Publications by authors named "Head J"

Background/objectives: This study examined the association between adherence to the Mediterranean dietary approaches to stop hypertension Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet, its components, and recurrent depressive symptoms (DepSs).

Methods: The analyses included 4824 participants (73% men, mean age = 61; SD = 5.9) from the British Whitehall II cohort study.

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Many European countries have increased retirement ages to address the challenge of population ageing. However, job strain which is the combination of high job demands and low job control may be an obstacle to extending the working lives of older workers. Job strain is associated with poor health and early work exit among older workers, but less is known about whether job strain impacts working life expectancy (WLE)-an increasingly employed summary measure capturing the length of working lives.

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  • Coccidioidomycosis is a fungal infection mainly transmitted through inhaling spores, but studying its airborne aspects has been difficult due to low recovery rates from air samples.
  • Researchers used uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) with air samplers to capture and analyze spores in eastern San Luis Obispo County, California, where the fungus is present in soil.
  • During September 2023, they conducted 41 flights and found fungal DNA in 2 out of 41 air samples, marking the highest airborne detection known, which could advance knowledge of fungal dispersal in challenging environments like dust storms and wildfires.
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Remote sensing observations have shown that the far side of the Moon (lunar farside) has different geology and rock composition to those of the nearside, including the abundances of potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus (collectively known as KREEP). The Chang'e-6 (CE-6) spacecraft collected samples from the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin on the farside and brought them to Earth. We used lead-lead and rubidium-strontium isotope systems to date low-titanium basalt in a CE-6 sample, finding a consistent age of 2830 (±5) million years.

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  • The study investigates how elementary school eligibility affects COVID-19 incidence among children, highlighting its potential implications for future epidemic responses.
  • Data was collected from California's pediatric COVID-19 cases between May 2020 and December 2022, focusing on children near the age threshold for school attendance.
  • Results showed that kindergarten-eligible children had significantly higher COVID-19 incidence rates compared to those just over the eligibility age, even after accounting for testing biases.
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Poor health is a key reason for early exit from the labour market. Few studies have explored how the health of local populations is related to occupational differences in employment outcomes among older people. Our study used data for England and Wales from the ONS Longitudinal Study linked with 2001 Census measures of the health of the older working age population at local authority level.

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Coccidioidomycosis, a fungal disease caused by soil-borne spp., exhibits pronounced seasonal transmission, with incidence in California typically peaking in the fall. However, the influence of climate on the timing and duration of transmission seasons remains poorly understood.

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Terrestrial carnivorans, with their diverse diets and unique adaptations such as the carnassial tooth, offer insights into the connections between functional traits and the climatic and environmental conditions they inhabit. They shed light on functional trait-environment relationships at the highest trophic levels across a broad range of environmental conditions. In this study, we evaluate the relationship between relative blade length (RBL) of the lower carnassial tooth, a key dietary adaptation among terrestrial carnivorans for slicing and grinding food items, and climate.

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  • * A study conducted in Carrizo Plain National Monument found that soil microbial communities, particularly in rodent burrows, showed a higher diversity and a significant association with the presence of the pathogen compared to surface soils.
  • * Results indicated that soil from rodent burrows had greater microbial diversity, suggesting that these environments may enhance the presence of the pathogen, challenging previous assumptions about microbial diversity and its relation to Coccidioidomycosis.
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Squamates have independently evolved an elongate, limb-reduced body form numerous times. This transition has been proposed to involve either changes to regulatory gene expression or downstream modification of target enhancers to produce a homogeneous, deregionalized axial skeleton. Analysis of vertebral morphology has suggested that regionalization is maintained in snake-like body forms, but morphological variation in the other primary component of the axial skeleton, the dorsal ribs, has not been previously examined.

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Background: The transition to retirement is a significant turning point in life, which may lead to changes in food habits.

Objective: To examine changes in red meat, fish, vegetables and fruit consumption during the retirement transition and whether these changes vary between sociodemographic groups.

Methods: The data were from the Whitehall II study, a cohort of 10 308 British civil servants aged 35-55 years at study induction (1985-1988).

