The first year in formal schooling improves working memory and academic abilities.

Neurocognition and academic abilities during the period of 4 and 7 years of age are impacted by both the transition from kindergarten to primary school and age-related developmental processes. Here, we used a school cut-off design to tease apart the impact of formal schooling from age, on working memory (WM) function, vocabulary, and numeracy scores. We compared two groups of children with similar age, across two years: first-graders (FG), who were enrolled into primary school the year that they became eligible and kindergarteners (KG), who were deferred school entry until the following year.

Disentangling age and schooling effects on inhibitory control development: An fNIRS investigation.

Children show marked improvements in executive functioning (EF) between 4 and 7 years of age. In many societies, this time period coincides with the start of formal school education, in which children are required to follow rules in a structured environment, drawing heavily on EF processes such as inhibitory control. This study aimed to investigate the longitudinal development of two aspects of inhibitory control, namely response inhibition and response monitoring and their neural correlates.

Analysis of policy interventions to attract and retain nurse midwives in rural areas of Malawi: A discrete choice experiment.

Background: Inadequate and unequal distribution of health workers are significant barriers to provision of health services in Malawi, and challenges retaining health workers in rural areas have limited scale-up initiatives. This study therefore aims to estimate cost-effectiveness of monetary and non-monetary strategies in attracting and retaining nurse midwife technicians (NMTs) to rural areas of Malawi.

Methods: The study uses a discrete choice experiment (DCE) methodology to investigate importance of job characteristics, probability of uptake, and intervention costs.

Home assessment of visual working memory in pre-schoolers reveals associations between behaviour, brain activation and parent reports of life stress.

Visual working memory (VWM) is reliably predictive of fluid intelligence and academic achievements. The objective of the current study was to investigate individual differences in pre-schoolers' VWM processing by examining the association between behaviour, brain function and parent-reported measures related to the child's environment. We used a portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy system to record from the frontal and parietal cortices of 4.

Assessment of interventions to attract and retain health workers in rural Zambia: a discrete choice experiment.

Background: Workforce shortages, particularly in rural areas, limit the delivery of health services in Zambia. Policymakers and researchers co-created this study to identify potential non-monetary employment incentives and assess their cost-effectiveness to attract and retain public sector health workers to the rural areas of Zambia.

Methods: The study consisted of two key phases: a discrete choice experiment (DCE), preceded by a qualitative component to inform DCE questionnaire development.

Time to Blood Pressure Control Before Thrombolytic Therapy in Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke: Comparison of Labetalol, Nicardipine, and Hydralazine.

Background: Elevated blood pressure is common in patients with acute ischemic stroke. Thrombolytic therapy is contraindicated in patients with a systolic blood pressure greater than 185 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure greater than 110 mmHg. Elevated blood pressure can lead to a delay in thrombolytic therapy, which is associated with increased morbidity.

Intravenous Subdissociative-Dose Ketamine Versus Morphine for Analgesia in the Emergency Department: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Study Objective: We assess and compare the analgesic efficacy and safety of subdissociative intravenous-dose ketamine with morphine in emergency department (ED) patients.

Methods: This was a prospective, randomized, double-blind trial evaluating ED patients aged 18 to 55 years and experiencing moderate to severe acute abdominal, flank, or musculoskeletal pain, defined as a numeric rating scale score greater than or equal to 5. Patients were randomized to receive ketamine at 0.