The effect of cosputtered catalyst on growth and alignment of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) grown by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) was investigated. Aligned CNTs were observed using a cosputtered catalytic metal deposited directly on boro-aluminosilicate glass. Catalytic metal alloys were sputtered directly onto the substrate using magnetron sputtering. Deposition...
This thesis will look at Paul Jensen while he was an education professor at Western Oregon State College in Monmouth, Oregon, and his role in Alaska Native education while working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Dr. Jensen's work coincided with the last twenty-five years of Bureau of Indian Affairs...
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...
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....
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...
Electronic structure calculations for free and immersed atoms are performed in the context of unrestricted Hartree-Fock Theory. Spherical symmetry is broken, lifting de-generacies in electronic configurations involving the magnetic quantum number m. Basis sets, produced from density functional theory, are then explored for completeness. Com-parison to spectroscopic data is done...
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...
Pesticides are among the most pervasive environmental contaminants and they are an important potential risk for human health. Agricultural workers are constantly exposed to pesticide spray, drift and residues in the soil and foliage. Many agricultural pesticides are readily absorbed by the body, through contact with the skin, the respiratory...
Managing rangelands with livestock grazing is a tool that can be applied to obtain vegetation management objectives. Animals utilize available resources, which vary in quantity and quality, across the landscape. Their movements are adjusted to the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of resource distribution. Controlling livestock distribution is fundamental to economically...
We studied the feasibility of using end-grain characteristics to match individual boards and cants back to their parent Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) logs. After reviewing marking/reading and biometric automated identification systems, we focused on end-grain biometrics because they appear to have the most promise for sawmills. Biometric identification requires that every...
Endothelial activation with increased expression of cellular adhesion molecules, chemokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines critically contributes to vascular inflammation and the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis. By affecting redox-sensitive cell signaling pathways and transcription factors, redox-active transition metal ions, such as copper and iron, may play an important role in these...
There are seven commercially important species of salmon and trout (genera Oncorhynchus and Salmo) in North America, many of which are closely related but command markedly different prices. The purpose of this research was to provide improved and novel methods for the detection of salmon species substitution on the commercial...
As the demand for real-time information in engineering and health care systems keeps increasing, the need for wireless sensor nodes is also continuously increasing. As a result, the cost and effort involved in installing and maintaining batteries to power the numerous sensor nodes is growing exponentially. Providing a cost effective...
Grapes (e.g. Vitis vinifera L.) are one of the more important fruit crops from an economic standpoint with world market values over 550 million US dollars in 2007 and 2008, second to apples (United States Department of Agriculture). While a satisfactory level of ripeness is of primary concern, the quality...
Nest counts from the largest subpopulation of the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) in the Atlantic, peninsular Florida, have been declining since 1998. Analyzing trends of nests and adult females is insufficient to determine the overall status of a sea turtle population, due to variation in nesting frequency and a...
Solar photovoltaic is considered one among many new alternatives to satisfy
our demand for energy. Solar Cells have undergone changes in the last 50 years or so
since its invention in 1954. Solar power is beginning to challenge conventional
energy sources in terms of mainstream acceptance. Solar power along with...
With more and more adolescent girls having lower self-esteem due to the pressures from society to be thin and beautiful, programs have been developed to help increase young girls’ self-esteem while teaching them about nutrition and self-image as well as encouraging them to be physically active. I analyzed one of...
Montane meadows comprise a small area of the predominantly forested landscape
of the Oregon Cascade Range. Tree encroachment in the last century in these areas has
threatened a loss of biodiversity and habitat. Climate change in the coming century may
accelerate tree encroachment into meadows, and exacerbate biodiversity loss. Multiple...
We propose a new classification method for longitudinal data based on a semiparametric approach. Our approach builds a classifier by taking advantage of modeling information between response and covariates for each class, and assigns a new subject to the class with the smallest quadratic distance. This enables one to overcome...
