Analytical techniques are utilized in a wide variety of applications. Traditionally, analytical measurements are achieved by trained personnel in a laboratory setting using expensive scientific instruments, which limits their applicability in resource-limited areas and point-of-care applications. Therefore, the concept of enabling these laboratory-based qualitative and quantitative assays in microfluidic device...
Cinder cones are useful geomorphic features for geological analysis because they generally have known initial states and follow a similar pattern of degradation as they are exposed to erosive processes. This is largely because cinder cones are produced by monogenetic eruptions. Characterizing large cinder cone fields in terms of age...
The domestic dog is one of the most popular pets in the world, and many pet owners consider their pets to be members of their family. Studies have suggested that dogs behave like pseudo-children in many contexts. Despite this, there is very little research on how dog owners may behave...
This analysis seeks to (1) establish a typology of the post-medieval ceramics from the Malkin Tower site, (2) determine vessel forms and extrapolate site function, and (3) establish a tentative chronology for the site. Over four hundred post-medieval ceramic artifacts from the Malkin Tower site were analysed via descriptive and...
The Women’s Development Army (WDA), an all-female workforce of unpaid Community Health Workers (CHW), is Ethiopia’s answer to improving rural health. Through the WDA, Ethiopia’s government says it is empowering women to spark change in their community by disseminating healthy behaviors and by advocating on their own behalf to health...
In this study I viewed video and corresponding transcripts of two students solving introductory combinatorial problems. Using an adapted version of Harel’s (2008) concepts of Result Pattern Generalization and Process Pattern Generalization, I analyzed the work done by the two students. Both students primarily worked through the problem How many...
The overall reduced funding from public education in the United States has sparked a backlash across the country. Citing inadequate resources, low pay, and an inability to control the direction of their classroom, teachers in seven states (West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, and Washington) halted instruction time...
Heightened cortisol levels are a typical physiological response to stress. The many responsibilities of animal shelter workers can lead to increased stress levels and negative effects on their job satisfaction and overall wellness. As a result, workers are subject to burnout and compassion fatigue. While working in shelter environments may...
Genetic counseling, a healthcare profession centered on communicating genetic information to patients and helping them understand it, has been rapidly evolving with the development of genetic sequencing and editing technology over the past decades. Consequently, future and current genetic counselors must address societal and ethical implications, as well as historical...
Resilience-based management in rangelands implies maintaining desirable ecological states and avoiding thresholds to less desirable ones; however, the efficacy of resilience-based management depends upon several driving forces. These forces include management by those who depend upon rangelands for their livelihoods, the current state of ecological health of rangelands, and changing...
Ideally, dosimetric models for pine trees will accurately reflect the doses to its critical organs. However, existing models (e.g. that in ICRP 108) for the pine tree are over simplified or solely focused on estimating doses to one specific organ, and none of the existing models attempt dosimetry to the...
Rates of electronic cigarettes (or “e-cigarettes”) use among youth are so high that the Surgeon General declared them to be of “epidemic proportions” (A Report of the Surgeon General, 2012). If these rates go unchanged, e-cigarettes will likely be responsible for the creation of a new generation of combustible cigarette...
This dissertation is comprised of four studies on different elements of Populus biotechnology and genomic science: 1) growth improvement by recombinant DNA (rDNA) modification of gibberellin (GA) metabolism; 2) gene editing using zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs); 3) induction of floral sterility by RNA interference (RNAi) of AGAMOUS (AG) gene homologs; and...
Wildfires can affect soil physical properties, resulting in changes in infiltration, hillslope runoff, groundwater recharge, and sediment and dissolved nutrients to streams. In November 2016, the Chimney Tops 2 Fire burned 4,617 ha of Appalachian hardwood forest in eastern Tennessee. A portion of the fire burned through a National Ecological...
In order to understand the ability of Detroit Reservoir’s recurring cyanobacterial bloom to produce toxins, and determine the genetic similarity of the bloom from year to year, environmental samples were taken from the Detroit Reservoir bloom biomass in the summers of 2017 and 2018. DNA from these samples was sequenced,...
This study evaluates the productivity and accuracy of surveys completed with single-base real-time kinematic (RTK) Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) using four different GNSS constellation combinations: (1) GPS-only, (2) GPS+GLONASS, (3) GPS+Galileo+BeiDou, and (4) GPS+GLONASS+Galileo+BeiDou. For this comparison, we set up a test site consisting of 20 stations ranging with...
