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Gross pathology and liver mercury concentrations in harbour porpoises, harbour seals and grey seals in Denmark, Northern Europe
No full textHere we report the first investigation of gross pathology and mercury (Hg) in liver tissue from harbour porpoises, harbour seals and grey seals from Denmark, Northern Europe. Mercury concentrations ranged between 0.2 and 248 μg/g wet weight (ww) with highest concentrations found in grey seals and subadult harbour seals from the Baltic Sea, with no relationship to body condition. Necropsy findings across all three species decreasing in the following order: pneumonia (n = 60) > respiratory parasitism (n = 56) > wounds (n = 18) > GI-parasites (stomach nematodes and/or parasitic colitis) (n = 16) > ectoparasites (skin lice) (n = 12) > hepatic parasites/lesions (n = 8) > focal alopecia (n = 5) > nephropathy (n = 4) > middle ear complex parasites (n = 3) > nasal parasites (n = 2). Heart and/or lung worms were significantly highest in subadult harbour porpoises, GI parasites and nephropathy significantly lowest in subadult harbour seals and focal alopecia significantly highest in subadult harbour seals. Most cases of pneumonia were associated with respiratory parasites (68 %), while nine cases of wounds led to signs of septicaemia. Significant positive relationships were observed between Hg and the presence of respiratory parasites in subadult harbour porpoises and between Hg and the presence of focal alopecia, nephropathy, and gastrointestinal parasites in subadult harbour seals. Levels of Hg were in the categories for low risk (16–64 μg/g ww) in 18 %, moderate risk (64–83 μg/g ww) in 3 %, high risk (83–123 μg/g ww) in 2 % and severe risk (>123 μg/g ww) in 3 % of all individuals for health effects in marine mammals. In conclusion, using marine mammals as integrative sentinel species for Danish North Sea, Inner Danish Waters and the Baltic Sea ecosystems provides monitoring of ocean health in terms of multiple stressors such as anthropogenic contaminants and infectious diseases all being important in the context of global change.Here we report the first investigation of gross pathology and mercury (Hg) in liver tissue from harbour porpoises, harbour seals and grey seals from Denmark, Northern Europe. Mercury concentrations ranged between 0.2 and 248 μg/g wet weight (ww) with highest concentrations found in grey seals and subadult harbour seals from the Baltic Sea, with no relationship to body condition. Necropsy findings across all three species decreasing in the following order: pneumonia (n = 60) > respiratory parasitism (n = 56) > wounds (n = 18) > GI-parasites (stomach nematodes and/or parasitic colitis) (n = 16) > ectoparasites (skin lice) (n = 12) > hepatic parasites/lesions (n = 8) > focal alopecia (n = 5) > nephropathy (n = 4) > middle ear complex parasites (n = 3) > nasal parasites (n = 2). Heart and/or lung worms were significantly highest in subadult harbour porpoises, GI parasites and nephropathy significantly lowest in subadult harbour seals and focal alopecia significantly highest in subadult harbour seals. Most cases of pneumonia were associated with respiratory parasites (68 %), while nine cases of wounds led to signs of septicaemia. Significant positive relationships were observed between Hg and the presence of respiratory parasites in subadult harbour porpoises and between Hg and the presence of focal alopecia, nephropathy, and gastrointestinal parasites in subadult harbour seals. Levels of Hg were in the categories for low risk (16–64 μg/g ww) in 18 %, moderate risk (64–83 μg/g ww) in 3 %, high risk (83–123 μg/g ww) in 2 % and severe risk (>123 μg/g ww) in 3 % of all individuals for health effects in marine mammals. In conclusion, using marine mammals as integrative sentinel species for Danish North Sea, Inner Danish Waters and the Baltic Sea ecosystems provides monitoring of ocean health in terms of multiple stressors such as anthropogenic contaminants and infectious diseases all being important in the context of global change
A test of browser-based crawls of streaming services' interfaces PAPER
No full textThis paper presents a test of browser-based Web crawling on a sample of streaming services’ web sites and web players. We are especially interested in their graphical user interfaces since the Royal Danish Library collects most of the content by other means. In a legal deposit setting and for the purposes of this test we argue that streaming services consist of three main parts: their catalogue, metadata, and the graphical user interfaces. We find that the collection of all three parts are essential in order to preserve and playback what we could call 'the streaming experience'. The goal of the test is to see if we can capture a representative sample of the contemporary streaming experience from the initial login to (momentary) playback of the contents.Currently, the Danish Web archive (Netarkivet) implements browser-based crawl systems to optimize its collection of the Danish Web sphere (Myrvoll et al., n.d.). The test will run on a local instance of Browsertrix (Webrecorder, n.d.). This will let us login to services that require a local IP-address. Our sample includes streaming services for books, music, TV-series, and gaming.In the streaming era, the very thing that defines it is what threatens to impede access to important media history and cultural heritage. Streaming services are transnational and they have paywalls while content catalogues and interfaces change constantly (Colbjørnsen et al., 2021). They challenge the collection and preservation of how they present and playback the available content. On a daily basis, Danes stream more TV (47 pct.) than they watch flow-TV (37 pct.) and six out of 10 Danes subscribe to Netflix (Kantar-Gallup, 2022). Streaming is a standard for many and no longer a first-mover activity, at least in the Nordic region of Europe (Lüders et al., 2021). The Danish Web archive collects websites of streaming services as part of its quarterly cross-sectional crawls of the Danish Web sphere (The Royal Danish Library, n.d.). A recent analysis of its collection of web sites and interfaces concluded that the automated collection process provides insufficient documentation of the Danish streaming services (Aegidius and Andersen, in review).This