The existence of generalized symmetries of Maxwell's equations in Gödel's Universe is investigated. It is shown that their existence is in turn tied to the existence of certain spinorial objects called Killing spinors.
The conformal algebra, corresponding to valence (1; 1) Killing spinors, for Gödel's Universe is discussed in detail....
The Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics (NE/RHP) at Oregon State University (OSU) has been developing an innovative modular reactor plant concept since being initiated with a Department of Energy (DoE) grant in 1999.
This concept, the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR), is an integral pressurized water...
COUP-TFI, an orphan nuclear receptor of the steroid/thyroid hormone receptor superfamily, plays important roles in homeostasis and the CNS development, including differentiation, patterning, axonal projection, cell migration, cortical arealization and the temporal specification of neural stem cells. A number of COUP-interacting proteins have been described previously, and the majority of...
Clostridium perfringens is the causative agent of a wide variety of diseases in animals and humans. C. perfringens can produce more than 15 toxins. However, individual strains produce a subset of these toxins. Although a small percentage of C. perfringens isolates (mostly belonging to type A) produce C. perfringens enterotoxin...
Although female athletes are at greater risk of non-contact knee injuries than men, the factors that contribute to these injuries are not well understood. One important question is whether intense exercise influences the risk of knee injury, both acutely
and over the following days. The purpose of this study was...
The links between forests, streamflow, and climate are poorly understood. Despite hundreds of studies over the past 60 years, fundamental questions of forests' effects on the hydrologic cycle remain unanswered. The hydrological cycle involves mutually-dependent biological and physical processes that operate at multiple scales of time and space, and this...
The absence of Black male counselor educators in CACREP accredited programs is astounding. Out of a pool of 130 CACREP programs, only 31 have at least one Black male full time counselor educator. Although these programs are comprised of approximately 2,000 counselor educators, only 58 of them are Black men....
A backward fall is a major cause of hip fractures. Hip fractures have the potential to increase the mortality rate of older adults. Thus, the prevention of backward falls by older adults is a critical subject to be studied. Specifically, it remains unknown what effect aging-related losses in muscle strength...
The primary purpose of this study was to determine which factors related to adult 4-H volunteer empowerment in 4-H youth development settings. This study examined the relationship of adult 4-H volunteers’ perceived leadership styles of Oregon 4-H Youth Development Educators (YDE) to the adult 4-H volunteer sense of empowerment. In...
Geometric Problems become increasingly intractable and difficult to visualize as the number of dimensions increases beyond three. Inductions from lower dimensional spaces are possible yet often awkward. This thesis shows how elementary linear algebra, vector calculus, and combinatorics offer improved methods for calculating the dihedral angles of n-simplicies and proving...
Why do rural households leave for urban places? And how does this
decision affect their economic well-being? Rural places in the United States have higher poverty and unemployment rates and lower levels of educational attainment relative to urban places. Does leaving a rural place for a city offer a pathway...
Interconnection networks play important roles in designing high performance computers. Recently two new classes of interconnection networks based on the concept of Gaussian and Eisenstein-Jacobi integers were introduced. In this research, efficient routing and broadcasting algorithms for these networks are developed. Furthermore, constructing edge disjoint Hamiltonian cycles in Gaussian networks...
Long-run food price changes respond to long-run changes in food demand, quasi-fixed and variable production factors, and agricultural productivity. Recent global food-price volatility puts a renewed spotlight on the trends and sources of any agricultural productivity growth. Because food prices’ most critical effects are on human hunger, it is especially...
The purpose of the study was to determine if online courses that were faculty peer reviewed based on five factors of quality instruction resulted in increased levels of student satisfaction and higher rates of student retention when compared with nonreviewed courses in a post-secondary context. The five factors of quality...
Current detection methods for bacterial contamination rely on structure based detection of proteins and nucleic acids. While these methods are easy to use and reliable, they cannot evaluate the toxicity of a sample and the potential to cause disease. Previously, erythrophore cells derived from Betta splendens had been suggested as...
The emerging use of portable digital devices by students, parents and teachers, is forcing schools to develop real-time communication systems that integrate technology into the general operations of schools, and contemplate governing policies and procedures to sustain and guide the challenges of these new technologies. This study contributes to this...
Detection technique that proposed utilizing electrochemically controlled, reversible ion extraction into polymeric membrane in an alternating galvanostatic/ potentiostatic mode was introduced. This method is studied in detail to comprehend the advantages of the novel sensor (pulstrode) compared to the potentiometric ion selective electrode (ISE), studies included possible applications and limitations....
In this dissertation, I qualitatively examined the meaning of mothering a child with autism in two countries: the United States and South Korea. The overarching research question focused on how sociocultural ideas about mothering and disability, particularly autism spectrum disorders, shape women’s understanding of themselves and their children with disabilities....
