Agricultural and companion animals are integral to our way of life as they provide us with nourishment, financial resources, transportation, and companionship. However, pets, managed animals in the agricultural industry, as well as wild populations of food animals are all subject to health and mortality risks. The gut microbiome is...
The number of children entering foster care is rising, making foster parent retention a critical concern. Significant stressors accompany the role of a foster parent, which may be exacerbated by the current context (e.g., COVID-19). Although stress may influence foster parents’ decision to continue fostering, formal social support may act...
A growth model is developed for coho salmon which accounts for
temperatures and feeding rates typically encountered in fish hatchery
operation. Feeding rates utilized by the model ranged from
maintenance to maximum utilizable rations. The model is derived from
an empirical equation for maximum growth rate, and a theoretical
equation...
Achieving and maintaining sustainability in irrigated agriculture production in the era of rapidly increasing stress on our natural resources require, among other essential actions, optimum control and management of the applied water. Thus, a significant upgrade of the currently available soil water monitoring technologies is needed. The primary goal of...
A wilderness area, as administered by the U. S. Forest Service, is a tract of undeveloped land over 100,000 acres in size with no roads or provision for motorized transportation. Commercial timber cutting, hotels, stores, and similar developments are prohibited. While there are some exceptions for private holdings and administrative...
The Levels-of-Growing-Stock Studies in Douglas-fir is a regional cooperative to investigate the effects of levels of growing stock on young stand growth. The Hoskins
installation, in western Oregon, was established in a dense, high site natural stand at total age 20 years. The initial thinning resulted in an immediate 131...
This thesis is devoted to determining structure results on a group relative to a subgroup, using information about the kernel of the boundary map of associated free resolutions. If Y is a CW-complex with homotopy type K(G,1) then for n ≥ 2 the nth skeletal homotopy module, hn(Y ) =...
Globally the forest harvesting industry is becoming increasingly mechanized. Driving this trend is the desire to increase productivity and reduce cost, as well as to improve labor-related issues. With mechanization comes an in-forest platform for the introduction of state-of-the-art communication and measurement technologies, and powerful on-board computers. These systems have...
The immune toxicity of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) has been studied for over 35 years, but only recently has the profound immune suppression associated with TCDD exposure been linked to induction of regulatory T cells (Tregs). The effects of TCDD are mediated through binding the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a ligand-activated transcription...
The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the effectiveness
of two approaches in nutrition education instruction among culturally
diverse adolescents: the teacher-oriented lecture approach and the
student-oriented instructional design approach. The study was
designed to help culturally diverse students gain a basic
understanding of practices that promote...
A new experimental apparatus was built at Oregon State University to perform high resolution stimulated Raman spectroscopy in a pulsed molecular jet at state densities of the order of 10¹¹ cm⁻³. The technique uses a stimulated Raman step to first populate a vibrational/rotational level and then a resonantly enhanced multiphoton...
Hydrologic processes within mineral flat wetlands, along with their
connections to groundwater and downstream surface water in lowland agricultural
catchments are poorly understood, particularly under different land uses. In the three
field studies included in this thesis, we examined infiltration, wetland hydroperiod,
groundwater recharge dynamics, surface runoff generation, and water...
Two essays are focused on crop choice and the growth of corn production in
the Corn Belt and surrounding areas. The first essay develops a partially
degenerate nested logit model to examine the effect of price islands and local
ethanol capacity on corn production and crop mix. The primary data...
In 2022, the Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth noted only 24% of children ages 6 to 17 years achieved the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity daily, with a drop in physical activity as children age (Barriss, 2022). More importantly, children with disabilities have been found...
Congenital hearing loss is a common disorder and over 60 mutations in the sensory hair cell protein, otoferlin, have been linked to pre-lingual deafness. Although otoferlin is essential for hearing, the large size and low solubility of the protein have limited approaches to study its function on a molecular-level. To...
Sagebrush steppe ecosystems in the Great Basin have become increasingly threatened by the proliferation of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), an invasive annual grass. Diverse sagebrush and perennial bunchgrass landscapes can be converted to homogenous cheatgrass grasslands mainly through the effects of fire. Although the consequences of this conversion are well...
Proper use of vegetation in streambank bioengineering practices requires a comprehensive understanding of the influence of vegetation density on streambank hydraulics. A series of studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between independent variables vegetation density, bank angle, and discharge and dependent variables channel velocity, resistance, turbulence, and shear stress....
Organic semiconductors have attracted considerable attention due to their applications in low-cost, solution-processable (opto)electronic devices. An important class of high-performance organic semiconductors is pentacene derivatives, which exhibit high charger carrier mobilities in field-effect transistors and ultrafast singlet fission in photovoltaic devices. These derivatives have served as benchmark materials for systematic...
In light of water scarcity and the impacts of climate change, there is an increased need to understand the interaction between land use characteristics and ecohydrologic processes in semiarid regions. Additionally, many semiarid and arid regions face various land management challenges, including woody plant encroachment, decreased snowpack, and increased stream...
One important cool-season perennial grass seed crop grown in Oregon is fine fescue (Festuca rubra L.). Open-field burning has been used for many decades to manage pests, cycle nutrients, and stabilize yield, in fine fescue seed fields, especially as stands age. Legislative restrictions currently limit open-field burning to 6,070 hectares...
