Over 150 years ago, C. Bergmann observed a within-species pattern of increasing body size as elevation and latitude increased. Bergmann’s data came from numerous endothermic taxa, but the pattern has since been documented among numerous poikilotherms and invertebrates. The ferocious waterbug Abedus herberti Hidalgo (Hemiptera: Belostomatidae) lives in isolated populations...
Vaccinia virus is the prototypic member of the Orthopoxvirus genus. It undergoes a complex replication process where a key step in the transition from immature virion to intracellular mature virion is the cleavage of the major core protein precursors. The product of the I7L open reading frame (ORF) is a...
In order to produce infectious virus progeny, vaccinia virus (VV)
undergoes morphogenic proteolysis to regulate the structural rearrangements of
virus particles. Several of the major structural precursor proteins of VV are
cleaved at a conserved Ala-Gly-X (where X is any amino acid) motif by the VV
I7L core protein proteinase...
This qualitative study examined the experiences and perceptions of males aged 16 – 19 who did not complete a traditional high school diploma program because of feeling alienated from the school system. Five participants described their school experiences from elementary school through the point in high school when they decided...
Giant otters (Pteronura brasiliensis) and humans in the Lower Yasuní Basin (Ecuador) have similar food and space requirements: they consume comparable arrays of fish species, and they use similar aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Resource partitioning could facilitate coexistence by allowing each species exclusive access to some resources.
My research examines...
CTIP2, a novel C2H2 zinc finger protein, is a transcriptional repressor that functions by at least two mechanisms. CTIP2 interacts with and stimulates transcriptional repression mediated by COUP-TF family members. CTIP2 also represses transcription independently of COUP-TF proteins by direct, sequence-specific DNA binding activity. CTIP2 has been implicated in lymphoid...
Nares Strait is one of three main passages of the Canadian Archipelago that
channels freshwater from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic. There are very few
observations regarding the role of this region on the present day Arctic freshwater budget,
and even less regarding the changes in freshwater fluxes...
In the United States, many of the thorniest natural resource conflicts occur on private lands. This is especially true in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon where the hallmark habitat type, Oregon white oak woodland and savanna, is imperiled. Almost exclusively found on private land, Oregon white oak is threatened...
This thesis focuses on two aspects of oxide-based thin-film transistors (TFTs), contact resistance and instability assessment.
First, determination of the contact resistance of indium tin oxide (ITO) on two wide-band gap semiconductors, zinc oxide (ZnO) and indium gallium oxide (IGO), is attempted and the effects of contact resistance on device...
First introduced to the USA in 1958, Myxobolus cerebralis, the parasite responsible for whirling disease in salmonids, has since spread across the country causing severe declines in wild trout populations in the intermountain west. Recent development of risk assessment models used to assess the likelihood and consequences of exotic parasite...
This phenomenological inquiry explored dimensions of reflection for older adults in a developmental oriented adventure education experience. Data were gathered from emergent interviews with four individuals while participating in a multi-day, self-contained experiential education program conducted in a rugged environment, and led by a Navajo leader. Two principle research questions...
Once considered the largest wetland in Central Asia, the Mesopotamian Marshlands of Southeastern Iraq have nearly disappeared. Various hydrological projects by the Iraqi government and dam construction in the region have nearly destroyed these once rich freshwater wetlands by over 90%. With the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom recent attempts...
Floods are the most frequent and damaging of all types of natural disasters and annually affect the lives of millions all over the globe. However, researchers seem to have overlooked the fact that floods do not recognize national boundaries. Therefore, the phenomena of shared, or transboundary floods occurring in international...
Forest growth models in the Pacific Northwest are predominantly empirical. Predictions of yield under alternative silvicultural regimes cannot rely completely on field trials; yet empirical growth models are often inadequate for extrapolating untested regimes and genotypes. The limitations of current models include (1) long time-steps (e.g. 5-10 years); (2) insufficient...
The droplet formation process in the vicinity of the nozzle exit and the behavior of a spreading droplet during impingement on a smooth glass surface were studied. Two nozzle geometries were tested. The first case was a stiff stainless steel nozzle plate 0.787 mm thick. The second case was a...
Understanding seasonal changes in growth, survival, and movement rates is
crucial to salmonid management. These life history characteristics provide a context for
evaluation of management actions. We evaluated the life history of individually
marked Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdneri in the South Fork John Day River basin in
Northeastern Oregon. This thesis...
Cryptographic devices leak timing and power consumption information that is easily measurable, radiation of various levels, and more. Such devices also have additional inputs, other than plaintext and keys, like voltage, which can be modified to force the device to produce certain faulty outputs that can be used to reveal...