There is significant interest in titanium oxide and germanium-silicon oxide nanocomposites for optoelectronic, photocatalytic, and solar cell applications. The ability of the marine diatom Pinnularia sp. to uptake soluble metal oxides from cell culture medium, and incorporate them into the micro- and nano-structure of their amorphous silica cell walls, called...
Society uses massive quantities of wood fiber in production of paper, and demand for fiber is projected to increase further as production of biofuels from fermentation of plant cellulosic materials increases. Because these end uses generally require the costly step of removing of lignin, wood with reduced or more easily...
This dissertation used land rent theory and an economic model of land-use conversion to examine the main drivers of the deforestation occurred in Antioquia,Colombia, between 1980 and 2000. Land-cover information at a semi-fine scale (1:25,000)
obtained largely from aerial photography was employed to calculate deforestation. In addition, free international databases...
Recently, the concept of performance based design has become popular for many types of structures, including port facilities under seismic loading. For the case of pile-supported wharves, the level of performance is generally estimated using the displacement capacity of the structure. Therefore, understanding soil-pile interaction is one of the most...
Approximately 12% of Americans do not consume the amount of zinc equal to the Estimated Average Requirement for zinc and could be at risk for marginal zinc deficiency. Zinc is an essential component of proteins in the defense against oxidative stress and DNA damage repair. Specifically in the prostate, zinc...
A study consisting of three parts was undertaken to investigate how variation in species interactions, population genetic structure, epidemiological parameters, and plant breeding system may influence the ecology and biological control of an apomictic invasive plant, Chondrilla juncea (Asteraceae). Interactions between natural enemy species may modify their net effect on...
Kincaid's lupine (Lupinus oreganus Heller) is a federally listed threatened species native to remnant grassland of western Oregon and southwestern Washington, and is the primary larval host plant of a once thought extinct butterfly, Plebejus icarioides fenderi Macy. Past studies concerning Kincaid's lupine reproduction
suggested that populations may suffer reductions...
General purpose computer systems have seen increased performance potential through the parallel processing capabilities of multicore processors. Yet this potential performance can only be attained through parallel applications, thus forcing software developers to rethink how everyday applications are designed. The most readily form of Thread Level Parallelism (TLP) within any...
We examine the interactions and feedbacks between bathymetry, waves, currents, and
sediment transport. The first two pro jects focus on the use of remote sensing techniques
to expand our knowledge of the nearshore. Due to the plethora of snap-shot data that is
available from satellites and their distribution via Google...
For Pacific salmon, the evolution of local adaptations depends upon the species' propensity to return, or "home", to natal streams at time of reproduction. Pacific salmon use olfactory cues to guide homing behavior, yet little is known about the genetics of olfaction in salmon. In this study, I use putatively...
This dissertation addresses issues of strategic behavior of firms in oligopoly markets. In the first study we analyze how generic advertising affects brand advertising and firm profits in differentiated oligopoly markets. We develop two models, one with vertical differentiation and another with horizontal differentiation. In the case of vertical differentiation,...
A historic struggle in the counselor education field has been determining and developing the emotional suitability of applicants and trainees for counseling work. The literature suggests that emotional suitability for counseling includes such things as: the ability to experience a full range of emotions, the ability to modulate emotions,the ability...
If P is an integer polynomial denote the degree of P by ∂(P) and let H(P) be the maximum of the absolute value of the coefficients of P. Define Λ(P)=2[superscript ∂(P)]H(P) and for a fixed prime p let C[subscript p] denote the completion of the algebraic closure of the p-adic...
The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the developmental experience of novice play therapists. A review of the play therapy training literature as well as the counselor development literature suggested that there are characteristics such as patience, flexibility, and a love for children that are needed to work with...
Non-destructive commercial ultrasonic grading provides laminated veneer lumber (LVL) manufacturers a means for sorting veneer based on average ultrasonic propagation time (UPT) and/or average dynamic modulus of elasticity (MOEd). While this may provide reliable estimations of modulus of elasticity (MOE), little is known about the influence of veneer defects on...
The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the experiences of Asian group leaders who were leading groups in Asia. This research was developed to address a need for exploratory research in the area of Asian group leaders' perceptions and experiences during the process of leading groups in Asia. Grounded...
Hydrodynamic models are used as a diagnostic tool to understand the temporal variability of shallow-water processes that are difficult to completely resolve with traditional field measurements. For all simulations, modeled quantities are qualitatively or quantitatively compared with available measurements to gain confidence in conclusions derived from the modeled results. In...
Many conventionally reinforced concrete deck girder bridges (RCDG) and their intermediate supporting bent caps were designed during the Eisenhower interstate era of the 1950’s with the AASHO design equations at the time, which subsequently place higher demand on the concrete. The referenced components may exhibit diagonal cracking due to the...
