Managing the Ethical Dimensions of Brain-Computer Interfaces in eHealth: An SDLC-based Approach

A growing range of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies is being employed for purposes of therapy and human augmentation. While much thought has been given to the ethical implications of such technologies at the ‘macro’ level of social policy and ‘micro’ level of individual users, little attention has been given to the unique ethical issues that arise during the process of incorporating BCIs into eHealth ecosystems. In this text a conceptual framework is developed that enables the operators of eHealth ecosystems to manage the ethical components of such processes in a more comprehensive and systematic way than has previously been possible. The framework’s first axis defines five ethical dimensions that must be successfully addressed by eHealth ecosystems: 1) beneficence; 2) consent; 3) privacy; 4) equity; and 5) liability. The second axis describes five stages of the systems development life cycle (SDLC) process whereby new technology is incorporated into an eHealth ecosystem: 1) analysis and planning; 2) design, development, and acquisition; 3) integration and activation; 4) operation and maintenance; and 5) disposal. Known ethical issues relating to the deployment of BCIs are mapped onto this matrix in order to demonstrate how it can be employed by the managers of eHealth ecosystems as a tool for fulfilling ethical requirements established by regulatory standards or stakeholders’ expectations. Beyond its immediate application in the case of BCIs, we suggest that this framework may also be utilized beneficially when incorporating other innovative forms of information and communications technology (ICT) into eHealth ecosystems

The ecology of 3-d space use in a sexually dimorphic mammal

The distribution of animals is the result of habitat selection according to sex, reproductive status and resource availability. Little is known about how marine predators investigate their 3-dimensional space along both the horizontal and vertical axes and how temporal variation affects space use. In this study, we assessed the spatio-temporal movement of a sexually dimorphic marine mammal, the grey seal Halichoerus grypus by 1) determining seasonal home range size, 2) testing whether space use of seals was affected by water depth, and 3) investigating the vertical movement of seals according to the maximum depth of each dive. Between 1993 and 2005, we fitted 49 grey seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with satellite transmitters. We estimated seasonal 95% fixed-kernel home ranges for each individual. For each seal, we tested for selectivity and preference for 4 water depth classes at the home range scale and within the home range. We also evaluated the proportional number of dives made in each water depth classes according to the maximum depth of each dive. Home ranges were 10 times larger in winter than in summer. Seals generally selected habitats <50 m deep. They also mainly dove to depths of 40 m or less. At both scales of selection, preference for shallow areas decreased in winter. We also observed that adults used shallow habitats more than juveniles to establish their home range. A spatial segregation based on sex also occurred at the finer scale of selection where females were more concentrated in the shallowest parts of their home range than males. Segregation in space use according to age and sex classes occurred at both the horizontal and vertical scales. Our results emphasise the importance of studying habitat selection of marine predators in 3-dimensional space, in addition to the temporal scale

Atlantic water variability on the SE Greenland continental shelf and its relationship to SST and bathymetry

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 118 (2013): 847–855, doi:10.1029/2012JC008354.Interaction of warm, Atlantic-origin water (AW) and colder, polar origin water (PW) advecting southward in the East Greenland Current (EGC) influences the heat content of water entering Greenland's outlet glacial fjords. Here we use depth and temperature data derived from deep-diving seals to map out water mass variability across the continental shelf and to augment existing bathymetric products. We compare depths derived from the seal dives with the IBCAO Version 3 bathymetric database over the shelf and find differences up to 300 m near several large submarine canyons. In the vertical temperature structure, we find two dominant modes: a cold mode, with the typical AW/PW layering observed in the EGC, and a warm mode, where AW is present throughout the water column. The prevalence of these modes varies seasonally and spatially across the continental shelf, implying distinct AW pathways. In addition, we find that satellite sea surface temperatures (SST) correlate significantly with temperatures in the upper 50 m (R = 0.54), but this correlation decreases with depth (R = 0.22 at 200 m), and becomes insignificant below 250 m. Thus, care must be taken in using SST as a proxy for heat content, as AW mainly resides in these deeper layers.Funding for this work came from National Science Foundation OPP grant 0909373 and OCE grant 1130008, plus the WHOI Arctic Research Initiative. The Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada, supported the seal tagging logistics.2013-08-2

Report of the NAMMCO-ICES Workshop on Seal Modelling (WKSEALS 2020)

