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Predictors Of School Weapon Carrying Among Adolescents, Jonathan Adams Jan 2019

Predictors Of School Weapon Carrying Among Adolescents, Jonathan Adams

All ETDs from UAB

The presence of weapons threatens the safety of all individuals on school grounds. Emergent research suggests factors linked to school weapon carrying may stem from both within and outside the school environment; however, few efforts have been made to identify a comprehensive set of risk and protective factors associated with school weapon carrying. To address this gap, the first manuscript serves as a comprehensive, systematic review of variables associated with higher or lower likelihood an adolescent will carry weapons to school. Results indicated higher rates of weapon carrying among individuals who are male, sexual minority, children of single parents; exhibit …


Deciphering The Roles Of Hopd1 In Carbon Metabolism During Pathogen Infection, Yali Sun Jan 2019

Deciphering The Roles Of Hopd1 In Carbon Metabolism During Pathogen Infection, Yali Sun

All ETDs from UAB

Plants are equipped with various immune responses including MAMP-triggered immunity (MTI) and effector-triggered immunity (ETI) to fight against pathogens, while virulent pathogens release virulent proteins (effectors) and phytotoxins to compete with host immune responses. Comprehensively, plant-pathogen interactions involve multi- layered and highly coordinated processes, and dynamic regulation at both transcriptional and translational levels plays a pivotal role in plant defense. For example, NPR1, a key immune regulator, is regulated by hosts and manipulated by pathogens at different levels during different stages of plant-pathogen interaction. However, besides the competition over immune responses, bacterial pathogens also need to gain nutrients from host …


Emergence Of Restricted Repetitive Behaviors In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, Helen Root Jan 2019

Emergence Of Restricted Repetitive Behaviors In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, Helen Root

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Genetic disorders are ideal populations through which to study the development of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD; Moss, Richards, Nelson & Oliver, 2012). Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) is a particularly compelling population due to the high prevalence of ASD and prenatal diagnostic ability (Jeste, Wu, Senturk, Varcin, McCarthy, Shimzu, ScM, Vogel-Farley, Sahin & Nelson, 2014; McDonald, Varcin, Bhatt, Wu, Sahin, Nelson & Jeste, 2017; Sundberg & Sahin, 2015). However, findings related to the two core symptom domains of ASD within TSC are mixed, with little research examining restricted repetitive behaviors (RRBs). The current study aimed to define the presence and profile …


The Relationship Between Cortical Excitability And Neuropsychological Functioning In Patients With Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsies (Iges), Lauren Bolden Jan 2019

The Relationship Between Cortical Excitability And Neuropsychological Functioning In Patients With Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsies (Iges), Lauren Bolden

All ETDs from UAB

Recent advances in neurostimulation and neuromodulation techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), may offer alternative treatment options to patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsies (IGEs). In a previous study, we utilized TMS to demonstrate a relationship between increased cortical excitability (i.e. hyperexcitability), attentional dysfunction, and mood disturbance in a sample of healthy adults. In general, patients with IGEs are found to exhibit cortical hyperexcitability, cognitive dysfunction, and mood problems; however, a relationship between these variables in IGEs has not yet been investigated. Importantly, patients with treatment-resistant IGEs (trIGEs) are shown to demonstrate greater cortical excitability, cognitive deficits, and mood problems …


Tensor Decompositions And Rank Approximation Of Tensors With Applications, Ramin Goudarzi Karim Jan 2019

Tensor Decompositions And Rank Approximation Of Tensors With Applications, Ramin Goudarzi Karim

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Tensor decompositions are higher-order analogues of matrix decompositions which have applications in data analysis, signal processing, machine learning and data mining. One of the most challenging problems in the tensor decomposition area is to approximate the rank of a given tensor. Unlike the matrix case there is no simple formula to bound the rank of a tensor. In fact, finding the exact rank of a tensor is an NP hard problem. In this thesis we formulate the tensor rank estimation of a tensor as an optimization problem and estimate the rank via $\ell_1$ minimization. We propose a numerical iterative method …


