Abstract: The prevalence of overweight and obesity are increasing in many African countries and hence becoming regional public health challenges. We employ satellite-based night light intensity data as a proxy for urbanization to investigate the relationship between urbanization and women's body weight. We use two rounds of the Demographic and Health Survey data from Nigeria. We employ both nonparametric and parametric estimation approaches that exploit both the cross-sectional and longitudinal variations in night light intensities. Our empirical analysis reveals nonlinear relationships between night light intensity and women's body weight measures. Doubling the sample's average level of night light intensity is associated with up to a ten percentage point increase in the probability of overweight. However, despite the generally positive relationship between night light intensity and women's body weight, the strength of the relationship varies across the assorted stages of night light intensity. Early stages of night light intensity are not significantly associated with women's body weight, while higher stages of nightlight intensities are associated with higher rates of overweight and obesity. Given that night lights are strong predictors of urbanization and related economic activities, our results hint at nonlinear relationships between various stages of urbanization and women's body weight.

Abstract: 1.Plants use light as a source of both energy and information. Plant physiological responses to light, and interactions between plants and animals (such as herbivory and pollination), have evolved under a more or less stable regime of 24-hour cycles of light and darkness, and, outside of the tropics, seasonal variation in daylength.
2.The rapid spread of outdoor electric lighting across the globe over the past century has caused an unprecedented disruption to these natural light cycles. Artificial light is widespread in the environment, varying in intensity by several orders of magnitude from faint skyglow reflected from distant cities to direct illumination of urban and suburban vegetation.
3.In many cases artificial light in the nighttime environment is sufficiently bright to induce a physiological response in plants, affecting their phenology, growth form and resource allocation. The physiology, behaviour and ecology of herbivores and pollinators is also likely to be impacted by artificial light. Thus, understanding the ecological consequences of artificial light at night is critical to determine the full impact of human activity on ecosystems.
4.Synthesis. Understanding the impacts of artificial nighttime light on wild plants and natural vegetation requires linking the knowledge gained from over a century of experimental research on the impacts of light on plants in the laboratory and greenhouse with knowledge of the intensity, spatial distribution, spectral composition and timing of light in the nighttime environment. To understand fully the extent of these impacts requires conceptual models that can (i) characterise the highly heterogeneous nature of the nighttime light environment at a scale relevant to plant physiology, and (ii) scale physiological responses to predict impacts at the level of the whole plant, population, community and ecosystem.

Abstract: With urban areas growing worldwide comes an increase in artificial light at night (ALAN), causing a significant impact on wildlife behaviour and its ecological relationships. The effects of ALAN on nocturnal and protected European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) are unknown but their identification is important for sustainable species conservation and management. In a pilot study, we investigated the influence of ALAN on the natural movement behaviour of 22 hedgehogs (nine females, 13 males) in urban environments. Over the course of four years, we equipped hedgehogs at three different study locations in Berlin with biologgers to record their behaviour for several weeks. We used Global Positioning System (GPS) tags to monitor their spatial behaviour, very high-frequency (VHF) loggers to locate their nests during daytime, and accelerometers to distinguish between active and passive behaviours. We compared the mean light intensity of the locations recorded when the hedgehogs were active with the mean light intensity of simulated locations randomly distributed in the individual's home range. We were able to show that the ALAN intensity of the hedgehogs' habitations was significantly lower compared to the simulated values, regardless of the animal's sex. This ALAN-related avoidance in the movement behaviour can be used for applied hedgehog conservation.