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Background: Coccidioidomycosis, an emerging fungal disease in the western USA, exhibits seasonal patterns that are poorly understood, including periods of strong cyclicity, aseasonal intervals, and variation in seasonal timing that have been minimally characterized, and unexplained as to their causal factors. Coccidioidomycosis incidence has increased markedly in recent years, and our limited understanding of intra- and inter-annual seasonality has hindered the identification of important drivers of disease transmission, including climate conditions. In this study, we aim to characterize coccidioidomycosis seasonality in endemic regions of California and to estimate the relationship between drought conditions and coccidioidomycosis seasonal periodicity and timing.

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  • Coccidioidomycosis, also known as Valley fever, is a fungal infection linked to wet winters following drought periods, with a significant spike in cases seen in California in 2023 due to wetter conditions after a statewide drought from 2020-2022.
  • The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued alerts due to the anticipated rise in infections, leading to nearly 9,054 reported cases in 2023 and forecasts for continued high risk in 2024-2025.
  • An ensemble model predicts that California could see over 12,000 cases in 2024-2025, especially in regions like the Southern San Joaquin Valley and Southern Coast, highlighting the seasonal peak in cases expected
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Efforts to use transcriptomics for toxicity testing have classically relied on the assumption that chemicals consistently produce characteristic transcriptomic signatures that are reflective of their mechanism of action. However, the degree to which transcriptomic responses are conserved across different test methodologies has seldom been explored. With increasing regulatory demand for New Approach Methods (NAMs) that use alternatives to animal models and high-content approaches such as transcriptomics, this type of comparative analysis is needed.

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  • Scientists study how animals change to survive in different places, which is really important for understanding biology.
  • They looked at chimpanzees, our closest relatives, who live in many types of environments like rainforests and savannahs.
  • By examining genetic information from wild chimpanzees, they discovered that some chimps have adapted to fight off malaria in similar ways to humans, showing how important genetic diversity is for endangered animals.
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Water ice and other volatiles that accumulated in the Moon's polar regions are among the top priority targets for lunar exploration, due to their significances in both lunar geology and extraterrestrial resource utilization. Locating suitable landing sites and determining the provenance of sampled/measured surface materials are critical for future landed missions. Here, we map over 800 sites of plains terrains in the Moon's south polar region, with a total surface area of ~46,000 km.

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Human-induced environmental change has caused widespread loss of species that support important functions for ecosystems and society. For example, vertebrate scavengers contribute to the functional health of ecosystems and provide services to agricultural landscapes by removing carcasses and associated pests. Widespread extirpation of native Australian mammals since the arrival of Europeans in Australia has removed many scavenging species from landscapes, while scavenging mammals such as European red foxes () have been introduced.

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Health care workers experience high rates of burnout and psychiatric distress. A large health care system in the southwest United States developed a comprehensive mental health service model for employees. Services offered range from traditional benefits (eg, Employee Assistance Program), resiliency and well-being initiatives, and innovative technology solutions, to access to peer support services for professional practice issues.

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Importance: A SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was approved for adolescents aged 12 to 15 years on May 10, 2021, with approval for younger age groups following thereafter. The population level impact of the pediatric COVID-19 vaccination program has not yet been established.

Objective: To identify whether California's pediatric COVID-19 immunization program was associated with changes in pediatric COVID-19 incidence and hospitalizations.

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Background: The placement of an external ventricular drain (EVD) for the treatment of acute hydrocephalus is one of the most common life-saving procedures that neurosurgeons perform worldwide. There are many well-known complications associated with EVD placement, including tract hemorrhages, intra-parenchymal and subdural hemorrhages, infection, and catheter misplacement. Given the variety of complications associated with EVD placement and the inconsistent findings on the relationship of accuracy to complications, the present study reviewed short- and long-term complications related to EVD placement at our institution.

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The nationwide scale-up of evidence-based and evidence-informed interventions has been widely recognized as a crucial step in ending the HIV epidemic. Although the successful delivery of interventions may involve intensive expert training, technical assistance (TA), and dedicated funding, most organizations attempt to replicate interventions without access to focused expert guidance. Thus, there is a grave need for initiatives that meaningfully address HIV health disparities while addressing these inherent limitations.

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Introduction: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer, and despite rigorous research, patient prognosis remains poor. The characterization of sex-specific differences in incidence and overall survival (OS) of these patients has led to an investigation of the molecular mechanisms that may underlie this dimorphism.

Methods: We reviewed the published literature describing the gender specific differences in GBM Biology reported in the last ten years and summarized the available information that may point towards a patient-tailored GBM therapy.

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