Aquatic fecal contamination from non-point sources impairs environmental health and serves as a vehicle for transmission of waterborne disease, resulting in economic losses worldwide. Accurate methods of diagnosing fecal pollution and its source are needed to prevent human exposure, remediate pollution, and reduce economic impacts. In order to obtain this...
The growth of foster care, particularly kin foster care has greatly outpaced our knowledge. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to develop a more informed understanding of foster family functioning from the perspective of foster parents. This study examined the experiences of 9 kin and 12 nonkin foster...
The impact of recent severe droughts throughout the United States, the potential for climate change to intensify the frequency and severity of drought, and discussion about the future of government assistance in agriculture highlight the need for a transition from drought as ‘disaster’ to drought as ‘managed risk’. However, guidance...
Two native shrub species (Piliostigma reticulatum and Guiera senegalensis) are prominent vegetation components in farmers’ fields in Senegal. However, their role in nutrient cycling and ecosystem function has largely been overlooked. A study including both laboratory and field experiments was conducted to evaluate potential biophysical interactions of the two shrub...
The main objective of this research study is to incorporate construction worker safety and health into sustainable design and construction practices. This can be fulfilled by the development of an innovative construction worker safety and health planning tool, called Sustainable Construction Safety and Health (SCSH) Rating System that will:
•...
A digital implementation of a PLL has several advantages compared to its
analog counterpart. These include easy scalability with process shrink, elimination
of the noise susceptible analog control for a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and
the inherent noise immunity of digital circuits. Several recent digital PLL (DPLL)
implementations have achieved...
The Steller Sea Lion Research Initiative was passed in 2001 to provide funding to help scientists determine causes and solutions for the population crash of Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus). In response to need to understand population dynamics of Steller sea lions, NOAA Fisheries has spearheaded a large-scale, range-wide research...
Molecular genetic and enzymological techniques have been employed to study antibiotic biosynthesis. The nonproteinogenic amino acid capreomycidine is the signature residue found in the tuberactinomycin family of antitubercular peptide antibiotics and an important element of the pharmacophore. Recombinant VioG, a single module peptide synthetase from the viomycin gene cluster cloned...
Clostridium perfringens type A isolates produce the spore-specific enterotoxin, CPE, upon sporulation in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. Spo0A is a response regulator representing the major transcription factor for sporulation initiation in C. perfringens. In Bacillus subtilis, a multicomponent phosphorelay involving five histidine kinases (KinA-KinE), the intermediate response...
L. C. Dunn (1893-1974) spent most of his scientific career conducting research in
developmental genetics as a member of the Zoology Department at Columbia
University in the City of New York. He had an accomplished scientific career
researching mutations in mice, which earned him respect from other geneticists and
scientists....
This dissertation uses a new methodological approach for an in-depth analysis of three cartographic works. Studies within the discipline of the history of cartography have followed various methodologies throughout the past century. This dissertation argues that in order to come to a more complete understanding of how maps were produced...
Hot-melt pan-coating, which is a novel coating method and takes 2-3 hours for 300 mg coating weight gain per capsule and tamper-resistant coating, which takes 30 minutes, is much faster than tedious sugar coating and allows greater coating weight gains in shorter times than spray-melt coating. Although hot-melt pan coating...
As time continues, the issue of full European Union membership for Norway becomes a more pertinent issue. The EU has long awaited the membership of Norway, but unfortunately the Nordic country has decided to remain independent. Norway’s historical past has led many Norwegians to believe their country is not ready...
DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is an evolutionary conserved process that functions to maintain genomic integrity through the correction of mismatches that have escaped proofreading. Mutations in the MMR gene Mlh1 are associated with approximately 50% of all cases of Lynch syndrome, a hereditary predisposition to colorectal cancer, through varying and...
An autonomous, in-situ instrument was developed to detect dissolved copper in seawater, suitable for deployment on time scales from weeks to months. A commercially available in-situ nitrate analyzer (YSI 9600) was adapted to measure copper (II) in seawater by chemiluminescence. Modifications included construction of a photomultiplier (PMT) based detector and...
Nisin, an antibacterial peptide proven to be an effective inhibitor of Gram-positive bacteria, was incorporated into novel block copolymer constructs and tested for retained antibacterial activity. Covalent coupling was achieved by chemical modification of the N-terminal isoleucine to introduce a thiol group. Thiolated nisin derivatives were then linked to poly[ethylene...
High performance multi-cell delta-sigma modulators are a preferred choice in applications which require programmability. Multi-cell delta-sigma modulators with M unit cells provide 10log10(M) SQNR improvement for the same thermal noise and bias power due to the uncorrelated quantization noises of the M unit ADCs. This concept is used in this...
