Canine Transitional Cell Carcinoma (TCC) makes up 2% of all canine cancers and is the most common cancer of the bladder for dogs. Usually diagnosed in its later stages, TCC is difficult to treat, with low survival times. Current diagnosis involves invasive techniques, and mainstream screening tests are often ineffective....
The Boulder Batholith and Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics (EMV) formed concurrently during shortening between ~85-76 Ma near the end of Mesozoic Cordillera arc magmatism. Together they represent an exceptionally well-preserved and voluminous record of continental arc magmatism. We report field and analytical results from studies of the EMV and Boulder Batholith...
Utilization and preference of whelk shells by the hairy hermit crab are examined in the following to further define the ecology of Oregon’s mid to low intertidal ecosystems. The study was conducted at Tokatee Kloochman State Natural Area (TK) where I made observations before collecting data. My observations were of...
Over half of the U.S. coastline is found in Alaska, and the majority of the state’s economic activity occurs along the coast. Increased coastal development poses a potential threat to nearshore habitats in Alaska. The installation of artificial reef (AR) systems can mitigate habitat loss; however, few AR systems have...
The quality of relationships in early childhood have lasting effects on children’s academic and behavioral success. Teacher report is the most widely used measure to assess the quality of the teacher-child relationship, however teachers are often biased by the child’s behavior. Observed quality of the relationship may illustrate differences in...
Sand dunes provide coastal communities critical protection from flooding and erosion, as well as a habitat for a range of species- some threatened or endangered. As such, it is of importance to develop a quantitative understanding of the processes through which these systems evolve at a variety of temporal and...
Carcinus maenas is an invasive marine predator. Its generalist feeding strategies make it one of the most effective invaders. Carcinus maenas has invasive populations throughout the world, and was recently introduced to the west coast of North America. This study looks at the abundance and growth of C. maenas in...
Over 70% of the Antarctic krill population exists along the Antarctic Peninsula, a region undergoing rapid climate change. Recent studies have shown a clear correlation between krill recruitment each spring and the timing and coverage of sea ice the winter before, with less sea ice and a shorter duration being...
Self-directed mobility is a fundamental human right. Typically developing children engage in mobility for a majority of their day, but children with disabilities do not have the same opportunities. Children with disabilities are at a disadvantage and have a greater risk for developmental delays in physical and cognitive skills, along...
A novel approach for the colorimetric detection of creatinine in a paper/polycaprolactone hybrid microfluidic device using alkaline3,5-dinitrobenzoate (DNB) is described. The reaction parameters of reagent concentration, alkalinity, and analysis time are optimized for fast reaction times and high color yield. Microfluidic devices incorporating this assay are designed and fabricated to...
During fall term of 2015 and winter and spring term of 2016 I assisted in research within Dr. Emily Ho’s lab. The project that I assisted in looked at the effects of low zinc status and arsenic exposure in mice. Zinc is an essential micronutrient involved in numerous cellular processes...
When people think of fossils, they generally imagine the bones of large, charismatic animals. However, small mammals are an ecologically important group of organisms that show up frequently in the fossil record, and can frequently function as indicators for local environmental and ecological conditions (Terry, 2007, 2010). Rodent and rabbit...
The hypothalamic neuropeptide kisspeptin (Kiss-1) acts as a central component of the reproductive axis. A critical factor in pubertal progression and normal reproduction, this peptide is an afferent stimulator of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), and is responsive to gonadal steroids, integrating steroid hormone signals and modulating GnRH secretion accordingly. Kiss-1 exhibits...
Diet History Questionnaires (DHQ) can only provide general information about a person’s nutritional intake. It is unable to cluster groups of people based on diets or lifestyles, nor identify specific foods that may play a role in disease prevention. The aim of this study was to validate the use of...
4-H, an agriculture based youth program, promotes a variety of curricula in both agriculture and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (S.T.E.M.) topics. However, science based curricula provided by this organization gravitates away from the programs agricultural roots. An effort was made to pilot a test on lesson plans that would...
Gene expression in plants (and other eukaryotes) is a very complex process. Gene expression is primarily controlled by proteins and their binding sites near the gene in the chromosomal DNA. More specifically, interactions among transcription factors (DNA-binding proteins) and cis-regulatory modules (CRMs-sets of binding sites) control the expression of nearby...
