Do executive functions and processing speed mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational achievement? Analysis of an observational birth cohort study.

Background: There are large and persistent social inequalities in children's educational attainment, with children from more socioeconomically disadvantaged families consistently having lower attainment. Despite this being widely reported, the mechanisms underlying the association between socioeconomic disadvantage and educational attainment are not well understood. It is important to understand the potential mechanisms by which socioeconomic disadvantage may impede on educational outcomes, as this knowledge could then be used to help target possible interventions to improve educational outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged children.

The Minnesota Critical Care Working Group 1: Monitoring and Coordinating Statewide Critical Care Surge Response in the COVID-19 Pandemic, March 2020 Through July 1, 2021.

Background: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and as part of the statewide health care coalition response, the Minnesota Critical Care Working Group (CCWG), composed of interprofessional leaders from the state's nine largest health systems, was established and entrusted to plan and coordinate critical care support for Minnesota from March 2020 through July 1, 2021.

Research Question: Can a statewide CCWG develop contingency and crisis-level surge strategies and indicators in response to the COVID-19 pandemic while evolving into a highly collaborative team?

Study Design And Methods: CCWG members (intensivists, ethicists, nurses, Minnesota Department of Health and Minnesota Hospital Association leaders) met by audio video conferencing as often as daily assessing COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 hospitalization data, developed surge indicators reflecting contingency vs crisis conditions, and planned responses collaboratively. A foundation of collaboration and teamwork developed which facilitated an effective statewide response.

The Minnesota Critical Care Working Group 2: Crisis Conditions During the COVID-19 Pandemic, July 2021 through March 2022.

Background: The Minnesota Statewide Healthcare Coordination Center requested that the Minnesota Critical Care Working Group (CCWG) and Ethics Working Group (EWG), comprising interprofessional leaders from Minnesota's 9 largest health systems, plan and coordinate critical care operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the fall 2021 surge.

Research Question: Can a statewide working group collaboratively analyze real-time evidence to identify crisis conditions and to engage state leadership to implement care processes?

Study Design And Methods: The CCWG and EWG met via videoconferencing during the severe surge of fall 2021 to analyze evidence and plan for potential crisis care conditions. Five sources of evidence informed their actions: group consensus on operating conditions, federal teletracking data, the Medical Operations Coordination Center (MOCC) patient placement data, and 2 surveys created and distributed to hospitals and health care professionals.

Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Dysfunction in People With Cancer: A Systematic Review.

Purpose: Cancer can be a source of significant psychological and physical stress. Prolonged stressful stimuli can influence the stress response, mediated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. However, there is limited literature investigating HPA axis function in patients with cancer.

Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning (RISE): Scalable online replications of key findings in infant cognitive development.

The current article describes the Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning, a battery intended to provide robust looking time measures of cognitive development that can be administered remotely to inform our understanding of individual developmental trajectories in typical and atypical populations, particularly infant siblings of autistic children. This battery was developed to inform our understanding of early cognitive and language development in infants who will later receive a diagnosis of autism. Using tasks that have been successfully implemented in lab-based paradigms, we included assessments of attention, memory, prediction, word recognition, numeracy, multimodal processing, and social evaluation.

Expanding Opportunities for Living Donation: Recommendations From the 2023 Santander Summit to Ensure Donor Protections, Informed Decision Making, and Equitable Access.

A strategic vision toward global convergence in transplantation must encourage and remove barriers to living organ donation and transplantation. Here, we discuss deliberations of a working group of the 2023 Santander Summit charged with formulating recommendations for the safe expansion of living donor kidney transplantation and living donor liver transplantation worldwide. Living donor kidney transplantation has grown to be the preferred treatment for advanced kidney failure.

Reinforcing Global Oversight of Organ Transplantation: Activity and Outcome Monitoring Through the Development of Registries.

Establishing transparency and oversight of organ transplantation by regulatory agencies is of paramount importance to assure ethical, legal, and clinically robust transplantation practices. Registries reporting activity and outcome data of the donor and recipient, including donor source (living or deceased), must be developed for each transplant and should be a mandatory requirement to achieve accreditation to perform transplant surgeries. Collected data for the living organ donor must include the nationality, the nature of their relationship with the recipient, and the complications encountered by living donors that result in prolonged morbidity or mortality.

Increased Pretransplant Inflammatory Biomarkers Predict Death With Function After Kidney Transplantation.

Background: Chronic systemic inflammation is associated with mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between pretransplant inflammatory biomarkers (growth differentiation factor-15 [GDF-15], interleukin-6 [IL-6], soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor-1, monokine induced by gamma interferon/chemokine [C-X-C motif] ligand 9 [MIG/CXCL9], monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, soluble FAS, tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-15, and interleukin-1β) and death with function (DWF) after kidney transplantation (KT).

