Respiratory illnesses caused by both viral and bacterial infection are serious issues for global healthcare providers. With the emergence of new, drug-resistant forms of these diseases, innovative drugs and treatment therapies are needed. M tuberculosis is an infection that affects a large portion of the world’s population each year. Aerosol...
This study investigates whether existing interventions in USDA-defined food deserts have been effective in improving access to healthy foods and improving dietary quality. A systematic literature review was conducted using articles from MEDLINE database using “food desert” and “intervention” as search terms. Exclusion and inclusion criteria resulted in selection of...
Natural disturbances and human activities can alter the benthic composition of coral reefs and other marine ecosystems. Reef fishes that associate with particular structures on the sea floor, such as coral heads, may be vulnerable to perturbations of those habitats. The spread of a newly discovered crustose alga (Ramicrusta sp.)...
Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular pathogen that affects millions of people worldwide via ocular or reproductive tract infection. Despite obvious differences in site of infection, there has been shown to be high levels of sequence conservation across C. trachomatis. This high level of sequence conservation is hindered with a...
Chlamydia possesses an immense importance within both human and animal medicine when looking at pathogens. Chlamydia trachomatis infections have been shown to affect both the eye and genital tracts in millions of humans and animals every year [13]. As C. trachomatis strains are highly conserved in patients, it has made...
Our laboratory is exploring the mechanism of action of a novel broad spectrum antiviral, ST-669. This compound has activity against a variety of different viruses and the obligate intracellular bacterium, Chlamydia. In this study, we explored the effects of ST-669 when the cell cycle of the host cells was altered....
Our laboratory group is studying the molecular target of a novel, broad-spectrum antiviral compound known as ST-669. This compound has activity against a variety of different viruses and also obligate intracellular bacteria in the genera Coxiella and Chlamydia. The goal of this thesis project was to help elucidate the mechanism...
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Daniel Rockey
Our laboratory group is studying the molecular target of a novel, broad
The extensive adoption of social media has provoked widespread debate about how
online communication impacts social relationships. An apparent paradox of Facebook
is that people simultaneously express feeling more and less connected than ever
before. Through perspectives from psychology and communication studies, this thesis
addresses a question of public concern:...
Studying the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy helps us understand our place in the Universe. Early evolution of the Galaxy can effectively be studied by observing stars with low metallicity values since they are the oldest stars still visible. Due to the formation of the Galaxy, the oldest stars...
Pantoea agglomerans pathovar betae (Pab) is a bacterium that causes galls on the roots of beet plants, resulting in reduced marketability of beet roots and crop loss. Pab uses a type III secretion system (T3SS) to infect and cause galls on beets. The T3SS is a molecular syringe-like structure that...
Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular bacterium that causes diseases of the eye and urogenital tract in humans. It is the cause of the sexual transmitted infection (STI) chlamydia, the most prevalent STI worldwide, and the ocular disease trachoma, the leading cause of infectious blindness. To date there is no...
Although U.S. Latin@s are more affected by major depressive disorder than non-Latin@ whites, they are less likely to utilize mental health services. The purpose of this project is to create a children’s book that promotes the utilization of mental health services among U.S. Latin@s with major depressive disorder. This book...
Pediatricians and other physicians in the United States identify themselves with various religious or spiritual affiliations and use its practices and customary ways to influence their medical practice. Pediatricians and physicians affiliated in the pediatric medical field have an important role in monitoring the health of many children, teenagers, and...
Chlamydia abortus, an intracellular bacterium, spreads through flocks of sheep and goats, causing ovine enzootic abortion (OAE). Chlamydiae develop within a pathogen-modified vacuole in the host cell called the inclusion, which allows the bacteria to acquire host resources. The morphology of the inclusion varies between chlamydial species. Some species fuse...
This thesis consists of two papers in manuscript format. The first paper presents optical measurements of tsunami inundation through an urban waterfront in a laboratory wave basin. The physical model was constructed at 1:50 scale and was an idealization of the town of Seaside, Oregon. The paper presents an analysis...