Cystic ovarian disease (COD) is one of the main causes of infertility in dairy cattle and has a high economic impact on farmers. COD is caused by an endocrine imbalance within the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis which prevents the mature Graafian follicle from ovulating. The cause at the molecular level is not...
Monitoring the concentration of phenolic compounds is important for environmental regulation, health diagnostics, and bioenergy fermentation. Vanillin is a phenol compound used as a food flavoring that can cause allergies and inhibits biofuel production. The phenol m-cresol is a toxic compound that is regulated in the environment and in human...
Genetic engineering techniques allow scientists to create plants with desired traits. However, there is unwanted variability in transgene expression due to enhancer-promoter interactions and the influence from genetic elements near the insertion site of the transgene, which integrates into a random location in the genome. In an attempt to reduce...
Research in Dolan lab focuses primarily on the adaptive immune system and ways it can be better utilized to eliminate infected or transformed cells. Research focuses on the major histocompatibility (MHC) class I antigen presentation pathway, which plays an important role in alerting the immune system of the presence of...
Tyria jacobaeae was introduced as a biological control agent to control the noxious weed Jacobea vulgaris. Eventually introduced to the Cascade mountain range of Oregon, T. jacobaeae has been found to feed on Senecio triangularis, a native plant closely related to J. vulgaris. Nosema tyriae is a parasitic fungus under...
Embryonic development, where organs and major structures begin to develop, requires precise coordination of numerous gene regulatory pathways. Fendrr is an long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) that plays a role in regulating gene expression in mesodermal tissues during early embryonic development in mouse. The lateral plate mesoderm (LPM) is an earlier...
Liquid manure lagoons are known to be sources of odor and environmentally damaging gas emissions. Land application of the manure slurry after storage can lead to detrimental nutrient runoff and leaching. Floating lagoon covers (biocovers) are one option for reducing emissions, but to date they have only been used to...
The Bcl-2 family of proteins regulate cell survival and are targets for cancer therapy. This protein family has also been implicated in chemotherapeutic resistance, the cause of approximately 90% of treatment failure in advanced cancer. We analyzed the expression and the role of the Bcl-2 proteins in chemotherapy resistant breast...
Current methods in traction force analysis rely on a homogeneous extra-cellular matrix and
embedded microbeads to track deformations. The efficacy of these methods decreases when the matrix is not homogeneous. In heterogeneous matrices, beads often aggregate in regions of higher matrix density and float in regions where matrix substrate is...
The Cinnabar moth, Tyria jacobaeae, has been introduced to North America in an effort to control the invasive plant Jacobaea vulgaris. The Cinnabar moth is the main host of Nosema tyriae. When infection levels are high, N. tyriae can shorten the lifespan and affect reproduction of the Cinnabar moths. The...
Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. In 2012, over 220,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. It has been hypothesized that dairy may play a role in breast cancer; however, the evidence has been inconsistent and limited. Proposed mechanisms linking dairy and...
Vibrio cholerae (Vc), the etiological agent of cholera, has developed many mechanisms to combat the great fluctuations in pH, ion content and osmotic conditions of the vastly differing environments it encounters through its infections of the human host. A series of cation antiporters are found in the Vc membrane to...
The use of zebrafish in behavioral neuroscience is rapidly growing. Zebrafish can be assessed for alterations in multiple behavioral endpoints, creating opportunities to use this powerful model to identify chemicals that alter behavioral phenotypes. To evaluate the utility of zebrafish for neurotoxicity research, we designed custom instrumentation to evaluate numerous...
The Boulder Batholith and Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics (EMV) formed concurrently during shortening between ~85-76 Ma near the end of Mesozoic Cordillera arc magmatism. Together they represent an exceptionally well-preserved and voluminous record of continental arc magmatism. We report field and analytical results from studies of the EMV and Boulder Batholith...
It has been found that youth who are involved in their own growing and harvesting of produce and also prepare and cook their own meals have been found to be more likely to consume the vegetables and meals they themselves cook and prepare.
