Abstract: | Few, if any studies have focused on the daily rhythmic nature of modern industrialized populations. The present study utilized real-time load data from the U.S. Pacific Northwest electrical power grid as a reflection of human operative household activity. This approach involved actigraphic analyses of continuously streaming internet data (provided in 5?min bins) from a human subject pool of approximately 43 million primarily residential users. Rhythm analyses reveal striking seasonal and intra-week differences in human activity patterns, largely devoid of manufacturing and automated load interference. Length of the diurnal activity period (alpha) is longer during the spring than the summer (16.64?h versus 15.98?h, respectively; p?0.01). As expected, significantly more activity occurs in the solar dark phase during the winter than during the summer (6.29?h versus 2.03?h, respectively; p?0.01). Interestingly, throughout the year a “weekend effect” is evident, where morning activity onset occurs approximately 1?h later than during the work week (5:54 am versus 6:52 am, respectively; p?0.01). This indicates a general phase-delaying response to the absence of job-related or other weekday morning arousal cues, substantiating a preference or need to sleep longer on weekends. Finally, a shift in onset time can be seen during the transition to Day Light Saving Time, but not the transition back to Standard Time. The use of grid power load as a means for human actimetry assessment thus offers new insights into the collective diurnal activity patterns of large human populations. |