Chronomes render predictable the otherwise-neglected human "physiological range": position paper of the BIOCOS project. BIOsphere and the COSmos.

On June 30, 1997, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences convened a special session at its headquarters to discuss and, at the end of this meeting, to unanimously endorse a project on "The BIOsphere and the COSmos" (BIOCOS), a follow-up on various international resolutions reviewed elsewhere [1]. BIOCOS recommends the introduction of the science of the body's time structure, chronobiology [2], into basic science and health and environmental care via national physiological and physical monitoring and educational endeavors. More specifically, BIOCOS aims at the collection and archivization for basic and applied purposes at different latitudes and longitudes of physical and physiological time structures, or chronomes [1, 3]. The first step of BIOCOS is the systematic mapping of variation in human blood pressure and heart rate from womb to tomb and the opportunistic mapping of other variables in human and other life forms. On July 1, 1997, BIOCOS was introduced at the XXXIII International Congress of the International Union for Physiological Sciences in St. Petersburg, in the context of a symposium on "Adaptation to the Environment". Thereafter, BIOCOS was presented in a course on chronobiology in Mexico City, August 27-30, 1997, in lectures at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic (September 1, 1997); at a meeting on "Chronobiology with roots in the cosmos", September 2-6, 1997, in Stara Lesna, Slovakia, under the auspices of the Slovak Medical Society; at Safarik University in Kosice (September 8) and the Institute of Clinical Endocrinology in Lubochna (September 9), both in Slovakia and at the International Conference on the Pineal Gland and Cancer (October 2-5, 1997) in Blaubeuren, Germany.