Light my fire

Light my fire

It is not the temperature hovering around freezing, nor the searching wind
that will find the pinhole in the latest Antarctic wear from Patagonia, nor the
incredible damp that makes your bones ache that induces the pall at the prospect
of a Kentucky winter. Once you warm up, the seasonal changes can doubtless be
considered invigorating (at least by the delusional).

No, it is the long
dark spells that sour the mood. Those days when the sun shines are fine, but
rare. A month can pass with only a slight brightening of the cloud cover,While
SmartView has been slow DSTT and
unstable in the past, it seems to have improved greatly with recent updates.
which during January and February is as thick and impenetrable as that of Venus.
The darkness colors all moods in its relentless monotony, a low-grade anxiety
only heightened by the brief, teasing flashes of unfiltered sun.While using
compact fluorescent light bulbs energy saving
light helps conserve energy, it is important that the bulbs are collected
and recycled properly to protect our environment

The "winter blues" now
have a more formal name; Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Each winter,
millions of people suffer from more or less the same symptoms. These include a
general feeling of malaise, a desire to sleep longer, an increased appetite for
carbohydrate foods (and concomitant weight gain), and often a lack of
libido.Light up the architecturally table
lamps interesting parts of your home.

The onset of these symptoms
appears to vary with latitude, beginning earlier in the year in the North and
lasting longer in St. Paul, Minnesota, than Atlanta, Georgia. Often, people will
go on vacation in the Caribbean and quickly find respite from many or all of the
symptoms, with relief persisting for a while even after their return to darker
climes. Just as interesting is that the same environmental clues that produce
depression in many people are responsible for the seasonal anestrus patterns in
mares. Both conditions are tied to the stimulation of biological clocks residing
in all animals, whose timing is set by the length of the day.Although this
article shows that Cree's led
lighting and Philips LED product sales are not equal it is important to note
that Philips LED sales



Around the day

We are normally
only aware of our own biological clocks when their timing is disrupted. Wiley
Post (the famous aviator who was killed along with Will Rogers in a plane crash
in Alaska) was the first person to recognize the symptoms now known as jet lag.
Flying around the world in eight days in the early 1930s, Post recognized the
adverse effects time zone displacement had on his flying proficiency and
struggled to evade them. It has now been determined that the human body can
accommodate speeds of about 100 miles per hour across time zones. This is why
you do not suffer from "car lag" from cross-country automobile trips.



Just as there are 24-hour rhythms, there are biological cycles occurring
on monthly (lunar) intervals, as well as on an annual scale. It is this seasonal
calendar within man and horse that is affected by the waning days, and the long
cold nights that accompany them.



Pining and the pineal


Deep inside the brain of all animals is a small organ called the pineal
gland. In humans, it is the size of a small pea and shaped like a pine cone
(hence its name). Also called the "third eye" (because of its nerve connection
to the other two), early anatomists were at a loss to describe a function for
the pineal. Rene Descartes believed it to be the seat of the soul, since it was
the only structure in the skull not directly connected to the brain. Early in
this century, scientists had concluded that it was a vestigial organ like the
appendix and no longer had a function in the body.

Then some industrious
researchers removed the pineal glands of 200,000 cattle, ground them up, and
squirted the juice on tadpoles to see what would happen. (I am not making this
up.) The tadpoles' skin lightened, so they called the pineal hormone
"melatonin."

Naturally, it is unlikely that all mammals produce hormones
just to lighten the complexions of self-conscious amphibians. Further study
determined that the melatonin was produced by the pineal in direct proportion to
the amount of darkness the animal perceived in a day. The longer the "night,"
the more melatonin was produced. It appeared that melatonin had an inhibitory
effect on hormone production by the pituitary and hippocampus.Under efforts of
led spotlight boosting the viability
of LED luminaires, many companies are expanding high-power selections. These
hormones normally stimulate sexual activity. The exact way melatonin works is
unclear, but when an animal has extended high levels of it in the blood, it will
undergo shrinkage and reduced function of the ovaries or testes. In effect,
melatonin suppresses sexual activity and receptiveness in animals.




Not tonight, honey

Since reproduction of the species is
the raison d'?tre of each individual (at least as far as the species as a whole
is concerned), what, then, is the significance of suppressing sexual activity?
Natural wisdom dictates that you should not have young if you cannot feed them
(a verity no longer understood by many people). Periods of darkness are
associated with winter, which is obviously a period of reduced feed stores and
harsh environmental conditions. Other factors, such as food intake and
temperature, also help establish the biological clock. These zietgebers ("time
givers") are useful to some extent, but are subject to considerable variation
from year to year. However, barring cataclysm, daylight remains constant from
year to year.

The need to limit breeding to a specific period of time is
particularly important for a large animal such as the horse, which has a long
gestation period. Eleven months after conception a mare will foal, so timing the
onset of the first season's estrus to the lengthening days of spring will find
the foals arriving at a time when pasture is becoming more plentiful.