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The linguistic abilities of children born preterm at 32 weeks' gestation or earlier at Kuopio University Hospital during 1984 to 1986 were evaluated during successive phases of a prospective study. The study protocol included the Rapid Automatic Naming test and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised at 9 years of age and a modified Stroop Color-Word test and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale - Revised at the age of 16 years. Fifty-one children born preterm (26 males, 25 females) and 51 age-matched and sex-matched term controls (26 males, 25 females) were studied at the age of 9 years. At the age of 16 years, 40 children born preterm (19 males, 21 females) and 31 term controls (14 males, 17 females) participated in the study. The children born preterm scored significantly lower in two naming tasks than the controls at the age of 9 years. However, there was no difference between the study groups in naming skills at the age of 16 years or in verbal IQ in either study phase. Maternal education level was not associated with naming skills. Thus, the consequences of preterm birth seem to be minor in relation to linguistic skills during school age and diminish by adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Preeclampsia and gestational diabetes mellitus share risk factors such as obesity and increased maternal age, which have become more prevalent in recent decades. We examined changes in the prevalence of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes between 2005 and 2018 in Denmark and Alberta, Canada, and investigated whether the observed trends can be explained by changes in maternal age, parity, multiple pregnancy, comorbidity, and body mass index (BMI) over time., Material and Methods: This study was a register-based cohort study conducted using data from the Danish National Health Registers and the provincial health registers of Alberta, Canada. We included in the study cohort all pregnancies in 2005-2018 resulting in live-born infants and used binomial regression to estimate mean annual increases in the prevalence of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes in the two populations across the study period, adjusted for maternal characteristics., Results: The study cohorts included 846 127 (Denmark) and 706 728 (Alberta) pregnancies. The prevalence of preeclampsia increased over the study period in Denmark (2.5% to 2.9%) and Alberta (1.7% to 2.5%), with mean annual increases of 0.03 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.02-0.04) and 0.06 (95% CI 0.05-0.07) percentage points, respectively. The prevalence of gestational diabetes also increased in Denmark (1.9% to 4.6%) and Alberta (3.9% to 9.2%), with average annual increases of 0.20 (95% CI 0.19-0.21) and 0.44 (95% CI 0.42-0.45) percentage points. Changes in the distributions of maternal age and BMI contributed to increases in the prevalence of both conditions but could not explain them entirely., Conclusions: The prevalence of both preeclampsia and gestational diabetes increased significantly from 2005 to 2018, which portends future increases in chronic disease rates among affected women. Increasing demand for long-term follow up and care will amplify the existing pressure on healthcare systems., (© 2023 The Authors. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Federation of Societies of Obstetrics and Gynecology (NFOG).)

Efficient and economical performance evaluation of pilots has become critical to the aviation industry. With the development of virtual reality (VR) and the combination of eye-tracking technology, solutions to meet these needs are becoming a reality. Previous studies have explored VR-based flight simulators, focusing mainly on technology validation and flight training. The current study developed a new VR flight simulator to evaluate pilots' flight performance based on eye movement and flight indicators in a 3D immersive scene. During the experiment, 46 participants were recruited: 23 professional pilots and 23 college students without flight experience. The experiment results showed significant differences in flight performance between participants with and without flight experience, the former being higher than the latter. In contrast, those with flight experience showed more structured and efficient eye-movement patterns. These results of the differentiation of flight performance demonstrate the validity of the current VR flight simulator as a flight performance assessment method. The different eye-movement patterns with flight experience provide the basis for future flight selection. However, this VR-based flight simulator has shortcomings like motion feedback compared to traditional flight simulators. This flight simulator platform is highly flexible except for the apparent low cost. It can meet the diverse needs of researchers (e.g., measuring situation awareness, VR sickness, and workload by adding relevant scales).

