Colloids, particles smaller than ten microns in diameter, are ubiquitous in the subsurface. Colloids have an effect on the transport of contaminants that bind to their surfaces, and can reduce the permeability of aquifer materials through deposition. Some microorganisms, including pathogens, are also transported in the subsurface as colloids. The...
The purpose of this study is to identify promising practices for the transferability of professional/technical coursework taken at a community college to related programs at universities. The main research question sought to identify the salient elements in existing models of transfer. Supporting the main question, sub-questions sought to identify obstacles...
Sex on television has nearly doubled since 1998 while sexual risk and responsibly messages have decreased. During this time frame, television watching has become one of the most popular pastimes in the United States, especially among Black/African Americans. Black youth are more likely to report higher levels of satisfaction with...
In this dissertation, I explored how social relationships influence, and are influenced by, men's experiences of caregiving to their aging parents. Because of sociodemographic trends such as fewer siblings in younger generations and the growth of women seeking professional careers, men are increasingly likely to be called upon to meet...
There is little current research in reading instruction for gifted learners. Children who are identified as gifted in reading are often left to their own devices or provided inadequate reading/literacy instruction (Ries et al., 2004). The purpose of this project was to determine how parents of gifted children and gifted...
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus -1 (HIV-1) has been the source of substantial human misery since it was first discovered in the early 1980s. Despite remarkable progress that has been made towards understanding HIV- 1, there is no cure, no vaccine and life-prolonging therapies are beyond the reach of millions in...
Eliminating physical activity disparities among ethnic minorities in the U.S. is important. Cultural differences have been found to be plausible contributing factors associated with such disparities. Therefore it is important to investigate and understand the mechanisms by which diverse aspects of cultural experiences affect physical activity participation among ethnic minorities,...
Chronic hepatitis B disproportionately affects Asian Americans. Although Asians make up only 4.2% of the total United States (U.S.) population, they account for more than half of those infected with hepatitis B. If left untreated, chronic hepatitis B could lead to cirrhosis, liver damage, and liver cancer. Studies show that...
The purpose of this study is to identify factors that support the likelihood of persistence of academically underprepared community college students to 45 college level credits. Factors considered in this research include: (a) race/ethnicity, (b) age, (c) enrollment status, (d) socio-economic status (SES), (e) first quarter GPA, (f) developmental need,...
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related death in American men. Epidemiologic studies suggest that cruciferous vegetable intake may lower the risk for many cancers, including prostate and colon. Isothiocyanates (ITC) are phytochemicals derived from cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage that may...
Science inquiry is central to the science education reform efforts that began in the early 1990's. It is both a topic of instruction and a process to be experienced. Student engagement in the process of scientific inquiry was the focus of this study. The process of scientific inquiry can be...
This qualitative study explores the "coming out" experience of gay males raised in conservative Christian environments. Seven men with varying ethnic and racial backgrounds, between the ages of 20 and 40 years old, participated. Each was raised in a conservative, Christian environment during his formative years and each was now...
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in black raspberry (Rubus
occidentalis L.) breeding. This has been spurred, in part, by an increase in black
raspberry consumption due to studies that have shown them to be particularly high in
anthocyanin content indicating high levels of antioxidants. Present cultivars are...
The imperfections of the propagation channel due to channel fading and the self-generated noise from the RF front-end of the receiver cause errors in the received signal in electronic communication systems. When network coding is applied, more errors occur because of error propagation due to the inexact decoding process. In...
This dissertation addresses two fundamental problems in computer vision—namely,
multitarget tracking and event recognition in videos. These problems are challenging
because uncertainty may arise from a host of sources, including motion blur,
occlusions, and dynamic cluttered backgrounds. We show that these challenges can be
successfully addressed by using a multiscale,...
This dissertation addresses a number of inter-related and fundamental problems in computer vision. Specifically, we address object discovery, recognition, segmentation, and 3D pose estimation in images, as well as 3D scene reconstruction and scene interpretation. The key ideas behind our approaches include using shape as a basic object feature, and...
Ceramides are a group of lipids in the sphingolipid family that are potent cell signaling molecules. Elevations in ceramide levels above the norm generally lead to apoptosis. Evidence from in vitro studies suggests that accumulation of ceramides within mitochondria leads to dysfunction of the mitochondria. This includes inhibition of the...
