Background: Against global health disparities and a shortfall of medical personnel, community health workers (CHWs) promise a solution based in lived experience and connection to the health system. To address global and upstream health determinants, CHW programs engage the perspectives of both the workers they employ and the communities they...
This dissertation presents a different approach to understanding how amphibians are responding to disease through ontogeny. Although numerous efforts have been conducted to understand host responses to the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), studies have been restricted to distinct developmental stages. This dissertation provides information on host response to Bd across...
Breast cancer is the leading cancer in women with an estimated 13% of women in the United States developing a form of invasive breast cancer in her lifetime. The survival rate is estimated to be 85%, but the American Cancer Society estimates that early detection of breast cancer in the...
Proportion data falling in the continuum (0, 1) are very common in practice. It can also happen that an inflated number of zeros (or ones) occur with proportion data. There are extensive studies of zero-inflated data in the literature. Almost all of them, however, focus on zero-inflated count data. Furthermore,...
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a ligand activated transcription factor that is a member of the basic helix-loop-helix PER-ARNT-SIM (bHLH/PAS) protein family of cellular sensors. The AHR is conserved across multiple animal phyla and is required for proper vertebrate development. A structurally diverse group of chemicals, including polycyclic aromatic...
The student-loan market has surpassed 1.3 trillion dollars; rising student-loan cohort default rates are a growing concern among educational institutions. Many colleges are implementing financial-education programs for students to help increase their knowledge, aptitude, and skills so they may become informed consumers. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The purpose of this...
Background: According to the National Mental Health Survey (NMHS), the treatment gap of any mental disorder in India among the general population was reported to be as high as 83% (R. S. Murthy, 2017). There is insufficient evidence currently describing the treatment gap among the child and adolescent population. Given...
Four key aspects of the relationship between predatory hoverflies and the aphid pest Brevicoryne brassicae L. on broccoli were investigated in the Willamette Valley, Oregon USA: 1) the relationship between aphid density and hoverfly oviposition, 2) the larval voracity of key hoverfly species, 3) the preferences of hoverflies and broccoli...
Forecasts of the impacts of climate change have traditionally focused on individual species and their phenotypes, phenology, or distribution. However, shifts in species distributions and the resulting reorganization of community composition represent an important violation to the assumption of species acting in isolation. Whereas species may respond individualistically to climate...
My dissertation title is, “Applied economic strategies to evaluate policies and environmental outcomes: case studies from immigration and ecosystem services.” The first two chapters of this dissertation concern the relationship between local immigration policies and societal welfare. The third chapter examines the impact of human activity on the environment and...
Glutamine synthetase activity is present in both the cytosol and
bacteroid fractions of soybean root nodules. Total activity measurements
indicate that at least 90% of the activity in nodules is located
in the cytosol. Results reported by McParland, et al. (29), showed
that many properties of glutamine synthetase from nodule...
This dissertation uses manipulative experiments to explore amphibian-Bd infection dynamics. Although there has been almost two decades research since the discovery of Bd, many questions still remain regarding what conditions mediate chytridiomycosis virulence. My research shows how certain host and pathogen factors can influence disease virulence. Identifying how host and...
Species are one of the foundational units upon which entire fields of scientific inquiry are built. Discovering and documenting the planet’s biodiversity remains one of the grand challenges of science. A proper conceptualization of species provides a critical framework for diverse fields such as biophysics, biochemistry, agriculture and pharmacology, and...
The vegetation in Yosemite National Park changed during the 20th century and may change in the 21st century in response to climate change. Vegetation surveys made during the 1930s and the 1990s provide benchmark records separated by 60 years. This study uses the MC1 dynamic global vegetation model to forecast...
There is no information available on water management of birdsfoot
trefoil grown for seed. Information is also not available describing how to
minimize seed losses due to shattering in order to obtain consistently high
birdsfoot trefoil seed yields. The objectives of this research are to: (i) quantify
crop water use,...
Marine magnetic data from the northern Yucatan continental margin were used to
obtain the radially-averaged power-density spectra (RAPDS) of 34 grids, each with
dimensions of 128 by 128 km, overlapping 50 percent. Depths to the tops of three
magnetic horizons were estimated from the slopes of linear segments in the...
