Jellyfish benefit from many of the changes mankind is making to the ocean. Climate change, overfishing, nutrient runoff, the introduction of invasive species, and coastal development all promote these ancient, gelatinous creatures. Because of their familiarity to readers and affinity for degraded places in the ocean, jellyfish are used to...
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...
Maintaining variation in software is a difficult problem that poses serious challenges for the understanding and editing of software artifacts. Although the C preprocessor (CPP) is often the default tool used to introduce variability to software, because of its simplicity and flexibility, it is infamous for its obtrusive syntax and...
College students are learning to make increasingly complex financial decisions, facing high tuition and living costs while having limited means to make a living. Studies show that most college students lack sufficient financial literacy. They need a well-designed financial education, especially if they are low-income, first-generation students whose parents are...
The High Plains Aquifer, a natural resource critical to the United States economic, energy and food security, faces significant sustainability challenges in the coming years. This case study aims to identify the main causes and consequences of unsustainable use of the High Plains Aquifer. The agriculture industry plays the largest...
The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) Human Trafficking Task Forces bring together federal, state, and municipal governmental agencies and law enforcement agencies (“agencies”), and non-profit organizations and other service providers (“organizations”), for one main purpose: to reduce the trafficking of humans in...
The role of science in marine policy, and environmental policy in general, is a debated topic. Currently, there is an increasing desire for transparent and participatory democracy that involves more input from local residents and other non-experts. These demands often conflict with the increasing complexity of problems and the real...
Scientists say that climate change is very likely to cause more frequent and more severe weather events. In order to understand how communities respond to changing weather patterns, an exploration of the connection between extreme weather events and climate change awareness, collective action, and policy is warranted. This case study...
Global climate change is projected to have far-ranging effects on the oceans and
marine life. In turn, fisheries will likely undergo changes in their distributions and
abundance. Coastal Alaskan communities are often highly dependent on commercial
fisheries, and as a result will likely be vulnerable to climate change. The purpose...
This study uses the Health Impact Assessment approach to determine the health impacts of allowing accessory dwelling units in Benton County, Oregon. A literature review presents the health benefits of accessory dwelling units in urban areas and identifies the potential negative health effects in rural areas. Five accessory dwelling units...
Housing is the single most important environmental factor associated with high rates of mortality and morbidity (United Nations, 2007). Most Americans spend about 90% of their time indoors, and an estimated two-thirds of that is spent in the home (Klepeis et al., 2001). Studies show a link between substandard housing...
The magnitude of global AIS data exceeds the capability of conventional in-browser graphic rendering technologies like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Canvas. Normal practices of rendering AIS data in browser will either suffer from low frame rates or will have to limit the total number of visual elements. In this...
In 2014, the Washington State Legislature directed the creation of the Fish Barrier Removal Board (FBRB), a multi-entity committee tasked with the development of a statewide strategy for removing anadromous fish barriers. The strategy shall identify watersheds with the greatest potential for salmon and steelhead recovery and implement the removal...
Persistence, the ability for institutions to help students matriculate from their first year to completion, has been a major concern for underrepresented racial minorities (URMs). Among URMs, Black and Hispanic students are the least likely to be retained, graduating at 38 percent and 45.8 percent respectively (Shapiro et al., 2017)....
Persistence, the ability for institutions to help students matriculate from their first year to completion, has been a major concern for underrepresented racial minorities (URMs). Among URMs, Black and Hispanic students are the least likely to be retained, graduating at 38 percent and 45.8 percent respectively (Shapiro et al., 2017)....
Declines or extinctions of the native intertidal estuary blue mud shrimp, Upogebia pugettensis, have been observed or are suspected in all of its populations over the species’ range. These declines are associated with the introduced Asian bopyrid isopod parasite, Orthione griffenis, which effectively castrates females. Baseline estimates of population abundances...
