Over the last several decades, potato production has increased globally as it has been recognized as an important component to improving food security. However, potato production has been continuously challenged by pests. Current pest management practices rely heavily on chemical pesticides. Unfortunately, the overuse of pesticides can be harmful to...
Transmit beamforming is an important technique employed to improve efficiency and signal quality in wireless communication systems by steering signals towards their in- tended users. It often arises jointly with the antenna selection problem due to various reasons, such as limited number of radio frequency (RF) chains and energy/resource effi-...
Within the Pacific Northwest, USA, root diseases of conifers are a major forest health concern. These diseases are primarily caused by basidiomycete fungi. These fungal associates play a vital role in carbon sequestration but also have a significant negative economic impact within the timber industry. As a result, research on...
Social robots benefit from a sense of humor, which requires the ability to recognize and adapt to human responses during playful interactions. Past work on humorous robots has classified audience responses with audio-based and preliminary visual-based methods following the joke punchline. Building on this progress, we conducted a survey of...
Evolve & Resequence (E&R) experiments subject laboratory populations to environments controlled by investigators, who then document the phenotypic and genomic changes that take place over many generations. These experiments provide powerful tools for testing of a wide variety of evolutionary questions, especially questions about the nature of adaptive traits. While...
This thesis is a rhetorical analysis of American newspaper coverage of Hồ Chí Minh from 1954-1969. My method is the Pragmatic Attitude, created by Elizabeth and Jay Mechling. My foci of study are the polls and letters to the editor from this same period. These foci of study are used...
Machine learning has enabled significant advancements in diverse fields, yet, with a few exceptions, has had limited impact on computer architecture. Recent work, however, has begun to explore broader application to design, optimization, and simulation. Notably, machine-learning-based strategies often surpass prior state-of-the-art analytical, heuristic, and human-expert approaches. This thesis first...
The budding yeast Brettanomyces bruxellensis has the potential to spoil fermented beverages and cause financial losses, but also contribute positively to certain products such as Lambic beer. It is most notorious for causing “Brett” spoilage of wine, which is characterized by undesirable aromas such as “bandaid” and “barnyard”, therefore most...
The cultural and social constructions of gender and sexuality play a major role in shaping an individual’s reproductive agency within the Yoruba society. This thesis suggests the need to apply a reproductive justice framework and transnational feminist theory as alternatives to individual-driven ‘choice’ and reproductive and sexual human rights. In...
Hydrogen is an increasingly attractive low-carbon energy carrier for a variety of stationary and mobile applications. Currently, the vast majority of hydrogen in the United States is produced via the energy intensive steam reforming of natural gas. The cost and carbon emissions associated with hydrogen production can be reduced by...