There is consensus among researchers that some form of hemispheric lateralization exists when perceiving emotions. However, conclusions regarding the exact organization have been inconsistent with some studies supporting an overall right hemisphere lateralization and others suggesting differential lateralization for positively and negatively valenced emotions. The main objective of this study...
The complex challenges that Oregon’s commercial fishing community faces are mainly driven by four sources of change: climate change, change in management regulations, societal shifts, and market trends. Challenges include increasing competition for ocean use, management decisions that prioritize economic efficiency over community values, and an increasingly uncertain environment. The...
This Thesis examines Brazil’s political and historical context to explore and understand the logics behind the high rates of violence in our society. It focuses in education as one of our main vehicles of disseminating knowledge and therefore culture, language and values that might be contributing and perpetuating sexism, racism,...
In this work we consider a mathematical and computational model for biofilm growth and nutrient utilization. In particular, we are interested in a model appropriate at a scale of interface. The model is a system of two coupled nonlinear diffusion--reaction partial differential equations (PDEs). One of these PDEs is subject...
Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are small anthropogenic colloids with at least one length dimension <100 nanometers. Due to the nature of their use, ENMs are being increasingly released to the environment. Yet the environmental risks posed by ENMs are unknown due to a variety challenges, including limitations with detecting and quantifying...
Consider a polygon lying in the Euclidean plane with labeled edge lengths. The moduli space of polygons is the space of all polygons with the same labeled edge lengths, modulo orientation preserving isometries. It is well known that this space is generically a smooth manifold. For certain combinations of edge...
The evaluated nuclear data widely used in computational tools suffer from inaccuracies and large relative uncertainties, particularly with respect to short-lived and low-yield fission products. The existing data are often based on nuclear models, and limited experimental measurements of these fission product yields have been performed. This work seeks to...
Forests are some of the most ecologically diverse and dense habitats on the planet. Research shows that the endophyte community, or the fungi, bacteria, and viruses within a forest ecosystem is highly diverse. Fungal endophytes are defined as fungi that live within the tissues of host plants. Relationships between fungal...
As CAD tools become more sophisticated, engineers are able to more easily create complex part geometries with minimal mass given strength and stiffness requirements. However, these complex part geometries can be difficult to subtractively manufacture, which consequently increases manufacturing cost and production time. This thesis presents a method independent of...
In 2013, Lemke Oliver created a list of all eta-quotients which are theta functions. Then in 2016, Folsom, Garthwaite, Kang, Swisher, and Treneer utilized this list of ``eta-theta'' functions along with Zwegers's construction of mock theta functions to create a set of mock modular forms which are also quantum modular...
Legged robots, while advancing quickly, have far to go before they can recover from major disturbances safely and consistently. Reflected inertia, which affects how quickly the actuators can physically respond to an environmental disturbance, and delay, which describes the time necessary for the controller to sense, re-plan, and respond to...
Self-regulation, or an individual’s ability to control their emotions, behaviors, and cognitions, is one important factor of cognitive development during early childhood. The behavioral aspects of self-regulation have the potential to impact children’s success in formal education settings. Breastfeeding also has been shown to increase overall cognitive development at a...
Phytochemicals from the genus, Fagonia, have been attracting increasing attention due to their potential beneficial effects on human health, particularly, anti-cancer properties. Certain Fagonia species contain various types of phytochemicals such as saponins, alkaloids, cardiac glycosides, flavonoids, terpenoids, and tannins. In this study, we investigated the phytochemical composition of a...
Bacterial endophytes have the potential to confer benefits to Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii
), for instance drought tolerance. Bacterial endophytes originating from seeds are
especially important. This is because seed endophytes are more likely to be the first endophytes
to get established within the young host plant. The goals of...
South Louisiana has a major coastal erosion problem, exposing coastal communities to storm surge. The state is spending billions of dollars on projects that are not expected to last beyond 20 years. Research indicates that predominate stories influence problem definitions and solutions. Colten (2017) identified a shift in Louisiana's coastal...
Exciton polaritons are quasiparticles composed of a quantum superposition of matter and light states that arises from the coupling of a standing wave photon and an exciton. This research has two primary objectives: to design and fabricate a Fabry-Perot microcavity system in which to produce exciton polaritons; and to show...