The Willamette River floodplain has been highly modified by urbanization, conversion of land to agriculture, construction of dams and revetments, and regulation of flow, all of which have reduced floodplain processes that provide valuable ecosystem services such as fish and wildlife habitat and flood storage. Efforts to protect and restore...
This study investigates the barriers faced by fats, oil, and grease (FOG) as an energy feedstock in the state of Oregon. FOG, which typically originates in food service establishments (FSEs), historically has been treated as waste, yet it also has the chemical make up to be an energy feedstock in...
Wave energy is a potentially important renewable clean source of energy that can help solve the energy demand throughout the world. A great deal of research has been conducted in the last few decades and it is now reaching the point of full implementation. In order to compete with other...
”Until relatively recently, mankind was not aware that there was a separable binocular depth sense. Through the ages, people like Euclid and Leonardo understood that we see different images of the world with each eye. But it was Wheatstone who in 1838 explained to the world, with his stereoscope and...
Automatic music transcription (AMT) is the task, given an acoustic representation of music, to recover a symbolic notation of the written notes expressed by the sound. Transcribing music with multiple notes sounding simultaneously is difficult for both humans and machines. Much existing work on AMT has focused on suitable acoustic...
This essay provides a snapshot of major policy change in the siting of radioactive waste depository facilities in South Korea during 2005. After 20 years of failing to locate a radioactive waste depository facility, South Korea finally succeeded in locating a facility through a major policy change of delegating decision...
The benefits of electrification are widely discussed in energy and development literature, but little research to date has studied the impacts of household electricity access on women in particular. Women make up the majority of the world’s poor and are also disproportionately affected by energy poverty because of their social...
Levee management has historically been considered a local governance issue. Many users of the Portland International (PDX) airport may have no knowledge that the airport is in a floodplain and is protected by a hundred year old levee. This study asked survey respondents across the U.S. how much they would...
Michigan’s State Department of Education issued a resolution in 2003 calling for all public K-12 schools to repeal their American Indian mascots and in 2013 the Michigan Department of Civil Rights filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education in response to school districts failing to do so....
Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness in Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) is a federal program that aims to significantly increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. Oregon has been receiving GEAR UP funding since 2002. In 2008-2014, Oregon received its second round...
The present study employs a normalized restricted quadratic profit function approach to estimate lumber and plywood supply and Marshallian factor demand elasticities for four region-product combinations in Oregon for the period 1970-2010. The four log demand functions will be employed as the "demand side" of the log market model of...
We model the popular board game of Clue as an MDP and evaluate Monte-Carlo policy rollout in a simulated environment pitting different agents and policies against each other. We describe the choices we made in the representation, along with some of the problems we encountered along the way. We find...
Collaborative decision-making is often promoted as a means to achieve socially acceptable and enduring solutions to natural resource management issues, and one that holds promise for resolving “wicked” problems. However, success rates for implementation of collaborative recommendations are unknown. This paper explores challenges to collaborative salmon fishery management in Prince...
A commitment to diversity is now quite common in the missions of colleges and universities. One of the primary barriers to hiring a diverse faculty is the role that implicit bias, or the case of identifying flawed ideas as reliable choices systematically, plays in the search and selection process. At...
In this project we study multiple approaches to modeling coupled flow and energy systems, with applications to geothermal fluid flow in geysers. We explore a model from a geophysical point of view, and discuss analysis of a related model. We then focus on our own model which features a free-boundary...
Timber supply from Washington State may be reduced by non-industrial private forest owners' diverse purposes for holding timberland, which is a concern since they control 38% of Washington forestland. This study is an exploratory analysis of the effect of land and human infrastructural characteristics on landowners’ likelihood to harvest, precommercially...
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world with 35% of its people live below the poverty line. 70% of Afghans have no access to electricity, and 90% of those without electricity live in the rural areas. Since 2002, more than $4 billion have been spent on Afghanistan’s...
The Vermillion Basin, located in southwest Wyoming is an inhospitable, high altitude desert with unique biota and environmental conditions. The area has a long history of usages by humans including recreation, livestock grazing and mineral development. The natural gas industry has had a strong presence in the area since the...
