We all know that the normal human daily cycle of activity is of some 7-8 hours' sleep alternating with some 16-17 hours' wakefulness and that the sleep normally coincides with the hours of darkness. Our present concern is with how easily and to what extent this cycle can be modified.
我们都知道，人类正常的日常活动周期是大约7-8小时的睡眠和大约16-17小时的清醒交替，睡眠通常与黑暗的时间相吻合。我们目前关注的是这个周期是否可以轻易修改，以及在多大程度上可以修改。
The question is no mere academic one. The ease, for example, with which people can change from working in the day to working at night is a question of growing importance in industry where automation calls for round-the-clock working of machines. It normally takes from five days to one week for a person to adapt to a reversed routine of sleep and wakefulness, sleeping during the day and working at night. Unfortunately, it is often the case in industry that shifts(轮班) are changed every week; a person may work from 12 midnight to 8 a.m. one week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. the next, and 4 p.m. to 12 midnight the third and so on. This means that no sooner has he got used to one routine than he has to change to another, so that much of his time is spent neither working nor sleeping very efficiently.
这个问题不仅仅是学术问题。例如，在自动化要求机器全天候工作的行业中，人们可以轻松地从白天工作转变为晚上工作是一个越来越重要的问题。一个人通常需要五天到一周的时间来适应颠倒的睡眠和清醒习惯，白天睡觉，晚上工作。不幸的是，行业中的情况往往是每周轮班；一个人可能第一周从午夜12点工作到早上8点，第二周从早上8点工作到下午4点，第三周从下午4点工作到午夜12点，以此类推。这意味着他刚习惯了一种习惯，就不得不换成另一种习惯。因此，他的大部分时间既没有很有效地工作，也没有很好地睡眠。
The only real solution appears to be to hand over the night shift to a number of permanent night workers. An interesting study of the domestic life and health of night-shift workers was carried out by Brown in 1957. She found a high incidence of disturbed sleep and other disorders among those on alternating day and night shifts, but no abnormal occurrence of these phenomena among those on permanent night work.
唯一真正的解决方案似乎是将夜班交给一些长期的夜班工人。1957年，布朗对夜班工人的家庭生活和健康进行了一项有趣的研究。她发现昼夜交替轮班的人睡眠紊乱和其他障碍发生率很高，但在长期夜班的人中没有这些现象的异常发生。
This latter system then appears to be the best long-term policy, but meanwhile something may be done to relieve the pressure of alternate day and night work by selecting those people who can adapt most quickly to the changes of routine. One way of knowing when a person has adapted is by measuring his body temperature. People occupied in normal daytime work will have a high temperature during the hours of wakefulness and a low one at night; when they change to night work the pattern will only gradually go back to match the new routine and the speed with which it does so parallels, broadly speaking, the adaptation of the body as a whole, particularly in terms of performance. Therefore, by taking body temperature at two-hour intervals throughout the period of wakefulness, it can be seen how quickly a person can adapt to a reversed routine, and this could be used as a basis for selection. So far, however, such a form of selection does not seem to have been applied in practice.
后一种制度似乎是最好的长期政策，但与此同时，可以通过选择那些最能快速适应日常生活变化的人来缓解昼夜交替工作的压力。了解一个人何时适应的一种方法是测量他的体温。白天正常工作的人在清醒时温度会很高，晚上温度会很低；当他们改为夜间工作时，这种模式只会逐渐恢复到与新的常规相匹配的状态，而且这种模式的速度与整体身体的适应相类似，尤其是在表现方面。因此，在整个清醒期每隔两小时测量一次体温，可以看出一个人适应颠倒的日常生活的速度有多快，这可以作为选择的基础。然而，到目前为止，这种选择形式似乎还没有在实践中应用。
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