Staphylococcus aureus is a human pathogen capable of producing enterotoxins causing staphylococcal food poisoning, one of the most economically important foodborne diseases in the U.S. This pathogen may be introduced to pre-cooked tuna meat used for the production of canned tuna because significant manual handling occurs after cooking of the...
This study focuses on iodine-131 detected in milk samples from the Dairy Science Unit at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California following events at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant in March of 2011. The samples were collected as part of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (DCPP) Radiological Environmental...
Controlling competing vegetation with the application of herbicides and increased seedling size at planting has been shown to increase seedling survival and growth. These two important reforestation tools have often been studied independently of each other, limiting comparisons that can be made between them. This study utilized a factorial treatment...
This thesis presents a novel approach for propagation of uncertainty in river systems. Errors in data observations and predictions (e.g., stream inflows), in model parameters, and resulting from the discretization of continuous systems, all point to the need to accurately quantify the amount of uncertainty carried through the modeling process....
Linear wireless sensor networks (LWSN) are special class of wireless sensor networks where sensor nodes are deployed in a straight line. Monitoring industrial pipelines, railroads, tunnels, power lines, and borders are applications of LWSNs. Wireless sensors are tiny devices with limited energy resources; therefore, efficient energy routing in LWSNs is...
To quantify the relative activity contributions of beta emitters in mixed emission source spectra, the triple-layer phoswich detector was modeled to generate beta energy absorption spectra from mixed beta sources. These mixed sources include four pure beta emitters (C-14, Tc-99, Sr-90, and Y-90). Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) computer code was...
Since the 1970s, tendon-transfer surgeries have been routinely performed for a variety of conditions such as stroke, paralysis, spinal atrophy, trauma, and birth defects. The surgery involves rerouting a tendon from a disabled muscle and directly suturing it to a functioning muscle in order to partially restore hand function. This...
In recent years, small poultry producers have been interested in finding an alternative for corn and soybean for a variety of reasons. Health concerns related to either naturally occurring isoflavones (phytoestrogens) or their genetically modified organism (GMO) status are the primary considerations behind this trend. Secondly, the recent high prices...
A techno-economic analysis (TEA) was performed to evaluate the technology, cost, and resource use for algal biofuel production based on today’s economics and technology. The basic goal of this study is to develop a model to calculate the mass and energy balances and costs to produce 10 million gal of...
The subsurface microbial biosphere in the igneous oceanic crust has implications for global geochemical cycling, early life on Earth, and the search for life on Mars. Microscopic evidence of a subsurface microbial ecosystem includes biotic alteration textures associated with basaltic glass. The exact conditions in the basaltic layer that make...
The Law of Transboundary Aquifers, introduced to the United Nations General Assembly in December 2008, encourages nations to make multilateral arrangements for the proper management of transboundary aquifers.
This study seeks to answer the question: “What are the main challenges for successful collaboration in assessing and managing Transboundary Aquifer Systems...
Novelty detection plays an important role in machine learning and signal processing. This
project studies novelty detection in a new setting where the data object is represented as
a bag of instances and associated with multiple class labels, referred to as multi-instance
multi-label (MIML) learning. Contrary to the common assumption...
This study presents a mooring analysis of the Ocean Sentinel buoy, which is a mobile test platform for Wave Energy Converters. The Ocean Sentinel is owned and operated by the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC) at Oregon State University (OSU). The study involved a field observation as well...
Green technology in the United States has been on the rise over the past few decades in the United States. However, certain green technologies have been developed in the absence of design standards. Ecoroofs, which are vegetated soil masses placed on the top of a building’s roof structure, present several...
Steam distillation has been the common method of extraction of essential oils from plants for more than a century. The use of microwave energy has been suggested as an alternative distillation method that would: reduce water usage, dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and the carbon footprint. A byproduct of this...
The development of solution-based methods for deposition of different thin film material is presented as an alternative to high cost vacuum-based methods. For certain materials, vacuum techniques are unsuitable for processing. Additionally, vacuum-based processes present high capital costs associated with equipment, and slow processing times. Atmospheric pressure solution based techniques...
Auctions are used to solve resource allocation problem between many agents and many items in real-world settings. Unfortunately, in most cases, it is possible for selfish agents to manipulate the system for their own interest at the expense of the social welfare. Such manipulation can be prevented using the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves...
Image classification is a difficult problem, often requiring large training sets to get satisfactory results. However this is a task that humans perform very well, and incorporating user feedback into these learning algorithms could help reduce the dependency on large amounts of labeled training data. This process has already been...
This study sought to better understand the voluntary adoption of water quality improving practices by agricultural producers in Northern Malheur County, Oregon. The Reasoned Action Approach/Theory of Planned Behavior was used as a theoretical framework to identify barriers and incentives to adoption. Study findings suggest that producers primarily consider practical...
Software developers frequently need to perform code maintenance tasks, but doing so requires time-consuming navigation through code. A variety of tools are aimed at easing this navigation by using models to predict places in the code that a developer might want to visit, and then providing shortcuts so that the...