Forest management planning is critical for the sustainability of natural systems on a site. Managing public ground is a complicated process, and usually involves many stakeholders with a variety of opinions. One such public property is the Evitts Creek Water Company (ECWC) property, owned by the city of Cumberland, Maryland....
Several distinctive environmental movements of the past century have had major influence on public policies in the United States. More generally, social movements that push environmental issues into the limelight have the potential for significantly altering public perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs, thus driving big policy changes. This thesis examines the...
The goal of this project was to estimate the total annual cost of salmon recovery efforts throughout the Columbia River Basin from all stakeholders, including direct and indirect costs. How much is spent on salmon recovery efforts each year in the Columbia River Basin? Depending on who you ask, you...
As a general solution to the problem of managing structural and content variability in relational databases, in previous work we have introduced the Variational Database Management System (VDBMS). VDBMS consists of a representation of a variational database (VDB) and a corresponding typed query language (v-query). However, since this is a...
The topic of species distribution modelling has been on of increasing interest in
recent years. As climate change is becoming of even more interest to researchers,
more tools are needed to better analyze and predict various climate change scenarios.
One particular area of interest is that of species distribution modeling....
This project utilized both shore-based and shipboard commercial marine radar technology to collect wave statistics. In the first application a shore-based system was installed at Yaquina Bay in Newport, Oregon in order to collect real-time wave information. This information was collected under the auspices of the Northwest Association of Networked...
From an organizational perspective, economic incentives are often used as a tool to induce behaviors which align the goals of individuals with the organization. As a fundamental concept, varied types of merit pay have been utilized to keep organizational and individual motives in sync. This can be illustrated in contracts...
Oregon State University and the City of Corvallis have recently embarked on a three-year series of meetings and forums (‘Collaboration Corvallis’) designed to increase collaboration between the two organizations and other relevant stakeholders as well as find solutions to worsening problems in the areas of parking, noise and student population...
Urban green space is associated with multiple physical and mental health outcomes. Several benefits of green space, such as stress reduction and attention restoration, are dependent on visual perception of green space exposures. However, traditional green space exposure measures do not capture street-level exposures. In this project, we apply deep...
Historically, rural economic development has focused on attracting outside firms or increasing exploitation of natural resources, often without equitable or lasting returns to the community. The Rural Wealth Creation framework was developed as a systems-based approach to assessing and leveraging local assets for the creation of lasting wealth in communities....
Pesticides are widely used to control undesirable pests and may be applied directly to water or lands directly adjacent to water. There can be unintended consequences, however, to native, threatened, and endangered species. There is little information on the impacts of aquatic pesticides and best management practices (BMPs) to NOAA...
This project is a custom output stage for a two-channel signal source design project at Oregon State. Starting in January, I began leading a team tasked with the development of an arbitrary waveform generator via the CreateIT Collaboratory at OSU. Undergraduate students interview into the CreateIT Collaboratory and are assigned...
Attempts to site nuclear waste storage facilities are highly contentious. Given that nuclear related facilities are the most commonly opposed types of proposed land uses, one might expect to observe strong contentious interactions between proponents and immediate community members. In some cases, what is expected is not necessarily observed; why?...
The goal of the first part of this project was to investigate the influence of aggregate source and entrained air on the transport properties of concrete. Currently, there are several ASTM standards available that provide systematic procedures to evaluate mass transport properties of concrete. ASTM C642-13 (ASTM 2013), often referred...
Global warming is an increasingly serious problem around the world. To mitigate the influence of global warming on people’s lives, the Obama Administration put an emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate global warming. The adoption of energy efficient vehicles, including hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid vehicles...
In 2008, China released a new green initiative, the Green Securities Policy, to increase the sustainability of Chinese capital markets. One of the integral components of the policy is the new environmental disclosure regulation which prescribes Chinese listed companies in the 14 highly polluting industries to report required environmental information....