Self-Tracking Practices: The Roles Of Social Contexts And Chronic Conditions, Aowen Zhu Jan 2019

Self-Tracking Practices: The Roles Of Social Contexts And Chronic Conditions, Aowen Zhu

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The rapid development of mobile health (mHealth) technologies is propelled by the culture of disease prevention and management. Smartphone applications and wearable devices provide valuable personal data for self enhancement. In addition to health promotion, people with chronic conditions are using apps and devices to monitor symptoms and behaviors. There is great potential for self-tracking practices to reduce health care cost and improve population health. However, the emphasis on personal responsibility of individuals’ health may hinder the long-term effectiveness of self-tracking practices. The purpose of the study is to examine the associations between social contexts and self-tracking practices, chronic health …


Inverse Problems, Regularization And Its Applications, Abinash Nayak Jan 2019

Inverse Problems, Regularization And Its Applications, Abinash Nayak

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Inverse problems arise in a wide spectrum of applications in fields ranging from engineering to scientific computation. Connected with the rise of interest in inverse problems is the development and analysis of regularization methods, such as truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD), Tikhonov regularization or iterative regularization methods (like Landerweb iterations), which are a necessity in most inverse problems due to their ill-posedness. TSVD can be used when dealing with (small) finite dimensional linear problems, but is computationally very expensive, and sometimes even unfeasible, for large scale linear problems or nonlinear problems. In such scenarios, Tikhonov regularization is an attractive alternative, …


Biopsychosocial Correlates Of Pain In Youth With Eosinophilic Esophagitis: A Comparison To Other Pediatric Patients, Mary Kenna Lynch Jan 2019

Biopsychosocial Correlates Of Pain In Youth With Eosinophilic Esophagitis: A Comparison To Other Pediatric Patients, Mary Kenna Lynch

All ETDs from UAB

EoE is a chronic, clinico-pathological, esophageal disease with symptoms that include dysphagia, reflux, vomiting, feeding aversion, and epigastric pain. Diagnosis requires clinical symptom presentation and histologic findings of eosinophil-predominant inflammation of the esophagus. While the pediatric patient’s epigastric pain is predictive of their quality of life, little is known about their pain experience. Through two studies, the pain experience, sleep quality, and internalizing symptoms of youth with Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE) have been examined. Through individually evaluating each of these factors as well as testing their relations with each other, the model proposed by Lynch and colleagues (2015) to understand the …


An Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Study Of The Magnesium Acceptor In Gallium Nitride In Different Crystal Field Environments, Ustun Robert Sunay Jan 2019

An Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Study Of The Magnesium Acceptor In Gallium Nitride In Different Crystal Field Environments, Ustun Robert Sunay

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Non-uniform strain phenomena localized to Mg acceptor sites were investigated in Mg-doped GaN single crystals using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. Samples in this study were grown either as µm thick thin film or mm thick free standing samples with the Mg concentration ranging from 3 150 x1018 cm-3. In all samples, the Mg related EPR signal was observed but the g-factor, intensity, and lineshape anisotropy characteristics varied significantly depending on the magnitude of the bi axial crystal field Δx local to the Mg acceptor. By modelling the Mg acceptor as basal atomic 2p orbitals, the angular dependent intensity could …


Unintentional Childhood Injuries In Rural Uganda: The Role Of Sibling Supervision And The Potential For Behavior Change Through Classroom-Based Instruction, Marissa Swanson Jan 2019

Unintentional Childhood Injuries In Rural Uganda: The Role Of Sibling Supervision And The Potential For Behavior Change Through Classroom-Based Instruction, Marissa Swanson

All ETDs from UAB

Objective: Unintentional childhood injury is a significant global health burden particularly in low and middle income countries (LMIC). Effective supervision can reduce risk of injury to supervisees. Frequently, older siblings assist in supervising younger siblings, but may not be as effective as adult caregivers at preventing supervisee injury. The current investigation had three primary objectives: 1) Assess Ugandan adult caregivers’ self-reported expectations for children to provide sibling supervision; 2) Assess sixth-grade students’ self-reported experiences providing supervision; 3) Determine whether students’ supervision knowledge and skill improve through participation in the Super Siblings program, a novel classroom-based, culturally-adapted intervention. Methods: Adult caregivers …


