About one third of Americans have metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by five risk factors related to blood pressure and triglyceride levels and could lead to diabetes and heart disease if left untreated. Watermelon has been shown to exhibit cardioprotective effects due to its high phytochemical content and may act...
Reducing garment waste and finding sustainable alternatives within the apparel industry has gained momentum in recent years as concerns increase towards the polluting nature of the industry. Designing for longevity, by focusing on aspects such as emotional and physical durability have been cited as possible solutions. The purpose of this...
Simultaneous speech-to-text translation remains a difficult yet important problem for modern machine learning models whereby a text translation is generated concurrently with receiving partial speech inputs. One state-of-the-art simultaneous speech-to-text model is the augmented memory transformer whose encoder breaks a speech input into fixed-size overlapping segments composed of left, right,...
Objective: To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis on the prevalence rate of mental health disorders including anxiety, depression, and insomnia during the COVID-19 pandemic in Eastern Europe in the general population, as well as within select sub-populations (i.e., students, general healthcare workers, and frontline workers).
Data sources: Articles in PubMed,...
To design engineering systems that have improved reliability, it is important to understand what kind of system faults they will be susceptible to. Mitigation strategies are important to ensuring the performance of these engineering systems. Understanding how the modularity of complex engineering systems affects the risk of devastating failures such...
The national average life expectancy for houseless individuals in the United States is forty seven years, which is thirty years lower than the overall average. I argue that this disproportionately short life expectancy of the houseless is reflective of significant health inequities in the United States that disproportionately impact the...
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...
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...
Previous investigations of glacier dynamics at Tioga Pass during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) have produced different conclusions. A map of the LGM ice extent and flow direction (Alpha et al., 1987) illustrates a south-to-north direction of ice flow across the pass with little evidence to support this inference. Since...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is characterized by the degeneration of motor neurons in the motor cortex and spinal cord. Recent evidence suggests that the purine receptor P2X7 (P2X7R) plays a central role in the pathology of ALS. Previous research indicates that P2X7R activation by oxidatively modified heat shock protein 90...
DNA segments in the fungus Fusarium graminearum were identified as possible genes encoding for chromodomain proteins (CDPs), and targeted for genetic manipulation. Targeted single-gene deletion strains, as wells as GFP-S tag fusion strains, were generated from wildtype F. graminearum protoplasts, and verified strains were screened for phenotypic differences, such as...
Koi herpesvirus (KHV) is a new emerging viral pathogen of koi and common carps. It has been demonstrated that KHV becomes latent in the white blood cells in the recovered koi. The latent KHV can be reactivated under stressful conditions, such as heat and injury, and the reactivated viruses can...
Fashion bloggers have become a changing force of the retail industry over the past decade, redefining where consumers look for fashion inspiration, product reviews, and brand credibility. Despite the widespread popularity of fashion bloggers, there is little industry consensus as to what characteristics make a fashion blogger successful and to...
Optical trapping is a tool used throughout a wide variety of disciplines rang- ing from precisely probing and manipulating sub-micron organisms in biol- ogy to analyzing fundamental charge transfer in colloidal physics. This thesis presents research involving optical tweezer force measurements of polystyrene and silica microspheres. In addition, preliminary work...
This paper presents a method of implementing real-time apple detection for closed-loop control to approach apples for grabbing. The approach is to train two known real-time object detection networks–the Faster R-CNN and YOLOv5–on a novel dataset to verify that it is possible to achieve maximum average precision (mAP) above 50\%...
Oil is notorious for its volatility. Often as an indicator for economic wellbeing, the commodity employs millions across the country. Entire communities in the western United States are centered around oil extraction, with employment, livelihoods, and revenues dependent on oil’s success. This combination of factors begs the question, how do...
The S-domain subfamily of receptor-like kinases (SD-RLKs) in plants is poorly characterized and the majority of genes have unknown functions. The goal of this study was to study the expansion of rice (Oryza sativa) SD-RLK subfamily, and characterize gene and protein structure and expression of its members using publicly available...
