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2008

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Comparing Virulence Of Cryphonectria Parasitica Isolates Recovered From Portions Of Cultures Or Cankers Established Before Versus Those After Hypovirus Innoculations, William E. Jones Jan 2008

Comparing Virulence Of Cryphonectria Parasitica Isolates Recovered From Portions Of Cultures Or Cankers Established Before Versus Those After Hypovirus Innoculations, William E. Jones

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Variable recovery of hypovirulent (HV) and virulent (V) isolates from repeatedly sampled, identical chestnut blight cankers, caused by Cryphonectria parasitica, prompted this study to monitor more closely the isolate recovery over time to determine hypovirulent or virulent status. To meet the objective, laboratory and field experiments were conducted between 1998 and 2000 to recover isolates from cultures and cankers challenged with HV inoculum. Cultural studies demonstrated (1) hypovirus transfer readily occurred to actively growing colony margins, and (2) that established, virulent mycelium one-to-six weeks-old at time was unable to acquire hypovirus. Results from field studies demonstrated a significant difference in …

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Constructing Gene Expression Based Prognostic Models To Predict Recurrence And Lymph Node Metastasis In Colon Cancer, Ramakanth Reddy Mettu Jan 2008

Constructing Gene Expression Based Prognostic Models To Predict Recurrence And Lymph Node Metastasis In Colon Cancer, Ramakanth Reddy Mettu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The main goal of this study is to identify molecular signatures to predict lymph node metastases and recurrence in colon cancer patients. Recent advances in microarray technology facilitated building of accurate molecular classifiers, and in depth understanding of disease mechanisms.;Lymph node metastasis cannot be accurately estimated by morphological assessment. Molecular markers have the potential to improve prognostic accuracy. The first part of our study presents a novel technique to identify molecular markers for predicting stage of the disease based on microarray gene expression data. In the first step, random forests were used for variable selection and a 14-gene signature was …

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Bioinformatic Study Of Gamma-Secretase And Its Substrates, Fei Nan Jan 2008

Bioinformatic Study Of Gamma-Secretase And Its Substrates, Fei Nan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

gamma-Secretase is an enzymatic complex critical to amyloid formation and other important pathophysiological processes. Non-specific gamma-secretase inhibitors are not ideal for intervention of familial Alzheimer's disease. The four essential include Presenilin (PS1 or PS-2), APH-1, Pen-2, nicastrin (Nct). Also gamma-secretase cleaves a variety of substrates (over 30). But different sites are cleaved even in a single substrate and no consensus sequence for cleavage by gamma-secretase is identified. We hypothesize that consensus compositional sequence (or functional domain) in components of gamma-secretase and/or its substrates should exist during gamma-secretase regulation and specific gamma-secretase inhibitor based on such consensus sequence (or functional domain) …

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Thresholds And Tolerance Of Physical Pain Among Young Adults Who Engage In Self-Injury, Katrina Mccoy Jan 2008

Thresholds And Tolerance Of Physical Pain Among Young Adults Who Engage In Self-Injury, Katrina Mccoy

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Prevalence rates of non-suicidal self-injury among college students ranges from 17% to 38%. Research indicates that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) who self-injure sometimes report an absence of pain during self-injury. Furthermore, self-injury in the absence of pain has been associated with more frequent suicide attempts. The present study examined pain thresholds and tolerance among 44 college students (11 self-injurious and 33 non-self-injurious). Pain thresholds and tolerance were measured using an algometer pressure device which has been used to produce pain previous laboratory research. Self-injurious participants had higher pain tolerances than those who do not engage in self-injury. In …

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Identification And Characterization Of The E(Var)3-5 Gene In Drosophila Melanogaster, Pranoti Sahasrabhojane Jan 2008

Identification And Characterization Of The E(Var)3-5 Gene In Drosophila Melanogaster, Pranoti Sahasrabhojane

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The goals of my research project were to clone the E(var)3-5 gene and characterize the lethality of E(var)3-5 mutations. The E(var)3-5 gene was identified by dominant mutations that enhanced PEV of wm4, thus implicating the gene product in promoting a euchromatic chromatin structure (Dorn et al. 1993). These mutations were found to be recessive lethal as well and the lethal phenotype was used to map the E(var)3-5 gene (Dorn et al. 1993; this work). I characterized the lethality of E(var)3-5 mutations and found that lethality in E(var)3-5 hemizygotes is manifested at the pupal stage. I mapped the lethality to a …