The use of paraeducators has increased as a main mechanism to include more
students with disabilities in multiple settings in the public schools in the U.S.
Research has examined the use of paraeducators in typical classroom settings but
little is known about their role in physical education. Although the utilization...
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of a Filipino American college student organization at a Predominantly White Institution, and uncover elements of the organization that influence or limit the development of critical consciousness of its members. This study focuses on the aspect of critical consciousness that...
The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that led to the move to include non-need aid in community college institutional financial aid policies. The following questions guided the research: (1) What meaning do those involved in the
formulation of institutional financial aid policy at community colleges give...
Two-year chemistry-based technology training (CBTT) programs in the U.S. are important in the preparation of the professional technical workforce. The purpose of this study was to identify, examine, and analyze factors related to the economic sustainability of CBTT programs. A review of literature identified four clustered categories of 31 sub-factors...
This dissertation has two objectives. The first objective is to determine where best to situate the study of mentoring (i.e. the 'making of scientists') on the landscape of the history of science and science studies. This task is accomplished by establishing mentoring studies as a link between the robust body...
The original research detailed in this document recognizes that the majority of students with disabilities between 18-69 years of age will attend a community college. The literature also indicates an exponential increase for better job opportunity and earnings relative to individuals with disabilities who attain higher levels of education. This...
Despite the advances in surgery, physical therapy, and pharmaceutical agents, muscle
dysfunction (i.e., atrophy and weakness) continues to impair recovery from an anterior
cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and surgery. Ischemia-reperfusion injury during surgery
and the subsequent limb disuse are two events experienced by patients having ACL
surgery. Oxidative stress and...
Evolution of the mobile communication standards and proliferation of hand-held devices mandate stringent Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) specifications. Among various ADCs, a ∆Σ ADC is best known as a power-efficient ADC when more than 12b is required. However, a conventional discrete-time (DT) ∆Σ Modulator (∆ΣM) is inadequate for low-power wideband applications...
One of the basic questions facing transportation planners and road managers is how to provide and maintain a road system that provides efficient access to the forest while limiting adverse effects roads can have on water and soil resources. The purpose of this study is to develop decision support models...
Knowledge workers are struggling in the information flood. There is a growing interest in intelligent desktop environments that help knowledge workers organize their daily life. Intelligent desktop environments allow the desktop user to define a set of “activities” that characterize the user’s desktop work. These environments then attempt to identify...
This study investigated how a minority population of Latino/a immigrant children attending a middle school in the Pacific Northwest made sense of engaging with school and school mathematics. A cross disciplinary theoretical framework was used to examine how individual student motivation is impacted by the social context in which the...
Litter nutrient dynamics contribute significantly to biogeochemical cycling in
forest ecosystems. These dynamics may be influenced by site attributes, litter nutrient concentrations, and soil nutrient availability either independently or synergistically. Litter nutrient dynamics were examined in two decomposition studies in temperate coniferous forests of Oregon. I used ¹⁵N-labelled litter of...
Automated recognition of object categories in images is a critical step for many real-world computer vision applications. Interest region detectors and region descriptors have been widely employed to tackle the variability of objects in pose, scale, lighting, texture, color, and so on. Different types of object recognition problems usually require...
This thesis describes the chemical investigation of marine cyanobacteria collected in Madagascar and Panama with an emphasis on the isolation and structure elucidation of medicinally relevant secondary metabolites.
A collection of the marine cyanobacterium Lyngbya majuscula from the Radames Islands, Madagascar yielded two new cyclic depsipeptides, radamamides A and B,...
A striking feature in the study of Riemannian manifolds of positive sectional curvature
is the narrowness of the collection of known examples. In this thesis, we examine the
structure of the cohomology rings of three families of compact simply connected seven dimensional
Riemannian manifolds that may contain new examples of...
Many conditions affecting hydrogen (H₂) production by the cyanobacterium, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, were optimized to yield maximum H₂ accumulation. Biological H₂ production from photosynthetic species is a promising form of renewable energy since an abundant supply of sunlight hits the Earth every day, and photosynthetic bacteria can harness this...
The purpose of this study was to investigate third year college students' transfer of learning of the concepts of eigenvalues and eigenvectors from the winter term physics courses to the interviews in which they participated before, during, and after these courses. Transfer of learning of each student was explored
by...
In order to address the energy needs of developing countries and remote communities, Oregon State University has proposed the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR) design. In order to achieve five years of operation without refueling, use of 8% enriched fuel is necessary.
This dissertation is focused on core design...
