Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is a key ecological process that can restore nitrogen (N) lost in wildfire and shape the pace and pattern of post-fire forest recovery. To date, there is limited information on how climate and soil fertility interact to influence different pathways of BNF in early forest succession....
This paper presents the design and evaluates the performance of a double-walled electrically aspirated radiation shield for thermometers measuring air temperature and its gradients in the atmospheric surface layer. Tests were performed to quantify its solar radiation error and wake production, and to characterize the observer effect of the forced...
Purpose: Primary care practices are an ideal setting for reducing national smoking rates because >70% of smokers visit their physician annually, yet smoking cessation counseling is inconsistently delivered to patients. We designed and created a novel software program for handheld computers and hypothesized that it would improve clinicians' ability to...
A framework for understanding the synthesis and catalysis of metabolites and other biochemicals by proteins is crucial for unraveling the physiology of cells. To create such a framework for Zea mays L. subsp. mays (maize), we developed MaizeCyc, a metabolic network of enzyme catalysts, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, secondary...
Gene expression profiles of the biological control strain Pseudomonas protegens Pf-5 inhabiting pea seed surfaces were revealed using a whole-genome oligonucleotide microarray. We identified genes expressed by Pf-5 under the control of two global regulators (GacA and RpoS) known to influence biological control and secondary metabolism. Transcript levels of 897...
The computation of Lagrangian coherent structures typically involves post-processing of experimentally or
numerically obtained fluid velocity fields to obtain the largest finite-time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE) field.
However, this procedure can be tedious for large-scale complex flows of general interest. In this work, an
alternative approach involving computation of the FTLE...
The present study investigated a direct assessment of behavioral self-regulation (the Head-Toes-Knees- Shoulders; HTKS) and its contribution to early academic achievement among young children in Germany and Iceland. The authors examined the psychometric properties and construct validity of the HTKS, investigated gender differences in young children’s behavioral self-regulation, and explored...
Assistive mobile manipulators have the potential
to one day serve as surrogates and helpers for people with
disabilities, giving them the freedom to perform tasks such as
scratching an itch, picking up a cup, or socializing with their
families. This article introduces a collaborative project with the
goal of putting...
Contaminants used at low elevation, such as pesticides on crops, can be transported tens of kilometers and deposited in adjacent mountains in many parts of the world. Atmospherically deposited organic contaminants in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, USA, have exceeded some thresholds of concern, but the spatial and temporal...
A central challenge for natural resource management is developing rigorous yet practical approaches for balancing the costs and benefits of diverse human uses of ecosystems. Economic theory has a long history of evaluating tradeoffs in returns from different assets to identify optimal investment strategies. There has been recent progress applying...
The dynamic Quaternary geology of the Pacific Ring of Fire created substantial challenges for biogeography. Fish life history and population genetic variation were shaped by climate change, repeated formation and subsidence of ice sheets, sea-level change, volcanism and tectonics, isostatic rebound, and now human activities. It is widely recognized in...
The 2011 M[subscript W] = 9.0 Tohoku-oki earthquake generated a large number of unique soil liquefaction case histories, including cases with strong ground motion recordings on liquefiable or potentially liquefiable soils. We have compiled a list of 22 strong motion stations (SMS) where surface evidence of liquefaction was observed and...
Economic theory predicts that individual migration decisions for working-age adults will depend on area differences in wages, housing costs, and amenities. While the importance of wages and amenities is well-established from previous empirical studies, evidence regarding housing costs is far less conclusive. We develop and test a new method for...
A fossil seed cone with characters that have been hypothesized as transitional to the origin of crown group gnetophytes has been discovered in Lower Cretaceous deposits on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. This cone, described as Protoephedrites eamesii gen. et sp. nov., provides the first anatomically preserved fossil evidence for...
Models relating species distribution records to environmental variables are increasingly
applied to biodiversity conservation. Such techniques could be valuable to predict the
distribution, abundance or habitat requirements of species that are rare or otherwise difficult
to survey. However, despite widely-documented positive intraspecific relationships between
occupancy and abundance, few studies have...
A cylindrical permineralized conifer seed cone has been identified from the Officer Member of the Trowbridge Formation, near Izee, in east-central Oregon. The cone is preserved in a Middle Jurassic (Callovian) marine calcium carbonate concretion, associated with araucarian seed cones, conifer twigs and wood, cycad seeds, fern rachides, and lycopodialean...
Background: Management strategies have been proposed to minimise the effects of climate
change on forest resilience.
Aims: We investigated the Pacific Northwest US region forest carbon balance under current
practices, and changes that may result from management practices proposed for the region’s
34 million ha of forests to mitigate climate...
RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) is the current method of choice for characterizing transcriptomes and
quantifying gene expression changes. This next generation sequencing-based method provides unprecedented
depth and resolution. The negative binomial (NB) probability distribution has been shown to be a
useful model for frequencies of mapped RNA-Seq reads and consequently provides...
Re-introduction of California condors into Oregon is currently being considered,
but there are concerns about the safety of potential food sources of this species.
Condors are opportunistic feeders and a largely available food source for this
species will be stranded marine mammal carcasses. We analyzed 37 blubber
samples from 7...
Woody encroachment has dramatically changed land cover patterns in arid and semiarid
systems (drylands) worldwide over the past 150 years. This change is known to influence bulk
soil carbon (C) pools, but the implications for dynamics and stability of these pools are not well
understood. Working in a Chihuahuan Desert...
DNA methylation is a well-recognized epigenetic mechanism that has been the subject of a growing
body of literature typically focused on the identification and study of profiles of DNA methylation and their
association with human diseases and exposures. In recent years, a number of unsupervised clustering algorithms,
both parametric and...
Hypoxia is increasing in coastal zones worldwide, with acute effects on demersal fish and benthic invertebrate communities in shallow coastal and estuarine habitats. Less studied are the effects of hypoxia on planktonic larvae of open coastal habitats. Climate change projections suggest intensified hypoxia in open coast upwelling systems, such as...
Identifying effective strategies for increasing access to quality care for children from low-income families has important implications for society. This study examined the effectiveness of expanding child care assistance for low-income families (capping expenses at 10% of income and raising eligibility to 200% of the federal poverty line) to purchase...
The response of tidal and residual currents to small scale morphological differences over abrupt
deep sea topography (Seine Seamount) was estimated for bathymetry grids of different spatial
resolution. Local barotropic tidal model solutions were obtained for three popular and publicly
available bathymetry grids (Smith and Sandwell TOPO8.2, ETOPO1 and GEBCO08)...
As resource management efforts move towards more comprehensive approaches that spin multiple sectors and stakeholder groups, decision makers are faced with the challenge of deciding how important each group is, and how much weight their concerns should have, when making decisions. These decisions must be made transparently if they are...
Lithothamnion rnuelleri is reported for the first time as one of the main components of rhodolith beds along the Eastern Pacific Ocean based on samples from Washington State (USA), Pacific Baja California (Mexico), southern Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Individual rhodoliths ranged from fruticose to lumpy in morphology, and bi-sporangial, tetrasporangial,...
The relative contributions of sea level rise (SLR) and increasing extra-tropical storminess to the frequency with which waves attack coastal features is assessed with a simple total water level (TWL) model. For the coast of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) over the period of wave-buoy observations (~30 years) wave height...
In the Klamath province of southwestern Oregon, Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) occur in complex, productive forests that historically supported frequent fires of variable severity. However, little is known about the relationships between Spotted Owl survival and home-range size and the characteristics of fire-prone, mixed-conifer forests of the Klamath...
Purpose: To determine if the associations among established risk factors and reduced kidney function vary by age.
Methods: We pooled cross-sectional data from 14,788 nondiabetics aged 40 to 100 years in 4 studies: Cardiovascular Health Study, Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study, Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, and Prevention of Renal...
Most youth cessation treatment research consists of efficacy studies in which treatments are evaluated under optimal conditions of delivery. Less is known about the effectiveness of youth cessation treatments delivered in real-world, community based settings. A national sample of 41 community-based youth cessation programs participated in a longitudinal evaluation to...
Medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae [L.] Nevski) is an exotic annual grass invading western rangelands. Successful
revegetation of invaded-plant communities can be prohibitively expensive because it often requires iterative applications of
integrated control and revegetation treatments. Prescribed burning has been used to control medusahead and prepare seedbeds
for revegetation, but burning has...
We integrate micropaleontological and geochemical records (benthic stable isotopes, neodymium isotopes, benthic foraminiferal abundances and XRF-scanner derived elemental data) from well-dated Pacific Ocean successions (15-12.7 Ma) to monitor circulation changes during the middle Miocene transition into a colder climate mode with permanent Antarctic ice cover. Together with previously published records,...
Ballast water discharges are a major source of species introductions into marine and estuarine ecosystems. To mitigate the introduction of new invaders into these ecosystems, many agencies are proposing standards that establish upper concentration limits for organisms in ballast discharge. Ideally, ballast discharge standards will be biologically defensible and adequately...
Bioethanol produced from the lignocellulosic feedstock is a potential alternative to fossil fuels in transportation sector and can help in reducing environmental burdens. Straw produced from perennial ryegrass (PR) and wheat is a non-food, cellulosic biomass resource available in abundance in the Pacific Northwest U.S. The aim of this study...