The Tam McArthur Rim is a volcanic center located within the Tumalo Volcanic Field (TVF), approximately 25 km west of Bend, OR. The rim comprises of shallowly dipping bedded sequences of intermediate and silicic flows with minor tephra interbedding capped by a rhyodacite dome. Glacial activity has exposed significant portions...
The urban hydrology and hydraulics program, US EPA SWMM 5, has been coupled with a compartment model of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in the system dynamics software, STELLA, to simulate the radiocesium pathway from urban catchment to the wastewater treatment sludge. Two literature case studies were re-examined. Firstly, a...
This thesis focuses on creating effective signage for the Oregon State University College of Forestry Research Forests (OSU Research Forests). The OSU Research Forests are a unique setting because they offer space for research, class field trips, active timber harvest, and public recreation. The public interface requires the management at...
Despite the many advances in biotechnology and biomedical engineering, the need for long term organ and tissue storage remains among the unsolved problems in the field. Researchers are investigating several possible solutions to the issue that aim to maintain the function and integrity of the biological tissues during storage and...
Many humans and canines alike suffer from osteosarcoma, which is often metastatic, resistant to chemotherapy, and frequently fatal. The mechanisms through which osteosarcoma cells acquire resistance to chemotherapy are not entirely understood, and the role of exosomes as intercellular mediators of this resistance in osteosarcoma is unknown. Using established canine...
Pharmacy technicians play a critical role in delivering patient care. As part of their regular job roles, however, these individuals spend time walking on the campuses of the healthcare facilities at which they work. This walking or ‘move-time’ is considered nonvalue-added time and constitutes a cost for the organization.
To...
Obtaining high-resolution structures of biological macromolecules has become one of the biggest challenges in the scientific world. Dr. Wei Kong’s lab is currently working to overcome the limitations of current structure resolution techniques, such as x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Kong’s group hopes to develop a new protein...
The agricultural lands of Saudi Arabia cannot support feeding the population since they have been facing environmental problems including climate change and water scarcity (DeNicola et al. 2015). Food security is the issue, especially in desert countries which rely on natural water resources. Saudi Arabia is one of these desert...
This thesis reviewed the current cultural, religious and spiritual concerns of a patient, regarding the relationship between the patient and medical professional. Common issues medical professionals have been exposed to in terms of cultural differences was also explored. This thesis reviewed whether medical schools, nursing schools and pharmacy schools have...
For many, the concept of Home resides in the subconscious; an idea that is present, but not questioned, or even realized. However, this concept may be particularly troublesome to define for those who have left their homes in pursuit of a different life. The concept of Home becomes a conscious...
A recipe as a piece of text can tell a variety of stories as well as any other. Using a feminist rhetorical analysis, I read my grandmother’s personal recipe journal to show that her writings contain valuable information about women’s lives in twentieth century Poland. Through the close examination of...
Modern communication systems often have the ability to transmit signals on multiple communication mediums (e.g., RF, visible light) or interfaces (e.g., MAC layer protocols) at the same time. While each channel has different characteristics, a centralized controller with channel condition information will be able to schedule the resource allocated to...
Thermodynamic potentials are energies that can describe a thermodynamic system in terms of different mathematically independent variables. Some of these potentials describe particular thermodynamic systems or processes in particularly convenient ways. In this dissertation, I discuss the different ways that students and experts reason about quantities in thermodynamics within the...
We consider the problem of computing the cannonical polyadic decomposition (CPD) for large-scale dense tensors. This work is a combination of alternating least squares and fiber sampling. Data sparsity can be leveraged to handle large tensor CPD, but this route is not feasible for dense data. Inspired by stochastic optimization's...
Mountain pine beetle infested forests in the Rocky Mountain region raise complicated economic, environmental, and social impacts and pose severe forest management challenges to land managers and public and private landowners. Harvesting infested forest stands provides an opportunity to utilize otherwise wasted resources, mitigate economics losses to landowners, and generate...
Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) technology is a rapidly developing technological marketspace. This thesis focuses on micro, tethered, coaxial UASs and the development of an electrically-tethered observation platform (ETOP). The thesis details the current status of the technology as well as current products on the market. Stability considerations, critical when adding...