Bumble bees provide vital pollination services in both native and agricultural landscapes. However, in recent years, bumble bee populations have experienced global population declines. The primary causes of these declines have been attributed to the environmental impacts of pathogens, pesticide use and habitat fragmentation. While research has examined the impacts...
This dissertation focuses on a central question for six countries in Asia: what factors affect environmentalism? Numerous studies have proposed mixed theoretical explanations for the relationship between diverse values and beliefs regarding environmentalism. Although these diverse studies propose theories for the fast-growing and multifaceted environmentalism in Asia, here it is...
Since at least the 1970s, rural areas in the western United States, as elsewhere across the country and world, have been subject to social, economic, and political forces that have resulted in novel demographic and land tenure trends when compared to previous decades. Collectively, these processes of restructuring have created...
School counselors are challenged with creating a wide range of programs to
address three developmental domains: personal/social, career, and academic, with an
increasing requirement to provide accurate and sufficient data substantiating their
professional contributions to students’ academic achievement. At the same time, the
professional literature reports that during adolescence there...
The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the factors that contributed to the engagement of middle and high school teachers in professional learning with instructional coaches, relative to disciplinary literacy. The study addressed the following question: What factors appear to influence secondary content-area teachers' engagement with instructional coaches,...
Current frameworks for analyzing forest carbon offset projects in disturbance-prone western forests often fail to address the dynamic nature of carbon pathways through time. They do not account for the probability of loss due to wildfire, which can influence the prediction of carbon storage at the end of a planning...
This thesis contains three parts addressing the asymptotic analysis of fluid flow through fully saturated porous medium in the presence of an adjacent thin channel.
In the first part the problem is modeled by Darcy's law in both the porous medium and in the channel. The permeability in the channel...
There has been a lot of work done in recent decades in the field of symbolic dynamics.
Much attention has been paid to the so-called "complexity" function, which gives a sense
of the rate at which the number of words in the system grow. In this paper, we explore this...
Carbon dioxide (CO₂) fluxes between the ocean and atmosphere on continental margins are difficult to diagnose because these regions experience large variability over spatial and temporal scales spanning meters to basins and hours to years, respectively. In a global sense, continental margins could represent a significant atmospheric CO₂ sink, equivalent...
The purpose of this study is to synthesize and characterize the nanoporous structures that can be obtained by the anodization of thin film aluminum sputter deposited on a silicon wafer substrate. This study also investigated the application of nanoporous alumina to fabricate nanorod arrays by using preceramic polymers. Although there...
Two essays are focused on crop choice and the growth of corn production in
the Corn Belt and surrounding areas. The first essay develops a partially
degenerate nested logit model to examine the effect of price islands and local
ethanol capacity on corn production and crop mix. The primary data...
For manufacturing and service industries to stay competitive in this rapidly changing, globalized world, one of the most important operations, and one that many businesses struggle to plan and manage efficiently, is material handling. There has been a large amount of research on various vehicle routing problems (VRPs) in recent...
As the number of mobile devices accessing large-scale WLANs such as campus
and metropolitan area networks increases, the need for load balancing among the
cells becomes crucial. In addition, the network must also support some minimum
handoff tolerance defined by an application.
A number of load balancing techniques have been...
We develop several a-priori and a-posteriori error estimates for two-grid finite element discretization of coupled elliptic and parabolic systems with a set of parameters P. We present numerical results that verify the convergence order of the numerical schemes predicted by the a-priori estimates. We present numerical results that verify the...
This thesis summarizes work completed over the previous four years primarily focusing on chloroplast phylogenomic inquiry into the genus Pinus and related Pinaceae outgroups using next-generation sequencing on Illumina platforms. During the time of our work, Illumina sequence read lengths have essentially been limited to 25 to 100 base pairs,...
This research intends to provide insights into community wind energy development in Oregon using an integrated analysis approach, which incorporates GIS Suitability Analysis, Socio-Political Analysis, and Empirical Case Studies. In the GIS analysis, we developed a model through a series of steps (including data acquisition, preprocessing, data management, manipulation and...
As electronics reach nanometer size scales, new avenues of integrating biology and electronics become available. For example, nanoscale field-effect transistors have been integrated with single neurons to detect neural activity. Researchers have also used nanoscale materials to build electronic ears and noses. Another exciting development is the use of nanoscale...