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected various aspects of life, at different levels and in different countries on almost every continent. In response, many countries have closed their borders and imposed lockdown policies, possibly bringing benefits to people's health with significantly less emission from air pollutants. Currently, most studies or reports are based on local observations at the city or country level. There remains a lack of systematic understanding of the impacts of different lockdown policies on the air quality from a global perspective. This study investigates the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic towards global air quality through examining global nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) dynamics from satellite observations between 1 January and 30 April 2020. We used the Apriori algorithm, an unsupervised machine learning method, to investigate the association among confirmed cases of COVID-19, NO 2 column density, and the lockdown policies in 187 countries. The findings based on weekly data revealed that countries with new cases adopted various lockdown policies to stop or prevent the virus from spreading whereas those without tended to adopt a wait-and-see attitude without enforcing lockdown policies. Interestingly, decreasing NO 2 concentration due to lockdown was associated with international travel controls but not with public transport closure. Increasing NO 2 concentration was associated with the "business as usual" strategy as evident from North America and Europe during the early days of COVID-19 outbreak (late January to early February 2020), as well as in recent days (in late April) after many countries have started to resume economic activities. This study enriches our understanding of the heterogeneous patterns of global associations among the COVID-19 spreading, lockdown policies and their environmental impacts on NO 2 dynamics., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Background: In 2006, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services incorporated the requirement for a Medication Therapy Management Program (MTMP) for individuals with Part D coverage to ensure that drug regimens provide optimal therapeutic outcomes through improved medication use, thereby reducing adverse drug events., Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of an MTMP implemented for Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug members enrolled with Health Alliance Plan (HAP) during 2006 and 2007., Methods: Patient eligibility for MTMP was searched electronically. Clinical pharmacists researched medication histories and adherence and, through telephone contact, ascertained the patients' healthcare goals and needs. A patient-centered pharmacotherapy plan was created and implemented collaboratively with the patient's physician(s). To ensure that therapy goals were met, pharmacists performed follow-up interventions. Clinical outcomes and cost savings were compared for MTMP enrollees versus those declining enrollment., Results: Average enrollment rate for the MTMP was 20% for 2006 and 2007. Nearly 60% of interventions involved changing therapy to improve efficacy and greater than 40% involved changing therapy to improve safety. Analysis of 2006 data revealed an overall improvement in electronically measurable clinical outcomes for MTMP enrollees versus individuals who declined enrollment, including a trend toward improved adherence to drug therapy for heart failure, insulin use, and a significant reduction in gastrointestinal bleeds (p = 0.001). Cost-savings analysis indicated a greater reduction in total prescription per member per month costs ($PMPM) of 17.2% for MTMP enrollees versus a 7% reduction for those who declined MTMP (p = 0.001). Patients who enrolled into the 2006 MTMP also saw a sustained positive effect in lowered $PMPM for prescription drugs in 2007., Conclusions: The HAP MTMP, conducted through telephone contacts, produced positive trends in improving clinical outcomes, reductions in pharmacy costs, and sustained pharmacy cost savings for patients who enrolled in the MTMP compared with patients who declined enrollment.

In this longitudinal study the development of preterm and control children was followed from infancy until adolescence. School performance at the age of 16 in subjects born very preterm with a gestational age (GA) of

The working memory functions and processing speed of 35 adolescents born preterm (< or = 32 weeks of gestation) and those of 31 control adolescents were assessed at the age of 16 years. All study participants were free from major disabilities. There were no statistically significant differences in verbal IQ between the study groups. Adolescents born preterm performed less well in complex spatial span compared to their peers born full term, even when verbal IQ and processing speed were allowed to covary. Both groups performed equally well in other working memory tasks and processing speed. Gestational age was the primary contributor to spatial span performance. These results indicate a minor spatial working memory deficit in preterm born adolescents without major disability and with normal cognitive capacity. Our results are encouraging and indicate only minor neuropsychological consequences due to very preterm birth.

Purpose: In prematurely born population, a cascade of events from initial injury in the developing brain to morbidity may be followed. The aim of our study was to assess seizures in prematurely born children from birth up to 16 years and to evaluate the contribution of different seizures, and of neurological dysfunction to the seizure outcome., Methods: Pre- and neonatal data and data from neurodevelopmental examination at 5 years of 60 prospectively followed children born at or before 32 weeks of gestation, and of 60 matched term controls from the 2 year birth cohort were available from earlier phases of the study. Later seizure data were obtained from questionnaires at 5, 9, and 16 years, and from hospital records and parent interviews., Results: In the preterm group, 16 children (27%) exhibited neonatal seizures, 10 children (17%) had seizures during febrile illness and 5 children had epilepsy. Eight children had only febrile seizures, and 3 of these had both multiple simple and complex febrile seizures and neurodevelopmental dysfunction. None of the 8 children had experienced neonatal seizures, 6 had a positive family history of seizures, but none developed epilepsy. The children with epilepsy had CP and neurocognitive problems, and all but one had experienced neonatal seizures; two of them had also had fever-induced epileptic seizures. In controls 3 children (5%) had simple febrile seizures., Conclusion: Children born very preterm have increased rate of febrile seizures compared to the controls. However, no cascade from initial injury via febrile seizures to epilepsy could be shown during the follow-up of 16 years. Symptomatic epilepsy in prematurely born children is characterised by neonatal seizures, major neurological disabilities and early onset of epilepsy.

