Author: bioclock

Night is more than just a moment on the clock – it is a rich and diverse habitat we still know surprisingly little about. But what does ‘the night’ mean for our modern cities? For the latest Roundtable by the international platform The Nature of Cities (TNOC), researchers, designers, and policymakers from around the world shared their perspectives on the night. Their goal: to shed light on the lives that unfold after sunset in cities across the globe. Mara...

Higher temperatures amplify the effects of anthropogenic light at night on bats. A recent publication by Sander Buddendorf, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) within the BioClock project, shows that common pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) are more strongly attracted to streetlights on warm nights — a behavior that disrupts their foraging patterns and thereby the ecological balance in a warming climate. What was the study about? Over a...

Daylight Saving Time under scrutiny by NTR Wetenschap and NPO 3 op Reis On June 21 – the longest day of the year – NTR Wetenschap released a short video about the effects of light on our biological clock. Chronobiologist Inês Machado Chaves, affiliated with BioClock, explains how light impacts our bodies and why we would be better off abolishing daylight saving time. NPO 3 op Reis also addressed the topic in an online article titled: “Should we abolish daylight saving time?...

Illustration by Hyunh Kim, Australasian Dark Sky Association This weekend, Aotearoa New Zealand celebrates the start of the new year: Matariki, a festival rooted in the Māori lunar calendar. Aotearoa is the Māori name for New Zealand, meaning “land of the long white cloud.” Matariki marks the reappearance of the Pleiades star cluster in the morning sky and is a time for reflection, remembrance, and setting new intentions. Around this celebration, new research is calling for a...

Last week, several BioClock researchers attended the 36th annual meeting of the Society for Light, Rhythms, and Circadian Health (SLRCH) in Boston — a vibrant gathering of international experts in the field of light, biological rhythms, and health. Heidi Lammers-van der Holst presented research by Maaike van der Rhee, and Raymond Noordam, Gali Albalak, Emma Visser, and Laura Kervezee were also there to share their work and represent the BioClock Consortium. The conference...

At a festival like Lowlands, your biological clock is put to the test. With performances running deep into the night, little sleep, and constant stimulation, festivalgoers are bound to get exhausted. But what exactly does that do to your brain? This August, BioClock will be part of Lowlands Science 2025 to find out. Our team of young researchers will study how sleep deprivation and circadian rhythm disruption affect the reaction time, alertness, and even driving ability of...

How does artificial light at night affect the natural world — and our sleep? A recent episode of Het Klokhuis, a Dutch educational TV show for children, explores the science behind light pollution, featuring BioClock researcher Kamiel Spoelstra (NIOO-KNAW). Kamiel explains how streetlights can confuse insects, delay trees from shedding their leaves, and leave animals more exposed. The episode also links excessive nighttime lighting to disturbed human sleep. Filmed partly in...