Chlamydiae encode a family of proteins named the polymorphic membrane proteins, or Pmps, whose role in infection and pathogenesis is unclear. The Rockey Laboratory is studying polymorphic membrane protein expression in Chlamydia abortus, a zoonotic pathogen that causes abortions in ewes. C. abortus contains 18 pmp genes, some of which...
Background: Lateral gene transfer (LGT) among C. trachomatis strains is common, both in isolates generated in the laboratory and those examined directly from patients. This is a challenging concept because there are very few examples of recent acquisition of foreign DNA by Chlamydia spp. There is no understanding of the...
Enduracidin is an antibiotic produced by Streptomyces fungicidicus that is effective against Gram-positive bacteria. Previous work identified seventy-eight mutations in an S. fungicidicus strain that produces a significantly higher level of enduracidin than the wild type strain, ATCC 21013. Eleven mutations were analyzed individually to identify those that may contribute...
Autism and alexithymia are two disorders characterized by deficiencies in interpersonal and emotional processing. For example, both of these disorders are associated with deficits in the ability to identify and judge the emotions of others. For diagnosis, patients are typically assessed for such deficiencies using published tests of emotion perception...
Autism and Alexithymia are two disorders characterized by deficiencies in interpersonal and emotional processing. For example, both of these disorders are associated with deficits in the ability to identify and judge the emotions of others. For diagnosis, patients are typically assessed for such deficiencies using published tests of emotion perception...
One of the distinctive features of mitochondria is that they have their own DNA. When compared to nuclear DNA, it is known that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) not only has a much higher rate of spontaneous mutation, but also arises from metabolically distinct precursor pools. Others from our laboratory have demonstrated...
Graphs have a wide variety of real-world applications. In the area of social networks, graphs are composed of individuals and their relationships with others. Analysis of social networks led to the discovery of the small-world phenomena, which is also known as six degrees of separation. Our analysis is focused on...
The oilseed crop Limnanthes alba (white meadowfoam) is grown in Oregon. Methods were developed for the production of a liquid-based bioherbicide from meadowfoam seed meal (MSM). It was determined that glucosinolate-containing extracts of MSM can be combined with active-enzyme-containing liquid extracts of meadowfoam seed to form a fermented product rich...
Genetic code expansion is a technology that allows for site-specific incorporation of noncanonical amino acids into recombinant proteins at amber stop codons using engineered translational machinery. The technology allows for expanded study into proteins, derived from the integration of novel chemical functions found in noncanonical amino acids, such as fluorescence,...
The types and rates of label noise in real-world data sets present a challenge to machine learning projects. In this thesis, we propose a novel approach to address this issue. Our method combines a noise modelling technique for correcting label noise across the entire data set with a robust loss...
The physician-patient relationship is one that relies heavily on the premise of trust. In contemporary medicine, trust is difficult to sustain due to the distractions created by technological documentation, rules, an increasing number of patients seen by a fewer physicians that diminish the human interaction within the relationship. To emphasize...
We developed an integration-based line detection algorithm. Existing line detection methods such as the Hough Transformation (HT) and its variants are insensitive to image noise. The reason is that HT finds lines by calculating the gradient of the image and assumes that the region where the gradient is the steepest...
Constant and reliable health monitoring can help doctors provide higher quality
health care to meet the growing needs of the medical industry. The advent of
cloud computing has enabled low-cost sensor devices that can process their data
in real-time without powerful onboard hardware. Using an Android smartphone,
medical data can...
Optical tweezers are capable of trapping micron sized particles through the transfer of
the momentum of light. These capabilities are expanded through the use of computer
controlled holograms for beam shaping. This hologram creation is facilitated through the use of
a spatial light modulator, which is a liquid crystal device...
Although Latino students make up more than a quarter of the U.S. public school system, only three percent of children’s literature either features a Latino protagonist or is written by a Latino author (Machado et al.). Latinos are therefore severely underrepresented in children’s books. Additionally, studies have revealed that Latino...
Motivation: It can take considerable amounts of time and effort to use existing computational tools to analyze a small RNA sequence for the purpose of determining if it is characteristic of microRNA. It is similarly tedious to search for homologs to known microRNA sequences in the rapidly growing collection of...