Objective: The aim of our study was to examine the role of brain activity related to stimulus evaluation processes in distractibility by analyzing the P3 event-related potential., Methods: We studied the P3 response to target stimuli at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a two-tone auditory oddball task in easily distractible (n = 16) and non-distractible (n = 16) adolescents., Results: Easily distractible adolescents showed enhanced frontal and reduced parietal P3 amplitude across the blocks relative to non-distractible adolescents. Also, the usual decline in P3 amplitude at the end of the task was significantly larger in distractible than in non-distractible adolescents., Conclusions: These results suggests that the P3 effects are not limited to the neuropsychiatric disorders, and that increased distractibility may be characterized by reduced amount of resources allocated to the task with continued testing., Significance: The results of this study contribute to elucidation of the functional basis of distractibility.

Objective: The aim of our study was to examine the role of brain activity related to orienting in distractibility., Methods: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to intermittently presented, non-attended trains of identical auditory stimuli in otherwise healthy but easily distractible (n=16) and non-distractible (n=16) 15-to-16 year old adolescents., Results: In easily distractible adolescents, the first tone in each train elicited a significantly larger N1 response than in non-distractible adolescents. A later positivity in the P3 latency range, which may be correlated with the posterior part of the orienting-related P3, was also significantly larger in distractible than in non-distractible adolescents., Conclusions: The findings of this study suggests that the susceptibility to distraction in adolescence is characterized by abnormally strong orienting response as indexed by enhanced N1 component, and that distractible adolescents allocate proportionately more attentional resources to the irrelevant stimuli as indexed by larger parietal P3 amplitude to the first stimulus of each train., Significance: The results of this study contribute to elucidation of the functional basis of distractibility.

The P300 event-related potential (ERP) was studied at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of an auditory stimulus discrimination task in 70 normal 9-year-old children. Easily distractible children showed frontally a short-latency P300 response to target stimuli throughout the task, whereas in the non-distractible children the corresponding response was distinctly smaller and also showed a tendency to decrease in size towards the end of the task. The short-latency frontal P300 response reflects activation of the brain's orienting networks, and it normally decreases in size when stimuli lose their 'novelty value' with stimulus repetition. Persistent frontal P300 suggest that distractible children continued to show enhanced orienting to stimuli that should have already been well encoded and/or categorized.

Event-related potentials were recorded in response to intermittently presented, non-attended trains of identical auditory stimuli in healthy 9-year-old children. In abnormally distractible children (n =24), the first tone in each train elicited a significantly larger N1 vertex response than in the non-distractible children (n 24), suggesting that increased distractibility may be associated with an abnormally strong cerebral orienting towards non-attended stimuli. A later negativity at around 300 ms, which increases in amplitude with stimulus repetition and may thus reflect the building up of a functional neuronal representation of the stimulus properties, was significantly smaller in the distractible than in the non-distractible children. These findings demonstrate that event-related potential measures may be useful in helping to understand the information processing found in distractible children.

We compared event-related responses (ERPs) to non-attended frequent and intermittent auditory input in school-aged children and in young adults. In adults, both inputs elicited prominent auditory N100 responses at vertex. In children, intermittent stimulation evoked vertex responses with similar latency and refractoriness, whereas frequently delivered identical tones evoked responses on average at 240 ms. Sensitization of a separate neuronal population at 260-300 ms was obvious during intermittent stimulation in children. The dual behaviour, simultaneous 'habituation' of one neuronal population response and sensitization of another, may reflect the process of redirecting the attention and setting up a neuronal model. Furthermore, results suggest that a simplistic interpretation of developmental ERPs in which shortening of latencies represents maturation is insufficient.

The effects of dichloromethylene bisphosphonate (clodronate) on the composition of bone mineral, morphology and histology of a long bone with an artificial femoral fracture were studied in a 22 week experiment. Two hundred twenty-four female rats were allocated to dose groups of 0, 3, 10, and 30 mg/kg clodronate daily subcutaneously. Bone calcium, phosphorus and magnesium concentrations remained stable and fluoride concentration rose with time. There were no statistical differences between different groups. Clodronate did not alter the histology of the callus nor delayed the healing of the fracture. It caused mild to moderate prominence of the metaphyseal area in the fractured bone in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Serum osteocalcin levels were lowered in the treated animals dose-dependently. Other serological as well as haematological values were within normal range. Clodronate seems in this experimental arrangement to be a safe agent to administer in different pathological conditions of bone even when they are complicated by fractures of long bones.