Soils have a critical role in global carbon (C) cycling, containing one of the largest fast-cycling carbon stocks on earth. Robust representation of soil organic matter dynamics in Earth System Models is critical for future climate prediction. Current C cycling models assume that all C cycling in non-hydric (i.e. ‘upland’)...
Leads are long fractures wide enough for a ship to travel through the ice pack. Sea ice acts as a barrier between the ocean and the atmosphere, whereas leads allow the transfer of heat and moisture between the two. Leads play a role for marine mammals and are hunting grounds...
Previous work introduced the GenderMag method, a software inspection method used to help software creators identify features within their software that are not gender-inclusive. Inclusiveness of software (gender or otherwise) matters because supporting diversity matters—it is well-known that the more diverse a group of problem-solvers, the higher the quality of...
Denitrifying bioreactors are an edge-of-field treatment technology particularly well suited for nitrate removal from subsurface (tile) drainage effluent of agricultural lands. The effectiveness of a proposed denitrifying bioreactor is site-specific and depends upon the complicated interplay of field and environmental parameters controlling discharge events, nitrate concentrations, subsurface temperatures, dissolved oxygen...
Alaska pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus) is a schooling whitefish native to the Bering Sea that is prized for its fillets, surimi, roe, and milt. Fillets are frequently used for popular products such as fish and chips. If collected, roe and milt are commonly exported to South Korea and Japan. However, no...
The objectives of this research is to advance human health by evaluating interventions to minimize the detrimental effects of acute whole body gamma irradiation on bone metabolism, bone architecture and bone reconstruction using a mouse model. Total body irradiation (TBI) followed by adoptive transfer of bone marrow from donor animals...
Many applications require not only representing variability in software and data, butalso computing with it. To do so efficiently requires variational data structures thatmake variability explicit in the underlying data and the operations used to manipulate it.Variational data structures have been developed ad hoc for many applications, but thereis little...
Douglas-fir provides social, economic, and ecological benefits in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). In addition to timber, forests support abundant plant and animal biodiversity and provide socioeconomic viability for many rural communities. Products derived from Douglas-fir account for approximately 17% of the U.S. lumber output with an estimated value of $1.9...
This thesis is about visual relationship detection. This is an important task in computer vision. The goal is to detect all visual relationships in a given image between objects. This thesis presents a new approach to this problem. Our approach does not use an object detector as a common pre-processing...
Additive manufacturing and 3D printing have become household names as both hobbyistsand industrial manufacturers utilize fast, inexpensive prototyping and production of functionalparts. Additive manufacturing is being revolutionized with 3D printers such as theMulti Jet Fusion 3D from HP, Inc., where each volume pixel, or voxel, can be independentlyfunctionalized. Voxel-by-voxel printing...
This study examines different fate and transport processes of N and P based on uncultivated grass, contour crop, and livestock management across different topographies (i.e. 5% vs. 30% slope) found within the tropical mountains of volcanic pedogenesis in the Ambato river catchment. The hydrologic, cultural, and agricultural properties of the...
Old-growth forests are structurally complex in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. This complexity arises from biological characteristics, typically branch and leaf structure, but also includes epiphytes with varying form and function. I characterized the biomass and species composition of epiphytes along the vertical axis of an old-growth Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)...
Seafood is one of the most diverse and highly traded natural resources worldwide. Widespread evidence of increased seafood fraud and IUU fishing has placed enormous pressure on industry and governments to determine the authenticity, safety, and sustainability of seafood. The recently established US National Ocean Council has addressed several gaps...
Among the suite of water resources management strategies, water banking can be a tool for water resource management in areas with high water demands or localized water scarcity. This research aims to further the understanding of water banking by conducting a review and analysis of relevant state legislation. This research...
In this thesis, high resolution ocean models are used to evaluate and forecast coastal ocean variability in two different applications. In the first study, the 2-km resolution ocean circulation model for the Eastern Bering Sea is utilized to understand whether slope-interior exchange along the path of the Aleutian North Slope...
Silicon integrated circuit (IC) technology has enabled numerous electrical and optical sensors used in biological and chemical assays, where they can increase performance while decreasing cost and size compared to traditional detectors. There is significant potential to further leverage IC technology for lab-on-chip applications, creating affordable and portable medical diagnostic...
Organizations are significantly influenced by corporate cultures of the interacting organizations. Both the construction industry and engineered wood products (EWP) manufacturing industry are generally known for operating in a traditional environment maintaining conservative corporate cultures, which can create friction when they try to interact with a more liberal architectural industry...