Oregon is one of several states to implement a new and innovative minimum wage policy. The Oregon policy defines three regions with each having a separate initial minimum wage and a different set of incremental increases over the next seven years. This paper explores how this policy change may impact...
Ever expanding pressures on the health and productivity of our oceans and coasts from threats such as coastal development and climate change are stressing the need to consider the full spectrum of factors, scales, datasets, opinions, and trade-offs for current and future coastal management actions (Guerry 2009; McLeod and Leslie...
Despite unprecedented access to information, the American public has been shown to have difficulty distinguishing factually correct information from misinformation. Misinformation can, and does, alter voting patterns and policy preferences which impact the range of policy solutions available to policymakers. In recent years, media organizations have begun specialized ‘fact-‐checking’ operations...
Understanding the causal links between riparian forests, streams, and salmonids is important to help understand the likely effects of forest management practices. Previous studies have identified three major causal pathways (Instream Cover, Light, and Hydrology) through which riparian forests influence streams, and ultimately stream fishes. To evaluate the potential importance...
Oregon possesses a diversity of natural resources from the dense rain-soaked forests of the Coastal and Cascade ranges to the deep, fertile soils of the Willamette Valley to the arid and semi-arid Snake River Basin. In the Willamette Valley, water resources sustain agriculture, municipalities, hydropower, fish and wildlife, flood control,...
Although the last decade has seen an increase in research to understand civic engagement and public participation in terms of generating involvement, less research has been conducted to understand the structures of participation and effects on and of current participants. Many local governments in the United States use boards, committees,...
The Intel Xeon Phi is a relative newcomer to the scientific computing scene. In the recent years, GPUs have been used extensively for mathematical simulations. The Xeon Phi is Intel’s response to the use of these cards. Like the GPU, it is highly parallelizable but can be programmed like a...
Over the last several decades, the narrative around international development has shifted away from neoclassical models towards an increased focus on sustainability and community-driven participatory approaches. However, there is a lack of research looking at whether these theoretical concepts manifest in practical realities that avoid the imperialistic flaws of previous...
On June 23, 2016 the United Kingdom (UK) held a vote to determine whether to remain in the European Union (EU) or withdraw. The British exit from the EU, or Brexit, is the antithesis of two centuries of progressive social work theory developed by a series of prominent social workers...
For some incarcerated individuals, when they are released from prison they are released to an officer in the parole and probation department for a specified period of supervision while in the community. During this supervisory period, these individuals, also known as parolees, are able to develop pro-social skills and behaviors,...
Just as prime numbers can be thought of as the building blocks of the natural numbers, in a similar fashion, simple groups may be considered the building blocks of finite groups. Burnside considered the following
questions:
1. Do there exist non-abelian simple groups of odd order?
2. Do there exist...
In 2011 the California State University (CSU) system’s overall four-year graduation rate was 16 percent, which is far below the national rate of 26 percent among similar institutions. In response to the low graduation rate, the California legislature passed 2 statutory bills meant to further expand access, while improving college...
People in the US and Europe eat the most meat worldwide, lose or waste about 20% of this product overall, and they waste the most food per capita. Food waste is currently addressed as an issue of volume, so programs and policies target foods that are wasted more by weight...
Gray wolves (Canis lupus) are the most socially polarizing species listed under the Endangered Species Act. Wildlife management practices at local, state, and federal levels include lethal control to resolve stakeholder and wolf conflicts as a last resort. There is little experimental evidence that lethal control is effective in this...
Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources has been identified by governments throughout the world as a key strategy for reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing sustainability and resiliency, and supporting local economies. Despite these benefits, this transition has been slow in the United States, causing some...
With explosive growth of Internet access from smart phones and tablets, increasing bandwidth for WIFI system is badly needed. Depending on two years’ research, we produced a novel communication system called WIFO system, which integrates both RF (Radio Frequency) and FSO (Free Space Optical) techniques. WIFO system can significantly increase...
