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Antimicrobial resistance must be recognised as a global societal priority - even in the face of the worldwide challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has illustrated the vulnerability of our healthcare systems in co-managing multiple infectious disease threats as resources for monitoring and detecting, and conducting research on antimicrobial resistance have been compromised during the pandemic. The increased awareness of the importance of infectious diseases, clinical microbiology and infection control and lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic should be exploited to ensure that emergence of future infectious disease threats, including those related to AMR, are minimised. Harnessing the public understanding of the relevance of infectious diseases towards the long-term pandemic of AMR could have major implications for promoting good practices about the control of AMR transmission.

There is growing understanding that the environment plays an important role both in the transmission of antibiotic resistant pathogens and in their evolution. Accordingly, researchers and stakeholders world-wide seek to further explore the mechanisms and drivers involved, quantify risks and identify suitable interventions. There is a clear value in establishing research needs and coordinating efforts within and across nations in order to best tackle this global challenge. At an international workshop in late September 2017, scientists from 14 countries with expertise on the environmental dimensions of antibiotic resistance gathered to define critical knowledge gaps. Four key areas were identified where research is urgently needed: 1) the relative contributions of different sources of antibiotics and antibiotic resistant bacteria into the environment; 2) the role of the environment, and particularly anthropogenic inputs, in the evolution of resistance; 3) the overall human and animal health impacts caused by exposure to environmental resistant bacteria; and 4) the efficacy and feasibility of different technological, social, economic and behavioral interventions to mitigate environmental antibiotic resistance.

When animals move around interacting with the environment, the nervous system has to solve several tasks simultaneously in order to produce and control the movements - notably propulsion, posture, balance, and associated movements. Basic motor tasks are controlled by neuronal networks organized into central pattern generators (CPGs) and reflexes, located in the spinal cord and brainstem. The overall aim of this work has been to study how supraspinal descending control systems for locomotion, including control of movement direction, and postural control interact with each other, and with the spinal locomotor CPG in order to produce purposeful and economic movements. Locomotion and postural corrections were studied in the lamprey, a lower vertebrate, in which the reticulospinal (RS) system is responsible for sensori-motor integration and descending control. Different aspects of locomotor activity - initiation, termination, and regulation of the intensity of locomotion, as well as steering and maintenance of a proper posture - were reflected in the activity of RS neurons in intact, freely swimming lampreys. In vitro studies have shown that groups of RS neurons in the middle and posterior rhombencephalic reticular nuclei are activated by vestibular and visual stimuli. Here, the activity of these neurons was correlated to the direction of fictive turns in a novel in vitro preparation. Commands for lateral turns can be initiated in rhombencephalon and are mediated by ipsilateral descending spinal pathways. Asymmetric descending command signals, such as the commands for turning and postural corrections, are amplified by a system of crossed reciprocal inhibition in the spinal cord and phasically modulated by the locomotor activity. The alternating locomotor pattern is also dependent on crossed reciprocal inhibition between the two sides of the spinal cord. Crossing inhibitory neurons are subject to inhibition from a class of propriospinal neurons, the lateral interneurons (