Workplace Bullying Attitudes And Opinions In Local Government Employees, Regan Gaskin Jan 2019

Workplace Bullying Attitudes And Opinions In Local Government Employees, Regan Gaskin

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Bullying is an issue that can affect children, adolescents, and adults (Gould, 2014; Schmidt, 2017). When bullying occurs in the workplace, it causes difficulty not only for victims, but for witnesses, families, and the organizations (Leymann, 1992). Workplace bullying has been defined as the “repeated mistreatment; abusive conduct that is: threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, work sabotage, or verbal abuse” (Namie, 2014). An estimated 60.3 million US workers are affected by workplace bullying, and 20 percent are victims (Namie, 2017). Workplace bullying research in the United States has focused more on the private sector, and to the author’s knowledge, there is …


The Relationship Of Bedside Assessment Of Orientation And Cognition To Treatment Outcome In Moderate To Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Growth Curve Analysis, Amber Marie Fahey Jan 2019

The Relationship Of Bedside Assessment Of Orientation And Cognition To Treatment Outcome In Moderate To Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Growth Curve Analysis, Amber Marie Fahey

All ETDs from UAB

Disorientation and cognitive impairment are commonly experienced in acute moderate to severe TBI patients and deficits early in recovery are predictive of worse long-term outcome. Hence, tracking recovery over time is a significant aspect of rehabilitation research. The Orientation-Log (O-log) and Cognition-Log (Cog-log) are important clinical measures used to monitor cognitive progress during treatment and previous research has shown them to be predictive of long-term outcome. This study used two-level growth curve modeling to, 1) determine the growth trajectory of orientation and cognition in persons with moderate to severe TBI in acute rehabilitation, as determined by the O-log and Cog-log, …


Utilization Of The Zebrafish Model System To Predict Effects Of Dietary Lipid Composition On Human Health, Lauren Adele Fowler Jan 2019

Utilization Of The Zebrafish Model System To Predict Effects Of Dietary Lipid Composition On Human Health, Lauren Adele Fowler

All ETDs from UAB

Obesity is a disease that encompasses the interaction of both genetics and life-style factors, and the pathology behind its development remains unclear. Specifically, defining the influence of dietary lipid intake on adiposity and metabolic health continues to be a fundamental challenge, and the use of animal models will be required to gain a full understanding of the processes contributing to diet-induced obesity in humans. The zebrafish Danio rerio has emerged as a powerful model system to study diet-induced obesity and metabolic disease in humans, while simultaneously offering multiple advantages over rodent models. This dissertation addresses multiple aspects regarding the use …


Rituals Of Reconciliation: The Use Of Peaceful Interactions To Repair Relationships, Sheila Renee Gainer Jan 2019

Rituals Of Reconciliation: The Use Of Peaceful Interactions To Repair Relationships, Sheila Renee Gainer

All ETDs from UAB

Reconciliation is the process by which social animals maintain valuable social relationships. It has been documented in many species including humans and nonhuman primates. While evidence of rituals has been seen in other species, the primary aim of this research is to explore how ritual behaviors are interconnected to human acts of reconciliation. Rituals are habitual activities closely linked to important events and reaffirm the identity of those who practice them as a group or a society. They are found in every society, culture and religion. In this study, rituals specifically related to reconciliation were exhibited in 27 of 138 …


An Investigation Of Histocompatibility Testing And Mhc Class I In Xenotransplantation, Gregory Ryan Martens Jan 2019

An Investigation Of Histocompatibility Testing And Mhc Class I In Xenotransplantation, Gregory Ryan Martens