Continental flood basalts represent short-lived but immense blasts of mafic magma to the continental crust. The youngest and smallest continental flood basalt worldwide, the Columbia River Basalt, initiated with the eruption of the most mafic member, the Steens Basalt (~16.9 Ma). The Steens Basalt is exposed in southeast Oregon, southwest...
A three component drag probe has been built, calibrated, and
used to measure velocities beneath deep water ocean waves and
turbulence in a tidal channel. Simple variable inductance devices
which may be submerged in water were used as displacement transducers
and the associated electronics provided voltage outputs which
were proportional...
Three related topics have been explored in this thesis. Those three topics deal
with the pricing problems both in the market for access rights to fish and in the market
for seafood. The purpose of this study is to contribute some insights into the global
picture of fishery management and...
Many regions in North America are experiencing water shortages, and these conditions are expected to worsen. The next generation of irrigation scheduling applications must therefore be capable of providing operational advice in support of deficit irrigation strategies. However, the theoretical, technical, and practical challenges associated with deficit irrigation scheduling are...
Decision-making in environmental management is complex due to the multiplicity arid diversity of management objectives and technological choices. This suggests that modelers and experts could utilize (I) multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches to assist stakeholder groups in integrating and synthesizing relevant data and information to address ecological and socio-economic concerns and...
Water conservation and water quality are rapidly increasing in importance in all areas of the world. The ability to accurately measure soil water content and salinity, over a wide variety of conditions, is key to meeting this need. A set of forward prediction models and waveform interpretation algorithms to extract...
This dissertation examines development and the implications of information and communication technology, particularly computers, on issues relating to education, labor, and the overall wellbeing of Black and indigenous people in Bocas del Toro, Panama. It details the Black and indigenous legacy of dependency in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries on...
Seed shattering is a constraint to improvement of seed yield in Lolium perenne L. and as a result, seed retention is an essential trait for this valuable crop. Field studies were conducted near Corvallis, OR in two years (2017-2018 and 2018-2019) to identify genetic variation for seed retention and to...
The silviculture of mixed dipterocarp forests of Peninsular Malaysia can potentially be improved by developing quantitative tools and guidelines for this forest type. This thesis addresses three key objectives; 1) to test the hypothesis that a maximum size-density relationship can be identified in hill dipterocarp forests of Peninsular Malaysia, 2)...
Orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L.) is an important seed crop, but unlike other cool-season perennial grass seed crops such as perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) and tall fescue [Schedonorus arundinaceus (Schreb.) Dumort.], seed yields have not increased over time so there is considerable room for improvement. Research suggests that plant growth...
Community science (also called citizen science) has become an increasingly popular data collection technique for scientists researching nature at a large scale. Many ecologists have also looked to community science as a method for educating the public about science. Over the past several decades, researchers have attempted to define an...
The experiences of Latinx youth are well-studied in U.S. schools, yet, few studies have focused on their experiences in Community Based Educational Spaces (CBES). CBES continue to be on the periphery of Education research despite the potential affordances of youth-led work in such out-of-school spaces (Baldridge, 2020). At the same...
A complete solution, exact to second-order, for wave motion
forced by a hinged-wavemaker of variable-draft is presented. A
solution for a piston type wavemaker is also obtained as a special
case of a hinged-wavemaker with negative infinite draft. The
existing Stokes inviscid theories for mass transport is extended to
include...
Renibacterium salmoninarum produces bacterial kidney
disease (BKD) in salmonid fish. Soluble antigen(s) (SA) produced
by the bacterium was characterized by physicochemical,
functional and immunological methods. The molecular weight
determination by SDS-PAGE analysis of SA yielded 14 different
molecular weight species. Seven of these species were
prominent, 57 kd protein being...
Counselors are tasked with being knowledgeable about assessing and treating a broad range of mental health issues. There has been an overall rise in mental health symptoms in individuals during the current COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the increased use of online internet forums as part of help-seeking behaviors. Obsessive-Compulsive...
In the field of machine learning, clustering and classification are two fundamental tasks. Traditionally, clustering is an unsupervised method, where no supervision about the data is available for learning; classification is a supervised task, where fully-labeled data are collected for training a classifier. In some scenarios, however, we may not...
While water scarcity and energy demand are continuously increasing in the world, alternative sources are needed to meet the requirement of a growing population. Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is a sustainable technology that converts organic matter in wastewater into electricity, thus it can be a potential alternative source for water...
Fungi in the genus Tolypocladium are diverse in their host associations, but the predominant ecologies include parasites of the ectomycorrhizal genus Elaphomyces and pathogens of insects. The aim of this dissertation research is to examine the evolution of these fungi and their host associations. To accomplish this several lines of...
Continuous Improvement (CI) is an integral part of hospital administration. This study examined the relationship between five CI variables against six hospital criterion measures of, wait times to prepare a room, patient costs per day, waiting time for lab results, reportable errors, patient satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. The research was...
Ecological resources available to freshwater fish shift spatially, temporally and across life stages. To better understand how spatial-temporal availability of resources influence fish, I examined the phenologies of hatching and emergence of Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in streams with contrasting and strongly defined seasonal thermal variability. The study streams included...
Grapevine red blotch virus (GRBV), the causal agent of red blotch disease (RBD) in grapevine, Vitis vinifera L., is an emerging pathogen of significance to the wine grape industry of Oregon, USA. To address knowledge gaps of GRBV epidemiology, spread of GRBV was evaluated in Oregon vineyards over four years....