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Mitigating The Effect Of Covariates In Face Recognition, Richa Singh Jan 2008

Mitigating The Effect Of Covariates In Face Recognition, Richa Singh

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Current face recognition systems capture faces of cooperative individuals in controlled environment as part of the face recognition process. It is therefore possible to control lighting, pose, background, and quality of images. However, in a real world application, we have to deal with both ideal and imperfect data. Performance of current face recognition systems is affected for such non-ideal and challenging cases. This research focuses on designing algorithms to mitigate the effect of covariates in face recognition.;To address the challenge of facial aging, an age transformation algorithm is proposed that registers two face images and minimizes the aging variations. Unlike …

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Slow-To-Warm-Up Temperament In Infancy As A Predictor Of Concurrent And Later Child And Maternal Behaviors, Jessica B. Stoltzfus Jan 2008

Slow-To-Warm-Up Temperament In Infancy As A Predictor Of Concurrent And Later Child And Maternal Behaviors, Jessica B. Stoltzfus

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Little is known about the slow-to-warm-up infant temperament. The present study evaluated the usefulness of this temperament as conceptualized by Thomas and Chess in predicting child and maternal parenting behaviors, with a particular focus on its conceptual link to child inhibition. Participants were 1,072 mothers and their children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Slow-to-warm-up temperament in infancy did predict later inhibition, p = .000, but not as well as the difficult temperament or the individual temperament subscales of mood and approach. Including maternal sensitivity and stimulation and support increased the prediction of inhibition from the slow-to-warm-up temperament …

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Cellular Mechanisms Of Effects Of Sphingosine 1 -Phosphate On Vascular Endothelial Barrier, Mei Xu Jan 2008

Cellular Mechanisms Of Effects Of Sphingosine 1 -Phosphate On Vascular Endothelial Barrier, Mei Xu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P), a biologically active lipid, induces a myriad of cellular events including enhancement of the endothelial barrier and assembly of adherens junction proteins, VE-cadherin and catenins. The over all goal in this set of studies was to investigate what cellular mechanisms contribute to S1P-induced enhancement of the vascular endothelial barrier.;Since VE-cadherin contributes to the stabilization of the endothelial barrier, I determined in the first study if the rapid, barrier-enhancing activity of S1P requires VE-cadherin. Ca2+-dependent, homophilic VE-cadherin binding of endothelial cells, derived from human umbilical veins and grown as monolayers, was disrupted with EGTA, an antibody to the …

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Rates Of Swim Bladder Parasite Infection And Pit Tag Retention In Upstream Migrant American Eels Of The Upper Potomac River Drainage, Jennifer L. Zimmerman Jan 2008

Rates Of Swim Bladder Parasite Infection And Pit Tag Retention In Upstream Migrant American Eels Of The Upper Potomac River Drainage, Jennifer L. Zimmerman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis involved two components: identification of the parasite Anguillicola crassus in American eels, Anguilla rostrata and PIT tag retention in eels in a laboratory setting. The recent spread of the swim bladder nematode parasite, Anguillicola crassus, in American eels has caused concern among biologists and fishery managers. A total of 244 yellow-phase American eels were collected at the Millville Dam eel ladder on the Shenandoah River, WV. Swim bladders were removed and examined for the presence of the nematode parasite. The number of parasites in each eel was recorded, and prevalence, intensity, and mean intensity were calculated. A swim …

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High-Throughput Self-Interaction Chromatography: Applications In Formulation Predictions For Proteins, David H. Johnson Jan 2008

High-Throughput Self-Interaction Chromatography: Applications In Formulation Predictions For Proteins, David H. Johnson

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Free -Knot Splines And Bootstrapping For Nonlinear Modeling In Complex Samples, Scott W. Keith Jan 2008

Free -Knot Splines And Bootstrapping For Nonlinear Modeling In Complex Samples, Scott W. Keith

All ETDs from UAB

Studies on body mass index (BMI) as it relates to headache or mortality have noted considerable nonlinearity. Approaches to rigorously analyzing these relationships have been limited to generalized linear models and survival models using either categorizations or polynomials of BMI. I have designed, evaluated, and implemented a piecewise linear logistic regression framework for modeling nonlinearity between a binary outcome and a continuous predictor, such as BMI, adjusted for covariates in complex samples. Least squares and maximum likelihood estimation methods were used to numerically optimize free-knot splines. Inference methods utilized both parametric and nonparametric bootstrapping. Parameter estimates were structured for interpretability …