Many youth are not consuming the recommended...
The Ratio Mountain Quadrangle is located in Southwest Montana, East of the city of
Butte. This quadrangle features two major geologic units; the Elkhorn Mountain
Volcanics, a series of several ignimbrites of varying composition, and the Boulder
Batholith, a large granite pluton that rose through the EMV. Previous studies in...
The Marinoan Snowball Earth ended 635 Ma ago during the Neoproterozoic Era, after an interval in which the Earth was completely covered by glaciers. Thawing of these glaciers formed cap carbonates across shallow marine depositional environments. The Noonday Formation is a cap carbonate that formed after the deglaciation of the...
We construct a Monte Carlo simulation in Python to calculate optical flashes at 5x10¹⁴ Hz peaking at 6x10³¹ erg s⁻¹Hz⁻¹St⁻¹ due to synchrotron radiation from the reverse shock of a gamma-ray burst’s jet. While analytical solutions to this problem exist, they rely on sweeping simplifications of what is necessarily a...
Perdeutero-spiropentane (C₅D₈) has been synthesized and infrared and Raman spectra are reported for the first time. Wavenumber assignments are made for most of the fundamental vibrational modes. Gas phase infrared spectra were recorded at a resolution (0.002 cm⁻¹) sufficient to resolve individual rovibrational lines and show evidence of strong Coriolis...
Vitamin D sufficiency supports cardiovascular health and lower cancer risk. Rates of vitamin D insufficiency vary by racial/ethnic group, in part because skin pigment limits sunlight penetration. However race/ethnicity is an unreliable marker of vitamin D deficiency, given individual differences in skin pigment, or phototype, and other characteristics. Clarifying associations...
Crystal morphology and dimensionality of single-crystal semiconducting materials can have dramatic effects on the optical and electrical properties. Organic photovoltaic (OPV) materials and fluorinated graphene folds are two materials that show these dependencies. Anthradithiophene (ADT), is an OPV that can be functionalized with different side groups to form different crystal...
I investigate the feasibility of a micron-sized biosensor designed to measure neural activity. The circuitry of the biosensor is composed of graphene, some photodiodes, and a light-emitting diode. Many of these biosensors would be injected into a subject’s brain, and when powered by near-infrared light, they would glow in response...
This research investigates the electronic properties of a fungi-derived pigment, xylindein
as a novel sustainable material for organic electronics. Xylindein molecules were characterized in solution and in film. Absorption spectra and (photo)luminescence spectra were
taken at various excitation wavelengths. Xylindein’s molecular properties were computed
with the Gaussian 09 software suite....
Childhood obesity is a nationwide concern of which rural, urban, and suburban communities must be aware in order to take action. The goal for the research project, GROW Healthy Kids and Communities (GROW HKC), is to prevent childhood obesity in rural communities through the use of participatory action research and...
The HEXACO personality framework is an emerging perspective to explain the phenotypic structure of personality, and is believed to replicate across natural language lexical studies better than the Five-Factor Model. Although similar to the “Big Five,” the primary difference between the two structural models is the recovery of the Honesty-Humility...
Quantum yield is an important, characteristic quantity to be measured for fluorescent compounds. Here, a comparative method between fluorescent compounds in solution is applied to measure unknown quantum yields. An absorption spectrometer was used to measure the absorbances of two different fluorescent quantum yield standards. The integrated fluorescence intensities were...
Agrobacterium tumefaciens causes the economically important plant disease, crown gall. These galls are the result of abnormal growth that manifests itself on either the root or the stem and can be devastating for the ornamental plant industry. Introduction of A. tumefaciens to a nursery can be highly detrimental and thus...
High field time-domain terahertz spectroscopy (TDS) is used to determine the time dependent transmission and the time-delay and optical-power dependent conductivity of a wafer of gallium arsenide (GaAs). Gallium arsenide is a direct band-gap semiconductor and has potential as a computer processor component. Analysis of the transmission of terahertz (THz)...
ASD is characterized primarily by deficits in social and communicative skills, however recent studies show differences in motor skills as well when compared to typically developing children. Because of these differences, parents of children with ASD may portray different behaviors than parents of typically developing children. This research aims to find...