X-ray computed tomography is a noninvasive imaging modality capable of reconstructing exact density values of 3D objects. Computed tomography machines are deployed across the world to provide doctors with an image that reveals more detail than a standard x-ray image. We investigate algorithms based on exact computed tomography reconstruction formulas...
The marine climate of the Galapagos is spatially and seasonally
heterogeneous. A taxonomically comprehensive study of Galapagos zooplankton has
never been done. This study is an initial effort to establish the distribution and
community structure of zooplankton in the Archipelago. I collected zooplankton
samples by vertical tows over the Galapagos...
This thesis consists of an autoethnography of a sexual assault survivor written using poems, journal entries, annotations, photographs and song lyrics. The ethnography is a chronological record of feelings the author experienced during the day prior to the attack and emotions she navigated during the year and a half after...
Creating an untraditional more personalized thesis allowed me to combine my
passion for children, travel, language, and books all into one. Hans the Adventurer is
a children’s book about a young German boy who loves to go on adventures.
However Han’s has to go on the adventure alone when his...
The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the underlying mechanisms within community colleges that influence cross-functional collaboration. The study also explored the role of community college leadership in fostering internal collaboration. The following questions guided the research: (1) What does cross-functional collaboration look like at a community...
My project is designed to determine how the English major and English Studies exist at OSU, through the collection of perceptions and opinions about English Studies at OSU from students and faculty (both inside and outside of the English department) via email surveys. I used secondary research to determine how...
The current appeal of reality television is undeniable, with the specific genre of makeover television having special nationalistic and moral appeal in the United States. Previous analyses of NBC's weight-loss makeover show The Biggest Loser suggest that the program is inherently problematic because of its ingrained fat bias and unethical...
The Disney Company is an inescapable force in American life that is often detached from the stigma of big business and instead viewed as something particularly valuable, the United States’ foremost storyteller. In addition to the stories that the Disney Company
produces through its animated and live-action productions, there is...
Numerous water supply systems and community based water boards have been created with the aid of international organizations and NGOs in developing countries. These water systems have great potential to improve people’s social life and health in these countries. However, in reality, these water systems are often not effectively managed;...
Oregon’s High Lava Plains Province (HLP) has strongly bimodal basalt and rhyolitic volcanism. The Province caps the northern margin of the Basin and Range Province and serves as a transitional region between westward extension of the Basin and Range Province and unextended crust to the north . The High Lava...
On piñon-juniper encroached sites that lack the understory fuels to carry a prescribed fire, treatment options are limited to mechanical methods. Cutting with chainsaws and leaving the trees on site has been the primary treatment method for such sites, however this method creates a potential fire hazard, particularly in the...
The net mass balance fluctuations of Arctic and Sub-Arctic glaciers, north of 47.5°
North latitude, are described over a 45-year period from 1957 to 2002 using two
parameters derived from a gridded climatology reanalysis. Variability among 185
measured glaciers was represented according to two main components. The first
component represents...
In the field of Human-Computer Interaction, provenance refers to the complete history and genealogy of a document. Provenance can be useful in identifying related resources, such as different versions of the same document or resources used in the creation of a new document. Though methods of provenance collection and applications...
Suspended sediment and in situ turbidity data from two western Oregon streams, Oak Creek and South Fork Hinkle Creek, were used to estimate annual sediment loads for the 2006 water year (October 1, 2005 to September 30, 2006). Water samples and in situ turbidity observations were taken following the Turbidity...
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...
A Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) is collection of wireless mobile nodes without a network infrastructure or centralized administration. Although MANETs can be used in many applications, such as mobile Internet, military communication, and disaster relief networks, a number of challenges remain. These include routing, medium access control, security, scalability, energy...
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)...
As college students transition to life away from their parental home, the need to make independent decisions regarding their eating and exercise behaviors is evident. This life transition may be a critical period for establishment of long term behavior patterns with potential impact on health, disease and weight balance. This...
End users' programs are fraught with errors, costing companies millions of dollars. One reason may be that researchers and tool designers have not yet focused on end-user debugging strategies. To investigate this possibility, this dissertation presents eight empirical studies and a new strategy-based end-user debugging tool for Excel, called StratCel....
Low energy design techniques for digital circuits are examined to determine their suitability for use in a digital logic controller for wireless sensor network nodes. Transistor level simulations are used to evaluate the techniques and those demonstrating an energy reduction are used to implement a digital logic controller. The digital...
In Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) or high frequency digital
ICs, there is a demand to probe the internal nodes for testing. The ultra low
capacitance RFIC probe presented in his work is a flexible tool for these
applications. The probe utilizes the coupling between a tungsten needle and the...
We consider the problem of tactical assault planning in real-time strategy games where a team of friendly agents must launch an assault on an enemy. This problem offers many challenges including a highly dynamic and uncertain environment, multiple agents, durative actions, numeric attributes, and different optimization objectives. While the dynamics...
Ensuring correctness of real-world software applications is a challenging task. Testing can be used to find many bugs, but is typically not sufficient for proving correctness or even eliminating entire classes of bugs. However, formal proof and verification techniques tend to be very heavy weight and are simply not available...
Methane hydrates and biohydrogen are two disparate subjects that are of interest in the growing field of alternative energy research. However, before commercial use becomes a viable option, each has challenges that need to be overcome. Methane hydrates require large investments of time and capital to locate. In this thesis,...
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...
Ocean wave energy is a new and developing field of renewable energy with great potential. The energy contained in one meter of an average wave off the coast of Newport Oregon could supply dozens of homes with electricity. However, ocean waves are usually quite irregular which leads to large bursts...
