IS A BIRTH-MONTH-DEPENDENCE OF HUMAN LONGEVITY INFLUENCED BY HALF-YEARLY CHANGES IN GEOMAGNETICS?

About-daily and about-yearly variations in organisms are commonly viewed as evolutionary adaptations to changesin the proximate environmental temperature and illumination. There is now ample evidence that a much broader timestructure ( chronome), long known to characterize the environment, is built into biological variables, from the level of anecological niche revealed by demographic statistics to that of molecular genetics. While a molecular basis has beenestablished for circadian rhythms, indirect evidence for some endogenicity had long been available by the persistence ofrhythms with a period differing from the environmental cycle under constant conditions (free-running) (1, 2). Naturalenvironmental factors have also been shown to play a critical role, notably in terms of synchronizing built-in rhythms(1-3). As reviewed elsewhere (4), non- photic as well as photic effects of the sun may play a role in shaping the elementof multifrequency rhythms currently, and may have done so in the past, resulting in even broader chronomes with addedelements of chaos and trends (4, 5). Non-photic signatures include, with the biological week (5), the about 10.5-yearsolar activity cycle, the about 21.0-year Hale bipolarity variation, and a prominent about half-year rhythm peaking atthe equinoxes. This natural physical half-year characterizes various indices of geomagnetic activity (6-15) and mayrelate to the tilt angle of the earth's dipole axis toward and away from the sun, which reportedly is not constantaccording to Robert L. McPherron. It is particularly prominent when analyzed in K

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