This dissertation aims to elicit how a neo-colonial context shapes maternal and infant heath (MIH) outcomes by describing how they are socially, politically, historically, and culturally produced. Using a multi-level critical biocultural, medical anthropological research approach, the purpose of this research was to investigate maternal stress in the United States...
This study looks at how gendered language circulates affect in order to coerce gender binary conformity. I analyze the ways gendered phrases like “sit like a lady”, “don’t be a bitch”, and “man up” communicate binary gender expectations within a U.S. context, and what they have to do with larger...
Nitrogen (N) fertilizer is a commonly applied silvicultural treatment in intensively managed Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco] plantations. When attempting to maximize average growth responses through fertilization, landowners experience difficulty prioritizing stands for treatment based on the likely magnitude of response and return on the operational investment. Field trials were...
Platinum and palladium surfaces are utilized as catalytic surfaces in the chemical industry. Understanding how hydrogen atoms interact with the metal surfaces will allow for further advancement in this area. Specifically, the interaction of hydrogen on the surface and subsurface of these metals was investigated using density functional theory calculations...
Gamma ray bursts are some of the brightest events in the entire observable universe. Since the late 1960’s, thousands of gamma ray bursts have been observed and they have been researched extensively. However, there are still many mysteries which remain unsolved. One such mystery is whether or not the viewing...
The interdependences among water, energy and food, are diverse and multidimensional and are referred to as the food-water-energy (FWE) nexus. This nexus approach seeks to understand the complex interactions among these sectors, in order to identify synergies and trade-offs that could serve as the basis for developing effective planning and...
This research examines the independent and combined effects of drainage and imbibition flowrate on nonwetting phase capillary trapping in a two-phase, porous medium system. A uniform system of cubic arrangement and non-uniform systems of both cubic and rhombohedral arrangements were examined in order to analyze and compare the nonwetting phase...
The purpose of this study was to understand current caregiver attitudes towards powered mobility devices for young children with disabilities. This data was obtained by collecting surveys from pediatric physical therapists who interact with many caregivers on a daily basis and often act as the bridge between families and access...
When running for a political office, a candidate’s platform is important for the voter to understand what the that individual believes. Candidates do not always lay out a concrete platform and tend to stay away from salient issues, such as climate change and its effects, and run on platforms that...
Although the concept of breeding crops for organic agricultural systems has been around for decades, few studies have been reported for vegetable crops to quantify and compare how conventional and organic systems differ in their selection pressures on genotypes advancing through the breeding cycle; especially research utilizing modern sequencing capabilities....
In a seminal paper published in 1982, scientist have warned that humanity was pushing earth’s ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life. One response to the concern was outlined by NASA with its vision for advanced fixed wing transport aircraft to be environmentally compatible and have revolutionary...
The electrical output of solar panels is reduced when dust covers the panels, but the air movement produced by a flying drone can be used to remove this debris. This research project will study the effectiveness of a quadcopter drone in dusting a solar panel. A solar panel was covered...
The leading edge of a sub-orbital, sounding rocket dictates an aerodynamically optimal profile which is difficult to manufacture. The university level offers no current standard to produce rocket nose cones made with pre-impregnated composites. Of particular interest is the molding technique used to fabricate a nose cone. The focus of...
Chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons (CAHs) like trichloroethene (TCE) were mostly used to replace drying cleaning fluids which contained hydrocarbons like benzene, and were highly flammable. Through improper disposal, storage, and spills, TCE and its downstream products, like cis-dichloroethene (cDCE) and vinyl chloride (VC), leached into groundwater and threaten human and environmental...
Modern product development is a complex combination of multidisciplinary processes ranging from market research to design, engineering analysis, and logistics. The product development process has a significant impact on the success or failure of new product launches. The majority of consumer product launches fail, resulting in significant sunk cost in...
The sustainable use of wood for rail ties requires chemical treatment to increase service life and maintain structural integrity. Treatment can only be applied after lengthy air-seasoning to reduce moisture content in wood, but seasoning leaves ties exposed to attack by decay fungi for up to a year. One factor...
Western Saudi Arabia hosts a number of young volcanic fields, known as “Harrats”. Harrats cover a significant proportion of western Saudi Arabia and are associated with significant volcanic hazards. However, the ultimate cause of volcanic activity remains unclear. Younger volcanism (<12 Ma) is clearly represented by the north-south-trending region known...