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Protective Role Of Coronary Endothelium During The Development Of Cardiac Hypertrophy: Insights From Pharmacological Intervention Studies, Xiaowei Sun Jan 2008

Protective Role Of Coronary Endothelium During The Development Of Cardiac Hypertrophy: Insights From Pharmacological Intervention Studies, Xiaowei Sun

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Effect Of Bisphosphonate On Osteo Genic Differentiation Of Pulp And Pdl Cells, Nachiket Saoji Jan 2008

Effect Of Bisphosphonate On Osteo Genic Differentiation Of Pulp And Pdl Cells, Nachiket Saoji

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Role Of The Gastric Ecosystem In Helicobacter Associated Gastritis, Julia M. Schmitz Jan 2008

Role Of The Gastric Ecosystem In Helicobacter Associated Gastritis, Julia M. Schmitz

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Investigation Of Thermal Performance, Indoor Air Quality And Energy Consumption Within The Tuskegee Healthy House Demonstrative Model, Rasha M. Selim Jan 2008

Investigation Of Thermal Performance, Indoor Air Quality And Energy Consumption Within The Tuskegee Healthy House Demonstrative Model, Rasha M. Selim

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Comparisons Of Sequential Testing Approaches For Detection Of Association Between Disease And Haplotype Blocks, Andres Azuero Jan 2008

Comparisons Of Sequential Testing Approaches For Detection Of Association Between Disease And Haplotype Blocks, Andres Azuero

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Rapid Prediction Of Tropical Soil Degradation Using Diffuse Reflectance Spectros Copy: Method Verification In The Saiwa River Basin, Western Kenya, Jeffries Blunt Degraffenried Jan 2008

Rapid Prediction Of Tropical Soil Degradation Using Diffuse Reflectance Spectros Copy: Method Verification In The Saiwa River Basin, Western Kenya, Jeffries Blunt Degraffenried

All ETDs from UAB

No abstract provided.

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Friction Produced By Esthetic Brackets With Varying Ligation, Christine Knox Abenoja Jan 2008

Friction Produced By Esthetic Brackets With Varying Ligation, Christine Knox Abenoja

All ETDs from UAB

Controlling friction is an important aspect of orthodontics because it allows more predictable tooth movement with less anchorage loss. Friction at the bracket/archwire/ligation interface can reduce the force available for desired tooth movement. Initial stages of orthodontic treatment depend on the ability of the archwire to slide freely through the bracket, making friction an important aspect of all orthodontic brackets in the early phases of orthodontic treatment. The purpose of the present in vitro study was to measure the force to move esthetic brackets over an archwire using different ligation methods. A stainless steel model reproducing the maxillary right dentition …

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Biomimetic Self -Assembled Nanomatrix For Bone Tissue Regeneration, Joel M. Anderson Jan 2008

Biomimetic Self -Assembled Nanomatrix For Bone Tissue Regeneration, Joel M. Anderson

All ETDs from UAB

Bone is a dense, connective tissue with an extracellular matrix (ECM) comprised of biological and organic/inorganic biphasic matrices. For this study, novel peptide amphiphile (PA) nanomatrices were synthesized to mimic the native bone ECM and evaluated with human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) isolated from bone marrow. The ability of this nanoscale, biomimetic scaffold composed of PAs that are inscribed with cellular adhesive ligands to direct hMSC osteogenic differentiation without supplements, along with other cellular behaviors, was investigated. Typical osteogenic supplements include dexamethasone, β-glycerol phosphate, and ascorbic acid. The synthesized PA sequences were evaluated as two-dimensional nanomatrix coatings without the inorganic …

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Detection Of Total And Pathogenic Salmonella In Oysters Using Real-Time Pcr With Internal Amplification Control And Study Of Their Antibiotic Resistance Profile, Maulshree Gangwar Jan 2008

Detection Of Total And Pathogenic Salmonella In Oysters Using Real-Time Pcr With Internal Amplification Control And Study Of Their Antibiotic Resistance Profile, Maulshree Gangwar

