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The European space sciences landscape is very diverse as it involves two major intergovernmental organisations (The European Space Agency-ESA- and the European Commission-EC) and more than 25 countries that each have their national institutional setting and scientific planning approach. It has therefore always been essential to coordinate space science and exploration programmes throughout Europe and with international partners. The European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC - www.essc.esf.org) is offering European scientists an independent voice providing advice and guidance on space science matters to ESA, EC, national space agencies, and other stakeholders. The ESSC is not a programmatic nor a political entity; it promotes space science not as a cost but as a high-return investment with a broad and exciting leverage effect on the people and the economy. Similarly to other international advisory bodies, ESSC offers recommendations and implements other space exploration related activities; it delivers direct consolidated (solicited or proactive) input from the scientific community to programmatic institutions; but is can also represent an anchor for non-European scientific communities to interact and collaborate. The ESSC has thus kept and developed very strong links with the Space Studies Board of the US National Academies (NAS-SSB), members from both sides of the Atlantic thus affording regular insight on European and US space programmes. These two bodies are also linked in some strategic planning issues and in studies related to Planetary Protection (e.g. on PhobosDeimos categorisation), Mars (Mars Special Regions), space weather or the icy moons of the giant planets. The ESSC has also tight contacts with Chinese, Russian and Japanese space agencies and research organisations. This international bottom-up approach in space roadmapping has proven to be highly valuable in the past, a relevant example being the Cassini-Huygens mission. In the early eighties, the concept of a joint U.S.-European mission to explore the Saturnian system was delineated duringa joint European Science Foundation-US National Academies workshop, this was the spark of one of the most successful long-lived (2004-2017) planetary exploration missions to date. A coordinated integrated position on programmatic space matters is key to maximise scientific return. Since the late nineties, the ESSC and its office have conducted studies and evaluations on the ESA Life and Physical Sciences in Space programme (ELIPS) as well as defining a Science-Driven Scenario for Space Exploration or roadmaps in the fields of human space exploration or astrobiology. ESSC has also been very active in providing inputs to the European Commission on the definition of its space strategy and space research work programme. The ESSC contacts with international bodies significantly contribute to the definition and implementation of exploration programmes in their respective countries and demonstrate that common initiatives allow us to promote the inputs from the scientific communities. A network of independent non-programmatic interdisciplinary bodies covering all the regions of the world would certainly improve coordination of space exploration at the global level. References: all of the documents related to the aforementioned studies can be found at: http://www.essc.esf.org/list-of-publications/

Background: Extensive debate surrounds the practice of continuous sedation until death to control refractory symptoms in terminal cancer care. We examined reported practice of United Kingdom, Belgian and Dutch physicians and nurses. Methods: Qualitative case studies using interviews. Setting: Hospitals, the domestic home and hospices or palliative care units. Participants: In all, 57 Physicians and 73 nurses involved in the care of 84 cancer patients. Results: UK respondents reported a continuum of practice from the provision of low doses of sedatives to control terminal restlessness to rarely encountered deep sedation. In contrast, Belgian respondents predominantly described the use of deep sedation, emphasizing the importance of responding to the patient’s request. Dutch respondents emphasized making an official medical decision informed by the patient’s wish and establishing that a refractory symptom was present. Respondents employed rationales that showed different stances towards four key issues: the preservation of consciousness, concerns about the potential hastening of death, whether they perceived continuous sedation until death as an ‘alternative’ to euthanasia and whether they sought to follow guidelines or frameworks for practice. Conclusion: This qualitative analysis suggests that there is systematic variation in end-of-life care sedation practice and its conceptualization in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Several new satellites such as Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and the hyperspectral satellites EnMAP and PRISMA will be launched in the near future. These EO sensors will provide a wealth of new data at increased spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions. Although not all conceived as being ocean colour missions, the inland and coastal water community could benefit considerably from these new data sources. A higher spatial resolution extends the existing monitoring efforts to cover even the first nautical mile from coast where the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is still in force or to lakes which are small and have irregular shapes and can not be monitored with the existing missions. However for these nearshore coastal and inland waters adjacency effects complicate the atmospheric correction process. Light reflected from the nearby land can be forward scattered by the atmosphere into the sensor’s field of view. This causes a “blurring“ of the signal and the effect, generally known as adjacency, background or environment effect, modifies the spectral signature of the observed pixel. Here we present SIMEC (SIMilarity Environment Correction), a new approach for the correction of adjacency effects.