Methods: We retrospectively measured inflammatory biomarker levels in serum collected up to 1 y before KT (time from blood draw to KT was 130 ± 110 d) in recipients transplanted between January 2006 and December 2018.

Racialized and Immigrant Status and the Pursuit of Living Donor Kidney Transplant - a Canadian Cohort Study.

Introduction: Both immigrant and racialized status may be associated with the pursuit of living donor kidney transplant (LDKT).

Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of a convenience cross-sectional sample of patients with kidney failure in Toronto, obtained from our "Comprehensive Psychosocial Research Data System" research database. The exposures included racialized, immigrant, and combined immigrant and racialized status (White nonimmigrant, racialized nonimmigrant, White immigrant and racialized immigrant).

National Attitudes Toward Living Kidney Donation in the United States: Results of a Public Opinion Survey.

Rationale & Objective: Understanding national attitudes about living kidney donation will enable us to identify and address existing disincentives to living kidney donation. We performed a national survey to describe living kidney donation perceptions, perceived factors that affect the willingness to donate, and analyzed differences by demographic subgroups.

Study Design: The survey items captured living kidney donation awareness, living kidney donation knowledge, willingness to donate, and barriers and facilitators to living kidney donation.

Does value-based prioritization at working memory enhance long-term memory?

Research has demonstrated that individuals can direct their attention to valuable information in both working memory and long-term memory tasks with observable effects on performance. However, it is currently unclear whether prioritising an item for a working memory task automatically translates into a boost at long-term memory. This was examined in two experiments using relatively short (250 ms per item; Experiment 1) and longer (500 ms per item; Experiment 2) encoding times.

Integrating multiscale and machine learning approaches towards the SAMPL9 log challenge.

The partition coefficient (log ) is an important physicochemical property that provides information regarding a molecule's pharmacokinetics, toxicity, and bioavailability. Methods to accurately predict the partition coefficient have the potential to accelerate drug design. In an effort to test current methods and explore new computational techniques, the statistical assessment of the modeling of proteins and ligands (SAMPL) has established a blind prediction challenge.

Unrecognized opportunities: The landscape of pediatric kidney-paired donation in the United States.

Background: Pediatric (age < 18 years) kidney transplant (KT) candidates face increasingly complex choices. The 2014 kidney allocation system nearly doubled wait times for pediatric recipients. Given longer wait times and new ways to optimize compatibility, more pediatric candidates may consider kidney-paired donation (KPD).

Utilizing Telenursing to Supplement Acute Care Nursing in an Era of Workforce Shortages: A Feasibility Pilot.

Hospitals are experiencing a nursing shortage crisis that is expected to worsen over the next decade. Acute care settings, which manage the care of very complex patients, need innovations that lessen nurses' workload burden while ensuring safe patient care and outcomes. Thus, a pilot study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of implementing a large-scale acute care telenurse program, where a hospital-employed telenurse would complete admission and discharge processes for hospitalized patients virtually.

Using a web platform for equitable distribution of COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies: a case study in resource allocation.

While medical countermeasures in COVID-19 have largely focused on vaccinations, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were early outpatient treatment options for COVID-positive patients. In Minnesota, a centralized access platform was developed to offer access to mAbs that linked over 31,000 patients to care during its operation. The website allowed patients, their representative, or providers to screen the patient for mAbs against Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) criteria and connect them with a treatment site if provisionally eligible.

Knowledge About Renal Transplantation Among African, Caribbean, and Black Canadian Patients With Advanced Kidney Failure.

Introduction: Variable transplant-related knowledge may contribute to inequitable access to living donor kidney transplant (LDKT). We compared transplant-related knowledge between African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) versus White Canadian patients with kidney failure using the Knowledge Assessment of Renal Transplantation (KART) questionnaire.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional cohort study.

Effect of a Novel Multicomponent Intervention to Improve Patient Access to Kidney Transplant and Living Kidney Donation: The EnAKT LKD Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) have the best chance for a longer and healthier life if they receive a kidney transplant. However, many barriers prevent patients from receiving a transplant.

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of a multicomponent intervention designed to target several barriers that prevent eligible patients from completing key steps toward receiving a kidney transplant.

Exploring techniques for encoding spoken instructions in working memory: a comparison of verbal rehearsal, motor imagery, self-enactment and action observation.

Encoding and recalling spoken instructions is subject to working memory capacity limits. Previous research suggests action-based encoding facilitates instruction recall, but has not directly compared benefits across different types of action-based techniques. The current study addressed this in two experiments with young adults.

Temporal trends in kidney paired donation in the United States: 2006-2021 UNOS/OPTN database analysis.

Kidney paired donation (KPD) is a major innovation that is changing the landscape of kidney transplantation in the United States. We used the 2006-2021 United Network for Organ Sharing data to examine trends over time. KPD is increasing, with 1 in 5 living donor kidney transplants (LDKTs) in 2021 facilitated by KPD.