Gang Zhao

OBJECTIVE: To examine and quantify the potential dose-response relation between fruit and vegetable consumption and risk of all cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality. DATA SOURCES: Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane library searched up to 30 August 2013 without language restrictions. Reference lists of retrieved articles. STUDY SELECTION: Prospective cohort studies that reported risk estimates for all cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality by levels of fruit and vegetable consumption. DATA SYNTHESIS: Random effects models were used to calculate pooled hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals and to incorporate variation between studies. The linear and non-linear dose-response relations were evaluated with data from categories of fruit and vegetable consumption in each study. RESULTS: Sixteen prospective cohort studies were eligible in this meta-analysis. During follow-up periods ranging from 4.6 to 26 years there were 56,423 deaths (11,512 from cardiovascular disease and 16,817 from cancer) among 833,234 participants. Higher consumption of fruit and vegetables was significantly associated with a lower risk of all cause mortality. Pooled hazard ratios of all cause mortality were 0.95 (95% confidence interval 0.92 to 0.98) for an increment of one serving a day of fruit and vegetables (P=0.001), 0.94 (0.90 to 0.98) for fruit (P=0.002), and 0.95 (0.92 to 0.99) for vegetables (P=0.006). There was a threshold around five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, after which the risk of all cause mortality did not reduce further. A significant inverse association was observed for cardiovascular mortality (hazard ratio for each additional serving a day of fruit and vegetables 0.96, 95% confidence interval 0.92 to 0.99), while higher consumption of fruit and vegetables was not appreciably associated with risk of cancer mortality. CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis provides further evidence that a higher consumption of fruit and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of all cause mortality, particularly cardiovascular mortality.

LAMOST (Large sky Area Multi-Object fiber Spectroscopic Telescope) is a Chinese national scientific research facility operated by National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). After two years of commissioning beginning in 2009, the telescope, instruments, software systems and operations are nearly ready to begin the main science survey. Through a spectral survey of millions of objects in much of the northern sky, LAMOST will enable research in a number of contemporary cutting edge topics in astrophysics, such as discovery of the first generation stars in the Galaxy, pinning down the formation and evolution history of galaxies especially the Milky Way and its central massive black hole, and looking for signatures of the distribution of dark matter and possible sub-structures in the Milky Way halo. To maximize the scientific potential of the facility, wide national participation and international collaboration have been emphasized. The survey has two major components: the LAMOST ExtraGAlactic Survey (LEGAS) and the LAMOST Experiment for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (LEGUE). Until LAMOST reaches its full capability, the LEGUE portion of the survey will use the available observing time, starting in 2012. An overview of the LAMOST project and the survey that will be carried out in the next five to six years is presented in this paper. The science plan for the whole LEGUE survey, instrumental specifications, site conditions, and the descriptions of the current on-going pilot survey, including its footprints and target selection algorithm, will be presented as separate papers in this volume.

The Large sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) general survey is a spectroscopic survey that will eventually cover approximately half of the celestial sphere and collect 10 million spectra of stars, galaxies and QSOs. Objects in both the pilot survey and the first year regular survey are included in the LAMOST DR1. The pilot survey started in October 2011 and ended in June 2012, and the data have been released to the public as the LAMOST Pilot Data Release in August 2012. The regular survey started in September 2012, and completed its first year of operation in June 2013. The LAMOST DR1 includes a total of 1202 plates containing 2 955 336 spectra, of which 1 790 879 spectra have observed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)>= 1 0. All data with SNR >= 2 are formally released as LAMOST DR1 under the LAMOST data policy. This data release contains a total of 2 204 696 spectra, of which 1 944 329 are stellar spectra, 12 082 are galaxy spectra and 5017 are quasars. The DR1 not only includes spectra, but also three stellar catalogs with measured parameters: late A, FGK-type stars with high quality spectra (1 061 918 entries), A-type stars (100 073 entries), and M-type stars (121 522 entries). This paper introduces the survey design, the observational and instrumental limitations, data reduction and analysis, and some caveats. A description of the FITS structure of spectral files and parameter catalogs is also provided.

We derive new constraints on the mass of the Milky Way's dark matter halo, based on 2401 rigorously selected blue horizontal-branch halo stars from SDSS DR6. This sample enables construction of the full line-of-sight velocity distribution at different galactocentric radii. To interpret these distributions, we compare them to matched mock observations drawn from two different cosmological galaxy formation simulations designed to resemble the Milky Way. This procedure results in an estimate of the Milky Way's circular velocity curve to ~60 kpc, which is found to be slightly falling from the adopted value of 220 km s-1 at the Sun's location, and implies M(<60 kpc)=(4.0+/-0.7)×1011 Msolar. The radial dependence of Vcir(r), derived in statistically independent bins, is found to be consistent with the expectations from an NFW dark matter halo with the established stellar mass components at its center. If we assume that an NFW halo profile of characteristic concentration holds, we can use the observations to estimate the virial mass of the Milky Way's dark matter halo, Mvir=1.0+0.3-0.2×1012 Msolar, which is lower than many previous estimates. We have checked that the particulars of the cosmological simulations are unlikely to introduce systematics larger than the statistical uncertainties. This estimate implies that nearly 40% of the baryons within the virial radius of the Milky Way's dark matter halo reside in the stellar components of our Galaxy. A value for Mvir of only ~1×1012 Msolar also (re)opens the question of whether all of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies are on bound orbits.

High resolution, high S/N spectra have been obtained for a sample of 90 F and G main-sequence disk stars covering the metallicity range , and have been analysed in a parallel way to the work of Edvardsson et al. (1993a) in order to re-inspect their results and to reveal new information on the chemical evolution of the Galactic disk. Compared to Edvardsson et al. the present study includes several improvements. Effective temperatures are based on the Alonso et al. (1996) calibration of color indices by the infrared flux method and surface gravities are calculated from Hipparcos parallaxes, which also allow more accurate ages to be calculated from a comparison of MV and with isochrones. In addition, more reliable kinematical parameters are derived from Hipparcos distances and proper motions in combination with accurate radial velocities. Finally, a larger spectral coverage, Å, makes it possible to improve the abundance accuracy by studying more lines and to discuss several elements not included in the work of Edvardsson et al. The present paper provides the data and discusses some general results of the abundance survey. A group of stars in the metallicity range of having a small mean Galactocentric distance in the stellar orbits, Rm kpc, are shown to be older than the other disk stars and probably belong to the thick disk. Excluding these stars, a slight decreasing trend of with increasing Rm and age is found, but a large scatter in (up to 0.5 dex) is present at a given age and Rm. Abundance ratios with respect to Fe show, on the other hand, no significant scatter at a given . The derived trends of O, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Ni and Ba as a function of agree rather well with those of Edvardsson et al., but the overabundance of Na and Al for metal-poor stars found in their work is not confirmed. Furthermore, the Galactic evolution of elements not included in Edvardsson et al., K, V and Cr, is studied. It is concluded that the terms “α elements" and “iron-peak elements" cannot be used to indicate production and evolution by specific nucleosynthesis processes; each element seems to have a unique enrichment history.