To support sustainable management of apex predator populations, it is important to estimate population size and understand the drivers of population trends to anticipate the consequences of human decisions. Robust population models are needed, which must be based on realistic biological principles and validated with the best available data. A team of international experts reviewed age-structured models of North Atlantic pinniped populations, including Grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), Harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), and Hooded seal (Cystophora cristata). Statistical methods used to fit such models to data were compared and contrasted. Differences in biological assumptions and model equations were driven by the data available from separate studies, including observation methodology and pre-processing. Counts of pups during the breeding season were used in all models, with additional counts of adults and juveniles available in some. The regularity and frequency of data collection, including survey counts and vital rate estimates, varied. Important differences between the models concerned the nature and causes of variation in vital rates (age-dependent survival and fecundity). Parameterisation of age at maturity was detailed and time-dependent in some models and simplified in others. Methods for estimation of model parameters were reviewed and compared. They included Bayesian and maximum likelihood (ML) approaches, implemented via bespoke coding in C, C++, TMB or JAGS. Comparative model runs suggested that as expected, ML-based implementations were rapid and computationally efficient, while Bayesian approaches, which used MCMC or sequential importance sampling, required longer for inference. For grey seal populations in the Netherlands, where preliminary ML-based TMB results were compared with the outputs of a Bayesian JAGS implementation, some differences in parameter estimates were apparent. For these seal populations, further investigations are recommended to explore differences that might result from the modelling framework and model-fitting methodology, and their importance for inference and management advice. The group recommended building on the success of this workshop via continued collaboration with ICES and NAMMCO assessment groups, as well as other experts in the marine mammal modelling community. Specifically, for Northeast Atlantic harp and hooded seal populations, the workshop represents the initial step towards a full ICES benchmark process aimed at revising and evaluating new assessment models.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Rapid circulation of warm subtropical waters in a major glacial fjord in East Greenland

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature Geoscience 3 (2010): 182-186, doi:10.1038/ngeo764.The recent rapid increase in mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet is primarily attributed to an acceleration of outlet glaciers. One possible cause is increased melting at the ice/ocean interface driven by the synchronous warming of subtropical waters offshore of Greenland. This hypothesis is largely untested, however, because of the lack of observations from Greenland’s glacial fjords and our limited understanding of their dynamics. Here, we present new ship-based and moored oceanographic data, collected in Sermilik Fjord, a large glacial fjord in East Greenland, showing that subtropical waters are present throughout the fjord and are continuously replenished via a wind-driven exchange with the shelf, where they occur year-round. The temperature and rapid renewal of these waters suggest that, at present, they drive enhanced submarine melting at the terminus. Key controls on the melting rate are the volume and properties of subtropical waters on the shelf and the patterns of the along-shore winds, suggesting the glaciers’ acceleration was triggered by a combination of atmospheric and oceanic changes. These measurements provide evidence of rapid advective pathway for the transmission of oceanic variability to the ice-sheet margins and highlight an important process that is missing from prognostic ice-sheet models.F.S. acknowledges support from WHOI’s Ocean and Climate Change Institute’s Arctic Research Initiative and from NSF OCE 0751896, and G.S.H and L.A.S from NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Program. Funding for the hooded seal deployments was obtained from the International Governance and Atlantic Seal Research Program, Fisheries and Oceans, Canada, to G. B. S. and to the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources to A. R. A

Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (2018): 3072-3077, doi:10.1073/pnas.1716137115.The extent of increasing anthropogenic impacts on large marine vertebrates partly depends on the animals’ movement patterns. Effective conservation requires identification of the key drivers of movement including intrinsic properties and extrinsic constraints associated with the dynamic nature of the environments the animals inhabit. However, the relative importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic factors remains elusive. We analyse a global dataset of 2.8 million locations from > 2,600 tracked individuals across 50 marine vertebrates evolutionarily separated by millions of years and using different locomotion modes (fly, swim, walk/paddle). Strikingly, movement patterns show a remarkable convergence, being strongly conserved across species and independent of body length and mass, despite these traits ranging over 10 orders of magnitude among the species studied. This represents a fundamental difference between marine and terrestrial vertebrates not previously identified, likely linked to the reduced costs of locomotion in water. Movement patterns were primarily explained by the interaction between species-specific traits and the habitat(s) they move through, resulting in complex movement patterns when moving close to coasts compared to more predictable patterns when moving in open oceans. This distinct difference may be associated with greater complexity within coastal micro-habitats, highlighting a critical role of preferred habitat in shaping marine vertebrate global movements. Efforts to develop understanding of the characteristics of vertebrate movement should consider the habitat(s) through which they move to identify how movement patterns will alter with forecasted severe ocean changes, such as reduced Arctic sea ice cover, sea level rise and declining oxygen content.Workshops funding granted by the UWA Oceans Institute, AIMS, and KAUST. AMMS was supported by an ARC Grant DE170100841 and an IOMRC (UWA, AIMS, CSIRO) fellowship; JPR by MEDC (FPU program, Spain); DWS by UK NERC and Save Our Seas Foundation; NQ by FCT (Portugal); MMCM by a CAPES fellowship (Ministry of Education)

