Publications by authors named "JD Walker"

The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) was created by the Canadian federal government through its health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), in 2014, as a response to the G7 initiative to fight dementia. Two five-year funding cycles (2014-2019; 2019-2024) have occurred following peer review, and a third cycle (Phase 3) has just begun. A unique construct was mandated, consisting of 20 national teams in Phase I and 19 teams in Phase II (with research topics spanning from basic to clinical science to health resource systems) along with cross-cutting programs to support them.

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Mechanisms of computation in sensorimotor cortex must be flexible and robust to support skilled motor behavior. Patterns of neuronal coactivity emerge as a result of computational processes. Pairwise spike-time statistical relationships, across the population, can be summarized as a functional network (FN) which retains single-unit properties.

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As healthcare workers in palliative care, every day brings its share of awfulness and beauty, suffering and connection, meaning and cynicism. Without a way to support ourselves, we cannot help our patients, let alone one another. But how do we cope? Despite the unpredictability inherent in our work, we can discern certain patterns that offer an approach for dealing with these stressors.

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Introduction: In 2018, the World Health Organization recognized traditional healers as community stakeholders in dementia care. This scoping review aimed to summarize the existing dementia care literature regarding strategies for the integration of traditional healing in dementia care and the roles of traditional healers.

Methods: A group of Indigenous Elders from Northern Ontario, Canada, guided, reviewed, and validated the research process and findings.

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Introduction: Airway compromise is the third leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield. Most combat medics carry supraglottic airway (SGA) devices for airway management. However, exchanging an SGA device for a definitive airway can be challenging, especially in austere environments.

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Human p97 ATPase is crucial in various cellular processes, making it a target for inhibitors to treat cancers, neurological, and infectious diseases. Triazole allosteric p97 inhibitors have been demonstrated to match the efficacy of CB-5083, an ATP-competitive inhibitor, in cellular models. However, the mechanism is not well understood.

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Objectives: Anemia and iron deficiency in patients having cardiac surgery increases their perioperative risk. Nonanemic iron deficiency (NAID) in this group is less well-described. We aimed to investigate the incidence and outcomes of patients with NAID undergoing cardiac surgery.

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Background: Health assessment tools developed using mainstream or Western concepts have been widely used in clinical practice worldwide. However, even culturally adapted or culturally based tools may not be relevant in other social contexts if they are grounded in Western beliefs and perspectives. The application of mainstream assessment tools, when used in Indigenous populations, can lead to the inappropriate application of normative data and inaccurate or biased diagnosis of conditions as Indigenous concepts of health differ from Western biomedical concepts of health.

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In response to COVID-19, educators rapidly pivoted to new and innovative ways of delivering lecture material. The ability to host synchronous lectures on platforms like Zoom gave students continued access to classroom material in the face of an ongoing pandemic. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in exam scores between students attending a physiology class (PHSL3051) synchronously via Zoom or asynchronously by viewing recorded lectures posted after class.

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Background/objectives: CAN-THUMBS UP is designed as a comprehensive and innovative fully remote program to 1) develop an interactive and compelling online Brain Health Support Program intervention, with potential to positively influence dementia literacy, self-efficacy and lifestyle risk factors; 2) enroll and retain a community-dwelling Platform Trial Cohort of individuals at risk of dementia who will participate in the intervention; 3) support an open platform trial to test a variety of multidomain interventions that might further benefit individuals at risk of dementia. This manuscript presents the Brain Health Support Program Study protocol.

Design/setting: Twelve-month prospective multi-center longitudinal study to evaluate a fully remote web-based educational intervention.

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Introduction: The aim of our study was to assess the initial impact of COVID-19 on total publicly-funded direct healthcare costs and health services use in two Canadian provinces, Ontario and British Columbia (BC).

Methods: This retrospective repeated cross-sectional study used population-based administrative datasets, linked within each province, from January 1, 2018 to December 27, 2020. Interrupted time series analysis was used to estimate changes in the level and trends of weekly resource use and costs, with March 16-22, 2020 as the first pandemic week.

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Objectives: This study tested the association between neuroticism and six cognitive measures, and examined the potential mediating roles of social connection (social isolation and loneliness) among middle-aged and older adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was a secondary analysis of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) Comprehensive Cohort, a sample of Canadians aged 45-85 years at baseline. Respondents with data collected at the first follow-up, between 2015 and 2018, were included ( = 27,765).

