The goal of many machine learning problems can be formalized as the creation of a function that can properly classify an input vector, given a set of examples of that function. While this formalism has produced a number of success stories, there are notable situations in which it fails. One...
Although much has been written describing the
various reactions to the origin of Species in America, the Mormon reaction to Darwinism has been largely ignored. This dissertation will recount the history of this reaction as exemplified by the life and works of B. H. Roberts. Roberts's intellectual pursuits early in...
Hop downy mildew is a devastating disease affecting hop requiring expensive
fungicide applications throughout the growing season. Plant resistance is highly
desirable and theorized as being decidedly quantitative with dominance and epistasis
involved in resistance. An association mapping approach using a mixed-model was
used to identify AFLP markers associated with...
The adsorption and elution of the antimicrobial peptide nisin at hydrophobic,
silanized silica surfaces coated with the poly[ethylene oxide]-poly[propylene oxide]-
poly[ethylene oxide] surfactant Pluronic® F108 was measured in situ, with ellipsometry.
While such layers are known to inhibit protein adsorption, nisin was observed to adsorb in
multilayer quantities, to an...
Most vertebrates exhibit seasonality in many life history traits. Such seasonal rhythms are temporally organized via the transduction of environmental cues (e.g., photoperiod, temperature) into appropriate endocrine signals. However, among ectothermic vertebrates that undergo continuous winter dormancy, temperature is the only environmental cue available for synchronizing seasonal rhythms. Most intriguing...
While there are many more species of reptiles in the tropics than in temperate
latitudes, relatively little is known about the natural history of tropical species of
snakes. Even basic information, such as reproductive ecology and behavior, is lacking. Patterns of reproduction in tropical species differ from patterns in temperate...
Salmonid run sizes are strongly affected by their early marine stage. Fully understanding the life history of salmonids means understanding how they interact with their marine environment and with other fishes. Changes in the biological and physical environment off the Columbia River region affects the distribution and abundance of predatory...
Missing data can lead to biased and inefficient estimation if the missing mechanism is not taken into account in the analysis. In this dissertation we propose two estimators that, under fairly general conditions, are asymptotically unbiased. The first proposed estimator assume the data are missing at random (MAR) and does...
Women living in sub-Saharan Africa are more affected by HIV/AIDS than any other population in the world. Two-thirds of all new HIV infections worldwide occur in sub-Saharan Africa and over 60% of these infections are in women. Indeed, 70% of
all women globally who are infected with HIV reside in...
Belowground carbon (C) storage and quality of soil organic matter (SOM) in
forest soils have implications for sustainable forest management and C sequestration,
but how these pools change in response to management is poorly understood. I
investigated whether fertilization and competing vegetation control, applied alone or
in combination early in...