All ETDs from UAB

Salmonella is a causative agent for food and water borne gastroenteritis in humans. A multiplex PCR-based detection revealing total and potentially virulent strains of Salmonellae was developed using oligonucleotide primers. These primers targeted chromosomally located invA gene generating a 274 bp and Salmonella virulence plasmid-borne spvB gene generating 561 bp amplified DNA fragments. The invA gene product brings about the invasion of the cells on the intestinal epithelium and is used as the marker for total Salmonella detection. The occurrence and distribution of these genes in 90 strains exhibited 100% amplification of invA gene whereas only 22% of spvB gene …

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Parenting Practices As Mediators Of The Association Between Violence Exposure And Internalizing And Externalizing Behavior Problems Among Black Youth, Penny Loosier Jan 2008

Parenting Practices As Mediators Of The Association Between Violence Exposure And Internalizing And Externalizing Behavior Problems Among Black Youth, Penny Loosier

All ETDs from UAB

“Tough love” has been posited as a prevalent parenting style among black families; although most of the literature has focused on differences in parenting across black and white youth, examinations of parenting within an exclusively black sample are rare. The current study used an exclusively black sample to examine a blend of parenting practices aligning with a “tough love” conceptualization of parenting: child disclosure (CD), parental nurturance (PN), and harsh discipline (HD). Given prior evidence that it might be an adaptation to compromised environments, it was hypothesized that, if viable, “tough love” would present via positive associations between violence exposure …

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A Rhetoric Of Resolution: The Limits Of Competition, Michael Schandorf Jan 2008

A Rhetoric Of Resolution: The Limits Of Competition, Michael Schandorf

All ETDs from UAB

The idea of competition underlies most all Western cultural practices making conflict inevitable, but understanding the world in terms of constant, perpetual competition limits the development of lasting, adaptive, and constructive solutions to human problems and conflicts. While competition serves the vital functions of quality control and the identification of best practices, the function of “Competition” as a god term betrays a misunderstanding of both the value and process of competition as an instrument, and demonstrates how human conceptualization, mediated by language, can direct the development and acquisition of knowledge into narrow channels and exclude ways of understanding that are …

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Success Rates Of Temporary Anchorage Devices Placed In An Orthodontic Clinic, Alex C. Schreiber Jan 2008

Success Rates Of Temporary Anchorage Devices Placed In An Orthodontic Clinic, Alex C. Schreiber

All ETDs from UAB

In recent years, the use of a variety of temporary placed implants to attain absolute anchorage has been described in the orthodontic literature. The use of temporary implants, fixed to bone, overcomes some of the limitations of traditional anchorage and their reliance on patient compliance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate factors relating to the successful placement of miniscrew temporary anchorage devices in an orthodontic clinic. The orthodontic records of patients who had miniscrews placed during their treatment at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry Postgraduate Orthodontic Clinic were selected. After application of the inclusion …

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Perioperative Music And Its Effects On Anxiety, Hemodynamics, And Pain In Women Undergoing Mastectomy, Pamela Gail Binns-Turner Jan 2008

Perioperative Music And Its Effects On Anxiety, Hemodynamics, And Pain In Women Undergoing Mastectomy, Pamela Gail Binns-Turner

All ETDs from UAB

The study purpose was to examine the effects of a perioperative music intervention on changes in mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), anxiety, and pain in women with a diagnosis of breast cancer undergoing mastectomy surgery. The convenience sample included 30 women between the ages of 42 and 70 who were undergoing mastectomy in a large urban hospital in the southern United States. Exclusion criteria included male gender, psychiatric disorder, use of psychotropic medications, cognitive mental disability, and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) status 4 or greater. In a quasiexperimental, repeated measures design, participants were randomized equally into music …

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Evaluation Of Pre And Post Treatment Filtration Performance Of Kinetico Macrolite® Ceramic Media Compared To Traditional Sand/Anthracite And Gac Filters In Drinking Water Treatment Process, Jeff Cochran Jan 2008

Evaluation Of Pre And Post Treatment Filtration Performance Of Kinetico Macrolite® Ceramic Media Compared To Traditional Sand/Anthracite And Gac Filters In Drinking Water Treatment Process, Jeff Cochran

