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The floodplain wetlands of northern Victoria are crucial for conservation of biodiversity and the livelihoods of people. Extensive ecosystem degradation and recent extreme floods and droughts have highlighted the urgent need for more sustainable management. We draw on expertise in ecology, hydrology, climatology and governance to synthesise key knowledge and options for enhanced conservation of the floodplains. A key finding is the need for more flexible mechanisms for delivering water to the diverse array of wetlands. A key option is ‘relaxing constraints’ that involves agreements with selected landholders to enable pulses of environmental water to fill river channels and safely spill onto low-lying floodplain wetlands. This should improve conservation of biodiversity, better manage flood risk and support a diverse range of local agricultural and recreational industries. These options may aid Victorians to find better ways of managing the rich lands, waters and biota of the floodplains in the southern part of the Murray–Darling Basin.

Background New York City (NYC) was the US epicenter of the spring 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We present the seroprevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and correlates of seropositivity immediately after the first wave. Methods From a serosurvey of adult NYC residents (13 May to 21 July 2020), we calculated the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies stratified by participant demographics, symptom history, health status, and employment industry. We used multivariable regression models to assess associations between participant characteristics and seropositivity. Results The seroprevalence among 45 367 participants was 23.6% (95% confidence interval, 23.2%–24.0%). High seroprevalence (>30%) was observed among black and Hispanic individuals, people from high poverty neighborhoods, and people in healthcare or essential worker industry sectors. COVID-19 symptom history was associated with seropositivity (adjusted relative risk, 2.76; 95% confidence interval, 2.65–2.88). Other risk factors included sex, age, race/ethnicity, residential area, employment sector, working outside the home, contact with a COVID-19 case, obesity, and increasing numbers of household members. Conclusions Based on a large serosurvey in a single US jurisdiction, we estimate that just under one-quarter of NYC adults were infected in the first few months of the COVID-19 epidemic. Given disparities in infection risk, effective interventions for at-risk groups are needed during ongoing transmission.

Despite barriers to its use in many settings, opioid agonist therapy with methadone has become the standard of care for treating opioid (e.g. heroin) use disorder. Since people with opioid use disorders have an increased incidence of incarceration, we undertook the present study to evaluate the association between incarceration and methadone maintenance therapy among a cohort of injection drug users in a Canadian setting.A cohort of people who inject drugs was prospectively followed between May 1996 and May 2013 in Vancouver, Canada. We investigated the relationship between recent incarceration and methadone use using multivariate generalized estimating equation (GEE) logistic regression analysis.Overall, 2758 individuals were recruited during the study period and followed for a median of 64 (interquartile range: 23-106) months. After adjusting for various potential confounders in the multivariate GEE model, being incarcerated remained independently associated with a lower likelihood of having received methadone treatment (Adjusted Odds Ratio: 0.87, 95% confidence interval: 0.81-0.93).Our study demonstrates that incarceration was independently associated with a significantly lower likelihood of being on methadone. Given the role of methadone in reducing the harms of heroin use, including drug acquisitive crime and recidivism, these data suggest a need to scale-up methadone provision for incarcerated injection drug users.

Introduction and Aims Methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) is an evidence-based treatment for opioid addiction. While gender differences in MMT pharmacokinetics, drug use patterns and clinical profiles have been previously described, few studies have compared rates of MMT use among community-recruited samples of persons who inject drugs (PWID). Design and Methods The present study used prospective cohorts of PWID followed between May 1996 and May 2013 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. We investigated potential factors associated with time to methadone initiation using Cox proportional hazards modelling. Stratified analyses were used to examine for gender differences in rates of MMT enrolment. Results Overall, 1848 baseline methadone-naive PWID were included in the study, among whom 595 (32%) were female. In an adjusted model, male gender was independently associated with increased time to MMT initiation and an overall lower rate of enrolment [adjusted relative hazard = 0.74 (95% confidence interval: 0.65–0.85)]. Among both female and male PWID, Caucasian ethnicity and daily injection heroin use were associated with decreased time to methadone initiation, while in females, pregnancy was also associated with more rapid initiation. Discussion and Conclusions These data highlight gender differences in methadone use among a population of community-recruited PWID. While factors associated with methadone use were similar between genders, rates of use were lower among male PWID, highlighting the need to consider gender when designing strategies to improve recruitment into MMT. [Bach P, Milloy M-J, Nguyen P, Koehn J, Guillemi S, Kerr T, Wood E. Gender differences in access to methadone maintenance therapy in a Canadian setting. Drug Alcohol Rev 2015;34:503–7]

Antisaccades are known to show greater variable error and also a systematic hypometria in their amplitude compared with visually guided prosaccades. In this study, we examined whether their accuracy in direction (as opposed to amplitude) also showed a systematic error. We had human subjects perform prosaccades and antisaccades to goals located at a variety of polar angles. In the first experiment, subjects made prosaccades or antisaccades to one of eight equidistant locations in each block, whereas in the second, they made saccades to one of two equidistant locations per block. In the third, they made antisaccades to one of two locations at different distances but with the same polar angle in each block. Regardless of block design, the results consistently showed a saccadic systematic error, in that oblique antisaccades (but not prosaccades) requiring unequal vertical and horizontal vector components were deviated toward the 45° diagonal meridians. This finding could not be attributed to range effects in either Cartesian or polar coordinates. A perceptual origin of the diagonal effect is suggested by similar systematic errors in other studies of memory-guided manual reaching or perceptual estimation of direction, and may indicate a common spatial bias when there is uncertain information about spatial location.

Social responsibility and accountability can be important core values in medical education. At the University of British Columbia, undergraduate medical students engage in prison health community service-learning opportunities in regional correctional facilities.To describe the impact of prison health exposure on pre-clinical medical students, in-depth individual interviews were conducted with individuals who had participated in a prison health medical education program. All interviews were transcribed verbatim, and interpretive descriptive methods were used to inductively derive thematic findings to describe students' experiences.Major themes emerged as students reported how (1) exposure to incarcerated populations increases students' insight into issues that diverse marginalized sub-populations encounter; (2) positive interactions with the incarcerated individuals enhances relationship building; (3) collaboration reinforces teamwork skills and (4) community placements garner important learning opportunities within the medical school curriculum.Our findings demonstrated that pre-clinical exposure to incarcerated individuals and prison health education provided a unique setting for medical students to develop an increased sense of social responsibility and accountability.

Antisaccade errors are attributed to failure to inhibit the habitual prosaccade. We investigated whether the amount of information about the required response the patient has before the trial begins also contributes to error rate. Participants performed antisaccades in five conditions. The traditional design had two goals on the left and right horizontal meridians. In the second condition, stimulus-goal confusability between trials was eliminated by displacing one goal upward. In the third, hemifield uncertainty was eliminated by placing both goals in the same hemifield. In the fourth, goal uncertainty was eliminated by having only one goal, but interspersed with no-go trials. The fifth condition eliminated all uncertainty by having the same goal on every trial. Antisaccade error rate increased by 2% with each additional source of uncertainty, with the main effect being hemifield information, and a trend for stimulus-goal confusability. A control experiment for the effects of increasing angular separation between targets without changing these types of prior response information showed no effects on latency or error rate. We conclude that other factors besides prosaccade inhibition contribute to antisaccade error rates in traditional designs, possibly by modulating the strength of goal activation.

To try to answer that question, ‘Climate change and the aquatic environment: the future for fish and fisheries’ was the subject of a focused scientific symposium held in Melbourne in July by the Australian Society for Fish Biology. The symposium’s key findings, which have been published in a special issue of the journal, Marine and Freshwater Research, provide an up-to-date synthesis of the Australian situation.