In this presentation both the NIR and SWIR spectral regions are investigated to improve the current correction schemes for turbid waters. The NIR is used in a new environment correction for MERIS based on the correspondence with the NIR similarity spectrum. The new correction is referred to as SIMEC, SIMilarity Environment Correction. The NIR similarity spectrum provides a base to both detect and correct adjacency effects. Detection of the magnitude of the environment effects is based on the deviations from the NIR similarity spectrum. The adjacency correction algorithm estimates the contribution of the background radiance based on the correspondence with the NIR similarity spectrum.The water-leaving reflectance in the SWIR is generally assumed to be zero (“black pixel assumption”), even for highly turbid waters. In this presentation some evidence is presented of non-zero water-leaving reflectance between 1000 and 1150 nm. The first results are shown of a measurement campaign at the Scheldt river in Belgium The measurements give evidence that the SWIR black pixel assumption is not valid here between 1000 and 1150 nm and that backscattering by suspended particles influence the retrieved signal.

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The aim of the study is to explore the possible impact of the socio-economic and cultural factors on the role of autonomy in ELDM. Exploration of socio-medical and anthropological literature.

Research aims Continuous sedation until death has become a much debated approach, focusing on how its use relates to euthanasia. We investigated physicians' and nurses' perspectives on the differences and similarities between these two practices. Study design and methods Qualitative data were gathered through four focus groups: two with physicians (n=4&n=4) and two with nurses (n=4&n=9). The participants were selected on the basis of their experience with performing continuous sedation. The focus groups took two hours and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Afterwards, a multidisciplinary team of researchers coded and analyzed all emerging themes using constant comparison analyses. Results Out of the transcripts, three main themes emerged. First, differences were found in terminology and definitions used for continuous sedation. Participants agreed that there was a need for a clear definition. Secondly, some participants perceived sedation and euthanasia as different decisions at the end of lifewith differences in performance and intention. Patients, family and caregivers may have their own preferences, wishes and requests for one practice or the other. According to some participants, sedation and euthanasia can never be alternatives and sedation can only be administered in the terminal phase when all other treatments have failed, which does not apply in the case of euthanasia. Finally, we found that continuous sedation and euthanasia were not always perceived as two completely different practices. There was a lack of clarity about the conditions under which its use is appropriate . Conclusion Participants disagreed about how continuous sedation should be defined. Several participants stated that sedation and euthanasia represent two different clinical practices whereas others did not always strictly distinguish between these two. These findings show that for some caregivers, there is a lack of clarity about how continuous sedation and euthanasia are recommended to be used, resulting in a grey zone in practice.

Background: A significant minority of dying people experience refractory symptoms or extreme distress\ud unresponsive to conventional therapies. In such circumstances, sedation may be used to decrease or remove\ud consciousness until death occurs. This practice is described in a variety of ways, including: ‘palliative sedation’,\ud ‘terminal sedation’, ‘continuous deep sedation until death’, ‘proportionate sedation’ or ‘palliative sedation to\ud unconsciousness’. Surveys show large unexplained variation in incidence of sedation at the end of life across\ud countries and care settings and there are ethical concerns about the use, intentions, risks and significance of the\ud practice in palliative care. There are also questions about how to explain international variation in the use of the\ud practice. This protocol relates to the UNBIASED study (UK Netherlands Belgium International Sedation Study), which\ud comprises three linked studies with separate funding sources in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. The aims of\ud the study are to explore decision-making surrounding the application of continuous sedation until death in\ud contemporary clinical practice, and to understand the experiences of clinical staff and decedents’ informal caregivers\ud of the use of continuous sedation until death and their perceptions of its contribution to the dying process.\ud The UNBIASED study is part of the European Association for Palliative Care Research Network.\ud Methods/Design: To realize the study aims, a two-phase study has been designed. The study settings include: the\ud domestic home, hospital and expert palliative care sites. Phase 1 consists of: a) focus groups with health care staff\ud and bereaved informal care-givers; and b) a preliminary case notes review to study the range of sedation therapy\ud provided at the end of life to cancer patients who died within a 12 week period. Phase 2 employs qualitative\ud methods to develop 30 patient-centred case studies in each country. These involve interviews with staff and\ud informal care-givers closely involved in the care of cancer patients who received continuous sedation until death.\ud Discussion: To our knowledge, this is one of the few studies which seek to take a qualitative perspective on\ud clinical decision making surrounding the use of continuous sedation until death and the only one which includes\ud the perspectives of nurses, physicians, as well as bereaved informal care-givers. It has several potential strengths,\ud weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with the specific design of the study, as well as with the sensitive\ud nature of the topic and the different frameworks for ethical review in the participating countries.

The European Patent Convention (EPC), which governs the grant of European patents by the European Patent Office (EPO), forbids the grant of patents for methods of medical treatment. In 1984, in an attempt to find a manner in which European patents could be granted to those who found new medical treatments using existing drug compounds, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) of the EPO sanctioned a novel form of patent claim, the "Swiss-type use claim", under which a known process for producing a known drug product was considered to acquire novelty by virtue of the new use to which the drug product was to be put. Following the revision of the EPC in 2000, in a 2010 decision, the EBoA has declared that the Swiss-type use claim is no longer to be permitted. In this article we explore the 1984 and 2010 decisions and their ramifications for the many European patents already granted with Swiss-type use claims. We conclude that the 2010 decision is both courageous and correct.

