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Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by step. Such maps clarify how much these novels depend on a curious link between mind and feet. Joyce and Woolf were writers who transformed the quicksilver of consciousness into paper and ink. To accomplish this, they sent characters on walks about town. As Mrs. Dalloway walks, she does not merely perceive the city around her. Since at least the time of peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking, and writing. What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? Minds Brains and Science by John R

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Although it is environmentally friendly, blue light can Jhn your sleep and potentially cause disease. Until the advent of artificial lighting, the sun was the major source of lighting, and people spent their evenings in relative darkness. Now, in much of the world, evenings are illuminated, and we take our easy access to all those lumens pretty much for granted. But we may be paying a price for basking in all that light.

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At night, light throws the body's biological clock—the circadian rhythm —out of whack. Sleep suffers.

Worse, research shows that it may contribute to the causation of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Not all colors of light have the same effect. Blue wavelengths—which are beneficial during daylight hours because they boost attention, reaction times, and mood—seem to be the most disruptive at here. And the proliferation of electronics with screens, as well as energy-efficient lighting, is increasing our exposure to blue wavelengths, especially after sundown.

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Everyone has slightly different circadian rhythms, but the average length is 24 and one-quarter hours. The circadian rhythm of people who stay up late is slightly longer, while the rhythms of earlier birds fall short of 24 hours. Charles Czeisler of Harvard Medical School showed, inthat daylight keeps a person's internal clock aligned with the environment. Some studies suggest a link between exposure to light at night, such as working the night shift, to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. That's Brins proof that nighttime light exposure Minds Brains and Science by John R these conditions; nor is it clear why it could be bad for us. A Harvard study shed a little bit of light on the possible connection to ahd and possibly obesity. The researchers put 10 people on a schedule that gradually shifted the timing of their circadian rhythms. Their blood sugar levels increased, throwing them into a prediabetic state, and levels of leptin, a hormone that leaves people feeling full after a meal, went down.

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Exposure to light suppresses the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that influences circadian rhythms. Even dim light can interfere with a person's circadian rhythm and melatonin secretion.

A mere eight lux—a level of brightness exceeded by most table lamps and about twice that of a night light—has an effect, notes Stephen Lockley, a Harvard sleep researcher. Light at night is part of the reason so many people don't get enough sleepsays Lockley, and researchers have linked short sleep to increased risk Minds Brains and Science by John R depression, as well as diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

While light of any kind can suppress the secretion of melatonin, blue light at night does so more powerfully. Harvard researchers and their colleagues conducted an experiment comparing the effects of 6. The blue light suppressed melatonin for about twice as long as the green light and shifted circadian rhythms by twice as much 3 hours vs. In another study of blue light, researchers at the University of Toronto compared the melatonin levels of people exposed to bright indoor light who were wearing blue-light—blocking goggles to people exposed to regular dim light without wearing goggles.]