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The introduction of street lighting in the city during the 19th-century revolutionized urban lifestyles. The idea was to create day during night. The street lighting caused new urban structures and behaviours like the boulevard or going out to bars. The artificial light also changed our working habits which does not only have positive effects on our sleeping habits.

In order to get the best sleep we should be in bed before 2 am. According to chronobiology* the body reaches its lowest temperature around 3 am. The body starts downsizing all activities one hour before, resulting im maximum fatique. 

A good long sleep also serves creativity. Scientists at the University of Lübeck found that volunteers taking a simple math test were three times more likely than sleep-deprived participants to figure out a hidden rule for converting the numbers into the right answer if they had eight hours of sleep.

For some of us, finding sleep at night is not so easy. Latest researchers proved that one in four people are night owls while only one in ten are early risers, the rest fall somewhere in the middle.

In genetics, variation of traits within a population is often key. As Dr. Christopher R. Jones, the medical director of the Sleep-Wake Center at the University of Utah points out: "The whole tribe is better off if someone is up all the night, listening for a lion walking through the grass.

* Science of the intrinsic rhythm of living beings.