The fuzzy front end of engineering design can present a difficult challenge, and as such, recent engineering design research has focused on guiding and influencing the way a designer ideates. Early ideation can be especially difficult when attempting to integrate specific design objectives in product design, called Design for X...
Knowledge of the mean recharge elevation (MRE) of water resources is
important for informing conservation and protection practices where water security is threatened by population growth, urban expansion, and land and climate changes. In this study a Bayesian approach was developed and applied to determine the MRE of 682 surface...
When treating highly infectious diseases, patient compliance with caregiver recommendations is crucial. Many patients who contract Ebola Virus Disease have symptoms including vomiting and severe diarrhea and die from the resulting dehydration if they do not drink enough fluids. Telepresence robots are useful in the context of Ebola treatment for...
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs), more commonly known as drones, have recently achieved commercial success for many public and private applications. As with all emerging technologies, new safety concerns and conflicts with existing paradigms are likely to arise. Many potential applications of UASs will result in their operation near roadway infrastructure,...
With ever-increasing number of vehicles actively using the state and national roadway network, transportation-related fuel consumption and consequent pavement structural damage rises. In this dissertation, the impact of material-induced dissipated energy mechanisms in asphalt and concrete pavements were analyzed using field measurements in California and finite element modeling of pavement...
Connections in mass timber structural systems dissipate energy and transfer lateral forces from mass timber elements such as shear walls and diaphragms, providing critical load paths. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is a prominent mass timber material used to manufacture wall and floor assemblies. Fire performance research of CLT walls and floors...
This research presents a methodology to identify and analyze human-system interactions, and their potential failure modes using a functional decomposition approach during the early system design stage.
The fundamental research contribution of this work is the development of a framework to identify associations between physical user-product interactions, generic human errors...
One fundamental concern in conservation biology is species abundance. For many taxa, however, these data are costly to obtain via direct observation and thus limited in geographic or temporal scope. Very high-resolution satellite imagery provides a means to address these limitations and provide remotely-sensed counts of large, colonial species. We...
My study of universal healthcare was motivated by the juxtaposition of social welfare and self-interest in the United States. Unlike most other industrialized countries—whom have adopted either a multi-payer or single-payer system of universal healthcare—the United States is situated uniquely, from both a philosophical and political standpoint. Among others, it...
The goal of my thesis is to (a) help reveal to the Corvallis community who comprises this local population and (b) to share with local resource agencies what potential gaps are present from the perspectives of the homeless individuals who call Corvallis home. We interviewed eight (8) individuals who have...
In 2011 Oregon enacted a public education open enrollment policy that gives students and families the choice of what school to attend, regardless of district lines. Despite the lack of public information, this policy will sunset this school year unless it is further extended during legislative session. This paper attempts...
Coastal hazards are the result of numerous physical processes cumulatively causing water levels to flood and erode the land. The waves, storm surges, tides, and run-off contributing to elevated water levels are each the product of chaotic and random weather patterns. These stochastic weather patterns dissipate energy in Earth's climate...
Managing wildlands to protect species and ecosystem services in response to climate change is challenging. To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projections. Vegetation models are one important source of projected...
The western purple martin (Progne subis arboricola) is a species of conservation concern throughout the Pacific Northwest. In western Oregon, the purple martin nests in three major ecosystem types: inland open-water, coastal, and upland forest. The availability of suitable breeding habitat is a major limiting factor for western purple martin...
The construction industry is a key contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many countries around the world and is valued at more than $10 trillion globally. Schedule, cost and quality are the main performance measures of construction projects. The primary goal for project stakeholders in the construction industry...
A great variety of topologically protected defects exist in ordinary and exotic states of matter. Some of them are promising candidates for technological applications such as magnetic memory or quantum computers. Others possess some properties of elementary particles that could lead to potential applications in quantum fields. Nematic liquid crystals...
In 1877 John Kerr described an experiment that demonstrated a quadratic change in refractive index in a plate glass placed in a strong external electric field. This results in a nonlinear relationship between the average electric polarization within the materials and the intensity of the applied electric field. This opened...
Washington State fisheries and Washington State Treaty Tribes are becoming increasingly restricted in harvest of wild salmon due to US Endangered Species Act listings of salmon species, marine mammal predation by both ESA listed Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) and US Marine Mammal Protection Act protected pinnipeds, salmon habitat destruction,...
