The Northern Rubber Boa (Charina bottae) is a small, secretive boa native to the Pacific Northwest. Despite this being possibly the highest latitude boas and one of only two boas native to the continental U.S., it has received surprisingly little attention. Most of the research on the natural history of...
Low-level nuclear power plant outages in the United States can lead to unanticipated costs, potentially compromising the expected operation lifetime of the plant. Nuclear power plants are complex systems of interfacing components and highly regulated processes. This inherent complexity makes predicting outages from system dependencies very challenging. When outages do...
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are a problem for coastal communities, the fishing industry, and coastal organisms. Pseudo-nitzschia spp. is a regularly occurring diatom in Oregon’s coastal waters. At times, Pseudo-nitzschia spp. can facultatively produce domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can bioaccumulate in the food chain. While regular shore-based sampling provides...
Healthcare access exhibits differing levels of complexity, often requiring multi-disciplinary approaches to study its barriers and enablers. Though Argentina has achieved nominal universal healthcare coverage through its public healthcare system, full effective coverage has not been achieved. The public system also has a parallel private care system, adding further complexity...
The red tree vole (Arborimus longicaudus) is an arboreal Arvicoline rodent endemic to conifer dominated forests of western Oregon and northwestern California. While commonly associated with old forests, often inhabiting stands over 80 years old, tree voles have also been found in young forests between 20 and 80 years old....
This study investigated the prevalence of misgendering and its impact on stigma and mental health outcomes in college students. Two hundred and eighty-five students participated in a comprehensive survey, providing insights into the frequency of misgendering they experienced, the level of stigma they felt in response, as well as their...
Chapter 2:
Aquatic macroinvertebrate communities have been shown to exhibit strong differences between erosional (riffle and run) and depositional (pool) macrohabitats of streams. A subset of these communities are aquatic insect taxa that are an important food source for riparian consumers like birds, bats, lizards, and spiders. Understanding the role...
Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to the high reliance on sea ice for safety, transport, and social behaviors. Additionally, the walrus diet consists of predominantly bivalves, whose populations are in decline as a result of ocean acidification. We first determined the...
In Oregon, outdoor recreation activities have continued to grow in popularity, as has the overall Latin@ population of the state. With the continual population increase of this ethnic group, researchers have focused on understanding their outdoor recreation habits through an environmental justice lens. This includes accessibility, affordability, and other barriers...
Meditation research in recent decades has disproportionately focused on the Buddhist derived practice of “mindfulness” meditation while leaving most other Buddhist meditation practices unstudied. The current study seeks to remedy this homogeneity through the adaptation of a novel meditation practice used in Tibetan Buddhism to affect motivation. We explored traditional...
Understanding the effects of disturbance and restoration on a species’ habitat is essential for understanding the demographic rates and population trends observed in a species. Sufficient habitat provides the space and resources required for survival and successful reproduction, such as food availability, access to water, protection from predators, protection from...
Beginning with the inception of American art history as a formal discipline in the 1940s, the dominant mode of interpreting nineteenth-century American landscape painting has been to view aspects of the landscape as symbols for grand cultural, religious, national, and moral narratives. While this method of interpretation highlights some key...
Transformation is a major bottleneck for genetic engineering and gene editing in forest tree species. This includes most genotypes of Populus and Eucalyptus, which are some of the world’s most widely-cultivated genera of plantation forest trees. To provide new tools for transformation, I tested the transcription factor-protein chimera consisting of...
A chair, once placed, will stay put until moved. Or will it? With the rise of technology being embeddable into everyday objects, what if that chair could move itself? Such robotic furniture has been featured in advertisements, art, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. Existing methods for operating robotic furniture have...
Latinx youth in the US experience stark inequities in sexual and reproductive health, including rates of unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. One promising way to reduce these inequities is to provide culturally centered, comprehensive sexual health education. However, such curricula are rarely offered to Latinx youth, in part because...