All ETDs from UAB

This study was conducted in conjunction with the Birmingham Water Works Board to evaluate Kinetico ceramic filter media against GAC (Granular Activated Carbon) and Sand/Anthracite filters. The Birmingham Water Works Board Water Treatment Pilot Plant was located and operated on the Shades Mountain Filter Plant (SMFP) premises. The evaluation was conducted in three phases: plant matching, plant optimization, and pre-filter testing. The initial phase called for determining the best combination of Kinetico Macrolite Ceramic media to match or outperform the existing Sand/Anthracite dual media filters located at SMFP. At the end of the testing it was determined that 18 inches …

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Human-Centered Semantic Retrieval In Multimedia Databases, Xin Chen Jan 2008

Human-Centered Semantic Retrieval In Multimedia Databases, Xin Chen

All ETDs from UAB

The research described in this dissertation has proposed a human-centered retrieval framework that can automatically retrieve multimedia data based on their semantic content. In particular, the framework queries and searches images and videos in a multimedia database according to their visual content. In order for computers to understand the semantic contents of images and videos, human guidance is necessary. By incorporating the user’s Relevance Feedback (RF) on the retrieval results into the learning and retrieval mechanism, the semantic gap between humans and computers can be gradually bridged. High-dimensional feature vectors of multimedia data can cause a dramatic increase in computation …

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Analysis Of The Role Of Fcrl5 And Figlers In B Cell Development, Signaling, And Malignancy, Christopher L. Haga Jan 2008

Analysis Of The Role Of Fcrl5 And Figlers In B Cell Development, Signaling, And Malignancy, Christopher L. Haga

All ETDs from UAB

The regulation of signaling and migration is critical to B lymphocyte development, activation, and proliferation. This dissertation reports a functional role for Fc receptor-like molecule 5 (FCRL5), a B cell specific member of the Fc receptor-like family of molecules, and the discovery of a novel family of conserved transmembrane proteins with fibronectin, immunoglobulin, and leucine-rich repeat domains (FIGLER) expressed in bone marrow and B lineage cells. Until now, the signaling potential of FCRL5 was unknown. A panel of FcRIIB/FCRL5 chimeric receptors were created and expressed in a B cell line lacking endogenous FcRIIB. Coligation of the chimeric receptor with the …

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Techniques For Context-Free Grammar Induction And Applications, Faizan Javed Jan 2008

Techniques For Context-Free Grammar Induction And Applications, Faizan Javed

All ETDs from UAB

Grammar Inference is the process of learning a grammar from examples, either positive (i.e., the grammar generates the string) and/or negative (i.e., the grammar does not generate the string). Although grammar inference has been successfully applied to many diverse domains such as speech recognition and robotics, its application to software engineering has been limited. This research investigates the applicability of grammar inference to software engineering and programming language development challenge problems, where grammar inference offers an innovative solution to the problem, while remaining tractable and within the scope of that problem. Specifically, the following challenges are addressed in this research: …

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Mechanism Of Interferon-Beta-Mediated Inhibition Of Il-8 Gene Expression, Travis Laver Jan 2008

Mechanism Of Interferon-Beta-Mediated Inhibition Of Il-8 Gene Expression, Travis Laver

All ETDs from UAB

Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is a potent chemoattractant of numerous cells, particularly neutrophils, in the innate immune response. In addition to immune functions, IL-8 is known to contribute to the pathogenesis of a number of diseases, including cancer. Interferon-β (IFN-β), a Type I interferon, inhibits the expression of IL-8, but the details of this effect are not known. In this study we investigate transcriptional control of the IL- 8 gene and the mechanism by which IFN-β exerts inhibitory effects on IL-8. Herein we show that stimulation of U87-MG glioma cells with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) results in a rapid recruitment of NF-κB …

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Air Pollution And Preterm Births In Atlanta, Georgia, Corey Masuca Jan 2008

Air Pollution And Preterm Births In Atlanta, Georgia, Corey Masuca

All ETDs from UAB

Exposure to ambient outdoor air pollution exposure is one of the many extraneous factors associated with preterm births. Many epidemiological studies involving preterm births and ambient air pollution have repeatedly indicated positive associations. However, for many such studies, results may be statistically significant but weakly associated or inconclusive. Such results may be primarily attributable to the fact that most studies include only single or multiple criteria air pollutants but not the total air pollution mixture of criteria air pollutants and air toxic pollutants (e.g., PAHs) to which people are actually exposed. This study assessed associations between pollutant classes, including criteria …

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