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Indigenous Peoples' right to sovereignty forms the foundation for advocacy and actions toward greater Indigenous self-determination and control across a range of domains that impact Indigenous Peoples' communities and cultures. Declarations for sovereignty are rising throughout Indigenous communities and across diverse fields, including Network Sovereignty, Food Sovereignty, Energy Sovereignty, and Data Sovereignty. Indigenous Research Sovereignty draws in the sovereignty discourse of these initiatives to consider their applications to the broader research ecosystem.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to map the hepatitis C virus (HCV) care cascade for Status First Nations peoples in Ontario, identifying stages from diagnosis to treatment to inform better public health strategies.
  • A retrospective analysis of testing records from 1999 to 2018 shows significant gaps, as only 83% of those who tested positive for HCV antibody went on to get tested for HCV RNA, with only 42% initiating treatment.
  • The findings highlight that older individuals and those in rural areas were more likely to undergo further testing, pointing to demographic factors influencing HCV care progression.
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The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed a kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, at 23:14 UTC on 26 September 2022 as a planetary defence test. DART was the first hypervelocity impact experiment on an asteroid at size and velocity scales relevant to planetary defence, intended to validate kinetic impact as a means of asteroid deflection. Here we report a determination of the momentum transferred to an asteroid by kinetic impact.

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Background: COVID-19 imposed substantial health and economic burdens. Comprehensive population-based estimates of health care costs for COVID-19 are essential for planning and policy evaluation. We estimated publicly funded health care costs in 2 Canadian provinces during the pandemic's first wave.

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Objective: To evaluate immersive virtual reality's (IVR) effectiveness as a distraction in reducing perceived pain and anxiety among adults undergoing intravenous (IV) blood draw.

Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, we recruited adult patients 18-50 years of age scheduled for routine blood draws at the phlebotomy lab and randomized them into experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent IV blood draw with IVR, and the control group underwent IV blood draw with standard practice.

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Objective: Our primary objective was to evaluate how the Indigenous Healing and Seeking Safety (IHSS) model impacted residential addiction treatment program completion rates. Our secondary objective was to evaluate health service use 6 months before and 6 months after residential treatment for clients who attended the program before and after implementing IHSS.

Methods: We observed clients of the Benbowopka Residential Treatment before IHSS implementation (from April 2013 to March 31, 2016) and after IHSS implementation (from January 1, 2018 - March 31, 2020).

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Tephra is a unique volcanic product with an unparalleled role in understanding past eruptions, long-term behavior of volcanoes, and the effects of volcanism on climate and the environment. Tephra deposits also provide spatially widespread, high-resolution time-stratigraphic markers across a range of sedimentary settings and thus are used in numerous disciplines (e.g.

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First Nations in Ontario are building capacity to leverage health services data in Ontario to provide robust, First Nations-driven health evidence. Beyond providing evidence, population health research processes must involve diverse First Nations' perspectives, collective capacity building and translation of research findings into action through integrated and community engaged knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) approaches. Suggested ways include integrating stories and traditional knowledge, prioritizing gatherings and establishing an enduring commitment to action.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study compared DeepLabCut (DLC), a deep learning tool for motion capture, with XROMM, a specialized 3D X-ray system, to evaluate the accuracy of tracking limb movements in marmosets.
  • Using Anipose for analysis, the median error in tracking between DLC and XROMM was found to be very small (0.228 cm), which is only 2.0% of the range of motion, indicating high accuracy in the DLC method.
  • The results suggest that DLC and similar markerless tracking technologies can be useful for studying more natural behaviors in various research areas, including motor control in non-human primates.
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Objectives: First Nations people report high levels of wellness despite high rates of chronic illness. Our goal was to understand the factors associated with wellness among First Nations adults in Ontario who were considered frail.

Methods: Using the First Nations Regional Health Survey, we created a profile of First Nations adults (aged 45+) who were categorized as "frail" (weighted sample size = 8121).

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Intact, the skin typically serves as an effective barrier to the external world; however, once pathogens have breached this barrier via a wound, such as a tick bite, the surrounding tissues must recruit immune cells from the blood to neutralize the pathogen. With innate and adaptive immune systems being similar between the guinea pig and human systems, the ability of guinea pigs to show clinical signs of many infectious diseases, and the large size of guinea pigs relative to a murine model, the guinea pig is a valuable model for studying tick-borne and other pathogens that invade the skin. Here, we report a novel assay for assessing guinea pig leukocyte infiltration in the skin.

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