Breast Cancer Awareness and Barriers to Early Presentation in the Gaza-Strip: A Cross-Sectional Study.

PURPOSE: Timely detection of breast cancer (BC) is important to reduce its related deaths. Hence, high awareness of its symptoms and risk factors is required. This study aimed to assess the awareness level of BC among females in Gaza. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed during September and October 2017 in Gaza, Palestine. Stratified sampling was used to recruit patients from four hospitals and seven high schools. The validated Breast Cancer Awareness Measure (BCAM) was used to assess confidence and behavior in relation to breast changes, awareness of BC symptoms and risk factors, barriers to seek medical help, and knowledge of BC screening. Women (age ≥ 18 years) visiting or admitted to any of the four hospitals, and female adolescents (age 15 to 17 years) in any of the seven schools, were recruited for face-to-face interviews to complete the BCAM. RESULTS: Of 3,055 women approached, 2,774 participants completed the BCAM questionnaire (response rate, 90.8%); 1,588 (57.2%) were adults, and 1,186 (42.8%) were adolescents. Of these, 1,781 (64.2%) rarely (or never) checked their breasts, and 909 (32.8%) were not confident to notice changes. In total, 1,675 (60.4%) were aware of the availability of BC screening programs. The overall mean ± standard deviation score for awareness of BC symptoms was 5.9 ± 2.9 of 11, and that of risk factors 7.5 ± 3.1 of 16. Feeling scared was the most reported barrier to seeking advice reported among women (n = 802; 50.2%), whereas feeling embarrassed was the most reported in adolescents (n = 745; 62.8%). CONCLUSION: Awareness of BC symptoms, risk factors, and screening programs is suboptimal in Gaza. Educational interventions are necessary to increase public awareness of BC and to train local female breast surgeons to address barriers to early detection.

A design of a parallel architecture for solving exact matching problem on DNA molecules.

This paper describes a parallel algorithm and its needed architecture for solving exact string matching problem on DNA molecules. The parallel algorithm is considered much more faster than sequential algorithms used to perform exact string matching; the whole matching process between a given string and a pattern is performed in only one clock cycle by activating a number of processing elements and grouping them into clusters that perform the comparison operation between the Pattern and the string simultaneously. A simple parallel architecture is also presented as the algorithms is performed using this parallel architecture. The system is considered a step towards a complete parallel processing architecture to solve computationally intensive applications of DNA.