The U.S. Pacific Northwest is home to one of the most extreme wave climates in the world with waves of 10 m in height arriving to the coast approximately each year. With an average water temperature of 12℃, the beaches in the region are too cold to go on a...
The goal of this project was to develop an integrated pest management strategy
for the control of a powder-post beetle (Dinoderus minutus F.). This species causes
serious damage in Philippine bamboo. Developmental threshold and thermal constants
were examined and natural enemies and ftmgi associated with beetles were investigated.
Finally, the...
The purpose of this study was to explore under controlled conditions
possible differences between teacher expectancy and child performance
at the first grade level. The Beaverton Public Schools participated
in the study with their first grade children and teachers, using an
examination administered to a random sampling of children and...
Community colleges serve various populations as part of their missions. Many community colleges serve the people who live in rural communities and are challenged with fewer financial resources. The term rural is not easily defined, and many variables need to be considered when creating academic programming for rural populations. There...
Investigation into how animals move within the landscape is important for both understanding of ecological processes and conservation management. Animal movement is important in shaping life history transitions, demographics, individual fitness, and species distributions. However, as landscapes become increasingly affected by human activities, movement becomes important as species navigate landscapes...
Pollution by pesticides is a ubiquitous concern for wildlife. The effects of
pesticides are especially concerning in aquatic environments, which are particularly
vulnerable as they have several exposure routes for the influx of chemicals. These
effects are of particular concern as biodiversity loss reaches unprecedented rates. This
includes recent declines...
Postcopulatory sexual selection—sperm competition and cryptic female choice—has become a major area of research over the past 40 years. Within this field there are many outstanding questions at every level of analysis, from proximate to ultimate. The fitness consequences for both sexes in the period after copulation and before fertilization...
The 100 North Pacific rockfish species in the genus Sebastes are highly diverse. Rockfishes fertilize their eggs internally and release swimming larvae. Complex courting behaviors may allow female rockfish to be selective about their mates and may promote and maintain speciation. In this study, I applied genetic techniques to survey...
Italian ryegrass populations have been identified with evolved resistance to glyphosate in orchards with a history of glyphosate use. Two of these populations were selected to investigate the inheritance of glyphosate resistance. The mechanisms involved in the herbicide resistance were an altered target site for the population SF and reduced...
The need for classifying vegetation in a more precise way is
evident. Also, there is a need to provide a hierarchical classification
scheme that will match changes in image characteristics as one
moves through the scales from space to conventional aerial photography.
Such refined classifications of vegetation are the first...
Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.) is a popular perennial, non-bloating forage legume used for pasture, hay and silage throughout the temperate regions of Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and North and South America. It is regarded as the most morphologically and biochemically variable species in the genus. Research investigating the...
Natural resources play a crucial role in human society by providing both market value and non-market value. Effective management of these resources is necessary to achieve a balance between economic value and other non-market benefits. Econometric studies focusing on natural resource management help us understand the costs and benefits of...
A growing body of work reveals that animal-mediated pollination is negatively affected by anthropogenic disturbance. Landscape-scale disturbance results in two often inter-related processes: (1) habitat loss, and (2) disruptions of habitat configuration (i.e. fragmentation). Understanding the relative effects of such processes is critical in designing effective management strategies to limit...
Energetic resources transferred between distinct habitats or ecosystems, referred to as allochthonous resources, can greatly subsidize consumers in the recipient habitat, and thus influence food web structure and dynamics. Such subsidies may allow the growth of the consumer population to be decoupled from in situ productivity with effects on consumer...
LGBTQ+ young people experience oppression daily and these experiences
negatively impact their wellbeing (Hafeez et al., 2017; Kattari et al., 2016; Kulik et al., 2017; Movement Advancement Project, 2020a; Woodford et al., 2014; Young, 2014). How young people respond to oppression can have far-reaching implications for not only their own...
This dissertation investigates the context-dependency of species interactions between seagrass and macroalgae in upwelling-influenced estuaries. In all coastal systems, nutrient loading is multidirectional, resulting from mostly freshwater and marine inputs. The directionality of nutrient inputs may affect the rate of supply of organic matter to the system. In systems where...