ESA APEX (Airborne Prism EXperiment) is a project for the realisation of an airborne dispersive pushbroom imaging spectrometer, a dedicated data Processing and Archiving Facility (PAF, hosted at VITO) and a Calibration Home Base (CHB, hosted at DLR) for instrument calibration operation. It has been developed by a joint Swiss-Belgian consortium. The APEX instrument is facing its finalisation phase undergoing intense experimental activities in view of its validation and performance assessment. Environmental tests were executed to simulate flight environment conditions. The first APEX airborne campaign has been held in June 2009 covering a variety of water targets over Switzerland and Belgium. Extensive pre- and postflight characterisation and calibration campaigns were accomplished. Instrument data evaluation, performance analysis and optimisation of the data processing schemes adopted have followed. This paper outlines the activities performed and presents the first products achieved.

An at-sensor radiance simulation environment based on Hydrolight and MODTRAN-5 was set up for the evaluation of arbitrary combinations of sensors, methods and targets for the investigation of inland water quality. Each Ls simulation requires three MODTRAN- 5 runs, whereas two runs are needed for the calculation of the specular reflectance. Simulation results can be used in the preparation of specific algorithms for future sensors, e.g. the Airborne Prism Experiment (APEX), as well as for vicarious calibration, to estimate the noise sensitivity of a specific algorithm or in general project planning.

An intercomparison of a curve fitting and least squares approach is presented for the estimation of CHL, CDOM and TSM for two inland waters. In the inversion procedures two different bio-optical models were used, i.e. the Gordon model and the model of Albert and Mobley. The intercomparison is based on simulated APEX reflectance data. For these simulations two field campaigns were organised on the Scheldt river and Lake Constance to collect water samples. They were analysed for the optical properties and concentration values of the three optically active constituents. Reflectance data were then simulated using Hydrolight and the models of Gordon and Albert and Mobley. These simulations were used to test several inversion approaches. The curve fitting with the model of Albert and Mobley provided the best results for the Scheldt river. For Lake Constance no single procedure outperformed the others.

Within the ORMES project a service is developed which provides suspended sediment maps from remote sensing images in an efficient way. Our main test site is a part of the Belgian Scheldt Estuary near Antwerp. A reliable semi-empirical algorithm has been developed to derive near-surface suspended matter maps in an operational way. This algorithm is applied to a series of hyperspectral airborne data obtained at different stages of the tidal cycle. The produced TSM maps showed good agreement with known variations of the suspended sediment content over the tidal cycle: maximum turbidity around high water and gradual settling of the sediment in the succeeding slack water. The cross-river differences in TSM matched well the variation measured at previous field campaigns.

The overall aim of this study is to monitor coral reefs and associated ecosystems by integrating different remote sensing data with spectral libraries and field measurements. To assess and verify the technical feasibility of a spaceborne hyperspectral sensor, a preliminary bottomtype classification was made based on hyperspectral data from the CHRIS/PROBA sensor. The atmospheric correction was performed with in-house atmospheric correction software, WATCOR, which takes into account atmospheric and air/water-interface effects. Due to the lack of bathymetric information, a water column correction could not be performed. As ground-truth data was available neither, the classification was based on automatic endmember selection using data-inherent spectral and spatial information. After the endmember selection, a Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) procedure was followed to classify the dataset. Although some problems remain to be solved, the preliminary result presented, shows the potential of spaceborne hyperspectral data for detail coral reef studies.

On the 16th of June 2003 a CASI (Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager) hyperspectral airborne remote sensing campaign took place above the Southern North Sea, just offshore of Oostende. In coincidence with the airborne overpasses seaborne measurements of water leaving reflectance and water quality parameters were performed. In addition near-simultaneous satellite imagery are available. This paper deals with the analysis of the airborne data. The CASI data have been atmospherically corrected using the in-house software WATCOR which is based on the radiative transfer code MODTRAN-4 and takes into account atmospheric and air/water interface effects. The data are subsequently geometrically corrected with PARGE. A semi-analytical approach is used to retrieve the concentration of the water constituents: for chlorophyll determination a biooptically modelled red/NIR band ratio algorithm is applied to the data; to quantify the Suspended Particulate Matter a single band NIR algorithm, calibrated for the Belgian coastal waters is used. The results of these semi-analytical methods were compared to an analytical approach where the water quality parameters are retrieved from the subsurface irradiance reflectance spectra using a least square determination of chlorophyll-a (CHL), suspended particulate matter (SPM) and colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) and requires as input the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of (specific) absorption and backscattering of the water constituents.