to signal aggression or submission to other males, and interest towards females. Males even square off in rapid-fire, colorful signaling duels, NewScientist.com wrote.
“Chameleons use color change for camouflage and communication, but we don’t know why some species change color much more than others“, says Devi Stuart-Fox of the University of Melbourne in Australia.
She and colleague Adnan Moussalli reasoned that if these differences evolved solely to enable the chameleon to match itself to its surroundings, chameleons living in backgrounds that vary a lot in color should produce a wider palette, whereas chameleons in less colorful environments should not.
The pair collected males from all 21 genetic groups of dwarf chameleon that live across South Africa and faced them off in duels within their normal habitats. They also measured the colors in their habitats and on the chameleons’ flanks. “We used a spectrometer because unlike humans, chameleons can see in the ultraviolet,“ says Stuart-Fox. “We wanted to work out how conspicuous a chameleon appeared to another chameleon--get a ’chameleons eye’s view’.“
They also assessed how the colors would look to the visual systems of the shrikes and hawks that eat chameleons.
They found that the chameleons’ color palette did not broaden with more colorful surroundings, as it would if the driving force on its evolution had been its ability to blend in. “Species that changed colors the most were the ones with the most conspicuous displays,“ Stuart-Fox says, meaning the capacity for color change evolved mainly to produce conspicuous social signals.
The chameleons do change their overall colors and brightness to blend in with their surroundings. But for social signaling, they do not have to worry about predators seeing their dramatic flank displays, as these changes in a few milliseconds.