Reproductive factors and hormone use and risk of adult gliomas

Previous research suggests there may be a hormonal influence on glioma risk as evidenced by lower rates in females, change in incidence rates around ages at menarche and menopause and presence of hormone receptors in glial tumors. Using the large San Francisco Bay Area Adult Glioma Study, we investigated whether reported reproductive factors and hormone use were associated with gliomas overall or with histologic subtypes among female cases (n=619) and controls (n=650). We found that reproductive factors were generally not associated with gliomas. Weak to moderately elevated odds ratios were observed for self-reported later age at menarche (14+ years old versus 12–13 years old: adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.39, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.02 –1.89), particularly for non-glioblastoma histologies (AOR = 1.64, 95% CI: 1.11–2.43). Inverse associations were observed for ever self-reported use of exogenous hormones (oral contraceptive use: AOR = 0.72, 95% CI: 0.53–0.99; postmenopausal hormone use: AOR = 0.56, CI: 0.37–0.84). However, cumulative hormone exposure defined multiple ways demonstrated no clear pattern of association. The results of this study suggest that any protective effect of hormones on gliomas may be limited to exogenous hormones, but a more detailed history of exogenous hormone use are needed to confirm findings

Possible application of FPGA to the MAORY Real Time Computer

MAORY is the post-focal Adaptive Optics module for the European Extremely Large Telescope first light. The baseline of MAORY is to rely upon the use of multiple Laser Guide Stars (6), multiple Natural Guide Stars (3) for wavefront sensing and multiple Deformable Mirrors (DM) for correction (M4/M5, that are part of the telescope, and 2 post focal DMs). The Real-Time Computer is a key sub-system of MAORY. It must collect the measurements from various sensing devices and drive several thousands actuators within high demanding latency requirements dictated by the system performance needs. The FPGA technology has been widely diffused in Real Time Systems due to its low latency and high determinism. Performance evaluation of this technology for the wavefront sensors images calibration and processing is in progress

Numerical simulations of MAORY MCAO module for the ELT

MAO (MAORY Adaptive Optics) is the a developed numerical simulation tool for adaptive optics. It was created especially to simulate the performance of the MAORY MCAO module of the Extremely Large Telescope. It is a full end-to-end Monte-Carlo code able to perform different flavors of adaptive optics simulation. We used it to investigate the performance of a the MAORY and some specific issue related to calibration, acquisition and operation strategies. As, MAORY, MAO will implement Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics combining Laser Guide Stars (LGS) and Natural Guide Stars (NGS) measurements. The implementation of the reference truth WFS completes the scheme. The simulation tool implements the various aspect of the MAORY in an end to end fashion. The code has been developed using IDL and use libraries in C++ and CUDA for efficiency improvements. Here we recall the code architecture, we describe the modeled instrument components and the control strategies implemented in the code

MAORY: adaptive optics module for the E-ELT

MAORY is one of the four instruments for the E-ELT approved for construction. It is an adaptive optics module offering two compensation modes: multi-conjugate and single-conjugate adaptive optics. The project has recently entered its phase B. A system-level overview of the current status of the project is given in this paper