Variability in the depth and duration of anesthesia in individuals within a species is
frequently observed, yet few studies have investigated its causes in reptiles. To evaluate
the potential causes of variability in reptile anesthesia, I conducted experiments to test for
effects of body temperature, body composition and time post-feeding...
Modern electronics have created increased demand for innovative cooling solutions. Typical forced convective cooling systems consist of pumps that circulate cooling fluid. However pumps can be unwieldy for many applications. This research is a continuation of work done at Oregon State University and Auburn University on the passive pumping of...
Buses can be impractical for those who must adhere to a strict schedule or depend on them for emergencies. While variations from the official bus schedule are understandable and largely unavoidable, a lack of communication discourages adoption at a rate disproportionate with their actual likelihood. Even if a bus is...
An intersection without a traffic light could be a potentially dangerous place to travel through depending on the mindsets of the of the travelers within it. When travelers are traversing an intersection, they generally have one of two different mindsets that influence the actions they do. One mindset they could...
As I prepared my senior vocal recital, I grew frustrated that there was no guidance to assist me or my teacher in incorporating elements outside of the standard recital framework: uncommon choices. Because I gained a great deal of practical experience from my own recital preparation, I decided to craft...
Sepsis is a life-threatening blood infection which leads to an uncontrolled systemic inflammatory state. In North America alone, sepsis annually afflicts approximately 750,000 individuals and kills 38-50% of these (more than HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and colon cancer combined). Current treatment involves administration of IV fluids, antibiotics and hemoperfusion, requiring prolonged...
This study aimed to determine the efficacy of baking to reduce bacterial populations (an unknown contaminant or Salmonella) in cookie dough. Baking conditions (time and temperature parameters) were selected based on conditions commonly used in industry. The first study (Chapter 2), “Baking as Validation for Control of Coliform Counts in...
Since underrepresented nominees began filling U.S. Supreme Court seats, political scientists have examined the possibility of existing biases towards potential judges based upon their identities or innate characteristics. Some scholars have identified that the gender identification and ethnic affiliations of candidates have affected the behaviors displayed by those involved in...
A lead slowing-down spectrometer (LSDS) was modeled in the hopes of beginning a nuclear data development campaign at Oregon State University. An LSDS can be used for neutron interrogation techniques, such as determining isotopic inventory of a sample of unknown components or determining the cross section of a sample of...
Previous literature consistently demonstrates a link between binge drinking and sexual assault among college students. State alcohol control policies, particularly tax policies, are established as important predictors of college binge drinking but have not been examined in relation to sexual assault. This study used merged data on student demographics and...
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Daniel Bradford, Committee Member, representing the School of Psychological Science
An emerging strategy to reducing food waste is converting food processing byproducts to nutritious and inexpensive food ingredients. A relevant food processing waste stream is brewers’ spent grain (BSG), the primary byproduct of beer production. BSG is a promising candidate as a food ingredient because of its high protein and...
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Daniel Smith, Committee Member, representing Department of Food Science & Technology
Advances in technology such as 3D digital scanning and spatial analysis software have provided archaeologists with novel data. Specifically, these methods increase the researcher's ability to measure artifact morphology and past networks of cultural transmission, to potentially track the movement of past peoples and ideas through space and time. This...
From my personal experiences, I’ve noticed that Latinx students and families are most receptive to college-related information communicated as anecdotes. Latinx students are among the most poorly represented demographic at universities nationwide, which I believe can be mitigated through calculated efforts to increase collegiate literacy and understanding. This project is...
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Daniel López-Cevallos, Committee Member, representing School of Public Health and
Health
Designing and building a home Media Center can be a daunting task given the multitude of available options and configurations. The goal of this project is to build a home Media Center, and in the process, create a guide that a less technically knowledgeable person could use to build their...
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Dean, University Honors College
– Dr. DanielJ. Arp
I understand that my project will
Giardia and Cryptosporidium protozoans are resilient, zoonotic waterborne pathogens that can bypass water treatment and kill millions of people and animals annually. Giardia and Cryptosporidium cysts and oocysts, respectively, can spread through feces; poor sanitation and poverty can increase the risk for giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis diarrheal diseases. We are currently...