We present a new model for unsteady flow routing through dendritic and looped river networks
based on performance graphs. The model builds upon the application of Hydraulic
Performance Graph (HPG) to unsteady flow routing introduced by Gonzalez-Castro (2000)
and adopts the Volume Performance Graph (VPG) introduced by Hoy and Schmidt...
Objective. Stage theories of health behavior are popular and of high practical relevance. Tests of the validity of these theories provide limited evidence because of validity and reliability problems. This study provides a bottom-up approach to identify behavioral stages from examining differences in underlying mindsets. We examine the concurrent validity...
The solid solutions of InGa₁₋ₓFeₓCuO₄, InFeCu₁₋ₓMgₓO₄, and InGa₁₋ₓFeₓCu₁₋ₓMgₓO₄ were
synthesized and characterized through the use of X – ray and neutron diffraction, and DC –
magnetism measurements. All compositions of InGa₁₋ₓFeₓCuO₄ are single phase and crystallize
in the R3m space group, but a transformation to the spinel InFeMgO₄ structure was...
Myc is a pleiotropic transcription factor that is involved in many cellular activities relevant to carcinogenesis, including hepatocarcinogenesis. The zebrafish has been increasingly used to model human diseases and it is particularly valuable in helping to identify common and conserved molecular mechanisms in vertebrates. Here we generated a liver tumor...
To examine whether stream nitrogen concentrations in forested reference catchments have
changed over time and if patterns were consistent across the USA, we synthesized up to 44 yr
of data collected from 22 catchments at seven USDA Forest Service Experimental Forests.
Trends in stream nitrogen presented high spatial variability both...
Cyanobacteria inhabit nearly every ecosystem on earth, play a vital role in nutrient cycling, and are
useful as model organisms for fundamental research in photosynthesis and carbon and nitrogen fixation.
In addition, they are important for several established biotechnologies for producing food additives,
nutritional and pharmaceutical compounds, and pigments, as...
Theories of human behavior are an important but largely untapped resource for software engineering research. They facilitate understanding of human developers’ needs and activities, and thus can serve as a valuable resource to researchers designing software engineering tools. Furthermore, theories abstract beyond specific methods and tools to fundamental principles that...
Zinc is an important nutrient but can be lacking in some soil environments, influencing the physiology of soil-dwelling bacteria. Hence, we studied the global effect of zinc limitation on the transcriptome of the rhizosphere biocontrol strain Pseudomonas protegens Pf-5 (formerly Pseudomonas fluorescens). We observed that the expression of the putative...
In this paper we focus on the specification of revenue functions in their dual price space. We consider two distance functions—the Shephard output distance function and the directional output distance function—and define both in price space. The former is multiplicative in nature and satisfies homogeneity, whereas the latter is additive...
We present a survey of Nd isotopes measured from authigenic phases on surface sediments from the Arctic Ocean seafloor. Comparison with published dissolved water column Nd isotope distributions suggests that epsilon Nd from sediment leachates accurately represents bottom water circulation of the Arctic Ocean, with Atlantic (similar to 11 epsilon...
The southeast Pacific Ocean is covered by the world's largest stratocumulus cloud layer, which has a strong impact on ocean temperatures and climate in the region. The effect of anthropogenic sources of aerosol particles on the stratocumulus deck was investigated during the VOCALS field experiment. Aerosol measurements below and above...
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: We report the de novo assembly and characterization of the transcriptomes of Brachypodium sylvaticum
(slender false-brome) accessions from native populations of Spain and Greece, and an invasive population west of Corvallis,
Oregon, USA.
METHODS AND RESULTS: More than 350 million sequence reads from the mRNA libraries...
Interstitially filled skutterudites are a promising class of state-of-the-art thermoelectric
materials. Although thermoelectrics are exposed to significant thermal stresses, little
information is known about the fracture toughness of interstitially doped skutterudites. This
work explores the fracture toughness of undoped Co₄Sb₁₂ and indium doped In₀.₁Co₄Sb₁₂
skutterudites using three methods: 1) Vickers...
We present a new hypothesis to explain the millennial-scale temperature variability recorded in ice cores known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) cycles. We propose that an ice shelf acted in concert with sea ice to set the slow and fast timescales of the DO cycle, respectively. The abrupt warming at the onset...
Time-depe ndencies of suspended-sediment discharge from six coastal watersheds of northern Califor nia
– Smith River, Klamath River, Trinity River, Redwood Creek, Mad River, and Eel River –were evaluated
using monitoring data from 1955 to 2010. Suspended-sediment concentrations revealed ti me-dependent
hysteresis and multi-year trends. The multi-year trends had two...