Objectives-To investigate why sharing the bed with an infant is a not consistent risk factor for the sudden infant death syndrome in ethnic subgroups in New Zealand and to see if the risk of sudden infant death associated with this practice is related to other factors, particularly maternal smoking and alcohol consumption.Design-Nationwide case-control study. 0-44 to 2-18). Neither maternal alcohol consumption nor the thermal resistance of the infant's clothing and bedding interacted with bed sharing to increase the risk ofsudden infant death, and alcohol was not a risk factor by itself.Conclusion-Infant bed sharing is associated with a significantly raised risk of the sudden infant death syndrome, particularly among infants of mothers who smoke. The interaction between maternal smoking and bed sharing suggests that a mechanism involving passive smoking, rather than the previously proposed mechanisms of overlaying and hyperthermia, increases the risk of sudden infant death from bed sharing.

This paper presents benchmark (BMD) calculations and additional regression analyses of data from a study in which scores from 26 scholastic and psychological tests administered to 237 6- and 7-year-old New Zealand children were correlated with the mercury concentration in their mothers' hair during pregnancy. The original analyses of five test scores found an association between high prenatal mercury exposure and decreased test performance, using category variables for mercury exposure. Our regression analyses, which utilized the actual hair mercury level, did not find significant associations between mercury and children's test scores. However, this finding was highly influenced by a single child whose mother's mercury hair level (86 mg/kg) was more than four times that of any other mother. When that child was omitted, results were more indicative of a mercury effect and scores on six tests were significantly associated with the mothers' hair mercury level. BMDs calculated from five tests ranged from 32 to 73 mg/kg hair mercury, and corresponding BMDLs (95% lower limits on BMDs) ranged from 17 to 24 mg/kg. When the child with the highest mercury level was omitted, BMDs ranged from 13 to 21 mg/kg, and corresponding BMDLs ranged from 7.4 to 10 mg/kg.

We introduce a dataset of biological, ecological, conservation and legal information for every species and subspecies of Australian bird, 2056 taxa or populations in total. Version 1 contains 230 fields grouped under the following headings: Taxonomy & nomenclature, Phylogeny, Australian population status, Conservation status, Legal status, Distribution, Morphology, Habitat, Food, Behaviour, Breeding, Mobility and Climate metrics. It is envisaged that the dataset will be updated periodically with new data for existing fields and the addition of new fields. The dataset has already had, and will continue to have applications in Australian and international ornithology, especially those that require standard information for a large number of taxa.

This is an unusual article in that it brings together the perspectives of many on this journal's editorial board, around the issue of contending with COVID-19. Twenty statements showcase a range of thoughts and experiences, highlighting the differences and similarities in the way the pandemic is impacting on the educational practice of outdoor and environmental education. The future is not yet written, of course, so it is worth thinking about how the current moment may impact on the months and years to come. The aim of this article is to influence and support such thinking.

Outdoor education practice around the world occurs in diverse circumstances, environments and cultures. The application of outdoor education to specific cultural and environmental issues in particular places and communities has received little attention in research. While research in fields such as cultural geography has addressed the relationships between cultures, communities and geographical places, this is largely overlooked in outdoor education research. In this paper I draw on literature from cultural history and environmental history to explore how these disciplines might inform outdoor education research and pedagogy that addresses current cultural and environmental issues of specific communities and geographical places. With the aid of the rhizome metaphor for (re)structuring knowledge, I use examples from my practice in Australia to demonstrate how reading the landscape and the use of stories, or historical accounts, can assist outdoor educators and participants to probe and reflect on the relationships between personal experience and the complex cultural-ecological processes that have shaped the places in which we live and work.