One of the most commonly diagnosed illnesses in the elderly population is cancer. Despite research to explain the consistent increase in incidence rates with age, the mechanisms are largely unknown. In order to explore the patterns in age-specific cancer incidence through visualization, tables and graphs were generated via SEER*stat of...
Quantitative measurement of the urban-rural continuum for examination of U.S. rural health disparities is a relatively new research area, where only a handful of studies have investigated health disparities using quantitative rural measures and even fewer have attempted to integrate health variables within said measures. Most U.S. rural health disparity...
Studies indicate that many cancers occur more frequently in adult males than females. This male predominance must either be due to disparate environmental exposures or innate, biologic mechanisms, or a combination of the two. Using data and statistical software from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, male:female incidence...
Purpose: Stereotactic radiation therapy and stereotactic radiosurgery deliver radiation precisely to tumors, using special equipment to position and demobilize patients. The VisionRT system, with its component AlignRT, is a non-invasive stereotactic positioning and tracking system that uses cameras to capture infra-red images of patients, and process these images, to obtain...
Birth defects may influence the risk of childhood cancer development through a variety of mechanisms. The rarity of both birth defects and childhood cancers makes it challenging to study these associations, particularly for the very rare instances of each. To address this limitation, the authors conducted a record linkage-based cohort...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are among the most widely known and studied environmental contaminants, originating from a range of natural and anthropogenic sources. PAHs are known to occur in the environment as complex mixtures, containing both unsubstituted PAHs, as well as a range of PAH derivatives. Among the less-studied of...
This thesis focuses on shared use lane facilities and road user understanding. Shared use lanes (sharrows) are a common solution for road facilities that are too narrow to accommodate a full bicycle lane and where the local jurisdiction wants to reduce dooring crashes. In recent years, engineers have focused on...
The conservation of declining desert fish species requires the identification of relations between fish population dynamics and their environments. Dynamic occupancy modeling, an approach that requires less information than traditional mark-recapture studies, may help identify important factors affecting population processes and aid desert fish conservation and restoration efforts. I used...
The photoneutron production from three Varian linear accelerators ranging in energies from 6 MV to 23 MV has been investigated. Photoneutrons are produced during (γ, n) interactions with materials located within the treatment head. These unwanted neutrons not only increase patient dose, but may also lead to the requirement of...
The Ariel Measuring System (AMS) is a national asset in responding to radiological or nuclear events. The AMS operates out of several aerial platforms, such as the BK-117 helicopter and the P3 Long Range Tracker, under many equipment configurations. Measurements can be telemetered real time to reach back for evaluation...