Worldwide, networks of plants and pollinators are faced with the threat of climate change. The extent of this threat and the degree of adaptability is not yet understood. In Oregon, climate change is predicted to bring hotter and drier summers which may have consequences for pollinators and the resources they...
This thesis examines the student employment experience within the field of higher education through an auto-ethnographic lens. The factors that contribute to the overall well-being and success of student employees in higher education are explored. The literature related to the student employment experience is limited, with much of the data...
With the rapid advancement of educational technology and the need for personalized, engaging content to accommodate diverse learning needs, Virtual Reality (VR) holds promises for the present and future. However, VR applications suffer from challenges, including usability concerns, lack of pedagogical value, and evaluation standards. This thesis focuses on two...
A central theme of ecology is determining factors that influence species distributions. Within aquatic ecology, species present in flowing waters are primarily influenced by the natural flow patterns of the stream (natural flow regime paradigm) while explanations of species present in standing waters are further divided by habitat type. To...
Small-scale fisheries often suffer from weak, formal governance, and in response they organize in various ways. These self-organizational arrangements rely on the capacity of informal institutions, such as norms and communication, in generating social cohesion among actors in the supply chain and therefore improve the likelihood of generating commonly devised...
Solar cells, also known as photovoltaic devices, are a class of renewable energy systems that can convert photons into electrons without the carbon dioxide emission. Short-wavelength, high-energy photons in the ultraviolet (UV) range can't be efficiently utilized by most solar cells because of the spectral mismatch. Luminescent downshifting is a...
Social and human services employees are on the forefront of social justice issues in the United States through their direct work with a wide array of oppressed and vulnerable people. As a field, these workers are proximal to people most acutely impacted by injustices. In Oregon, the principal agency for...
Forest composition in Paraguay has been in a state of change for the past half century due to land management practices, forest fragmentation, and deforestation for agriculture. How these factors affect dendrological diversity and wood anatomy in Paraguay is not well understood. This thesis documents Paraguayan forest composition on the...
Computational fluid dynamics conjugate heat transfer simulations were performed on a packed bed test facility using Dowtherm-A as the working fluid. Multiple test cases were simulated for a Reynolds number range of 188 – 1524 and a set heater power of 60 kW. Temperature profiles were extracted, and the near-wall...
Radiological emergency plans ensure that protective actions can and will be taken in the event of an accident. Principle protective actions for the early phase of an emergency are evacuation and sheltering-in-place. While evacuations are generally safe, there are deterministic, long-term health consequences from prolonged displacement that outweigh the stochastic...
Considering the negative impacts of climate change along with the rapid increase in population in Islamic dominated states, e.g., the Middle East, water tension among upstream and downstream states is increasing. Despite the importance of water in Islamic culture and studies, the role of religion has been under-valued and under-emphasized...
The discovery of GW170817 provided the first empirical evidence that merging binary neutron star systems are both progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts, as well as the primary sites of the nucleosynthetic rapid-neutron capture process. Initially detected as gravitational wave (GW) and gamma-ray burst (GRB) triggers, GW170817 was well-localized and follow-up...
Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common malignancy in Caucasian populations. One existing treatment modality for NMSCs is external radiotherapy delivered to the skin cancer tumor by a beta-emitter-containing radioactive skin patch. Alpha emitters, with their higher linear energy transfer than beta particles and shorter range in tissue, make...
The amount of energy we use and the ways that we get that energy sit on the edge of dramatic change as the carbon budget which can keep the planet under 1.5C of global average temperature increase gets smaller (Allen, 2018). In response, we continue to research and develop renewable...
New delivery methods for radiotracers are constantly being proposed. Two key properties of the delivery method must be analyzed: dose to patient and effectiveness of delivery. In this work, the localized skin dose for intranasal administration of 18F was determined utilizing MCNP code. An anatomically accurate nasal cavity was constructed...