This study investigated exemplary middle school mathematics teachers’ knowledge of students’ thinking with algebraic word problem solving and how they used this knowledge and understanding in their planning and teaching of students to solve algebraic word problems.
Initially, a questionnaire was distributed to nine teachers to gather their interpretation of...
Warming of the terrestrial biosphere due to the anthropogenic addition of carbon dioxide to the earth’s atmosphere is becoming a major focus of scientific inquiry. Predictions of the extent of this warming are hampered by uncertainty in the ability of the earth’s ecosystems to counteract this effect by sequestering carbon...
The extent to which responses to stress are maladaptive or adaptive to the long-term survival of fish remains to be better understood. The aim of this study was to identify differentially expressed genes in the livers of rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, responding to an experimental stressor. Gene expression responses were...
Hydrogels have been proposed as candidates for nucleus pulposus replacement due to
their similarity in mechanical behavior to the native tissue when subjected to transient or
static loading; however, given the viscoelastic nature of soft biological tissues, the lack of
dynamic testing is a significant inadequacy in the studies performed...
Vegetation provides food for many insects, and many insects serve as food for bats. We investigated the linkages among these three trophic levels in riparian areas throughout the Oregon Coast Range by examining the influence of vegetation cover, composition, and structure on the activity of nocturnal insects and bats, the...
This dissertation presents a dual-path 2-0 MASH (Multi-stAge-noise -SHaping) ADC with two verified digital corrections of DAC mismatch error and quantization noise leakage. By using these two techniques, the requirements for the analog circuits are greatly relaxed. The dual-path structure generates two outputs, one only composed of conversion errors, the...
New species introductions have been associated with the movement of
people for thousands of years. For instance, horses were introduced into North
America by Spanish explorers, while pigs were introduced by the Polynesians
into many Pacific islands long before the establishment of permanent
European settlements. Both of these species introductions...
The highly conserved multi-protein mismatch repair (MMR) system is known for its ability to correct post replication errors in genomic DNA. A hallmark of MMR deficiency in all organisms is microsatellite instability. The initiating proteins in the eukaryotic MMR system are hetrodimers formed with an integral MSH2 subunit and one...
Fanconi's Anemia (FA) is an autosomal recessive chromosomal instability disorder. The
symptoms include congenital abnormalities, defective hematopoiesis (formation of cells
of the blood), and high risk of developing acute myeloid leukemia and solid tumors.
Fanconi researchers have long been puzzled by how Fanconi Anemia (FA) cells, which
are known to...
Small broomrape (Orobanche minor) is an obligate, chlorophyll-lacking parasite that parasitizes red clover (Trifolium pratense) roots. This study was conducted to develop and implement an integrated, biologically based control program for small broomrape by using wheat as a false host to reduce the soil seed bank. The relationship between temperature...
Solanum species differ in their degree of frost tolerance and cold acclimation capacity. Cultivated potato species of Solanum tuberosum L. are frost-sensitive, incapable of cold acclimation, and have a maximum freezing tolerance of –3°C. Solanum commersonii Dun is frost-tolerant and can survive to –5ºC pre-acclimation and –10ºC post-acclimation. Breeding attempts...
A large, damaging earthquake in 1944 on a blind thrust fault caused 60 cm of surface rupture on the subsidiary La Laja fault and additional unmeasured growth of an associated backlimb fold. Both the fold and fault are components of the La Laja Fault System (LLFS) located 25 km northeast...
Studies towards the total synthesis of (−)-kendomycin (1), a bacterial metabolite with
a unique molecular architecture and pronounced biological activity, are described. These
studies resulted in the synthesis of advanced intermediate 208, containing all of the
carbon atoms of 1.
A Dötz annulation between alkyne 122 and novel chromium carbenoid...
I conducted a multi-scale evaluation of aspen – bird relationships in the northern ungulate winter range of the northern Yellowstone ecosystem during June 2001-03. Questions addressed were: (1) Does bird diversity increase with conifer presence in aspen stands? (2) Given known habitat selection cues, are migrating birds passively intercepted by...
It is estimated that 50-75% of Oregon vineyards cultivate at least every other alley in order to 1) reduce water stress 2) increase vineyard canopy temperatures and 3) increase nutrient availability. Because many vineyards are situated on steep hillsides, frequent tillage could result in increased soil erosion, decreased soil quality...
Clostridium perfringens type A isolates producing enterotoxin (CPE) are an
important cause of both food poisoning (FP) and non food borne gastrointestinal
diseases (NFBGID) in both humans and animals. C. perfringens type A food
poisoning is caused by isolates carrying the CPE encoding gene (cpe) on the
chromosome while the...