Few studies explored factors influencing breast cancer screening and early detection behaviors among immigrant Iranian women residing in the USA. Using a cross-sectional survey, a convenience sample of 319 Iranian American women was selected to investigate the impact of breast cancer knowledge and attitude on screening. A self-administered questionnaire assessed breast cancer screening knowledge, attitude, and mammography use (ever, previous year, and future intention). 79 % of the women in the study reported ever receiving at least one mammogram and 74 % received a mammogram in the past year. Personal attitude had an independent significant effect on: mammography use in the last year, ever use of mammography, and future intention to screen. Knowledge and morality-induced attitude influenced screening behavior but not significantly. Interventions targeting breast cancer screening among immigrant Iranian women in the USA should focus on enhancing personal attitudes in order to influence actual screening behavior.

A fundamental goal in nano-toxicology is that of identifying particle physical and chemical properties, which are likely to explain biological hazard. The first line of screening for potentially adverse outcomes often consists of exposure escalation experiments, involving the exposure of micro-organisms or cell lines to a library of nanomaterials. We discuss a modeling strategy, that relates the outcome of an exposure escalation experiment to nanoparticle properties. Our approach makes use of a hierarchical decision process, where we jointly identify particles that initiate adverse biological outcomes and explain the probability of this event in terms of the particle physicochemical descriptors. The proposed inferential framework results in summaries that are easily interpretable as simple probability statements. We present the application of the proposed method to a data set on 24 metal oxides nanoparticles, characterized in relation to their electrical, crystal and dissolution properties.