A system for radiological dosimetry for nonhuman biota developed by International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) relies on calculations that utilize the Monte Carlo simulations of simple, ellipsoidal geometries with internal radioactivity distributed homogeneously throughout. In this manner it is quick and easy to estimate whole-body dose rates to biota....
Landscape characteristics can strongly influence demographic and genetic processes in wildlife populations. Climate change and human land use are causing many landscapes to change rapidly, and the effects on wildlife populations must be understood to properly manage these threats and design effective conservation strategies. In this dissertation, I explored the...
The symbiosis between cnidarians, such as corals and sea anemones, and photosynthetic dinoflagellates belonging to the genus Symbiodinium spp. is one of the most productive in the marine environment. This mutualistic endosymbiosis allow reef-building corals to lay down the foundation of coral reef ecosystems, which supports a highly biodiverse community...
The advent of synthetic adhesives has transformed the structural applications of wood. However, a persistent issue in adhesively-bonded wood products has been moisture durability. When designing wood based composites, moisture durability will depend on both the wood phase and the adhesive phase. A key question, therefore, is how does one...
The design of mobile wireless devices has always focused on reducing power, area, and cost. This dissertation proposes two techniques that are leveraged to save power and area and therefore cost. The first techniques reduces the noise in the receiver and results in a relaxed power requirement. The second technique...
Exposure to urban outdoor air pollution is ubiquitous and low birth weight represents an important health disparity in the United States. While previous research suggests that exposure to outdoor air pollutants are associated with term low birth weight, few studies have evaluated the effects of multipollutant outdoor air exposures or...
High-energy delayed γ-rays from photofission were demonstrated to be signatures for detection and identification of special nuclear materials. Such γ-rays were measured in between linac pulses using independent data acquisition systems. A list-mode system was developed to measure low-energy delayed γ-rays after irradiation. Photofission product yields of ²³⁸U and ²³⁹Pu...
Background: Social interaction among peers on a campus of higher education has long been considered an important part of the college student experience, in particular for the first-term students transitioning into college life. Students who socially connect with peers on campus tend to persist at higher rates, while other benefits...
Advances in low-power digital integration and microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have paved the way for micro-sensors. These sensors are equipped with data processing capabilities along with sensory circuits. Sensor data are processed on these individual sensors and transmitted to the target (sink). Lowcost integration and small sizes of these sensors have...
An enabling technology for long duration, deep space missions is the availability of a high power, long-lived power supply. The goal of this work is the design of a self-regulating deep space nuclear reactor. The design objectives are to produce 250 kWth for a 25-year period using the presence of...
In this dissertation, I describe the experimental investigation of catching ions in superfluid helium droplets. The ultimate goal of our project is to build a coherent electron diffraction apparatus for atomic structure determination from oriented single macromolecules. This involves generating protein ions from electrospray ionization (ESI) and doping them in...
Background: Legislators and higher education policy makers increasingly are turning to policy initiatives to incentivize institutions of higher education to transform policies and practices in the name of student success, with success typically defined as retention and graduation rates. One such policy receiving increased attention amongst states is outcomes-based funding,...
There has been a tremendous growth in interest in carbon nanodots (C-dots) in the past several years. As a nascent nanomaterial, C-dots have shown great promise in applications that benefit from their superior water dispersibility, low toxicity, non-blinking fluorescent output, chemical and biological compatibility, ease of functionalization and resistance to...
The environmental movement needs people from communities of color and the differing perspectives they provide. Latinas/os are one of the largest communities of color in the US, and their numbers continue to grow. However, mainstream environmental organizations have failed to engage this community in authentic ways. The lack of meaningful...
Institutions of higher education are increasingly being held accountable and experiencing pressure to demonstrate how well their students are achieving intended learning outcomes. External and internal influences fuel this pressure. After decades of rhetoric on student learning outcomes assessment there remains a question of whether the practice has been fully...
Respiratory infections caused by nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), especially Mycobacterium avium, can lead to progressive, recurrent disease that is refractory to therapy. Bacterial biofilms are intrinsically resistant to a variety of stressors and pressures, including host killing mechanisms and antibiotic therapy. Though it is becoming increasingly evident that NTM biofilms are...
The purpose of this case study is to explore a mentoring program designed for African American male community college students at a Pacific Northwest community college. Community college practitioners can use the knowledge gained from this study as a best practice to increase the persistence and success of African American...