paper presents findings from a test of browser-based crawls of streaming services’ interfaces. We will discuss the most prominent sources of errors and how we may optimize the collection of national and international streaming services. ReferencesAegidius, A. L. & Andersen M. M. T. (in review) Collecting streaming services, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media TechnologiesColbjørnsen, T., Tallerås K., & Øfsti, M. (2021) Contingent availability: a case-based approach to understanding availability in streaming services and cultural policy implications, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 27:7, 936-951, DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2020.1860030Lüders, M., Sundet, V. S., & Colbjørnsen, T. (2021) Towards streaming as a dominant mode of media use? A user typology approach to music and television streaming. Nordicom Review, 42(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2021-0011Kantar-Gallup (2022) Digital Life 2022. Available at: https://www.kantargallup.dk/digital-life-2022 (accessed 20 September 2023).Myrvoll A.K., Jackson A., O'Brien, B., et al. (n.d.) Browser-based crawling system for all. Available at: https://netpreserve.org/projects/browser-based-crawling/ (accessed 26 May 2023).The Royal Danish Library (n.d.) Netarkivet. Available at: https://www.kb.dk/en/find-materials/collections/netarkivet (accessed 20 September 2023). Webrecorder (n.d.) Browsertrix-crawler. Available at: https://webrecorder.net/tools#browsertrix-crawler (accessed 20 September 2023).<br/
Towards a spatial history of Cold War operational planning
No full textThis paper reports on the first step towards developing a GIS-based methodology for analysing military operational plans from the Cold War. During the Cold War, the military of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact carried out a comprehensive military planning for the potential military confrontation between the two alliances.Military planning documents is complicated historical source due to combination of both text, diagrams and cartographic representations used to convey the complex spatial relationship between the operational environment, the objective (intentions) of own forces and information about the capability and deployment of own and enemy forces. An important component of the plan complexes are the cartographic representations of the operational plan, typically drawn directly on topographic maps or on different types of overlays. In the NATO planning system, these cartographic representations are supplementary to text documents, while in the Soviet / Warsaw Pact system, the map is the central planning document with the text and diagram being second.However, these maps are difficult to analyse due to a number of reasons. First, the number of maps as well as the amount of information on the maps makes it difficult to analyse the plan. In many cases, information is distributed on several maps at different scales covering vast geographic area include a spatio-temporal dynamics. Second, some difficulties are related to the specific cartographic technique used by Cold War militaries. Maps prepared in relation to NATO operational planning are often made on overlays, which needs to be viewed on top of a topographic map in order to provide a spatial reference. Such topographic maps for reference are typically not available at the reading room at the archive. Maps made by the Warsaw Pact armies are typically drawn directly on composite topographic map sheets, which cover the entire operational area. Depending on unite size and reference scale, such an operational area can be as much as whole of Western Europe. This means that the maps can be as lager as up to almost 18 square meters, which is almost impossible to view physically in detail. The physical size also means that digitization is difficult and that the output often comes as several parts, which is difficult to read without further processing. The complicated nature of the source material are probably also one of the reason behind the limited application of the cartographic content of the plans in Cold War research. Current research often ignores the spatial component of the plans in favour of the text, thus reducing the cartographic representation and spatial diagrams to illustrations.Based on comprehensive archives from the Danish military for the NATO commands COMLANDZEALAND and COMLANDJUT as well as the Polish General Staff during the Cold War, we propose the first steps towards a GIS-based methodology for analysing the history of cartography of Cold War operational planning. The proposed method consists of two parts.First, we aim to develop standard protocols for the georeferecing of plans from NATO as well as Warsaw Pact. For NATO plans, we propose to use the UTM-grid and coordinates as the main geographic reference and persistent geographic features from a reference maps as secondary in cases, where it is not possible to use the UTM grid or coordinates. For Warsaw Pact plans, we use the grid and coordinates related to the Soviet SK42 system and persistent geographic features as secondary.Second, we aim to develop a GIS-ontology, which can accommodate the cartographic content of the plans within the standard geometry in vector-GIS. This is not a simple task, because the Cold War plans in most cases were drawn by hand applying different symbols and colours to show the content of the plan visually on a paper map. In some cases, such as with deployment areas, these are represented as area, which can easily been digitized as polygons in GIS. However, in other cases large arrows are drawn on the map to show axis of advance. These could be digitized as either a line or a polygon. In addition to these two, examples additional complexity can be added in relation to time and scale of the different plans, as well as the need for combining information from different maps within the operational plan complexes.Despite these methodological difficulties, our results from our initial development has shown, that such GIS-data and visualizations can add significantly analytical power to the analysis of the Cold War operational plans. In addition, digital vector layers from the historical Cold War operational plans could also provide the source basis for a new historical geography of Cold War operational planning
