Motivated by my own struggle to find identity and belonging as a transracial adoptee (TRA), I sought to fulfill two thesis purposes: 1) answer the question “How do transracial adoptees find and create identity and belonging in a contemporary United States culture and context?” and 2) establish a) a rationale...
Intuitively, it seems as though natural language processing tasks might benefit from explicit representations of the syntactic and semantic properties of text. Ontonotes is a dataset which attempts to annotate texts, to represent as much as possible of the meaning of the text explicitly within the annotation. Many tools exist...
Loop quantum gravity is a theoretical framework which aims to quantize general relativity. One of the unique aspects of this theory is that it imposes a discrete structure on space-time. One toy model of loop quantum gravity is loop quantum cosmology, which maintains the idea of a discrete spatial structure...
Is there a core set of concepts in psychology? Early work identified keywords in psychology by asking textbook authors what concepts were most important to them to understand what was essential for college students' psychological literacy (Boneau, 1990). Much of the early work showed there is little consistency in the...
Bees play a crucial role in pollinating crops, supporting biodiversity, and maintaining ecosystem health. Despite their importance, the decline in bee populations has become a global concern due to various factors including habitat loss, urbanization, and climate change. The purpose of this thesis is to write an article that highlights...
Unintended pregnancy has been found to be one of the most prominent challenges that the public health system is forced to overcome due to the financial and social burdens that accompany it (Yazdkhasti et al., 2015). With nearly 48% of reproductive-age American female patients having experienced at least one unintended...
Loop quantum gravity is a framework for quantizing general relativity which imposes a discrete structure on space. In exploring the structure of loop quantum gravity, researchers have investigated loop quantum cosmology, a toy model with reduced degrees of freedom while maintaining a discrete space. Polymer quantum mechanics is a framework...
Following their extirpation due to the maritime fur trade, northern sea otter (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) reintroduction in the 1960s has facilitated their recolonization in southeast Alaska. Sea otters are now sympatric with wolves (Canis lupus), which are widespread in southeast Alaska, and a colonizing coyote population (Canis latrans). Recent studies...
Childhood tooth decay is a prevalent and concerning public health issue that is often misunderstood or dismissed. In Oregon specifically, over 50% of children have experienced at least one instance of tooth decay and these rates are even higher for marginalized communities such as children living in poverty, children of...
As new cost-effective cultivation methods are needed for macrophytic red algae, this experiment expands upon a previously studied land-based approach. The experiment aimed to determine how the fluid dynamics of a previously researched land-based method affected the growth of the macrophytic red alga, Gracilaria Vermiculophylla. A clonal culture of G....
There is high projected growth for STEM-based job fields; however, a significant barrier to students entering those fields is the requirement to take Introductory Calculus. This thesis summarizes the current research done to improve university level math education, specifically calculus courses. It then uses the MAA Instructional Practices Guide to...
With growing awareness of the negative impacts of the built environment, solutions for dramatic environmental, economic, and social improvements are sparking in all sectors, especially within the construction industry. The work of this thesis aims to quantify and compare social, economic, and environmental impacts of a three-story mass timber structure...
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 exists to protect the disabled community from discrimination in order to give people with disabilities the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest extent (What Is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? | ADA National Network, n.d.). When the ADA was signed...
ZIF-8, a zeolitic imidazolate framework that consists of zinc ions and imidazolate linkers, is of great interest due to its simple synthesis methods, low-cost raw materials, chemical and thermal stability, as well as its stability in moist environments. Furthermore, due to its unique structure, it contains well-defined pores that have...
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, most colleges and universities around the world were forced to switch to remote learning. Many instructors were provided little guidance regarding how to restructure their courses for the remote classroom. The purpose of this study was to understand how the shift from in-person...
Spent hemp biomass (SHB) is a byproduct of the cannabinoid oil production which currently is not approved as a livestock feed ingredient. The 2018 Farm Bill defined the difference between varieties of the cannabis sativa plant as either non-hemp cannabis or hemp which has equal to or less than 0.3...
The Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers maintains a taxonomy of their discipline known as the Industrial and Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge, or ISEBoK. A previous Honors College thesis by Thomas William Murphy mapped the knowledge areas within the ISEBoK to the stages of a scientific endeavor, and concluded...
Previous literature consistently demonstrates a link between binge drinking and sexual assault among college students. State alcohol control policies, particularly tax policies, are established as important predictors of college binge drinking but have not been examined in relation to sexual assault. This study used merged data on student demographics and...
This project uses field recordings to examine the levels of noise pollution present in both rural and urban areas by creating an artistic translation of these soundscapes, representative of how wild birds experience different environments. The field recordings capture not only what is present in a given soundscape, but what...
Cyprinid herpesvirus 3 (CyHV-3), also known as koi herpesvirus (KHV), is a pathogenic and highly contagious virus that affects the Cyprinus genus. The mortality rate of the KHV infection is around 80-100%. KHV can become latent in the recovered koi and reactivate under stressful conditions. KHV can reactivate under various...