Real-time, high efficiency neutron spectroscopy has, historically, been a persistent challenge in the field of radiation detection and, for the most part, has gone unsolved. The most promising method to resolve this challenge, is the boron-capture technique using an organic scintillation system (BC-523a). Detectors that utilize this method possess an...
Since the early 1990s, declines in northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) populations have been documented through extensive field surveys and range-wide demographic analyses. Although loss of late-successional forest has been credited as the primary cause for spotted owl population declines, environmental variation has also been shown to influence vital...
Mycobacterium avium cause disseminated disease in immunocompromised people such as AIDS patients. Subsequent to crossing the intestinal epithelium, M. avium thrive within vacuoles in macrophages. The bacteria exhibit a different, more invasive, phenotype after being in macrophages compared to M. avium from laboratory conditions. We hypothesized that this intracellular phenotype...
The purpose of this case study was to examine a third-grade teacher’s effective use of mathematical discourse in the classroom setting. The study offers insights into the following research questions: 1) How does a teacher’s engagement in mathematical discourse communities influence her practice and self-efficacy as a mathematics educator? 2)...
Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Random Forests (RF) have
consistently outperformed other machine learning algorithms on a variety of
problems. SVM can be used for classification and regression on many types of
data (e.g. nonlinear, high dimensional), but cannot handle missing or mixed data.
This research implements a permutation-based variable...
Two forest management objectives being debated in the context of federally managed landscapes in the US Pacific Northwest involve a perceived trade-off between fire restoration and C sequestration. The former strategy would reduce fuel (and therefore C) that has accumulated through a century of fire suppression and exclusion that has...
School attendance is perceived as a critical issue in today’s primary and secondary educational systems. This manuscript reviews literature that speaks to the complexity of issues related to truancy and then posits that many of the interventions typically recommended to address truancy are ones that school counselors already provide or...
This research effort examined Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Siletz tribal members of the environment they live and/or lived in, and how both Western societal beliefs and land reduction to the initially established reservation location affected and altered how the area TEK has been maintained and passed down. The theory...
In this dissertation I study evolutionary patterns at genes encoding antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in frogs. AMPs are short, amphipathic, cationic, secreted proteins that kill bacteria and other pathogens through a non-catalytic mechanism that involves
binding to and disrupting the microbial cell membrane. In many animal taxa, positive selection is much...
The purpose of this research was to develop tools and germplasm for the production of tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.) with high fruit phenolics without the use of genetic engineering. A candidate gene analysis was undertaken to identify genes regulating anthocyanin biosynthesis in tomato fruit (Aft, Abg, atv, and Purple Smudge)....
Papain-like leader proteases are found in diverse families of human, animal, plant, and fungal positive-strand RNA viruses. In addition to autocatalytic processing, these proteases play a variety of roles in the virus life cycle. In particular, the leader protease (L-Pro) of a prototype member of the Closterovirus genus, Beet yellows...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a re-emerging class of environmental pollutants. The persistent nature of these highly toxic compounds along with their ubiquity in the environment creates an unavoidable route of exposure. The developing fetus and neonate are a particularly susceptible population due to their incomplete complement of xenobiotic metabolizing...
The Change in Alcohol Consumption of Important People to Clients measures the relationship between outcomes of clients’ alcohol treatment and the changes in alcohol consumption by important people (IP) in clients’ social networks. The prevalence of alcoholism in America continues to negatively impact individuals and society, yet few people with...
The concept of reducing laboratory operations in scale such that they fit on a microfluidic chip has been met with great enthusiasm. Lab-on-a-chip devices promise to be cost effective to operate due to reduced reagent consumption, have the potential to offer shorter analysis times due to their short path lengths,...
In this dissertation, we present a user-in-the-loop method for the design of an interactive motion data structure that benefits from the advantages of both motion graphs and blend-based techniques. Our novel approach automatically analyzes a traditional motion graph built from labeled motion clips. The result is a more condensed, coarser...
Ever since composite laminate technology was introduced into the aerospace and automotive industry, there has been a need to fully understand the damage progression experienced by composite laminated plates in the presence of a notch. While numerous research studies have been conducted on this matter when subjected to in-plane loads,...
New highly polymorphic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers for European hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.). were developed from several sources. The markers were characterized, and segregation in a mapping population allowed to assign them to linkage groups. Their transferability across genera and species in the Betulaceae family was investigated. SSR markers...
Dynamic CMOS circuits are commonly used in high-performance memory arrays to implement wide-NOR logic functions for their read and search operations. This is because dynamic circuits have significantly higher speed and lower area compared to static circuits for performing similar operations. Register File (RF) arrays are located at the top...
Real world is analog but the processing of signals can best be done in digital domain. So the need for Analog to Digital Converters(ADCs) is ever rising as more and more applications set in. With the advent of mobile technology, power in electronic equipment is being driven down to get...