ABSTRACT
The rapid development of cities has brought tremendous pressure to astronomical observation, energy security, and the ecosystem. Automatic monitoring of night sky brightness (NSB) can help us to understand its regional differences and time variations of NSB effectively and to investigate the human and natural factors which lead to these changes. In this paper, the construction of Wuxi City night sky brightness monitoring network (WBMN) in China is presented. In addition to introducing the equipment and the installation of the network, a brief analysis of the data obtained from the stations will also be presented. The impact of human activities on the NSB is illustrated through its changes during the Spring Festival (lunar new year) and non-festival nights, and through a comparison study between NSB data taken from locations of different land usages. It is concluded that, while the reduction in human activities after non-festival midnights or the reduction in moon illumination near the new moon epoch led to darker night skies, brightening of the night skies may be attributed to firework displays during the nights of Spring Festival in 2019. On the other hand, the absence of firework during the Spring Festival in 2020 may explain the darker night skies. Finally, there is an evidence that the urban developments in Wuxi are degrading night sky quality.
ABSTRACT
A novel method is presented for rapid measurement of optical rotatory dispersion (ORD). Light passes through a polarizer, sample and analyzer, to a transmission grating that disperses the collimated light beam. A step-motor rotating stage controlled by a digital signal processor changes the analyzer orientation. The light power is measured by a charge-coupled device (CCD) after each rotating-stage step. The optical rotation angle for each wavelength is determined from the shift between two Malus curves obtained from each CCD pixel. The ORD spectrum is obtained by transforming the optical rotation angle into specific rotation. The ORD spectrum for a standard quartz tube demonstrates good continuity and agreement with reference data.
ABSTRACT
An optical rotation measurement system based on digital signal processor, modulated laser, and step motor rotating stage is established. Centroid algorithm featured fast and simple calculation is introduced to process light signals with or without sample to obtain the optical rotating angle through the step difference between two centroids. The system performance is proved experimentally with standard quartz tubes and glucose solutions. After various measurements, the relative error and precision of the system are determined to 0.4% and 0.004°, which demonstrates the reliable repeatability and high accuracy of whole measurement system.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: This study aimed at summarizing epidemiological evidence of the association between gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and subsequent risk of cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We searched Medline, Embase, Cancer Lit and CINAHL for epidemiological studies published by February 1, 2014 examining the risk of cancer in patients with history of GDM using highly inclusive algorithms. Information about first author, year of publication, country of study, study design, cancer sites, sample sizes, attained age of subjects and methods used for determining GDM status were extracted by two researchers and Stata version 11.0 was used to perform the meta-analysis and estimate the pooled effects. RESULTS: A total of 9 articles documented 5 cohort and 4 case- control studies containing 10,630 cancer cases and 14,608 women with a history of GDM were included in this review. Taken together, the pooled odds ratio (OR) between GDM and breast cancer risk was 1.01 (0.87-1.17); yet the same pooled ORs of case-control and cohort studies were 0.87 (0.71-1.06) and 1.25 (1.00-1.56) respectively. There are indications that GDM is strongly associated with higher risk of pancreatic cancer (HR=8.68) and hematologic malignancies (HR=4.53), but no relationships were detected between GDM and other types of cancer. CONCLUSIONS: Although GDM increases the risk of certain types of cancer, these results should be interpreted with caution becuase of some methodological flaws. The issue merits added investigation and coordinated efforts between researchers, antenatal clinics and cancer treatment and registration agencies to help attain better understanding.
