The purpose of this study is to examine the challenges of accepting and commissioning a new treatment planning system for eye plaque brachytherapy. Currently Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) utilizes v5.3.9 of the Plaque Simulator software to plan all of its eye plaque brachytherapy cases. However, v5.3.9 is no...
The present research sought to investigate the relationship between an individual's word choice and their social well-being. In the present investigation, social well-being is a person's social health in relation to their social environment, social network, and ability to interact with others in a social context. This thesis was based...
Solid-state ¹H magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR was used to investigate local proton environments in anhydrous [UO₂(OH)₂] (α-UOH) and hydrated uranyl hydroxide [(UO₂)₄O(OH₆ 6·5H₂O (metaschoepite). For the metaschoepite material, proton resonances of the μ₂-OH hydroxyl and interlayer waters were resolved, with two-dimensional (2D) double-quantum (DQ) ¹H–¹H NMR correlation experiments revealing strong...
Quantum Darwinism recognizes the role of the environment as a communication channel: Decoherence can selectively amplify information about the pointer states of a system of interest (preventing access to complementary information about their superpositions) and can make records of this information accessible to many observers. This redundancy explains the emergence...
Natural disasters could result in unnecessary loss of life and disproportionate suffering to families and communities if evacuation plans are not in place or understood by the public. In the Pacific Northwest, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami from the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) represents one of the most pressing...
Atherosclerosis is the underlying cause of ischemic heart disease and stroke and is the leading cause of death worldwide, especially in developed countries. As an inflammatory disease of arteries in a hyperlipidemic milieu, expression of adhesion molecules, such as endothelial-leukocyte adhesion molecule-1 (E-selectin) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), on endothelial...
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...
Understanding ecological interaction strengths is one of the main objectives of ecology. Recently, two methods for estimating interaction strengths of predator-prey interactions in nature have been proposed: a field observation approach proposed by Novak and Wootton (2008) and stable isotope analysis. The field observation method estimates feeding rates based on...
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...
The liberal arts have always struggled to find their place in the technically oriented land-grant university. Land-grant universities were tasked by the 1862 Morrill Act with providing both a practical and liberal education for all students. The liberal arts, however, were quickly sidelined from this dual purpose with the increasing...