Distribution and Cconnection to other Plant-Communities of Genista radiata (L.) Scop in the South Tyrol (Italy)

Es werden die Genista radiata-Bestände an der Mendel in Südtirol (Italien) beschrieben und ihr Gesellschaftsanschluß diskutiert. Das Genisto-Festucetum alpestris Peer 83 besidelt steile südexponierte Kalkhänge der hochmontanen und subalpinen Stufe und ersetzt z.T. den Zwergstrauchgürtel mit Pinus mugo. Ähnlich zusammengesetzt ist das Genisto-Festucetum alpestris pinetosum Peer 83, das in den ¡lockeren Erika-Kiefernwäldern auftritt und bis in die tiefmontane Stufe hinunterreicht. Keinerlei syntaxonomische Bedeutung besitzt Genista radiata in den thermophilen Buschwaldgesellschaften, in denen die Pflanze lediglich eine Variante zum Orno-Ostryetum seslerietosum Peer 81 darstellt und speziell in der Saumzone anzutreffen ist. Auch in den Lärchenwiesen der Kammlagen kommt Genista radiata nur sporadisch vor. Sie ist hier mit dem Festucetum nigrescentis laricetosum subass. prov. verzahnt.Istražene su vegetacijske sastojine vrste Genista radiata u južnom Tirolu i razmatrana njihova fitocenološka pripadnost. Asocijacija Genisto-Festucetum alpestris Peer 83 nastava strme, južne vapnenačke obronke visokobrdskog i subalpskog pojasa. Subasocijacija Genisto-Festucetum alpestris pinetosum Peer 83 dolazi u rijetkim borovim šumama s crnjušom i spušta se do u niži brdski pojas. Termofilne niske šume, u kojima Genista radiata nema posebno sintaksonomsko značenje, označene su samo kao varijanta zajednice Orno-Ostryetum seslerietosum Peer 81. Genista radiata dolazi također na travnjacima s arišem, ali samo sporadično i to u mješavini sa zajednicom Festucetum nigrescentis laricetosnm subass. prov.The Genista radiata-communities of the Mendel in the South Tyrol (Italy) are described and their connection to other plant-communities is discussed. Genisto-Festucetum alpestris Peer 83 settles on steep, south- exposed colcareous slopes of high-mountain and subalpine altitudes and replaces particularly the dwarf-shrub-belt with Firms mugo. Similar contents aire found in Genisto-F estucetum alpestris pinetasum Peer 83, which occurs in undensed Erico-Pinetum-communities and reaches down to the low-mountain-altitude. In the thermophilic bush-communities, in which Genista radiata is found only as a variant of Orneto-Ostryetum seslerie- tosum (Peer 81), the plant has no syntaxonomic importance. Genista radiata especially is found in the edge-zone. In the grassland of the larch- communities of the ridges Genista radiata appears only sporadically. Here the plant appeals in Festucetum nigrescentis laricetosum subass. prov

Animal-borne telemetry: An integral component of the ocean observing toolkit

Animal telemetry is a powerful tool for observing marine animals and the physical environments that they inhabit, from coastal and continental shelf ecosystems to polar seas and open oceans. Satellite-linked biologgers and networks of acoustic receivers allow animals to be reliably monitored over scales of tens of meters to thousands of kilometers, giving insight into their habitat use, home range size, the phenology of migratory patterns and the biotic and abiotic factors that drive their distributions. Furthermore, physical environmental variables can be collected using animals as autonomous sampling platforms, increasing spatial and temporal coverage of global oceanographic observation systems. The use of animal telemetry, therefore, has the capacity to provide measures from a suite of essential ocean variables (EOVs) for improved monitoring of Earth's oceans. Here we outline the design features of animal telemetry systems, describe current applications and their benefits and challenges, and discuss future directions. We describe new analytical techniques that improve our ability to not only quantify animal movements but to also provide a powerful framework for comparative studies across taxa. We discuss the application of animal telemetry and its capacity to collect biotic and abiotic data, how the data collected can be incorporated into ocean observing systems, and the role these data can play in improved ocean management