Apart from the traditional role of preventing progression from HIV to AIDS, antiretroviral drug therapy (ART) has an additional benefit of substantially reducing infectiousness, making them potentially an important strategy in the fight against HIV. Recent advances in drug therapy have also seen the use of antiretroviral drugs as a...
Changes in climate caused by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the Earth’s atmosphere have led land and ocean surface temperatures to increase by 0.85°C and sea level to increase by 19 cm relative to preindustrial times. Global climate change will lead to further alterations in mean temperature and...
Limnology is undergoing a transition to high-throughput -omic analysis of freshwater
bacterial communities. An important first step in making the transition is to
characterize several genomes that can be used as references to guide metagenome
assembly and analysis. Here I characterize four new freshwater cyanobacterial
genomes, a pair of lake...
In 2010 the American taxpayers spent $697 million educating veterans under the provisions of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly referred to as the GI Bill). Most veterans begin their college education at a community college. However, the number of veterans succeeding in community colleges is exceedingly low. Based...
Detection of xenon radioisotopes (radioxenons) has proven to be an important method for detecting nuclear explosions and is particularly well suited for detecting undeclared underground testing. The radioxenon isotopes ¹³¹mXe (t₁/₂ = 11.934 d), ¹³³mXe (t₁/₂ = 2.19 d), ¹³³Xe (t₁/₂ = 5.243 d) and ¹³⁵Xe (t₁/₂ = 9.14 h)...
Marine bivalves are globally recognized as ecologically and commercially valuable species and, for over a century, researchers have been studying their feeding, digestion and other related physiological processes. These studies have shown that marine bivalves have complex feeding and particle processing behaviors to maximize growth in dynamic environmental conditions. Additionally,...
Damage estimates to the built environment from tsunamis are important for disaster mitigation, including planning emergency response and recovery. This dissertation evaluates the damage states of buildings in a small urban coastal city, Seaside, Oregon, from tsunami hazards generated by a Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) event. This study is separated...
Cyclic nitramines are a class of compounds that include most of the commonly used explosives today. These are among the most common toxicants released into the environment as a result of human activity, generated on military ranges, battlefields, and production sites. Of these, hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5- triazine (RDX) is of particular interest,...
Thorough understanding of the mechanisms controlling the temperature structure in the surface mixed layer of the ocean and, in particular, accurate values of sea surface temperature are critical for properly parameterizing air-sea heat exchange and quantifying the amount of heat redistributed below the surface. It is however difficult to obtain...
Turbulent flows over rough surfaces are encountered in many engineering and geophysical applications. Flows of this nature, due to their increasing technological interests, have been a subject of rigorous investigation in recent years. Of the particular interest to the oceanographic community is the study of turbulent oscillatory flow over rough...
Chlamydia is a genus of obligate intracellular bacteria that undergo a unique, biphasic developmental cycle. The infectious and metabolically inert Elementary Bodies (EBs) begin the cycle of infection by attaching and invading a host cells. Once inside, the EBs differentiate into the metabolically active, dividing Reticulate Bodies (RBs) within their...
Wheat is a globally traded staple crop. Wheat is important in human diets because of its agronomic adaptability, physical characteristics, functionality for the production of leavened products and nutritional value. Two significant characteristics make wheat an important staple food-crop. First, the proteins present in wheat endosperm have attributes that enable...
Changes in environmental conditions in marine ecosystems could directly or indirectly influence distribution, abundance, settlement, and size at settlement of flatfish. Understanding species-specific and age-specific responses to environmental variability is important for managing commercially important flatfish stocks. Slope-spawning flatfish whose offspring rely on extensive drift from the slope (spawning) to...
This dissertation examines the spatial distribution of park access by type in relation to trajectories of gentrification in Seattle from 1990 to 2010. The dissertation includes 5 Chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of the literature that motivated this research. The second, third and fourth chapters are research papers...
When it comes to carbohydrate, it has been assumed that only mono- and disaccharides, but not oligo- and polysaccharides, can be tasted. However, because of its importance in the human diet, oral detection of starch or its hydrolysis products would be beneficial. The main goal of this study was to...
In this work, we study network coding technique, its relation to random matrices, and their applications to communication systems. The dissertation consists of three main contributions. First, we propose efficient algorithms for data synchronization via a broadcast channel using random network coding. Second, we study the resiliency of network coding...