Over the past three years recreational cannabis legalization has emerged as a major policy issue in the United States. The novelty of this movement has created a gap in the state of literature focusing on the examination of cannabis legalization policy processes. Using a two-pronged Multiple Streams approach, this study...
Definitions of child poverty and measurement approaches are directly linked to poverty reduction strategies. The definition determines the measure and the measure, in turn, informs policies, which can subsequently reshape measurement approaches. Applying human rights approach and using method of document analysis, this research explores how the conceptualization and measurement...
Group Engagement Theory describes the relationship between citizen perceptions of policy, individual identity and status judgements, and individual group engagement decisions. Utilizing a least likely crucial case methodology, this paper uses the case of Josephine County, Oregon to determine the validity of the Group Engagement Theory prediction that citizen identity...
Many methods have been explored in the literature of multi-label learning, ranging from simple problem transformation to more complex method that capture correlation among labels. However, mostly all existing works do not address the challenge with incomplete label data. The goal of this project is to extend the work of...
The goal of this paper is to classify linear operators with octonionic coefficients and octonionic variables. While building up to the octonions we also classify linear operators over the quaternions and show how to relate the linear operators over the quaternions and octonions to matrices. We also construct a basis...
Port Orford is a small fishing community on the southern Oregon coast. Like many coastal towns in Oregon, Port Orford's main economy is the commercial fishing industry. As such, the community has a high dependence on its nearshore marine resources. Those who make their living from these resources know that...
Aquifers are a whole lot more than groundwater. Aquifers are composed of many kinds of different resources, including storage space, geothermal energy, surface interactions, and various minerals. However, unlike these resources, groundwater is treated as something different. The transition from groundwater management to groundwater governance expanded the role of social...
This work is a representation of my competencies, experiences, reflections and learning through
the College Student Services Administration Master’s of Education program at Oregon State
University. This paper consists of both research and reflective writing and demonstrates in-depth
my learning and development over the past two years in the College...
The Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (BCCA) was created in response to a degrading natural environment coupled with a weakening community. The BCCA is a community owned 5,609-acre forest located in the heart of the Blackfoot watershed in Western Montana. Fearful of development and the creation of subdivisions, landowners banded together,...
To face large scale environmental challenges like climate change, the Obama administration has turned to renewable sources of energy to offset the carbon emissions that result from traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas. However, finding suitable locations for large-scale renewable energy developments has proven difficult due to strong...
Since the 1980s, NGOs have created a necessary niche for themselves within developing nations addressing poverty “traps” such as: lack of infrastructure, corruption, environmental degradation, conflict, disease, educational paucity, and gender inequality. Due to increasing issues of dependency and failed development projects resulting from a top-down, organizational structure, international nongovernmental...
Despite widespread public support for renewable energy development, the siting of wind energy facilities can prove problematic due to opposition from surrounding communities. I propose a unifying framework to explain community response to wind energy development – showing how concepts from environmental sociology related to local biophysical and socioeconomic conditions...
As GIS becomes more prominent in academic classrooms at all levels of education, the subject of geography and its related disciplines can be approached with a geospatial technology perspective, using new tools and lesson plans. The implementation of Google Earth in classrooms is just one example of this. Research was...
Whether media plays a contributory or a conduit role in the policy process has been a salient focus among policy scholars. If media plays a contributory role in the policy process, it not only shares similar policy core beliefs with advocacy coalitions, but also drafts and disseminates stories including policy...
Founded in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps served as a tool for exposing young adults to work in the environmental field. By creating opportunities during the Great Depression, this program not only generated short-term work experience for its members but provided educational resources to its participants, increasing their employability after...
A growing concern among the international community is that civil war has become the most common form of armed conflict worldwide. To prevent further bloodshed, more research is urgently needed to understand the causes of conflict and most successful strategies for peace. The bargaining theory of war proposes that former...
