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WEAK MAGNETOPERIODISM RATHER THAN SOCIO-PHOTO-THERMOPERIODISM CHARACTERIZES HUMAN TERRORISM: DETECTION OF ABOUT 1.3-YEAR AEOLIAN TRANSYEAR BUT NOT PRECISE 1.0-YEAR CYCLE
Germaine Cornelissen1, Franz Halberg1, Hans W Wendt2, Robert B Sothern1, Sergei MChibisov3, Kulikov S.I.4, Agarwal R.K.5
1 Halberg Chronobiology Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
2 Alexander von Humboldt Geomedicine, St. Paul, Minnesota 3-4 People's Friendship University of Russia, Moscow, Russia 5 Central hospital Polessk, Kaliningrad, Russia
Objective: To assess the spectral structure of international terrorist acts to determine whether their incidence may be influenced by socio-photo-thermoperiodisms with a 1.0-year signature and/or by magnetoperiodisms characterized by wobbly transyears with an about 1.3-year period.
Background. The time structures of the presumed hard-to-define "good" and "bad" of human motivations, including proselytism (1) and of societal ills, such as crime (2) and war (3), have been reported, against the background of studies by Chizhevsky (4, 5) and Ertel (6). The analyses reported herein are prompted by a report by Grigoriev and Vladimirsky (7), who used both Fourier and cosinor analyses of a data base on terrorism. Their kindly offered insight into their manuscript in press (7), and thus into their original scholarship, for which they are given priority, is greatly appreciated.
Materials and Methods. The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism's (MIPT) Terrorism Knowledge Base (http://www.tkb.org/) was used to derive the monthly incidence of international terrorist acts between February 1968 and March 2007 (slightly more than 39 years). The numbers of events per month were converted into numbers per day by dividing the monthly counts by the number of days in each month to account for the different numbers of days in different months and thereby avoid any spurious yearly cycle. The time series thus obtained was analyzed by the linear-nonlinear extended cosinor (8-10). Specifically, a least squares periodogram was computed in the frequency range of one cycle per 40 years to about 3 cycles per year. Periods of identified anticipated spectral peaks were used as initial value(s) for the nonlinear analysis, yielding point and 95% confidence interval (CI) estimates of the respective period length(s). Further insight into the spectral region from 4.0 years to 0.67 year was obtained by a gliding spectral window with a 0.05 harmonic increment, using an interval of 8 years progressively displaced by 1 month throughout the time series.
Results. The daily incidence of international terrorist acts, assessed monthly from February 1968 to March 2007 is illustrated in Figure 1 (top). Results from the least squares periodogram shown in Figure 1 (bottom) indicate the presence of an about 1.3-year transyear component, not previously reported, with an amplitude much larger than any annual or semiannual cycle. Linearly, the zero-amplitude (no-rhythm) assumption cannot be rejected for the calendar year (P>0.50), whereas it is for the transyear (ordering P = 0.004). Three other peaks are identified, with periods of about 25 years, about 9.5 years, and about 2.85 years. Nonlinearly, the transyear is validated when the major about 25-year component is included in the model. Results show a relatively narrow 95% CI extending from 1.32 to 1.37 years and a (conservative) 95% CI for the amplitude not overlapping zero. Whether the estimated 26.65-year cycle (95% CI: 23.47, 29.82 years) with an amplitude about three times larger (0.27, 95% CI: 0.18, 0.36), or the estimated 9.81-year cycle (95% CI: 9.00, 10.62 years) with an amplitude (0.13, 95% CI: 0.05, 0.21) only slightly larger than the transyear may correspond to the Hale and Schwabe cycles of solar activity, respectively, remains to be determined on the basis of longer records. Albeit wobbly in frequency and amplitude, the transyear with a period of about 16 months remains mostly statistically significant throughout the whole record, as shown in the gliding spectral window of Figure 2.
Discussion. The results strongly suggest a magnetoperiodic influence, with transyears also detected in human physiology (3, 11) and pathology, such as sudden cardiac death (ICD10 code I46.1) (12, 13) and suicide (14). The transyear has a period different from that reported earlier (7), however, perhaps because time series were constructed differently from the same database. An about 1.3-year component was also detected with borderline statistical significance in another separate, much smaller database from Princeton (http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/publications.html) (15; see also 16). It also seems pertinent that among a number of variables self-measured by a clinically healthy man (about 5 times a day for 40 years), a mental function, namely the estimation of 1 minute, was characterized by transyears, predominating over any calendar-year (17).
Conclusion. Separate lines of evidence almost concomitantly obtained with the results herein (7, 14, 15) all associate human violence with magnetoperiodisms rather than with photoperiodisms, thereby offering perhaps an approach to the prehabilitation of social ills, so that initially countermeasures are developed to prevent their potentially cataclysmic consequences.
