College students have reported increased levels of financial difficulties in the past decade and are working part or full time to afford tuition and cost of living. I explored the factors associated with working students' experiences of stress, also testing if they experience more stress than non-working students, and if...
On a global scale, illicit economies have dramatic impacts on the physical environment. Cocaine trafficking has been recognized as a major driver of deforestation inside Central American protected areas. A key problem in studying and managing the environmental impacts of illicit economic activity is the difficulty in obtaining reliable data....
Scientists have long recognized that bees and other insects respond to floral color, including ultraviolet (UV) floral patterns that are invisible to the human eye. While previous research has focused on isolating and capturing these UV markings in laboratory settings, methods that could be used in natural settings needed to...
This thesis examines food insecurity in Oregon among food bank users over the course of The Great Recession. Analyzing data from the Oregon Food Bank, this thesis tells the story of the change that the recession brought upon low-income families. In examining the regional differences in food insecurity, the local...
This thesis presents innovative pedagogical approaches to teach fundamental Computer Science (CS) concepts, such as abstraction, representation, algorithms, and computation utilizing manipulatives, which are physical objects that students interact with to teach or reinforce a concept. Teaching and learning with manipulatives has a long history in science and mathematics education,...
The Pacific Islander diaspora in the Pacific Northwest United States is a unique community characterized by diverse cultures, experiences, and motivations for migration. This study aimed to explore the narratives of individuals from different Pacific Islander backgrounds residing in Oregon, shedding light on their reasons for migration and the impact...
This paper explores the mutual constitution between language, thought, and culture within the context of Tibetan honorifics. I employ Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis to argue that changes in honorific usage pre- and post-Chinese occupation reflect and reify changes in ideology and culture within Tibetan communities. Analyzing usage patterns and...
Hydrogels have been attractive for use as a medium in porous flow studies,
but have always been limited in this role because of their poor mechanical properties.
This project analyzes and tests two recently developed hydrogels,
poly(methacrylamide-co-methacrylic acid) (PMM), and a heat-treated long chain
PVA hydrogel. Particle image velocimetry (PIV)...
The data retrieved from gt;momic sequencing techniques provides the raw information required to infer the basis of mutations and their resulting phenotypes, wherein plant ontologies can be utilized in annotating said phenotypes using a common, shared vocabulary. By relating mutant genes of similar phenotypes both within and between plant species,...