NEW HORIZONS

NEW HORIZONS

An analysis of 800 million anonymous twitter messages has shown that over the 24 hours of the day our mood changes following cycles. We knew about cycles for body temperature, sleep, appetite, secretion of certain hormones and some mood aspects, but we did not know about cycles for anger, sadness, tiredness. The cycles are specific for hour of the day, day of the week and season of the year and cycles for one emotion differ from those of another. The various cycles would all be under the control of a part of the brain called hypothalamus which is very sensitive to changes in light related to sunset and sunrise. Twitter messages are by definition brief and the words that are used are usually ‘strong’ to unequivocally pass on the desired message. Since several hundred million messages are sent every day, researchers have an endless mine of data available to study human behavior. By combining the energies of the Department of Artificial Intelligence, of Mathematics and Engineering as well as of The Association of Neurosciences, the University of Bristol hopes to throw new light on how mental disorders are affected by circadian rhythms. Until a few years ago nobody would have thought that to examine issues concerning human behavior we would hire engineers, mathematicians and software program experts. The destiny of an Engineering student was a factory. Today we see connections between domains that previously seemed to have well defined boundaries. Youngsters, teachers and parents must abandon old patterns and embrace the new opportunities the media and Big Data offer.

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