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In the United States, hundreds of thousands of patients suffer from end-stage organ failure or terminal diseases without the option of a life-saving transplant because of severe organ shortages. Xenotransplantation offers a possible solution by using genetically engineered pigs as organ donors. Application of pig-to-human organ transplantation has been limited by antibody-mediated rejection (AMR), but recent genetic engineering advances have eliminated pig glycan xenoantigens and dramatically reduced antibody binding. In human-to-human transplantation, allotransplantation, AMR is prevented by pretransplant screening donors and recipients. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC), class I and II, are primary targets for antibodies and may also bind …


Transition Into Adulthood: Cannabis Use And Mental Health, Katie Mcintyre Jan 2019

Transition Into Adulthood: Cannabis Use And Mental Health, Katie Mcintyre

All ETDs from UAB

The US is currently experiencing sweeping changes in the legal status of cannabis, the most common illicit drug used in America. Due to its classification as a Schedule I substance we know very little about how cannabis use impacts mental health since illicit drugs are not legally allowed to be researched in a laboratory setting. The current research on cannabis use (CU) and mental health (MH) is expansive and conflicting. One side of the debate suggests CU in adolescence has a direct effect on MH, the other side suggests CU could be an indirect coping mechanism of poor MH. One …


The Benefit Of Resilience: Examining The Roles Of Family Resilience And Parental Education In Child Anxiety, Bria Kathryn Morgan Jan 2019

The Benefit Of Resilience: Examining The Roles Of Family Resilience And Parental Education In Child Anxiety, Bria Kathryn Morgan

All ETDs from UAB

Extensive literature addresses the associations between parental education and children’s mental health outcomes; however, the role of parental education and family resilience in child anxiety is unclear. The purpose of this study is to obtain a greater understanding of the role of parental education in child anxiety. Additionally, the study aims to investigate the role and potential varying effects of family resilience. Building upon Bowen’s Family Systems Theory and Walsh’s Systems Theory of Family Resilience, I hypothesize that parental education will be negatively associated with child anxiety and that family resilience will be negatively associated with child anxiety. I also …


Neurocognition In Patients With Primary Dystonia, Lindsay Niccolai Jan 2019

Neurocognition In Patients With Primary Dystonia, Lindsay Niccolai

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Dystonia is defined as involuntary, sustained muscle contractions often causing twisting and repetitive movements. While dystonia is classified as a movement disorder with marked motor disturbance, there are also non-motor features associated with this disorder such as psychiatric, sensory, and neurocognitive deficits. This dissertation research focuses on the neurocognitive deficits found in patients with primary dystonia. Prior studies examining cognition in primary dystonia have often had the limitations of having small samples and lacking control groups. In addition, cognition is often assessed in deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgical candidacy evaluations, but neurocognitive deficits have not been studied as a predictor …


Automating Personal Safety Among Different Age Groups, Jayun Patel Jan 2019

Automating Personal Safety Among Different Age Groups, Jayun Patel

All ETDs from UAB

Personal Safety has always been crucial to one’s life. Many different threats are faced by people in their day to day lives. These threats differ with different age groups that affect their health and well being. Different threats affect people, which include birth defects, falls, drowning, health problems, abuse, suicide, homicide, and sexual violence [39]. Many other threats occur every day but these threats are the common threats that are faced by most of the people at different ages. These threats can affect the victims in terms of the health of the person, and the physical and mental well being …


The Weight Of Social Relationships: Social Network Analysis In An Adult Weight Loss Program, Alena Borgatti Jan 2019

The Weight Of Social Relationships: Social Network Analysis In An Adult Weight Loss Program, Alena Borgatti

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Adult behavioral obesity interventions often show improved attendance and weight loss when delivered in a group, as opposed to individual, therapy format. However, research on the exact mechanisms through which group therapy confers additional weight loss is lacking. Pediatric obesity interventions have recently begun to utilize social network analysis (SNA) to identify structural ties that may improve adherence and weight loss; however, this research is limited and has yet to be replicated in an adult weight loss program. The current study is the first to evaluate social networks in an adult behavioral weight loss intervention. Four weight loss groups were …


Social Support And Self-Care Efficacy As Mediators Of Racial Disparities In Diabetes Health In Older Adults, Wesley Browning Jan 2019

