Termination of Pregnancy After NonInvasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT): Ethical Considerations

This article explores the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ recent report about non-invasive prenatal testing. Given that such testing is likely to become the norm, it is important to question whether there should be some ethical parameters regarding its use. The article engages with the viewpoints of Jeff McMahan, Julian Savulescu, Stephen Wilkinson and other commentators on prenatal ethics. The authors argue that there are a variety of moral considerations that legitimately play a significant role with regard to (prospective) parental decision-making in the context of NIPT, for example, views on the morality of abortion and understandings of the impact of disability on quality of life. The variable nature of such considerations, both singularly and combined, suggests that any approach to NIPT should be sensitive to and understanding of similarly variable parental assessments and decisions. The implications of the approach developed for current and future policies in this area are explored, along with the impact of such arguments on ideas about procreative beneficence

Observing shelf sea oxygen dynamics with autonomous observation systems

This thesis provides new estimates for net community production (NCP) from two North Sea regions, using high temporal resolution oxygen measurements from a long-term monitoring buoy and from a fleet of submarine gliders during a pilot monitoring program. The buoy study reveals a net-heterotrophic system (O2 NCP = (−5.0 �} 2.5) molm−2 a−1), despite a highly productive spring phytoplankton bloom (maximum O2 NCP >(485 �} 129) mmolm−2 d−1). The glider study uses both oxygen and nitrate mass-balances and demonstrates new production rates consistent with Redfield (an O:N ratio of 8.7) during the Spring bloom (O2 NCP = (232 �} 12) molm−2 d−1, NO3 - NCP = (26.8 �} 0.7) mmolm−2 d−1). In addition, bottom mixed layer oxygen dynamics are explored using an array of seabed landers in the Celtic Sea. The oxygen fluxes, including respiration, are calculated and compared with incubation studies performed during the same observation campaign. The bottom mixed layer oxygen consumption is shown to be broadly similar to that as calculated by the incubation studies (O2 NCP ranged between 30 mmolm−2 d−1 to 47 mmolm−2 d−1). However, the time series reveals temporal variations which are missed with the incubations, including post-bloom increases in consumption and possible re-suspension-driven events. There is also evidence for large persistent vertical fluxes of oxygen. For shelf sea oxygen time series based NCP estimation, the largest source of uncertainty is derived from the determination of a representative water mass with which to perform an analysis, and the subsequent integration of oxygen observations. Spatial heterogeneity is often overlooked in both open-ocean and shelf-sea based studies. It is shown that the choice of which fluxes need to be quantified, and the length scales that observations should be integrated over, is highly dependent on the dynamics of the particular study region

Contested evolution of nutrition for humanitarian and development ends: Report of an international workshop

This working paper reports on a workshop organised by the Food Studies Centre at SOAS, University of London and the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. The workshop aimed to explore and debate how and why humanitarian and development nutrition came to be dominated by medical science. Current interventions tend to treat it as a decontextualized, biological problem amenable to the technical administration of nutrients. The main approaches to addressing malnutrition now include the provision of specialised food products, new agricultural technologies, and the promotion of behaviour change in feeding and hygiene practices. They are promoted as part of Public Private Partnerships. Social nutrition, in contrast, takes a more holistic approach by examining its social, political and economic causes, and was prominent in the 1930s and again in the 1980s and 1990s but has been in decline since. Social approaches to nutrition have been critical of contemporary practices because they focus on nutrition itself as the object of policy rather than its wider social and political causes, they prevent more flexible and people-centred approaches, and because new nutrition and agricultural technologies promote the interests of business rather than the malnourished. These issues were the subject of discussion at the workshop

Simultaneous assessment of oxygen- and nitrate-based net community production in a temperate shelf sea from a single ocean glider

The continental shelf seas are important at a global scale for ecosystem services. These highly dynamic regions are under a wide range of stresses, and as such future management requires appropriate monitoring measures. A key metric to understanding and predicting future change are the rates of biological production. We present here the use of an autonomous underwater glider with an oxygen (O2) and a wet-chemical microfluidic total oxidised nitrogen (NOx-NO3-+NO2-) sensor during a spring bloom as part of a 2019 pilot autonomous shelf sea monitoring study. We find exceptionally high rates of net community production using both O2 and NOx-water column inventory changes, corrected for air-sea gas exchange in case of O2. We compare these rates with 2007 and 2008 mooring observations finding similar rates of NOx-consumption. With these complementary methods we determine the O2:N amount ratio of the newly produced organic matter (7.8g±0.4) and the overall O2:N ratio for the total water column (5.7g±0.4). The former is close to the canonical Redfield O2:N ratio of 8.6g±1.0, whereas the latter may be explained by a combination of new organic matter production and preferential remineralisation of more reduced organic matter at a higher O2:N ratio below the euphotic zone

The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey I. Survey Description and Static Catalog Results for the Bootes Field

The Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS) is a key project of the Allen Telescope Array. PiGSS is a 3.1 GHz survey of radio continuum emission in the extragalactic sky with an emphasis on synoptic observations that measure the static and time-variable properties of the sky. During the 2.5-year campaign, PiGSS will twice observe ~250,000 radio sources in the 10,000 deg^2 region of the sky with b > 30 deg to an rms sensitivity of ~1 mJy. Additionally, sub-regions of the sky will be observed multiple times to characterize variability on time scales of days to years. We present here observations of a 10 deg^2 region in the Bootes constellation overlapping the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey field. The PiGSS image was constructed from 75 daily observations distributed over a 4-month period and has an rms flux density between 200 and 250 microJy. This represents a deeper image by a factor of 4 to 8 than we will achieve over the entire 10,000 deg^2. We provide flux densities, source sizes, and spectral indices for the 425 sources detected in the image. We identify ~100$ new flat spectrum radio sources; we project that when completed PiGSS will identify 10^4 flat spectrum sources. We identify one source that is a possible transient radio source. This survey provides new limits on faint radio transients and variables with characteristic durations of months.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; revision submitted with extraneous figure remove

The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey I. Survey Description and Static Catalog Results for the Bootes Field

The Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS) is a key project of the Allen Telescope Array. PiGSS is a 3.1 GHz survey of radio continuum emission in the extragalactic sky with an emphasis on synoptic observations that measure the static and time-variable properties of the sky. During the 2.5-year campaign, PiGSS will twice observe ~250,000 radio sources in the 10,000 deg^2 region of the sky with b > 30 deg to an rms sensitivity of ~1 mJy. Additionally, sub-regions of the sky will be observed multiple times to characterize variability on time scales of days to years. We present here observations of a 10 deg^2 region in the Bootes constellation overlapping the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey field. The PiGSS image was constructed from 75 daily observations distributed over a 4-month period and has an rms flux density between 200 and 250 microJy. This represents a deeper image by a factor of 4 to 8 than we will achieve over the entire 10,000 deg^2. We provide flux densities, source sizes, and spectral indices for the 425 sources detected in the image. We identify ~100$ new flat spectrum radio sources; we project that when completed PiGSS will identify 10^4 flat spectrum sources. We identify one source that is a possible transient radio source. This survey provides new limits on faint radio transients and variables with characteristic durations of months.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; revision submitted with extraneous figure remove

Net community production in the North Atlantic Ocean derived from Volunteer Observing Ship data

The magnitude of marine plankton net community production (NCP) is indicative of both the biologically driven exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the surface ocean and the export of organic carbon from the surface ocean to the ocean interior. In this study the seasonal variability in the NCP of five biogeochemical regions in the North Atlantic was determined from measurements of surface water dissolved oxygen and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) sampled from a Volunteer Observing Ship (VOS). The magnitude of NCP derived from dissolved oxygen measurements (NCPinline image) was consistent with previous geochemical estimates of NCP in the North Atlantic, with an average annual NCPinline image of 9.5 ± 6.5 mmol O2 m−2 d−1. Annual NCPinline image did not vary significantly over 35° of latitude and was not significantly different from NCP derived from DIC measurements (NCPDIC). The relatively simple method described here is applicable to any VOS route on which surface water dissolved oxygen concentrations can be accurately measured, thus providing estimates of NCP at higher spatial and temporal resolution than currently achieved

Vertical mixing alleviates autumnal oxygen deficiency in the central North Sea

There is an immediate need to better understand and monitor shelf sea dissolved oxygen (O2) concentrations. Here we use high-resolution glider observations of turbulence and O2 concentrations to directly estimate the vertical O2 flux into the bottom mixed layer (BML) immediately before the autumn breakdown of stratification in a seasonally stratified shelf sea. We present a novel method to resolve the oxycline across sharp gradients due to slow optode response time and optode positioning in a flow “shadow zone” on Slocum gliders. The vertical O2 flux to the low-O2 BML was found to be between 2.5 to 6.4 mmol m−2 d−1. Episodic intense mixing events were responsible for the majority (up to 90 %) of this oxygen supply despite making up 40 % of the observations. Without these intense mixing events, BML O2 concentrations would approach ecologically concerning levels by the end of the stratified period. Understanding the driving forces behind episodic mixing and how these may change under future climate scenarios and renewable energy infrastructure is key for monitoring shelf sea health

The Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey - A 690-Square-Degree, 12-Epoch Radio Dataset - I: Catalog and Long-Duration Transient Statistics

We present the Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey (ATATS), a multi-epoch (12 visits), 690 square degree radio image and catalog at 1.4GHz. The survey is designed to detect rare, very bright transients as well as to verify the capabilities of the ATA to form large mosaics. The combined image using data from all 12 ATATS epochs has RMS noise sigma = 3.94mJy / beam and dynamic range 180, with a circular beam of 150 arcsec FWHM. It contains 4408 sources to a limiting sensitivity of S = 20 mJy / beam. We compare the catalog generated from this 12-epoch combined image to the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a legacy survey at the same frequency, and find that we can measure source positions to better than ~20 arcsec. For sources above the ATATS completeness limit, the median flux density is 97% of the median value for matched NVSS sources, indicative of an accurate overall flux calibration. We examine the effects of source confusion due to the effects of differing resolution between ATATS and NVSS on our ability to compare flux densities. We detect no transients at flux densities greater than 40 mJy in comparison with NVSS, and place a 2-sigma upper limit on the transient rate for such sources of 0.004 per square degree. These results suggest that the > 1 Jy transients reported by Matsumura et al. (2009) may not be true transients, but rather variable sources at their flux density threshold.Comment: 41 pages, 19 figures, ApJ accepted; corrected minor typo in Table