Search

We report the experiences from the first two years of a paediatric ethical committee at Rigshospitalet. The committee consists of five clinicians (nurses and doctors) and five non-clinicians. Themes of the sixteen reported case were: genetic testing, life-sustaining treatment ("when is enough enough?"), non-consensus between the parents and health personal and between different health personal, controversies to different religious wishes and to optimizing resources of the department versus individual care of a critically ill child. Within paediatrics a need for ethical reflection seems obvious.

This thesis examines the development in the Israeli expression of opinions and representations of the Peace Process with the Palestinians in the period 1993 to 2006. How did the discourse develop? And why did this development take place? This thesis examines the questions to uncover how Israeli national interests were constructed through the construction of national identity and the relation to a constituting Other, the Palestinians, through the use of language. The methodological and theoretical bases for the thesis are the constructivist approach to the construction of national interests in international politics and critical discourse analysis. The empirical sources for the analysis are policy statements, interviews and articles with Israeli foreign policy actors from the period 1993 to 2006. The sources are chosen to provide an understanding of the development in the actors’ representations through the period of analysis. By also examining the influence of terror events in the broader context on the discourse development, it is uncovered why the identified development took place. Furthermore, this provides the instrument to examine how security needs came to dominate Israeli national interests in the Peace Process. The analysis identifies three, partly four, different dominant discourses during the period. The two major discursive shifts took place as a result of escalating terror in Israel in early 1996 from Palestinian groups as well as the breakout of the Second Intifada in 2000. The analysis finds that more critical interpellations of the Palestinians became dominant after these events and that the constructed Israeli identity became clearer and more unambiguous. The thesis concludes that events in the broader context had a considerable influence on the Israeli discourse with consequences for the formation of national interests in the Peace Process – and with negative indications on the prospects for a negotiated solution

Temora longicornis, a calanoid copepod with low energy reserves and high metabolic requirements, is a key species in the North Sea zooplankton community. Since the North Sea is characterised by high seasonal variation in food quality, the digestive system of T. longicornis must respond fast to use different food sources efficiently. Lipids play a major role in studies of copepod feeding, because (1) they are an important energy source, and (2) different diets can be traced by specific dietary fatty acids. Information, however, on the capacity of the lipid metabolism to adapt to changing food is scarce. Therefore, we have studied the fatty acid composition and lipolytic enzyme patterns of T. longicornis in relation to food supply. Adult females were incubated for three days, feeding either upon the diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii or upon the heterotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina. The enzyme patterns of single females were identified by SDS-PAGE using a fluorescent substrate for lipases/esterases at the start and the end of the experiments. The fatty acid compositions were analysed by gaschromatography. In females fed with T. weissflogii the portion of the fatty acids 16:2(n-4) and 16:3(n-4) increased by a factor of 2.5 and 6.3, respectively. The portion of 22:6(n-3) doubled in individuals fed with O. marina. This shows that the dietary fatty acids have been digested and incorporated in the copepods lipids within three days. In both groups, new enzyme bands (30 to 100 kDa) appeared, indicating a high adaptive capacity of the lipolytic enzyme complex to different diets.

This study describes the annual reproductive cycles of the three dominant Calanus species, C. finmarchicus, C. glacialis and C. hyperboreus, in Disko Bay (West Greenland) in relation to the seasonal phytoplankton development. Relative abundance of females, copepodite stage 5 (CV) and males, and the developmental stage of the female gonad were examined from plankton samples collected at weekly to monthly intervals from May 1996 to June 1997 with a WP2 net or a pump. During spring and summer, egg production rates were determined. Females of all three species were present year round. Maximum relative abundance was reached by C. hyperboreus females at the beginning of February, by C. glacialis in mid February, and by C. finmarchicus in April. All three species reproduced successfully in Disko Bay. Their reproductive cycles were considerably different with respect to the timing of final gonad maturation and spawning, and hence in their relation to the seasonal phytoplankton development. In all three species, early gonad development took place during winter before living food became plentiful suggesting that these processes were largely food independent. Final gonad maturation and spawning in C. finmarchicus was related to the phytoplankton concentration reflecting that final gonad maturation processes are food dependant in this species. C. glacialis females matured and spawned prior to the spring bloom. Our results indicate that first internal lipid stores, and later ice algae grazing, supplied final gonad maturation and egg production. Maximum egg production rates of C. glacialis were found in spring and summer when the chlorophyll a concentration was high. Mature female C. hyperboreus were found from February until mid April when the chlorophyll a concentration was still low. In this species, reproductive activity was decoupled from the phytoplankton development, and final maturation processes and spawning were solely fuelled by internal energy stores.Keywords