ANDRZEJ KRAUZEThe first-ever French retrospective of American artist Edward Hopper, mounted in Paris’s Grand Palais from October 2012 to February 2013, proved to be so popular that the museum opened its doors round the clock for the exhibition’s last three nights—an unusual and particularly fitting honor for a painter whose most famous work, “Nighthawks,” portrays three lonely patrons in an all-night diner.
The detail of the 1942 painting that graces the cover of The Scientist’s September issue aptly illustrates this month’s feature “Out of Sync.” In this story, Kerry Grens describes what is currently known at the cellular level about the coupling of metabolism and circadian clocks, both in the brain and in peripheral tissues. While night-shift workers have long been known to suffer metabolic disorders at a higher rate, “humans, particularly those in developed countries with abundant artificial light, late-night TV, and 24-hour diners, have been putting themselves through an inadvertent experiment over the last few decades,” she writes. “No longer does daylight dictate the times when we eat,” and the consequences could be severe. So take note, night owls.
Elsewhere in this issue, “Organs on ...
