This thesis investigates the reported communication experiences of married women transitioning to motherhood. The study involves a series of focus groups in which new mothers share their communicative experiences, explaining how they are navigating their new roles as mothers while also performing roles as wives, daughters, and workers. Informed primarily...
Background: Short RNAs, and in particular microRNAs, are important regulators of gene
expression both within defined regulatory pathways and at the epigenetic scale. We investigated
the short RNA (sRNA) population (18-24 nt) of the transcriptome of green leaves from the
sequenced Populus trichocarpa using a concatenation strategy in combination with...
A melt pond model is presented that predicts pond size and depth changes, given an
initial ice thickness field and representative surface fluxes. The model is based on the
assumption that as sea ice melts, fresh water builds up in the ice pore space and eventually
saturates the ice. Under...
Colonization of N. densiflorus tissues by P. ramorum is not well understood. The pathogen is able to colonize nearly all tissues of this host but it is unclear how a tree is ultimately killed. Because this is such a destructive invasive pathogen, it is important to investigate its pathogenic strategy....
Two essays are focused on semiparametric econometric methods. The first essay investigates applicability of the smooth back tting estimator (SBE) to statistical analysis of residential energy consumption. The second essay attempts to incorporate additivity restrictions into semiparametric stochastic frontier estimation. The procedure described in the first study is used to...
My thesis explored the effects of environmental variability on population
dynamics and community composition of aquatic insects. Environmental variability in
the form of flow regime in streams can limit the distribution and life-history traits of
aquatic insects. I used tributaries to the McKenzie River in Oregon with dramatically
different flow...
The lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus) is an important groundfish species in both recreational and commercial fisheries of the Northeastern Pacific. It is a large, fast-growing, generalist predator of invertebrates and fishes. In response to concerns that lingcod may limit populations of rockfishes (Sebastes spp.), I compared the diets of 375 adult...
Davidson Seamount, a volcano located about 80 km off the central California coast, has a volume of
~320 km³ and consists of a series of parallel ridges serrated with steep cones. Davidson was sampled and
its morphology observed during 27 ROV Tiburon dives. During those dives, 286 samples of lava,...
There are typically two responses to the complex environmental problems of our time: 1) doom and gloom and 2) optimism. There is a lot of doom and gloom in the environmental literature. This literature warns that the future portends danger for humans and their life support systems. But when one...