Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Preventive Maintenance Decision Modeling In Health And Service Systems, Mahboubeh Madadi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the preventive maintenance decision modeling in healthcare and service systems. In the first part of this dissertation, some issues in preventive health decisions for breast cancer are addressed, and in the second part, the required characteristics for preventive maintenance of an unreliable queuing system are derived.

Adherence to cancer screening is the first issue that is addressed in this dissertation. Women’s adherence or compliance with mammography screening remained low in the recent years. In this dissertation, we first develop a design-based logistic regression model to quantify the probability of adherence to screening schedules based on women’s …

Understanding Technology Diffusion And Spatial Accessibility In The Home Healthcare Industry, Mehmet Serdar Kilinç

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Home healthcare is becoming an important alternative to institutionalized care. It not only reduces costs but also increases health outcomes and patient satisfaction. However, the availability and efficiency of home healthcare services need to be improved as the aging population increases in the US. Hence, understanding home healthcare utilization and access are the essential steps to develop strategies ensuring effective and sustainable services to patients.

This research aims to study two main issues in the US home healthcare system: diffusion and long-term impacts of home telehealth and potential spatial accessibility of home healthcare services. Home telehealth is a promising technology …

Numerical Simulation Of Terahertz Wave Interaction With Breast Cancer Tumor Tissue Sections, Abayomi Omotola Omolewu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents numerical simulation of terahertz (THz) wave interaction with breast cancer tumor tissue sections. The obtained results are expressed in THz images of heterogeneous material that mimics the excised breast cancer tissue sections. The finite-element software package ANSYS High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS) was used in this work. HFSS is a full wave frequency domain three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic simulation package. In this work, four breast cancer tissue models based on pathology images were simulated and images of the models were obtained at 1 THz. An incident Gaussian beam was raster scanned over tissue model configurations and the reflected …

The Production Of Biobutanol From Biomass Via A Hybrid Biological/Chemical Process, Thomas Melvin Potts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biobutanol use as a fuel began in the late 19th century. Problems remain in economic viability. A review of the state of the art and need for technical advances is presented.

The technical potential of producing biofuel from a naturally occurring macroalgae was studied. The algae grow in Jamaica Bay, New York City, in contaminated water. The process consisted of mechanical harvesting, drying, grinding, and acid hydrolysis to form an algal sugar solution. Clostridium beijerinckii and C. saccharoperbutylacetonicum were used in an acetone butanol ethanol (ABE) fermentation to make butanol. Fermentation was followed by distillation Butanol concentrations during fermentation reached …