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Cyanobacteria use an AM radio-like mechanism to regulate their genes, with the cell division cycle acting as a “carrier wave” and their circadian clock modulating the pulse strength to integrate signals from these two rhythms. This discovery explains how cells coordinate these oscillatory processes and may have applications in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Credit: SciTechDaily.com Cyanobacteria use an AM radio-like principle to coordinate cell division with circadian rhythms, encoding information through pulse amplitude modulation. Cyanobacteria, an ancient group of photosynthetic bacteria, have been discovered to regulate their genes using the same physics principle used in AM radio transmission. New research...

For decades, many Americans have fiddled with their clocks each March and November as they “spring forward” or “fall back” to keep pace with daylight saving time (DST). Experts have historically claimed that the practice, which has roots in late 19th century and was widely instituted in 1966, benefits society by extending our sunlit hours and saving energy costs, although many others have called those benefits into question, as Amanda Kooser reports for CNET. Last week, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) entered the debate, calling for the end of DST-related time-changes altogether. Instead, AASM leaders wrote in a...