The purpose of this project is to write a children’s book that promotes breastfeeding to
acculturating Latin@s. María’s Mamá’s Milk or La leche de la mamá de María is about a little
girl named María whose mother is about to give birth. María wonders what the new baby will
eat,...
Understanding how particles behave in detectors is a critical part of analyzing data from neutrino experiments. There are methods in place to track charged particles in scintillator material, but neutral particles such as neutrons are more difficult to characterize. The purpose of this project was to assess and calibrate methods...
We analyze some symmetries of the octonionic multiplication table, expressed in terms of the Fano plane. In particular, we count how many ways the Fano plane can be labeled as the octonionic multiplication table, all corresponding to a specified octonion algebra. We show that only 28 of these labelings of...
Temperate evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest support big huckleberries (Vaccinium membranaceum) despite their nutrient impoverished soils. Acquisition of nitrogen and phosphorous are the major nutrients limiting V. membranaceum. The plant’s access to these resources is linked to their mycorrhizal symbiosis. To learn more about the symbionts of eriaceous plants...
Metallic glasses (also referred to as amorphous metals) have been gaining interest in the materials science community in recent years. These amorphous materials demonstrate promising properties compared to their crystalline counterparts that include much higher strength and elastic strain limit, better corrosion and wear resistance, superior soft magnetism, and an...
Red Signal Countdown Timers (RSCTs) are devices placed at intersections to inform drivers of the time remaining on a red indication before it turns green, typically to improve intersection efficiency. This study examines the visual attention of Oregon drivers to circular red (CR) indications with RSCTs as compared to standard...
Thomas Stearns Eliot’s 1922 modernist poem The Waste Land presents itself as an alternative to the decaying society Eliot found himself inhabiting. It begins as a personal means of pulling together one’s fragmented consciousness, but in doing so Eliot manages to present a solution to a world of selfishness—looking beyond...
The soil microbiome drives nutrient transformation in forest soils and plays a critical role in the carbon (C) cycle of these ecosystems. Wildfires cause significant disturbance to ecosystems and are known to alter C sources available to microbes in forest soils. Summer wildfires in the Pacific Northwest are of growing...
In communities impacted by climate disasters, institutions largely determine the distribution of outcomes within a population. This research aims to examine the role of institutions in differential outcomes for displaced communities impacted by the 2020 Labor Day Wildfires in the Santiam Canyon and the Rogue Valley. Using semi-structured interviews of...
Pacific Northwest temperate rainforests are anticipated to experience increasingly frequent and severe wildfires in the foreseeable future due to climate change, increased fuel loads, and deforestation. Soil, underlying these forests, is the largest terrestrial carbon (“C”) reservoir. Fire disturbance influences soil C persistence, the timeframe and magnitude of which remain...
Tooth decay in the form of dental caries and cavities is estimated to be among the most common health conditions globally, with treatment of these oral diseases resulting in a massive, world-wide economic burden. The cause of this demineralization of teeth is rooted in the action of complex microbial biofilms...
The issue of global climate change and possible remedies has been debated between national governments since the 1970s. While some countries have adopted aggressive measures to address the issue, others have lagged in their efforts. The United States, as a key player in global climate change conferences, has focused its...
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline porous material distinguished for high free empty volume and pore tunability. MOF-74(Ni) was previously shown to be effective in adsorbing carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrogen. Microwave-assisted synthesis of MOF-74(Ni) was shown to lower reaction time from days to hours. In this thesis, experimental conditions of...
Reclaimed water is a key source in overall global water management and sustainability;
however, small concentrations of antibiotics in treated wastewater effluent threaten
induction of antibiotic resistance in naturally-occurring soil bacteria and pathogens in
irrigated soils. This type of chronic exposure has the potential to lead to more severe food...
Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has potential applications as a low-cost catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Defects on MoS2, such as edge sites and sulfur vacancies, are known to be the major active sites for HER. Controlling the formation of these defects allows for the enhancement in reactivity of MoS2...
