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Your history prof might appreciate me mentioning the 1700s is the “18th century” not 17th century. Comes from years 0-100 being the first century and thus 101-200 (could be called the 100s) is the 2nd century, and so on.

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Our experience with daylight savings time distorts the comparison. Without DST, could your local winter dark be pushed back to 6pm? And throw in a bad 6 that looks like an 8 and then someone miscopied and now you’re reading a typo that persisted.

And that’s assuming the locals were particularly punctual and hadn’t let the town clock run into disrepair and keep time poorly. Or maybe there were still enough people out and about from 5-8 and houses with lamps lit up that carrying your own wasn’t necessary until 8. There’s a lot of variables for each city, town, and village.

Most likely the opposite in the vast majority of cases, as Type 1 diabetes requires constant attention to insulin requirements and carbohydrate intake to maintain blood sugar, leading them to be far more aware of their health and diet to survive. However, that's not what the commenter was asking. The commenter was trying to draw a link to a poor lifestyle and the development of Type 1, to which there is absolutely no link. Most people are diagnosed as children.

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What part of the SARS-CoV2 virus - spike protein perhaps?

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The ‘wobble’ you mentioned is the answer I came here looking for.

The earth rotates like a spinning top, and the axial precession is on a 26,000 year cycle. The most noticeable effect is a change in the position of stars year to year, and it will eventually cause Polaris to be replaced as the ‘north star’ in another 3,200 years. Changes in day length are negligible, but present.

Humans have been aware of it and attempts to precisely measure and define it go back more than 2,000 years. The ancient Greek and Indian (ACTUAL Indian, not Native American) cultures both recorded attempts to define it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession

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>Why not already at 5pm when it's already dark especially without having electrical light at that time.

But also without bright electrical lights everywhere all the time people might just have been more accustomed to low light, so what is "already dark" to you today might have been "there is still enough light to see" back then.

No, the north pole is a blackout regardless of time of day in winter. You’re going the wrong direction. Summer it stays light longer.

I mean, sure. Any chronic condition can and usually does impact the way a human lives their life. But the commenter was drawing a link between a "generally poor lifestyle" (I'm assuming they mean in terms of poor activity levels and food choices) and being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, where there is absolutely no link between the two.

The cycle is pretty consistent year to year but there are some long term cycles. These cycles take thousands of years, however, so probably not much difference from 1718 to here. One is that the tile of the earth relative to its orbit varies between 22.1% and 24.5% in a cycle of 41,000 years. It currently is about in the middle at 23.4% but is slowly decreasing. This would impact amount of daylight. Also, there is a cycle where the earths axis wobbles. And a cycle where the earth's orbit changes from almost round (where it is now) to slightly more elliptical. And a cycle where the closest approach to the sun (currently Jan 3) and farthest distance from the sun (about July 4) slowly change dates. All of these (and probably others) will impact daylight durations but probably not very much in a few hundred years.

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I've been fascinated by fetal development and cellular signaling and it is brutally complex when you get down to the level of cellular receptors and signaling cascade chains, dna expression, etc. You have signals signaling signals, hormonal triggers, electrolyte triggers (i.e. calcium) and multiple pathways, feedback loops, etc. I'm amazed these all function and we are alive when you look at it all.

I wonder how many of these systems are really necessary and just reflect the random progression of evolution or do they represent a hardiness that comes from redundancy?

To develop medications that work on one of these pathways is a huge challenge. You'd not only have to track the ramifications of modifying the pathway but how all the other ones and various feedback systems would respond in kind. On top of that you can have the same receptors and signaling proteins used for different systems around the body, they are only differentiated by cell type and physical isolation (diffusion limits), so you can't just pump a drug into the blood stream without affecting "innocent bystanders" (i.e. serotonin drugs).

One more thing, it is amazing how much is controlled by the hypothalamus and brain stem, the most primitive parts of the brain. It must reflect its early origins and how basic these systems are. The cerebellum and cerebrum, by virtue of their external physical locations, can grow or modify more freely without much limitation but the hypothalamus and related structures, have to pretty much stay constant in their basic structure and functions. It is surprising to see that a cluster of neurons (KNDy) would be behind this process but I really shouldn't be. It is no coincidence the pituitary is so closely linked physically and chemically to that region.

In genetically susceptible humans, one of the proteins in H1N1 triggers an autoimmune attack by T cells against specific brain cells, and those brain cells dying causes narcolepsy.

Most flu vaccines by happenstance never included that protein. The vaccine that caused narcolepsy in susceptible people included the triggering protein.

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Given that the autoantibody response starts months or years prior to the development of clinical symptoms, it’s plausible that SARS-CoV2 infection accelerated the presentation of symptoms among people who were already autoantibody-positive yet asymptomatic. That would account for the initial spike in diagnoses, which appeared to correlate due to the myopic nature of the initial studies, but once that initial wave came through, later studies would be expected to find no overall increase in incidence.

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You have that backwards--the farther north the shorter the daylight during winter. Cross the arctic circle in winter, the sun doesn't rise at all. Conversely, during summer, the farther north the longer the daylight. Cross the arctic circle, the sun doesn't set at all during summer.

The same applies in the southern hemisphere, of course.

> In winter, the farther north of the equator, the longer the daylight.

The opposite. The farther away you are from the equator (i.e. farther north as OP asks about Germany) the shorter the daylight in winter.

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