1. Starbuck S, Cornelissen G, Halberg F. Is motivation influenced by geomagnetic activity? Biomed & Pharmacother 2002; 56 (Suppl 2): 289s-297s.
2. Halberg F, Otsuka K, Katinas G, Sonkowsky R, Regal P, Schwartzkopff O, Jozsa R, Olah A, Zeman M, Bakken EE, Cornelissen G. A chronomic tree of life: ontogenetic and phylogenetic 'memories' of primordial cycles - keys to ethics. Biomed & Pharmacother 2004; 58 (Suppl 1): S1-S11.
3. Halberg F, Cornelissen G, Schack B, Wendt HW, Minne H, Sothern RB, Watanabe Y, Katinas G, Otsuka K, Bakken EE. Blood pressure self-surveillance for health also reflects 1.3-year Richardson solar wind variation: spin-off from chronomics. Biomed & Pharmacother 2003; 57 (Suppl 1): 58s-76s.
4. Chizhevsky AL (de Smitt VP, trans and condensed). Physical factors of the historical process. Cycles 1971; 22: 1127. http ://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/chizhevsky/chizhevsky 1 .pdf
5. Sigel F (Dreier W, Lerche D, Übers.; Göring H, Wissenschaftl. Red. der deutschsprachigen). Schuld ist die Sonne. Thun/Frankfurt am Main: Harri Deutsch; 1979. 215 pp.
6. Ertel S. Space weather and revolutions: Chizhevsky's heliobiological claim scrutinized. Studia Psychologica 1996; 39: 3-22.
7. Grigoriev PYe, Vladimirsky BM. Heliogeophysical effects in frequency of acts of terrorism. Reports of Taurida University, in press.
8. Halberg F. Chronobiology: methodological problems. Acta med rom 1980; 18: 399-440.
9. Cornelissen G, Halberg F. Chronomedicine. In: Armitage P, Colton T, editors. Encyclopedia of Biostatistics, 2nd ed. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2005. p. 796-812.
10. Refinetti R, Cornelissen G, Halberg F. Procedures for numerical analysis of circadian rhythms. Biological Rhythm Research 2007; 38 (4): 275-325.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09291010600903692
11. Cornelissen G, Masalov A, Halberg F, Richardson JD, Katinas GS, Sothern RB, Watanabe Y, Syutkina EV, Wendt HW, Bakken EE, Romanov Y. Multiple resonances among time structures, chronomes, around and in us. Is an about 1.3-year periodicity in solar wind built into the human cardiovascular chronome? Human Physiology 2004; 30 (2): 86-92.
12. Halberg F, Cornelissen G, Otsuka K, Fiser B, Mitsutake G, Wendt HW, Johnson P, Gigolashvili M, Breus T, Sonkowsky R, Chibisov SM, Katinas G, Siegelova J, Dusek J, Singh RB, Berri BL, Schwartzkopff O. Incidence of sudden cardiac death, myocardial infarction and far- and near-transyears. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy 2005; 59 (Suppl 1): S239-S261.
13. Cornelissen G, Halberg F, Otsuka K. Do heliogeomagnetics override the effect of a harsh winter? No calendar year but non-photic transyear and cishalfyear components characterize sudden cardiac death (SCD) in Minnesota. Geophysical Research Abstracts 2007; 9: 00624. SRef-ID: 1607-7962/gra/EGU2007-A-00624. 2pp.
14. Cornelissen G, Halberg F. Chronomics of suicides and the solar wind. Br J Psychiatry 2006; 189: 567-568.
15. Halberg F, Cornelissen G, Sothern RB, Chibisov SM, Wendt HW. Do unseen magnetic mechanisms contribute to terrorism? This volume.
16. Wendt HW. Interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) polarity, collective emotions and entropy changes of random event generators. This volume.
17. Sothern RB, Katinas GS, Cornelissen G, Czaplicki J, Halberg F. Differential congruence of periods in helio- and/or geomagnetics and in human psychophysiology. 2nd World Congress of Chronobiology, Tokyo, Japan, November 4-6, 2007, in press.
MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base
Time (calendar date)
Figure 1. Time course of the daily incidence of international terrorist acts, assessed monthly for almost 40 years (from February 1968 to March 2007) (top) and their cosinor periodogram (bottom). © Halberg.
REMOVE AND REPLACE APPROACH APPLIED TO TERRORISM
MIPT (International)
Transyear
H-r~
50 98
1972 1976
~i—i—i—i—г—I—i—¡—i—гг
146 194 242
1980 1984 1988
Time (months from start on Jan 1968)
Interval = 8 years Interval = 1 month Harmonic Increment = 0.05
Figure 2. Gliding spectral window of the daily incidence of international terrorist acts, assessed monthly from February 1968 to March 2007, illustrates the more or less consistent detection of a transyear during most of the record, albeit with wobbly characteristics, notably in terms of the period and amplitude, whereas a precise 1.0-year cycle is not detected. ©
Halberg.