The need to detect trace amounts of target molecules is great, particularly when it comes to biosensing. With the early detection of a disease, the odds of the successful treatment of an individual increases significantly. To enhance the capability of biomolecular detection, we have created an optical biosensor capable of...
Traditional faculty development programs aimed at disseminating research-based pedagogy and innovations at potential adopters have helped increase awareness of these innovations; however, their adoption into engineering classrooms has been limited. This paper aims to present an alternative, pull-oriented approach to faculty development where faculty participants co-develop curricular innovations with engineering...
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may exert profound influences on ecosystem resilience and invasion resistance in western North American sagebrush steppe and other arid rangeland plant communities. Maintenance of plant community structure through ecological feedbacks such as facilitation of nutrient cycling and uptake by host plants, physical and chemical contributions to...
The growth of Brettanomyces bruxellensis is a major cause of wine spoilage due tothe production of the volatile phenols 4-ethylphenol (4-EP) and 4-ethylguaiacol (4-EG), derivatives of p-coumaric acid and ferulic acid. During the winemaking process,some microorganisms can impact the concentration of the 4-EP precursors pcoumaricand coutaric acid (tartaric acid-esterified p-coumaric...
Traditional electronic systems are usually fabricated via printed circuit boards (PCBs). In a regular PCB, the electronic components are placed and mounted on a two-dimensional board. Such a component layout limits the freedom in the component placement process which results in larger electronic devices. With the use of Additive Manufacturing...
In the light of the changing climate, the importance of designing effective watershed management plans that are likely to be implemented is becoming ever more important. This research introduces a new concept, consensus, for incorporation into stakeholder-guided interactive optimization of watershed management plans. User preferences were mathematically simulated based upon...
Several frequency and amplitude estimation algorithms are presented for balanced and unbalanced three-phase power grid systems. All the estimators are dynamic in nature and are implemented in the complex domain by transforming the three-phase power signals using Clarke’s transform. Specifically, we first construct a non-linear dynamic model of the complex...
Cancer risk at low-dose ionizing radiation has been the subject of great scientific controversy in the past century. The clear majority of national and international radiation protection regulators adopt the linear no-threshold (LNT) model based on the atomic-bomb survivors Life Span Study (LSS) for solid cancer risk assessment. The LNT...
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are one of the most commonly used animal models in biomedical research. Zebrafish resource facilities, like the Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC) in Eugene, Oregon, are the main providers and keepers of numerous zebrafish wild-type, mutant, and transgenic lines. Although ZIRC maintains live zebrafish at various life...
In this study, I seek to examine undergraduate STEM majors’ beliefs about and attitude towards mistakes in the context of counting. This is a particularly fruitful setting for such an investigation both because combinatorics is widely applicable to various fields such as physics, biology, chemistry, and computer science (Kapur, 1970),...
The Brownian motion of micron-scale particles reflects the viscoelastic response of the local environment of the medium. Tracking the thermal fluctuations of these particles is a measure of the rheology of the material at the microscopic scale. This technique is called passive microrheology. Microrheology has been developed to assess the...
Ornamental landscapes require considerable amounts of inputs, including but not limited to irrigation, mowing or pruning, fertilization, and pest management. However, school systems have limited budgets, which reduce their access to resources and labor hours. Therefore, the objective of this project is to identify ground covers that can compete with...
Vibrio parahaemolyticus is frequently isolated or detected from raw seafoods, especially shellfish. Also, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp. are pathogens that are frequently found in ready-to-eat (RTE) seafood, such as smoked fish and shellfish, seafood salad, cooked shrimp and crabmeat, and seafood consumed raw. Two studies to improve safety in RTE...
Mobile video streaming has become an essential application in mobile wireless networks,making up most of the mobile data of today’s Internet traffic. Studies have shown that mobile video data is projected to make up about 78 percent of the global mobile data traffic, and that global mobile data traffic is...
Dynamic modeling is key to the successful operation and reliability of electrical grids by evaluating transient stability. Developing dynamic load models and identifying where they are necessary is a challenging task as loads are an aggregation of individual devices that change throughout the year. This thesis investigates how to develop...
Management goals for restoring populations of the federally-threatened northern spotted owl currently include experimental lethal removals of barred owls from demographic study areas within the overlapping ranges of the two species to examine northern spotted owl population response. As lethal removals of a bird species are time- and cost-intensive, predictive...