Commercial fishing is deeply embedded in the economy and culture of many coastal communities. Recent ecological, economic, and regulatory changes impacting fisheries are likely to have important consequences for this industry and the communities it supports. The objective of this study is to improve understanding of coastal community resilience through...
Homelessness has many faces, several of which society will never truly see. The homeless population has begun to change during the recession, as families lose their homes to foreclosures due to high interest mortgages or become evicted from rental dwellings as one or both wage earners lose employment. The initial...
The mission of federal fish hatcheries has evolved over decades under budgetary changes and new conservation regulations and policies. I evaluated the US Fish and Wildlife Service Abernathy Fisheries Technology Center, which has experienced this evolution from a production fish hatchery with research programs to a non-production, cutting edge, basic...
Software Defined Storage is a term for data storage software to manage policy-based provisioning and management of heterogeneous data storage system abstracting underlying hardware. CoprHD is a software defined storage controller and API platform which enables policy-based management and cloud automation of storage resources for block, object and file storage...
Severe weather in the United States causes huge insured losses to crop and property frequently.It creates major impact and elicit diverse response in the weather insurance industry. Events like hail, storm, hurricane etc. are more likely to cause catastrophe losses. So it becomes crucial to collect and analyze these extreme...
The Oregon wine industry is growing and becoming increasingly valuable to the regional economy. As with many production industries, the wine industry has faced concerns around its environmental practices and community impact. The use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and associated wastewater run-off are a few issues vineyard managers experience....
This study explores the context of and impacts resulting from a broad range of university student civic engagements on the city of Corvallis, Oregon. Through semi-structured interviews with local community partners who engage with the university in what I term student civic service-learning, feedback reveals impacts that are overwhelmingly positive,...
Citizen science (formally public participation in science research) has emerged in recent years as an innovative and interactive tool for engaging many diverse groups in science and research. Defined as the collaboration of science professionals and the public in science research, citizen science has tremendously improved the reach of science....
The biggest obstacle to a 100% renewable energy utility portfolio is the ability to produce enough electricity to meet peak demand windows, which typically occur in the late afternoon to evening period from 3 pm to 9 pm. A popular policy option to reduce peak demand is time-of-use (TOU) electricity...
This project presents a new, and more versatile, method for performing Relief Mapping (also known as Parallax Occlusion Mapping), utilizing rates of change in texture coordinates across a polygon surface to calculate the texture sampling offsets used in the ray-tracing portion of the Relief Mapping algorithm. This new technique relies...
In this work, an alternating current (ac) magnetic susceptometer is designed and implemented to track the Brownian relaxation time of magnetic nanoparticles that are suspended in a liquid medium. The detection technique based on the Brownian relaxation time of magnetic nanoparticles has found its way in a variety of biosensing...
Assembly time estimation is a key factor in evaluating the performance of the assembly process in an automated assembly process. The overall goal of this study is to develop an efficient assembly time estimation method by generating the prediction model from an experimental design. In order to estimate these times,...
This study developed a strategic conservation project for the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon focusing on a signature species and this aquarium’s conservation focus areas (i.e., marine debris, sustainable fisheries, water quality, climate change). This study also examined the potential for incorporating an ecotourism or wildlife tourism component to...
Oregon is currently in the process of establishing Marine Reserves (MRs) and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) within Oregon’s Territorial Sea. To assure that residents are aware of impending policy and the science behind it, science educators must formulate education tools that define terms and identify issues, but do not alienate...
Over the past several decades, quality climate information has become extremely valuable to environmental decision makers, yet little is known about how this information is distributed within a social network of professionals. This study focuses on a climate knowledge network associated with a NOAA Climate Impacts Research Consortium (CIRC) study...
Civic participation has been perceived to be an important aspect in the City of Portland. Portland‟s civic engagement model and the high level of public participation from Portlanders have drawn praises. Not all communities, however, have been included in the democratic process, which should be accessible to all Portlanders. Communities...