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Desaulniers, J., Desjardins, S., Lapierre, S., & Desgagné, A. (2018). Sleep Environment and Insomnia in Elderly Persons Living at Home. Journal of Aging Research, 2018, 1–7.
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Beccali, M., Bonomolo, M., Leccese, F., Lista, D., & Salvadori, G. (2018). On the impact of safety requirements, energy prices and investment costs in street lighting refurbishment design. Energy, in press, in press.
Abstract: Street lighting is an indispensable feature for the night landscape of cities. It is important for road safety, users visual comfort, crime prevention and to augment the perceived personal safety. Realize and maintain an adequate street lighting service is very expensive for municipalities with significant impact on their budgets. For this reason, special attention should be paid to the design of new street lighting systems and to the refurbishment of existing ones, since many of them are inadequate. In light of this it is very important to implement street lighting designs that fulfil lighting requirements avoiding energy waste and light pollution and, at the same time, result economically sustainable for municipalities. In this paper, an original step by step methodology for the lighting, energy and economic analysis of street lighting refurbishment designs has been introduced and explained in detail. The methodology is suitable for use in cities of different sizes. As an applicative example, the methodology has been tested in the town of Pontedera (Italy) and the results are discussed, also providing a sensitivity analysis of the economic feasibility with respect to the variations of electricity prices and investment costs.
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Zeale, M. R. K., Stone, E. L., Zeale, E., Browne, W. J., Harris, S., & Jones, G. (2018). Experimentally manipulating light spectra reveals the importance of dark corridors for commuting bats. Glob Chang Biol, in press, in press.
Abstract: The rapid global spread of artificial light at night is causing unprecedented disruption to ecosystems. In otherwise dark environments, street lights restrict the use of major flight routes by some bats, including the threatened lesser horseshoe bat Rhinolophus hipposideros, and may disrupt foraging. Using radio tracking, we examined the response of individual female R. hipposideros to experimental street lights placed on hedgerows used as major flight routes. Hedgerows were illuminated on one side over four nights using lights with different emission spectra, while the opposite side of the hedge was not illuminated. Automated bat detectors were used to examine changes in overall bat activity by R. hipposideros and other bat species present. R. hipposideros activity reduced significantly under all light types, including red light, challenging a previously held assumption that red light is safe for bats. Despite this, R. hipposideros rapidly adapted to the presence of lights by switching their flight paths to the dark side of the hedgerow, enabling them to reach foraging sites without restriction. Red light had no effect on the activity of the other species present. Slow-flying Myotis spp. avoided orange, white and green light, while more agile Pipistrellus spp. were significantly more abundant at these light types compared to dark controls, most probably in response to accumulations of insect prey. No effect of any light type was found for Nyctalus or Eptesicus spp. Our findings demonstrate that caution must be used when promoting forms of lighting that are thought to be safe for wildlife before they are tested more widely. We argue that it is essential to preserve dark corridors free from light pollution to mitigate the impacts of artificial light at night on bat activity and movements. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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Taufique, S. T., Prabhat, A., & Kumar, V. (2018). Light at night affects hippocampal and nidopallial cytoarchitecture: Implication for impairment of brain function in diurnal corvids. J Exp Zool A Ecol Integr Physiol, in press, in press.
Abstract: Our previous studies have shown that light at night (LAN) impaired cognitive performance and affected neurogenesis and neurochemistry in the cognition-associated brain regions, particularly the hippocampus (HP) and lateral caudal nidopallium (NCL) of Indian house crows (Corvus splendens). Here, we examined the cytoarchitecture and mapped out the morphology of neurons and glia-neuron density in HP and NCL regions of crows that were first entrained to 12-hr light (LL): 12-hr darkness (LD) and then exposed to the light regime in which 12-hr darkness was either replaced by daytime light (i.e., constant light, LL) or by dim light (i.e., dim light at night, dLAN), with controls continued on LD 12:12. Compared with LD, there was a significant decrease in the soma size, suggesting reduced neuronal plasticity without affecting the neuronal density of both HP and NCL of crows under LL and dLAN conditions. In parallel, we found a reduced number of glia cells and, hence, decreased glia-neuron ratio positively correlated with soma size in both, HP and NCL regions. These results for the first time demonstrate LAN-induced negative effects on the brain cytoarchitecture of a diurnal species and give insight for possible influence on the brain health and functions in animals including humans that might be inadvertently exposed to LAN in an emerging night-illuminated urban environment.
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Willmott, N. J., Henneken, J., Selleck, C. J., & Jones, T. M. (2018). Artificial light at night alters life history in a nocturnal orb-web spider. PeerJ, 6, e5599.
Abstract: The prevalence of artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasing rapidly around the world. The potential physiological costs of this night lighting are often evident in life history shifts. We investigated the effects of chronic night-time exposure to ecologically relevant levels of LED lighting on the life history traits of the nocturnal Australian garden orb-web spider (Eriophora biapicata). We reared spiders under a 12-h day and either a 12-h natural darkness (∼0 lux) or a 12-h dim light (∼20 lux) night and assessed juvenile development, growth and mortality, and adult reproductive success and survival. We found that exposure to ALAN accelerated juvenile development, resulting in spiders progressing through fewer moults, and maturing earlier and at a smaller size. There was a significant increase in daily juvenile mortality for spiders reared under 20 lux, but the earlier maturation resulted in a comparable number of 0 lux and 20 lux spiders reaching maturity. Exposure to ALAN also considerably reduced the number of eggs produced by females, and this was largely associated with ALAN-induced reductions in body size. Despite previous observations of increased fitness for some orb-web spiders in urban areas and near night lighting, it appears that exposure to artificial night lighting may lead to considerable developmental costs. Future research will need to consider the detrimental effects of ALAN combined with foraging benefits when studying nocturnal insectivores that forage around artificial lights.
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