In the summer of 2007, a biophysical experiment was conducted to identify physical processes that determine the delivery of invertebrate larvae and juvenile rockfish to rocky intertidal and kelp forest communities in northern Monterey Bay, California. The experiment was sponsored by the Partnership for Interdisciplinary
Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO)...
Sediments of the central Chile margin record changes in ocean circulation and
continental erosion associated with large–scale climate change. Here Antarctic–
influenced Southern Ocean currents flow equatorward, forming a link between the high–
and low–latitude oceans. Part of this link, Antarctic Intermediate Water, is an important
conduit that ventilates South...
Due to age, original design that is deficient by modern standards, inadequate maintenance, environmental conditions, and increasing loads, large numbers of bridges in United States and elsewhere are classified as deficient and in need of rehabilitation or replacement. According to a national bridge inventory established by the Federal Highway Administration,...
Ecosystems are highly heterogeneous systems subjected to important levels of environmental variability; however, it is common in terrestrial biogeochemical models to assume homogeneous properties of the elements of the system or constant environmental conditions. For some processes, heterogeneity in these models is treated very simplistically, but there is not much...
Tidal wetland channels provide rearing habitat for juvenile Chinook salmon as they emigrate from freshwater habitat and prepare to enter the ocean. Widespread diking and drainage of estuarine marshes for agricultural and urban development may have contributed to a decline in salmon abundance in the Pacific Northwest, prompting efforts to...
This study sought to fill a void in research literature supporting Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and the beneficial effects of exposure to natural, green spaces. The literature predominantly discusses studies with adult and older child participants, finding that exposure to natural environments often produces an attention-restoring effect. ART has been...
The City of Woodburn, Oregon's Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) has been investigating several natural alternatives for improving effluent quality. Based on its current National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, the WWTP will require additional reduction of temperature and ammonia levels in the summer, especially in the critical month of...
The marine climate of the Galapagos is spatially and seasonally
heterogeneous. A taxonomically comprehensive study of Galapagos zooplankton has
never been done. This study is an initial effort to establish the distribution and
community structure of zooplankton in the Archipelago. I collected zooplankton
samples by vertical tows over the Galapagos...
Oxidative stress is recognized as an important underlying factor in the
pathogenesis of many degenerative diseases as well as normal senescence. The
free radicals, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and electrophiles produced during
oxidative stress are capable of modifying nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. There
are a variety of oxidative modifications...
My dissertation concerns two separate issues. The first issue is examined in Essay One, and the second issue is examined in Essays Two and Three.
The first essay develops an economic model of the determination of the rental rate of leased farmland in the United States. Particular attention is placed...
Sprawled-posture insects exhibit a remarkable ability to rapidly run in a stable manner
over complex terrain, a feat that has yet to be equaled by man-made legged robots.
Recent experimental results suggest that these insects may employ a hierarchical
control structure, in which locomotion performance emerges from a combination of...
The adsorption behavior of a human recombinant Factor VIII (rFVIII) in the presence of the nonionic, poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO-PPO-PEO) triblock surfactant Pluronic® F-68 was evaluated by dynamic air-water tensiometry. Surface tension kinetics were recorded for F-68 in the absence of protein at concentrations ranging from 0 to 10,000...
A duty-cycle controlled switched resistor is a tunable resistive element that uses pulse width modulation as the method of tuning. This thesis will describe the operation of switched resistors and propose several circuit architectures that are well suited to the use of switched resistors. These architectures include filters, mixers, and...
Coagulation and flocculation are commonly used in drinking water treatment
as a means of destabilizing and aggregating particles and promoting adsorption of
dissolved organic carbon (DOC). In practice, jar tests are used to determine optimal
conditions for the removal of turbidity and DOC. However, beyond the inferences
that can be...
Microbial electrolysis provides a new approach for hydrogen generation from renewable biomass. At current stage, the most likely limiting factors for successful scale up of this technology are the large internal resistance and high fabrication cost. This dissertation presents an attempt to overcome these limitations by investigating novel microbial electrolysis...