The Jetson Artificial Intelligence Tool chain (JAI-TC) is a set of packages, APIs and libraries for Artificial Intelligence applications to be deployed on the NVidia SOC, Jetson TX2. JAI-TC automates the installation of these items allowing for a wider set of users to leverage these technologies. Prior to this, the...
In many scientific settings, investigators are interested in the effect of a new treatment. To have a point of comparison data is collected from patients before treatment groups are assigned. When seeking to test the presence of a significant treatment effect it may be unclear how baseline measurements should be...
The sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima is a model organism for the study of temperate symbiosis. Anthopleura elegantissima can engage in symbiosis with two different algal symbionts: the dinoflagellate Breviolum muscatinei and the chlorophyte Elliptochloris marina. One host enzyme that has been shown to be important in cnidarian-algal symbioses is carbonic...
This thesis describes the implementation of ultrasonic sensors to trigger a stimulus to increase peer interaction for children with disabilities using modified ride-on-cars for mobility. Modified ride-on-car technology has improved mobility for children with disabilities by effectively replicating the social benefits of a powered mobility device, yet there are opportunities...
America is said to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. With the unfair treatment of people of color in this country, however, one would believe that somewhere in the fine print, they were excluded from that phrase. The very foundation of this country was...
Ecology is focused on understanding how organisms interact with each other and their environments, across ecological, spatial, and temporal scales. Thus, understanding how processes and patterns of ecological systems change across space and time is a principle goal for conservation biologist globally. While many approaches exist for investigating the changing...
There are many aging bridges in service in the US and around the world that were not constructed to modern seismic design codes and standards. As a result, they are expected to perform poorly during intense earthquake ground shaking. Older reinforced concrete (RC) bridges, in particular, are often supported on...
Mandelalide A has attracted considerable interest from the synthetic community due to its intriguing structure and important cytotoxic activity. Madeirolide A, a structurally related macrolide, shows promising antifungal activity but no appreciable anticancer activity. This dissertation describes synthetic studies toward mandelalide A, madeirolide A and their hybrid structures.
Part I...
Breakthroughs in heat sink design are now limited by conventional manufacturing techniques which can only produce basic fin shapes with homogenous surface structuring. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a potential disruptive technology for heat sink design and other convective heat transfer solutions, as surface properties can be directionally varied to maximize...
With growing populations and consumer demand, there has been a turn to the deep sea to meet our natural resource needs. The deep sea provides a range of benefits to humans—called ecosystem services—including carbon sequestration, fisheries, waste absorption and detoxification, and nutrient cycling, all of which are vital to life...
There is a national interest in improving the quality of STEM education in institutions of higher education. One goal of multiple initiatives focusing on such improvement is empowering more STEM educators to implement evidence-based instructional practices, that research has shown best help students learn. Related strategies target change in STEM...
This paper analyzes macroeconomic variables to determine their effect on the United States’ trade balance. Data on GDP, exchange rates, money supply and the trade balance are adjusted for inflations to get inflation-adjusted variables. This will lead to a regression with the goal of determining which factors explain the variability...
In this thesis we study mathematical and computational models for phenomena of flow and transport in porous media in the presence of changing pore scale geometries. The differential equations for the flow and transport models at Darcy scale involve the coefficients of permeability, porosity, and tortuosity which depend on the...
Fungi from the genus Chlorociboria are known for their production of the blue-green quinonic pigment xylindein. Extracted xylindein has been the subject of investigations ranging from fabric dying to use a coloring agent in paint, and shows potential as an organic semiconductor in organic photovoltaics (OPVs) and other technologies. However,...
Currently available soil moisture sensors have intrinsic limitations that limit their adoption by industry. Depending on the technology, these limitations may include high costs, battery requirements, precice manual installation, high cost, and/or constrictive legislation that regulates their use. A passive soil moisture sensing system based around RFID technology would allay...
Emerging applications for robotic data collection include ocean monitoring, emergency response and urban search and rescue. At the core of these applications is a robot's ability to make informed decisions on incomplete data. This dissertation addresses this problem by developing novel techniques for modeling and estimating structured environments using deep...
Soil solarization trials were conducted during the growing seasons of 2016-2018 with the purpose of determining if solarization was an effective pre-planting soil disinfestation technique for tree nurseries in the Pacific Northwest. A large data set was collected on soil properties and biological indicators from 5 interdisciplinary experiments. This thesis...