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Although methadone has been used in Canada for the treatment of opiate-dependent persons since 1959, information concerning its use in Canada is limited. Methadone treatment in Canada is discussed with respect to national and provincial drug laws, public and professional support for the treatment, patient characteristics, and the sources and types of illicit and licit opiates abused. The paper also reports on the results of a survey of the physicians in Canada who were authorized during 1981-82 to prescribe methadone to opiate-dependent persons. These physicians were asked to provide information on the number of patients they treated with methadone during the previous 12 months, their indication(s) for the use of methadone, the dosages used and duration of treatment, and the auxiliary treatments provided. Information concerning specific provincial methadone treatment programmes is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of tornadoes in North America occur in rural forested regions and often cause a massive volume of trees to fall down. As a result, the demand for documenting the tree damage in forests and research in estimating near-surface wind fields of tornadoes using forest damage have increased in the past years. However, excessive manual labor and time in identifying the damaged trees has been a challenge. Thus, a new method of identifying tree-fall patterns using image processing was developed. The method identifies downed trees in aerial photographs and determines the direction of the tree-fall. The leaves and stems of the fallen trees were identified and separated using an RGB color filter, and the median fall direction of the downed trees was determined using the Hough Transformation and the relative position between the leaf and stem pixels. The proposed method was applied to Alonsa, MB tornado in Canada, and the tree-fall directions of the tornado were identified. The manually and automatically identified tree-fall directions were compared and the error was assessed, in which 59% of the samples had less than a 20-degree difference and 73% had less than a 45-degree difference between the two methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The provision of care to pregnant persons and neonates must continue through pandemics. To maintain quality of care, while minimizing physical contact during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) pandemic, hospitals and international organizations issued recommendations on maternity and neonatal care delivery and restructuring of clinical and academic services. Early in the pandemic, recommendations relied on expert opinion, and offered a one-size-fits-all set of guidelines. Our aim was to examine these recommendations and provide the rationale and context to guide clinicians, administrators, educators, and researchers, on how to adapt maternity and neonatal services during the pandemic, regardless of jurisdiction., Method: Our initial database search used Medical subject headings and free-text search terms related to coronavirus infections, pregnancy and neonatology, and summarized relevant recommendations from international society guidelines. Subsequent targeted searches to December 30, 2020, included relevant publications in general medical and obstetric journals, and updated society recommendations., Results: We identified 846 titles and abstracts, of which 105 English-language publications fulfilled eligibility criteria and were included in our study. A multidisciplinary team representing clinicians from various disciplines, academics, administrators and training program directors critically appraised the literature to collate recommendations by multiple jurisdictions, including a quaternary care Canadian hospital, to provide context and rationale for viable options., Interpretation: There are different schools of thought regarding effective practices in obstetric and neonatal services. Our critical review presents the rationale to effectively modify services, based on the phase of the pandemic, the prevalence of infection in the population, and resource availability., (© 2022. The Author(s).)