Understanding the origin and nature of intra specific biodiversity enables us to better conserve and manage animal populations. Biological diversity is seen at different scales and for different traits such as behavior, morphology, physiology, and life history. Behavior is especially important since behavioral changes are believed to precede changes in...
The human pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis displays different phenotypes between serovars both in vivo and in vitro. The study of chlamydial biology has been hampered by the lack of a tractable genetic system. Here, chlamydial isolates with known phenotypes as well as strains generated though recombination were fully sequenced to address...
During the transition to motherhood, postpartum women undergo immense changes in all areas of life. Of particular interest are the changes at the cognitive and emotional level with regards to one's physical self. After giving birth, postpartum women would benefit from a caring perspective in how they relate to their...
The development of a transient electric birefringence (TEB) apparatus for macroparticle characterization is herein discussed. The experimental difficulties encountered were related largely to poor data resolution. Misalignment and strain birefringence in optical components further complicated results. Improved data digitization methods were developed, and precise mathematical models were derived in order...
The decrease of switching times accompanied by the corresponding increase of
clock speeds and data rates, contributes to improve the overall system
computational performance. At the same time, they also affect wireless
communications due to an increment in the emissions of electromagnetic
radiation on the radio bands.
In this dissertation...
This dissertation explores two economic phenomena involving forest-dependent areas: wage distribution and migration pattern of individuals. Are forest-dependent rural areas less desirable for workers from the standpoint of labor market returns? Are different skills (e.g. education, experience) rewarded differently in these areas? If there are interregional wage differences, would that...
I focus on addressing knowledge gaps relating to management of cryptogams in Oregon's public lands in Pseudotsuga menziesii-Tsuga heterophylla forests on the west side of the Cascade Range and dryland steppe in the Cascade Range's rainshadow.
While a great deal of research has illustrated the importance of late-successional forests for...
Fire severity is hypothesized as an important driver of bird responses to wildfire. For those species that typically respond negatively to increasing severity, Accessibility of high-severity burned forest may be dependent on the proximity of unburned or low-severity burned forest to meet all of the needs of breeding bird species...
In networked control systems (NCS) information or packets usually flow from a
sensor or a set of sensors to a remotely located controller. Then the controller
processes the received information and sends a series of control commands to the
actuators through a communication network which could be either wireless or...
This dissertation combines volcanological research of three convergent continental margins. Chapters
1 and 5 are general introductions and conclusions, respectively. Chapter 2 examines the spatiotemporal
development of the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex in the Lípez region of southwest Bolivia, a locus of a
major Neogene ignimbrite flare- up, yet the least...
Modeling and analyzing the combined effects of disease and population dynamics
is important in understanding the effects of mechanisms such as pathogen transmission
and direct competition between host species on the distribution and abundance of different
species in an ecological community. Mathematical analysis of such models in a
spatially explicit...
Best international health practice requires that all people benefit equally from health care
services regardless of their socio-economic status and that healthcare payments be based
on ability to pay. Although recent household surveys in Malawi show progress in a
number of health indicators population averages, many inequalities in health outcomes...
As the number of autonomous data collection applications keep increasing, the demand for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has seen explosive growth. In this dissertation, an ultra-low-energy WSN transmitter is developed to reduce the energy consumption of sensor nodes in WSNs. With an ultra-low-energy transceiver, it is possible to eliminate the...
Two aspects of ADC system performance are addressed in this work. First, the combination of the ADC and its associated reference are co-designed for an energy constrained remote sensing system. Second, sampling linearity is mathematically analyzed as a function of frequency to provide enhanced understanding into an ADC's requisite sampling...
This dissertation consists of two essays that address behavioral economics issues.
In first chapter we analyze the effects of psychological pressure on performance using National Basketball Association (NBA) free throw data from the 2002-2003 through 2009-2010 seasons. We find evidence that players choke under pressure – they shoot on average...
The purpose of this study was to investigate three research questions: (1) What are the attitudes and beliefs of the pre-service teachers and teacher educators regarding multicultural education, and how do the teacher educators prepare the pre-service teachers to meet the needs of diverse K-12 students in Taiwan? (2) To...