Measurements of social constructs that evaluate natural hazard preparedness are important to decrease natural hazard vulnerability. Preparedness reduces natural hazard impacts and human vulnerability. Investment in education and education research contribute to human sustainable development and natural hazard preparedness. Faced with other needs, people typically do not prepare enough to...
The results of a machine learning from user behavior can be thought of as a program, and like all programs, it may need to be debugged. Providing ways for the user to debug it matters because without the ability to fix errors, users may find that the learned program’s errors...
In this thesis, I conduct an analysis of paradigmatic background assumptions deployed in engineering decision-making processes, in order to understand how these assumptions, operating tacitly and in tension with each other, contribute to decisions that are ethically less effective and less substantial than they would otherwise be. I do so...
In previous work (Blakemore et al. Org. Lett. 2005, 7, 4721; Heterocycles 2006, 70, 609), successful elaborations of the lupine alkaloids (±)-α-isosparteine (dl-2) and (±)-β-isosparteine (dl-3) were realized from a common tetraoxobispidine precursor, 3,7-diallyl -2,4,6,8-tetraoxo-3,7-diazabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane (93). Herein, the tetraoxobispidine approach to lupine alkaloids was extended to a total synthesis of...
Analysis, visualization, and design of vector fields on surfaces have a wide variety of major applications in both scientific visualization and computer graphics. On the one hand, analysis and visualization of vector fields provide critical insights to the flow data produced from simulation or experiments of various engineering processes. On...
Within this thesis, I posit that poetry, rather than philosophical argument, is a more effective means of expressing and understanding the nature of mystical experiences. William James’ analysis of mysticism inspires the theoretical approach utilized in this thesis. An analysis of the unique qualities of poetic language within mystical discourse...
Tissue weighting factors, w[subscript T], used to convert equivalent dose to effective dose, account for differences in radiosensitivity of various organs in the human body and allow users to compare individual organ detriment to whole body risk. They are explicitly calculated in ICRP 26, 60, and 103, although the methods...
Contract harvest operations have become the preferred approach to reducing the largest cost component of timber production through free market competition amongst logging contractors bidding or negotiating for work. The goal of this research was to investigate economic components of harvesting operations not previously studied for steep slope thinning harvests...
The experimental and theoretical bases of transient electric birefringence (TEB) and its application in a variety of nanomaterials, including Na-montmorillonite, cellulose nanocrystals (CNXL), and CdSe quantum dots (QDs) will be presented. TEB is a phenomenon attributed to the alignment of particles in response to an applied electric field and has...
Ecosystems are facing increasing threats from human related activities, such as overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, species invasions, and diseases, among others. While oceanic islands provide natural laboratories to understand ecological and evolutionary process, they are also particularly vulnerable to these impacts, given their usual isolation from the mainland and the...
Endothelial activation with increased expression of cellular adhesion molecules, chemokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines critically contributes to vascular inflammation and the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis. By affecting redox-sensitive cell signaling pathways and transcription factors, redox-active transition metal ions, such as copper and iron, may play an important role in these...
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...
This thesis explores the effects study abroad literature, specifically promotional Websites, have on
Oregon State University students when selecting a study abroad program and if the students’ choices reflect
OSU’s International Degree and Education Abroad’s (IDEA) goal of global competency for students.
To explore this, two online surveys were made;...
We studied the feasibility of using end-grain characteristics to match individual boards and cants back to their parent Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) logs. After reviewing marking/reading and biometric automated identification systems, we focused on end-grain biometrics because they appear to have the most promise for sawmills. Biometric identification requires that every...
Decades of experimental work has illustrated the high degree to which the partitioning of most elements is dependent on phase composition, temperature and pressure. In order to quantitatively describe clinopyroxene partitioning it is required to derive expressions using theoretical constraints calibrated with experimental data.
The experimental database available for such...
This thesis is an exploration of Catch-22 (1961) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), two early documents of American postmodern literature. In particular, this thesis attempts to present the critical discussions surrounding each novel as parallel to the broader theoretical discussions surrounding the concept of postmodernism. My contention is that, in both of...
The purposes of this study were to examine the experiences of African American female students attending urban community colleges, to gain further understanding of how they interpret the meaning of persistence, and to identify the factors that affect their persistence. African American women attending community college in Los Angeles were...
The impact of yeast on the aroma and flavor of Vitis vinifera L. cv. 'Pinot Noir' wine was investigated. Due to the presence of naturally occurring yeast and bacteria on grapes and wine equipment, and the influence these microorganisms have on wine, a means of eliminating microorganisms from grape must...
In recent decades, there has been a tremendous change in the college student
experience. In many ways this change has been driven by developments in
technology, which have in turn changed the way students conduct research,
socialize, and recreate. This thesis seeks to gain an understanding as to how
Internet...
This study examines the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on merger and
acquisitions (M&A). Using data from Kinder, Lyndeberg, and Domini (KLD) Research
Analytics and Thomson’s Securities Data Corporation’s (SDC) Platinum Database, we
empirically test if CSR scores effect a firm’s propensity to pursue M&A activity.
Specifically, I examine...
This project is a short novelette told from the points of view of several different characters. The story is set in an airport and follows these characters as they wait for their flight to arrive. Each of the characters is observing the others, much like people do everyday without realizing...
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...
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...
Window displays are an important means by which retailers communicate with both current and potential consumers. The present study investigated how the use of context setting (with or without) in a window display and background music (with or without) influence consumers' mental imagery, arousal response, attitude toward the display, and...