Snip!t from collection of Alan Dix

<div class="articleBody"><nyt_text><p>However grumpy when they wake up, and whether they stumble to their feet in Mumbai, Mexico City or Minnetonka, Minn., people tend to brighten by breakfast time and feel their mood taper gradually to a low in the late afternoon, before rallying again near bedtime, a large-scale study of posts on the social media site <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Twitter." class="meta-org">Twitter</a> found. </p> </nyt_text></div> <div class="articleInline runaroundLeft"> <!--forceinline--> <div class="columnGroup doubleRule"> </div></div> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof NYTDVideoManager != "undefined") { NYTDVideoManager.setAllowMultiPlayback(false); } function displayCompanionBanners(banners, tracking) { tmDisplayBanner(banners, "videoAdContent", 300, 250, null, tracking); } </script> <div class="articleInline runaroundLeft" style="margin-top: -11px;"> <h6 class="sectionHeader flushBottom">Multimedia</h6> </div> <div class="articleInline runaroundLeft firstArticleInline"> <div class="story"> <div class="wideThumb"> <a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/30/science/30twitter_graphic.html?ref=science','510_447','width=510,height=447,location=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/30/science/30twitter_graphic/30twitter_graphic-thumbWide-v2.jpg" alt="" border="0" height="126" width="190"> <span class="mediaOverlay graphic">Graphic</span> </a> </div> <h6><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/30/science/30twitter_graphic.html?ref=science','510_447','width=510,height=447,location=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> Twitter Study Tracks When We Are :)</a></h6> <h6 class="byline"> </h6> </div> </div> <div class="articleInline runaroundLeft"><div class="articleInline runaroundLeft"></div> <div class="doubleRule"><h3 class="sectionHeader">RSS Feed</h3> <div class="story"> <div class="refer"> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Science.xml"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/global/icons/rss.gif" alt="RSS" height="16" width="44"> Get Science News From The New York Times &#xbb;</a> </div> </div> <!--div class="columnGroup doubleRule"> <h3 class="sectionHeader">Facebook</h3> <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fnytimesscience%3Fsk%3Dwall&width=190&colorscheme=light&show_faces=false&stream=false&header=true&height=62" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:190px; height:62px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe></div--> </div> </div> <div id="readerscomment" class="inlineLeft"> <h3>Readers&#x2019; Comments</h3> <div class="content"> <blockquote>Share your thoughts.</blockquote> <ul class="more"> <li><a href="http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/science/30twitter.html#postComment" rel="2p">Post a Comment &#xbb;</a></li> <li><a href="http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/science/30twitter.html" rel="3v">Read All Comments (68) &#xbb;</a></li> </ul> </div></div> <div class="articleBody"> <p> Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people&#x2019;s messages follows a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment. </p><p> <a title="Study abstract." href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6051/1878.abstract">The report</a>, by sociologists at <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/cornell_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Cornell University." class="meta-org">Cornell University</a> and appearing in the journal Science, is the first cross-cultural study of daily mood rhythms within the average person, using such text analysis. Previous studies have also mined the mountains of data pouring into social media sites, chat rooms, blogs and elsewhere on the Internet, but looked at collective moods over time, in different time zones or during holidays. </p><p> &#x201c;There&#x2019;s just a torrent of new digital data coming into the field, and it&#x2019;s transforming the social sciences, creating new lenses to look at all sorts of behaviors,&#x201d; said Peter Sheridan Dodds, a researcher at the University of Vermont who was not involved in the new research. He said the new study &#x201c;is very exciting, because it complements previous findings&#x201d; and expands on what is known about how mood fluctuates. </p></div>