In the most challenging nuclear power plant accidents, transient critical heat flux (CHF) is a primary phenomenon that drives peak cladding temperature and ultimately fuel failure. It is not yet determined whether the use of steady-state CHF methods can accurately predict transient CHF under the conditions of a blowdown due...
Northern highbush blueberry is a long-lived perennial crop that is well adapted to low soil pH conditions. The plants are often shallow rooted and absorb primarily the ammonium (NH₄) form of nitrogen (N) rather than nitrate-N (NO₃-N). Traditionally, commercial blueberry fields have been irrigated with overhead sprinklers and fertilized using...
Studies of Hawaiian volcanoes contribute valuable insights about Earth processes and mantle evolution, and are fundamental for understanding the construction of the largest volcanoes on terrestrial planets. The pre-shield stage exists in every Hawaiian volcano, but is usually blanketed by high volume tholeiitic lava flows during the main shield stage....
Vibration of nuclear power plant components can cause fretting wear and fatigue that can eventually lead to component failure. Flexible, high-aspect ratio components under flow, such as the wire-wrapped cylindrical fuel elements in a liquid metal-cooled fast reactor (LMFR) core, are particularly susceptible to vibration due to their low natural...
In recent years, the global nuclear industry has placed a greater emphasis on passively safe reactor designs. In particular, much attention and design work has been applied to engineered systems for passive cooling of nuclear fuel, whether it be loaded in a core or stored in spent fuel pools. The...
Until the 1930s, flows of the Colorado River maintained approximately 781,060 hectares of wetlands in its delta. These wetlands provided important feeding and nesting grounds for resident and migratory birds as well as spawning and protection habitat for many fish and other invertebrate species. However, the Delta's wetlands started to...
Contemporary environmental change encompasses massive biodiversity loss and
increasing numbers of emerging diseases worldwide. As part of a global biodiversity
crisis, amphibians are disappearing at unprecedented rates. Batrachochytrium
dendrobatidis is an emerging infectious pathogen prominently associated with many
declines. Chapter 1 reviews the past decade of research on this system...
Memory is essential to everyday life. As we age, deficits in memory become apparent. The toll of age-related cognitive impairment can be devastating to families and costly to society. The NMDA receptor is a molecule in the brain that is instrumental in the formation of memories. The receptor is particularly...
Determination of the source and fate of natural (higher plant lipids, marine
lipids, etc.) and anthropogenically (e.g., petroleum, coal emissions) derived
hydrocarbons and oxygenated compounds in the environment was accomplished
using gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)
to characterize or identify molecular biomarkers to be utilized as tracers....
My thesis explored the effects of and potential mediating mechanisms for an important environmental stressor, ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation. UVB radiation has negative effects on organisms in both terrestrial and aquatic systems. I used meta-analysis to quantify the effects of UVB radiation on a diversity of aquatic organisms (Chapter 2). UVB...
During the past 30 years, numerous studies have focused on the toxicities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Laboratory and field studies have helped elucidate the detrimental effects of these chemicals on growth, reproduction and immune response. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are in the priority list of chemicals to be studied by...
Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) disproportionately effects hematologic cancers when compared to solid tumor malignancies. Self-management of CRF has received increasing attention in solid tumor cancers, however, fatigue self-management in hematologic cancers has received significantly less systematic investigation. The purpose of this research was to determine effective strategies for self-managing fatigue across...
Species declines and extinctions have been recorded across taxa as evidence of an ongoing global biodiversity crisis. Amphibians are at the forefront of these declines with nearly one third of amphibian species estimated to be at risk of extinction. While many factors contribute to population declines and extinctions, the role...
The ongoing worldwide loss of biodiversity has been described as a "biodiversity crisis," "the Anthropocene defaunation," and alternatively "an extinction spasm." More recently, many scientists have come to the conclusion that we are witnesses to Earth's sixth major mass extinction event, which has the potential to fundamentally alter basic ecological...
Although it is widely accepted that dogs and humans form attachment relationships, characterizing attachment styles in dogs has only recently received attention in the literature. Previous research has shown that pet dogs display patterns of behavior in an attachment test that can be classified into secure and insecure attachment styles,...
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production of poplar biomass grown under four management conditions in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the U.S.A. was conducted. While the extraction of fossil fuels and the subsequent generation of energy have environmental impacts, the alternative of extracting poplar biomass also has impacts...