Research exploring methods to improve student learning of leadership, mathematics, and science in the United States is critically important. In this study, I sought to delve into the potential for student learning of leadership, mathematics, and science within the context of school-based agricultural education. Recognizing the teacher as a gatekeeper...
C. perfringens is a spore-forming, gram-positive, anaerobic pathogenic bacterium capable of causing a wide variety of diseases in both humans and animals. However, the two most common illnesses in humans are C. perfringens type A food poisoning (FP) and non-food-borne (NFB) gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses. Interestingly, these two major diseases are...
This dissertation serves as a contribution to the study of the prehistory of the Central Desert region of Baja California, Mexico. Between 2007 and 2011, a trans-peninsular archaeological survey and excavation program―the Central Desert Early Prehistory Project (CDEPP)―was completed for a portion of the Baja California peninsula extending from the...
Reintroduction programs are used to re-establish species back into their historical habitat. Most reintroduction programs have failed and few papers have evaluated factors that may be important to Pacific salmon. The 158 meter tall Cougar Dam has blocked Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) from accessing 40 kilometers of historical spawning and...
Background: African American males' experience in higher education is often categorized with negative terminology that does not reflect notions of success. Most research addressing the success of African American males in higher education illuminates factors that impede access to success and is often situated in university settings. Very little research...
The overarching premise of this dissertation is to understand how different college and university physical activity education policies affect college and university students. Fundamentally, some American colleges and universities require their students to complete a physical activity education requirement whereas others do not. Given the different policy arrangements of college...
Oxidative stress is defined as an imbalance that favors the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) over an organism's antioxidant defense. ROS have the ability to damage, either directly or indirectly, biomolecules including DNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. Various pathological conditions and environmental and chronic diseases have been associated with...
Grape powdery mildew (Erysiphe necator) causes economic damages to grape worldwide due to the cost of management and injury to berries. Each region where European grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is grown experiences a unique epidemic, and disease prediction models that are based on empirical correlations of weather data to disease fail...
Health disparity scholars and researchers call to expand the conceptualization of health disparities research beyond the predominant and long-standing race-based analyses. The call requests the inclusion of frameworks and theories that reflect the complex, multi-level and multifactorial social processes that yield health disparities. Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that is...
In this Dissertation, the mechanism and stereomechanics of complex organocatalysis and reaction processes are disclosed. The technologies and protocols currently being developed and utilized to efficiently investigate these systems using theory are highlighted.
A detailed computational study of peptide-catalyzed acylations is disclosed. In particular, the magnitude of all possible non-bonding...
Since its inception as a laboratory animal in the early 1970s, the zebrafish has proven itself a rising star in the world of comparative biomedical sciences due to its short generation time, ease of care, external fertilization, and transparent larvae. In a very few decades, the zebrafish has been utilized...
Host-parasite interactions between the pathogen, Sphaerulina musiva, and its host, Populus spp., were examined in a series of studies. In the first study, variation in resistance of Populus nigra from 7 locations in Europe was differentiated based on the parameters cankers per cm and disease severity score. The analysis evaluated...
Many low-income and first-generation community college students face disproportionate challenges in their quest for a college education. They typically balance multiple outside obligations, while being solely responsible for making these decisions without adequate knowledge, guidance, or support (Lyons, 2004). Many students begin college without ever having been responsible for their...
All animals that interact with fishing gear are not necessarily captured, and all animals that are captured are not necessarily retained. Fishing practices and gear configuration, management regulations, and markets dictate which animals ultimately are retained or discarded. The impact of a fishery and the efficacy of management regulations can...
This dissertation addresses gaps of knowledge associated with how ecosystem carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions are affected by land use land cover change in tropical peatlands. This was the first study that paired peat swamp forests with oil palm plantations and analyzed site scale variation on greenhouse gas emissions....
Wine volatile composition is one of the most important constitutes of wine quality, and it is greatly influenced by number of factors. The studies herein were conducted to evaluate the grape and wine aroma affected by different vine nutrient status, vigor and crop levels of Oregon Pinot noir.
In the...
Coral reproduction is vital to the persistence of coral reefs. Decades of ecological studies have correlated environmental variables, such as temperature and light, to the timing of reproduction in anthozoan cnidarians, including corals and sea anemones. However, elevated temperatures associated with climate change impair reproductive success and threaten the resilience...