Declining population is a major concern for rural communities. In many places, out-migration has led to a loss of key services. This essay investigates the role of services, as well as labor markets, natural amenities, distance to urban areas, and community size, in determining net migration rates for small Oregon...
Continuous liquid-liquid two-phase separation is needed in microfluidic devices. Due to the small characteristic lengths of microreactors, phenomena such as mass transport via molecular diffusion occur within seconds. Typically, discrete slugs of an extract are created within microchannels for high specific interfacial area to achieve intensified mass transfer. A challenge...
In Can You See Me?, a collection of nine short stories, Elizabeth Wyckoff explores the conflicting desires of young women who long for connection, but struggle to find the balance between concealing and revealing themselves. The female protagonists in these stories simultaneously yearn to be seen, recognized, and acknowledged; and...
Soft robotics utilizes compliant materials (such as rubber) to make robots that are flexible and safe around humans, however these materials present many practical manufacturing challenges. Current fabrication methods use molding techniques which limits the soft robot designs which could be fabricated and impacts part consistency. This defense introduces a...
Treatment of extrahepatic portosystemic shunts provides many options, including cellophane banding. These cellophane bands are secured with a ligation clip. Weck® offers two forms of these: the stainless steel Hemoclip, and the polymer Hem-o-lok. This in vitro study compares the mechanical strength of these two of types of clips by...
1,4-Dioxane (dioxane) and cis-dichloroethylene (cDCE) are compounds commonly found in industrial cleaning and degreasing agents that are frequently present as groundwater contaminants. In an effort to develop a more effective treatment method for these compounds, hydrogel beads were fabricated with either gellan gum or a combination of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)...
This dissertation outlines the design and development of the first fully-soft, snake robot and its snake-inspired skin. Soft robotics takes advantage of soft materials to, among other things, improve robot interactions with complex, unstructured environments. Due to the interplay between the soft material and the environment, minor tweaks to the...
This creative nonfiction thesis is an attempt to create a conversation between personal and collective truths. All four of the essays share the subject of music: one focusing on a band’s strange performance, another on an artist and his album, another on a cover band’s live show, and the last...
Given the many significant roles that bacteria play in modern food manufacturing, it is crucial that we have a fundamental understanding of how bacterial communities assemble and behave in the food manufacturing environment. The focus of this dissertation was to investigate both the spatial and temporal distributions of microbial communities...