Water-soluble quantum dots obtained through ligand exchange are widely applicable for biological imaging and marking, LEDs, and photovoltaics. Lipoic acid (LA) was reduced to dihydrolipoic acid (DHLA) using 365-nm soft UV light in a process known as photoligation, and ligand exchange with dodecanethiol-capped CuInS₂-ZnS core-shell quantum dots occurred. The reaction...
Though empathy has proven to be a vital component of the physician-patient relationship, recent studies have shown that medical students tend to lose empathy during their third year of medical school as they start interacting with patients for the first time. The main objective of this project was to find...
The pulse-coupled oscillator model is widely used to simulate the dynamics of neural systems. For networks with particular internal (Mirollo-Strogatz) dynamics, I will define three broad patterns of collective behaviors found in literature in terms of inter-spike interval (ISI) statistics. These patterns are i) temporally-regular, characterized by all oscillators in...
Purpose
In modern American society, educational television (ETV) plays an increasingly substantial role in the daily out-of-classroom education of the American youth and the decision to utilize youth based ETV is often in the hands of parents. However, many parents are unaware of the potential risks associated with early childhood...
Electrochemical sensing provides a quantitative alternative to colorimetric reactions within paper-based devices. The paper-based devices were fabricated by screen printing the conductive and reference inks onto porous substrates that were evaluated using cyclic voltammetry. Devices were evaluated based on the magnitude of the average anodic peak height, which correlates with...
One of the principal drivers of climate change is the concentration of greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere. A large portion of this CO2 ends up in the waters off the continental coasts where it transforms into biomass. The major sink for this matter is the ocean sediments...
One method for CO2 sequestration is to store the liquid form of CO2 in small cement wells in the ground. An issue with this method is the susceptibility of cement to fracture and thus release the CO2. One proposition is to fill these cracks with biofilm of the bacteria Sporosarcina...
Despite the many advances in biotechnology and biomedical engineering, the need for long term organ and tissue storage remains among the unsolved problems in the field. Researchers are investigating several possible solutions to the issue that aim to maintain the function and integrity of the biological tissues during storage and...
Aaron Copland is known by many as the founder of American Music and is still considered one of the pre-eminent composers to come from the Americas, particularly North America. He composed from 1917-1973, with many of his most recognizable works composed in the early 1940s. Duo for Flute and Piano...
Effective storage and release of low-to-moderate temperature thermal energy (e.g. solar thermal or geothermal) could be transformational for applications such as space heating/cooling, domestic hot water, or off-grid cooking. Good candidates for thermal energy storage in this temperature range include latent heat storage (LHS) systems and thermochemical energy storage (TCES)...
This thesis describes the implementation of ultrasonic sensors to trigger a stimulus to increase peer interaction for children with disabilities using modified ride-on-cars for mobility. Modified ride-on-car technology has improved mobility for children with disabilities by effectively replicating the social benefits of a powered mobility device, yet there are opportunities...
Currently available soil moisture sensors have intrinsic limitations that limit their adoption by industry. Depending on the technology, these limitations may include high costs, battery requirements, precice manual installation, high cost, and/or constrictive legislation that regulates their use. A passive soil moisture sensing system based around RFID technology would allay...
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are used to control pain and inflammation, but can have serious adverse effects, including gastrointestinal ulceration. Non-selective NSAIDs inhibit both cyclooxygenase isoforms: COX-1 and COX-2. COX-2 is primarily responsible for the inflammatory response, while COX-1 is constitutively expressed, representing the dominant source of prostaglandins for gastric...
Histones, as part of nucleosomes, are responsible for DNA packaging in chromosomes. They also affect DNA expression by a multitude of post-translational modifications, especially prevalent on the amino terminus of histones. Co-activator protein complexes “write”, “read”, or “erase” histone modifications, and in balance determine which sections of DNA are free...
A project to create a fundraising plan for remodeling the Milam Foods Labs accompanied by a personal reflection on the trials and experiences leading up to the completion of the University Honors College thesis project.