Fungi play critical roles in ecosystem processes and interact with plant communities in mutualistic, pathogenic, and commensal ways. Fungal communities are thought to be influenced by both associated tree communities and soil properties. However, the relative importance of the biotic and abiotic drivers of soil fungal community structure and diversity...
The Mars Hopper is an alternative extraterrestrial vehicle for the collection of samples from the Martian surface. This thesis studied the engine of the Mars Hopper to assess the validity of the current planned launch cycle according to current parameters. To do this, the engine was simplified to an average...
The hydrologic function of a landscape is an important concept for understanding the presence, movement and availability of water. The Camp Creek Paired Watershed Study (CCPWS) site in Central Oregon has been utilized to investigate the impacts of western juniper on watershed hydrologic function since 1993. The research presented here...
The increasing demand for higher data-rates in spectrum-deficient indoor WiFi networks calls for the adaptation of hybrid systems, consisting of RF and optical wireless channels. The novel hybrid WiFi Free-Space Optical (WIFO) system was introduced to enhance the wireless capacity of indoor WiFi networks. In this thesis, an optical wireless...
This work presents a new data encoding scheme: Integrated Pulse Width Modulation (iPWM) for equalizing lossy wireline channels with the aim of achieving energy efficient wireline communication. The proposed scheme is able to overcome the fundamental limitations imposed by Manchester and Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) encoding on high data rate...
Forest managers are challenged to restore resilience to forests with an elevated risk of stand-replacing fire by using mechanical thinning and prescribed fire. Implementation of these methods can be constrained by mandates to conserve sensitive wildlife species like the Pacific marten (Martes caurina). Martens avoid simplified forest stands created by...
Mycobacterium avium subspecies hominissuis (MAH) is an opportunistic pathogen that is ubiquitous in the environment and often isolated from faucets and showerheads. MAH mostly infects humans with an underlying disease, such as chronic pulmonary disorder (COPD), cystic fibrosis (CF), or are immunocompromised, though infections in patients without concurrent disease are...
Approximately 2700 years ago, Greek settlers from the Northwestern Peloponnese region of Achaea emigrated to the central coast of Southern Italy along the Gulf of Taranto. The city they founded, Metapontum, served as an important center for Magna Graecia, the lands on the Southern Italic peninsula wholly populated by Hellenic...
Understanding groundwater flow in faulted and fractured rock is an important frontier in the field of environmental remediation and in the management of water resources. One example of a site where this is particularly evident is the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Ventura County, CA where environmental remediation activities...
This dissertation is divided into two major chapters. The first chapter covers the geologyof the Encuentro deposit with emphasis in the intrusion sequence, vein mineral assemblages and distribution, and age of mineralization. The data used for this section includes field mapping, petrography, elemental analysis of biotite, and isotopic geochronology. The...
Every year thousands of people are killed or injured in work zone crashes in the US due to excessive speed, distraction, inattentiveness, low visibility, and other factors. Roadway construction and maintenance operations often occur at night when the traffic volume is low, creating less congestion and delay to the traffic....
In shared autonomy, a robot and human user both have some level of control in order to achieve a shared goal. Choosing the balance of control given to the user and the robot can be a challenging problem since different users have different preferences and vary in skill levels when...
The range of different nonvolatile constituents extracted from hops in highly hopped beers suggests that iso-alpha acids may not be the sole contributor to beers’ bitterness. Among brewers producing hop-forward beer styles there is a growing concern that the Bitterness Unit (BU) is no longer an accurate predictor of beer...
Offshore renewable energy (ORE) has the potential to be a significant source of future global electricity production, reduce carbon emissions, decrease dependence on energy importation, and stimulate economic growth in coastal and remote areas. The availability and abundance of ORE, paired with growing coastal population centers, position offshore wind, wave,...
Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii, is an economically damaging pest on small fruits. The estimated economic impact is hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the U.S. alone, and increasing every year. Current control of SWD relies heavily on chemical insecticides which have many negative impacts on environmental and...
Natural resource challenges in the American West feature a suite of actors and processes operating at different spatial and political scales, and crossing several administrative jurisdictions. I applied concepts of new environmental governance to Oregon’s greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) conservation strategy, focusing, in particular, on features of voluntary conservation arrangements...
In ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests of the western United States, prescribed fires are used to reduce fuel loads and restore historical fire regimes. The season in which prescribed burns are performed and the interval between burns can have complex consequences for the ecosystem, including soil carbon cycling through the...