Social Support And Self-Care Efficacy As Mediators Of Racial Disparities In Diabetes Health In Older Adults, Wesley Browning

All ETDs from UAB

Diabetes is a health problem that affects millions of Americans annually, and Black Americans have a higher prevalence with more complications than White Americans. A disparity exists between Black and White older adults living with diabetes in distress related to symptoms, treatment, and complications associated with the disease. Additionally, there are differences in levels of performing diabetes self-care behaviors between Blacks and Whites. One series of factors that may predict better diabetes self-care and diabetes distress in older adults are self-care efficacy and components of social support. This study used linear regression models to predict racial differences between Blacks and …


Prevalence Of Drugs In Blood Alcohol Concentrations Above Versus Below 0.08% In Alabama Driving Under The Influence Cases, Charity Buggs Jan 2019

Prevalence Of Drugs In Blood Alcohol Concentrations Above Versus Below 0.08% In Alabama Driving Under The Influence Cases, Charity Buggs

All ETDs from UAB

Driving under the influence of drugs combined with alcohol has become an increasing problem in the United States. When a person provides a breath test that results in less than the 0.08% per se limit, their driving may still be impaired from drug use. Over the past decade, more blood samples from DUI cases involving motor vehicle crashes have tested positive for drugs than for alcohol. Cases with previously analyzed blood samples were taken from the Laboratory Information Management System at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for statistical analysis. The aim of this study was to review reported DUI …


Peruvian Medical Students' Attitudes Toward People With Disabilities, Shane Daniel Burns Jan 2019

Peruvian Medical Students' Attitudes Toward People With Disabilities, Shane Daniel Burns

All ETDs from UAB

Patients with disabilities often interpret health care providers’ skills and facilities inadequate, are denied health care services, and report poor treatment in the medical setting. Key stakeholders in reforming this process are medical students, a demographic that currently provides services for patients with disabilities and will shape tomorrow’s health care systems. Past research has demonstrated that medical students often hold negative attitudes toward people with disabilities with much of this research being conducted in the developed world and none in Latin America. As a result, this study pursued to understand Peruvian medical students’ attitudes toward people with disabilities and how …


A Scalable Nearline Disk Archive Storage Architecture For Extreme Scale High Performance Computing, Hampton Walker Haddock Jan 2019

A Scalable Nearline Disk Archive Storage Architecture For Extreme Scale High Performance Computing, Hampton Walker Haddock

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Parallel file systems that exploit Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Devices (RAID) as the mechanism for greater resilience are primarily intended to provide high bandwidth and low latency. Quantifying and studying the trade-offs among reduced run time (bandwidth and latency), resilience (availability and integrity), and cost (energy and capital) is important. For instance, distributing the checksums of RAID systems appears in conflict with the canonical parallel access patterns in high performance computing such as long sequential reads, random access, and checkpoint operations. Choices consequently have to be made between performance, concurrency, latency, energy, capital, integrity and availability of the data for …


High-Pressure Studies On Borosilicate And Bulk Metallic Glasses, Kathryn Jinae Ham Jan 2019

High-Pressure Studies On Borosilicate And Bulk Metallic Glasses, Kathryn Jinae Ham

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Multi-angle energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction (EDXD) and white-beam radiography studies were conducted on a borosilicate glass sample (17.6% B2O3) to 13.7 GPa in a Paris-Edinburgh (PE) press at Beamline 16-BM-B, HPCAT, The Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. The measured structure factor S(q) to q = 19 Å-1 was used to determine internuclear bond distances between various species of atoms contained in the glass sample. Bond distances for Si-O, O-O, and Si-Si were determined from the reduced pair distribution function G(r) and were measured as a function of pressure. The sample height, as determined via white-beam radiography, showed an overall …


Genomic Insight Into The Gut Microbiome Of The Sea Urchins Lytechinus Variegatus And Strongylocentrotus Purpuratus Revealed Distinct Community Compositions And Their Metabolic Profiles, Joseph Antoine Hakim Jan 2019