The Middle Fork of the John Day River (MFJD) in Northeastern Oregon contains important spawning grounds for spring Chinook and summer steelhead of the Columbia River Basin. In the summer of 2008 phase one of a river restoration project was completed which included the addition of engineered log jams (ELJs)...
The ability to non-destructively assess fish condition and subsequently track fish behavior and survival can be vital in understanding natural and anthropogenic stressors and sources of mortality, especially in populations of fish listed as threatened or endangered. I investigated the use of a quick, non-lethal, external examination technique to assess...
Delta-Sigma (ΔΣ) analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are traditionally used in high quality audio systems, instrumentation and measurement (I&M) and biomedical devices. With the continued downscaling of CMOS technology, they are becoming popular in wideband applications such as wireless and wired communication systems,high-definition television and radar systems. There are two general realizations...
Low concentrations of dissolved copper have been shown to adversely
affect the olfactory system of endangered salmonids, impairing their ability to avoid predators and likely increasing predation. It is believed that only the free ionic (Cu2+ free) and weakly complexed forms are bioavailable to organisms; these forms typically account for...
The importance of accurately identifying inventories of domestic energy, including forest biomass, has increasingly become a priority of the US government and its citizens as the cost of fossil fuels has risen. It is useful to identify which of these resources can be processed and transported at the lowest cost...
In recent times, public policy debates in the United States have been very contentious and dysfunctional. To help improve this situation, a multi-discipline research effort was conducted to look at "solution papers" as a form of public participation. Specifically, the roles of objectivity and mutual respectfulness were under consideration. Foundational...
Religious histories have always appropriated pre-existing symbol systems of religion into newer forms, often with the goal in mind to acculturate a population into a new cultural setting to reach a desired status quo of society. The problem with acculturation theory is that it is filled with teleological and quantitative...
Google Earth has given internet users the power of a virtual globe at their fingertips. It is
a free, easy to use tool that avoids the need for technical training, and uses a simple,
intuitive interface. For this reason, Google Earth appeals to general and more specialized
users. This project...
In Zambia, there are approximately 920,000 people living with HIV/AIDS. Children are often referred to as a "window of hope" due to a low HIV/AIDS prevalence rate (UNAIDS/WHO, 2006). With growing numbers of infections and an increased strain on the social and economic structure due to HIV/AIDS there is a...
Degradation of lignin to simpler compounds is desirable for removing residual lignin during paper manufacture and accessing biomass carbohydrates for biofuel production, among other purposes. Lignin transformation using enzymes found in white rot fungi, some of nature's most efficient lignin-degrading organisms, offers a more environmentally benign, selective, and possibly less...
Interest in nanomaterials is motivated partly by their potential for sensor arrays to detect
different gases. Nanowires in particular are of interest because their high surface-to-volume
ratio promises the possibility of high sensitivity. However, because of their discrete
quasi-one-dimensional geometry, electrical integration of nanowires into photolithographically
defined devices and circuits...
Linear transformation for dimension reduction is a well established problem in the field of machine learning. Due to the numerous observability of parameters and data, processing of the data in its raw form is computationally complex and difficult to visualize. Dimension reduction by means of feature extraction offers a strong...
This thesis addresses Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) control by leveraging learning based techniques to improve robustness of the control system. Applying classical control methods to MAVs is a difficult process due to the complexity of the control laws with fast and highly non-linear dynamics. These methods are mostly based on...
This thesis is the consequence of a research effort undertaken by the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University and funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the Federal Highway Administration
(FHWA). The principal objective of the effort was to reduce the life cycle cost...
Understanding the impact of humans on the environment has long been a topic of scholarly interest and debate. As environmental problems mount, accounts of historic ecological conditions and the factors of change become increasingly useful. This study considers competing schools of interpretation about human impacts on ecological landscapes and develops...