Genomic Insight Into The Gut Microbiome Of The Sea Urchins Lytechinus Variegatus And Strongylocentrotus Purpuratus Revealed Distinct Community Compositions And Their Metabolic Profiles, Joseph Antoine Hakim

All ETDs from UAB

For over 500 million years, our planet’s self-replicating prokaryotes have colonized multicellular host organisms, forging complex interdependent relationships under the selective pressures of the natural environment. Recently, the use of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technology targeting metacommunity DNA has uncovered the unprecedented diversity and metabolic processes of these communities. Such information has extensively been investigated in the guts of higher bilaterian organisms, such as mammals including humans. One of the early bilaterian organisms that have been linked to humans are the sea urchins, the gut microbiota of which have not been sufficiently studied. Thus, the objective of this dissertation was to …


Relationship Between Frustration Tolerance And Psychological Self-Regulatory Mechanisms In Weight Loss Maintenance, Samantha Kaytana Henry Jan 2019

Relationship Between Frustration Tolerance And Psychological Self-Regulatory Mechanisms In Weight Loss Maintenance, Samantha Kaytana Henry

All ETDs from UAB

The present study investigated the relevance of frustration tolerance and other psychological regulation factors (e.g., trait mindfulness, executive function) to long-term weight maintenance. Using a cross-sectional design, participants (N=91) were recruited from three behavioral weight loss interventions and categorized dichotomously (maintainer vs. regainer) based on their level of success in maintaining weight loss long term. Participants completed the Frustration Discomfort Scale (FDS), objective measures of executive functioning (EF), and self-report questionnaires. Poorer frustration tolerance was significantly associated with lower trait mindfulness, higher negative affectivity, and greater difficulties in self-reported EF. There were no differences by race or weight maintenance status. …


Perceptions Of African-American Teachers Concerning African-American Youth, D'Antranett Hicks-Stewart Jan 2019

Perceptions Of African-American Teachers Concerning African-American Youth, D'Antranett Hicks-Stewart

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Perceptions of African American youth have been illustrated by how they are perceived on television: as deviants, criminals and unteachable. These perceptions are also illustrated in the behaviors of teachers in both inner-city and suburban schools. African American teachers in the inner-city schools have hope of changing the world for the better until they are met with difficult challenges presented by African-American students. Some students are excellent and some not so excellent. The structural environment of African-American youth can so strongly influence their behavior, that they begin to take on their perceptions. This can be seen in their choice friends, …


Stories From Rwandan Churches Prior To The Genocide; A Collection Of Oral Histories, Carmen Ava Lau Jan 2019

Stories From Rwandan Churches Prior To The Genocide; A Collection Of Oral Histories, Carmen Ava Lau

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STORIES FROM RWANDAN CHURCHES PRIOR TO THE GENOCIDE: A COLLECTION OF ORAL HISTORIES CARMEN A. LAU ANTHROPOLOGY PEACE & HUMAN RTS ABSTRACT As a tragedy in which religion did not serve as demarcation between rival groups, the Rwandan Genocide provides an example of Christians killing Christians. I use interviews from 14 Rwandan survivors who were Seventh-day Adventists, a Protestant group to which both heroes and villains belonged. Based on Eisler’s Theory of Cultural Transfor-mation, I assume that narratives inform action. I examine oral histories through a frame-work that searches for elements of Girard’s Mimetic Rivalry that might have influenced Adventists …


The Effects Of Saha And Egcg On Metastatic Potential In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Kayla Lewis Steed Jan 2019

The Effects Of Saha And Egcg On Metastatic Potential In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Kayla Lewis Steed

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About 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some time in their lives, and more than 40,000 women will die due to breast cancer this year. Women do not die from localized breast cancer cases but from metastatic, or Stage IV, breast cancer (MBC). Over 150,000 women are currently living with MBC, and treatments focus on length and quality of life considering there is no cure. Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) do not respond to targeted therapies as they are lacking estrogen receptor alpha (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). They …