Spatial capture-recapture (SCR) is employed for estimating abundance and density of species, particularly those that are cryptic or solitary, and evaluating how population density varies with habitat. However, it is uncertain whether estimates are biased when applied to species that aggregate, such as elk (Cervus canadensis). Wildlife managers in the...
This thesis uses a hedonic price model to estimate the value of water for irrigation in Deschutes County, Oregon. The analysis uses a dataset comprising information on 2,274 agricultural parcels across the County. Uniquely, the analysis successfully utilizes assessor-determined real market values in the place of actual land sales. A...
The social sciences are increasingly used in conservation to describe interactions and relationships between humans, wildlife, and ecosystems. Scientists and policy-makers have concluded that promoting human tolerance for wildlife is critical to the success of conservation efforts. Yet, the concept of tolerance is relatively new in the context of human-wildlife...
In this report, three studies are presented that utilize computations to predict transformations, identities, and properties of environmental organic molecules. Each study shows how computations can lead to models of chemical behavior. The importance of this research is rooted in the need for understanding how human behavior and health intersect...
Kilning, which is the drying operation in hop cultivation, is a processing step that can have a tremendous impact on hop quality. Historically, hops have been dried at temperatures ranging from 140-155°F. In the last decade, growers have moved toward kilning hops at lower temperatures averaging between 125-140°F in the...
The purpose of this research is to describe the secondary traumatic stress (STS) levels of early career school based agriculture (SBAE) teachers. Using the professional quality of life (ProQOL) scale (Stamm, 2010) as a theoretical framework, secondary traumatic stress, burnout (BO) and compassion satisfaction (CS) levels were measured among (n...
In response to the increasing pace and scale of wildfire and forest health challenges, the Intertribal Timber Council (ITC) proposed the creation of “Anchor Forests,” where a tribe would convene surrounding landowners to collaboratively manage the entire landscape, across property boundaries. This emergent concept has sparked conversation but has not...
The purpose of this work is to build a foundation of understanding and methodologies as the steps toward automating functional modeling. We have achieved significant progress in the automatic generation of functional representations, which can be connected at the interface of components to create a functional model. This work highlights...
Butter has long been the premium choice for producing pastries such as Danish and croissants. Its inclusion has consistently delivered characteristically light and airy crumbs with beautifully flaky crust. Once considered a delicacy, pastries have now become innocuous in our everyday lives. Once requiring a skillful hand to sculpt and...
The Inmaculada Mine is located in the Miocene belt of epithermal deposits that extends from southern Peru to northern Chile and Bolivia. This belt is known for its silver-rich epithermal veins that have been worked since colonial times. The Inmaculada Mine belongs to a mining district that includes, from north...
Although there is a substantial body of work on the inclusion of women in traditionally male-dominated processes of water management and water governance (Earle & Bazilli, 2013), these efforts have mostly been concentrated in the Global South and women are still lacking in positions with decision-making power, making water governance...
In 1976-77 and 2010, Oregon State University (OSU) excavated portions of the enlisted men’s barracks and privy at Fort Hoskins, a Civil War-era fort. In operation from 1856 to 1865, this fort served as part of a security network to protect and monitor the recently created Coast Indian Reservation. The...
Informal higher education science learning programs are increasingly being used as a tool to build scientific research capacity. However, there is low understanding of the impact that these programs on their target audiences, which is important to future capacity building efforts and program design. The purpose of this research project...
Deficiency of selenium (Se) or alpha-tocopherol (E) creates serious health issues in horses. This study evaluated owner supplementation practices and their efficacy at preventing deficiency in a large population of horses. In addition, common clinical signs of horses presenting to a referral institution who had Se and E testing performed...
Knowledge of the mean recharge elevation (MRE) of water resources is
important for informing conservation and protection practices where water security is threatened by population growth, urban expansion, and land and climate changes. In this study a Bayesian approach was developed and applied to determine the MRE of 682 surface...
Although the concept of breeding crops for organic agricultural systems has been around for decades, few studies have been reported for vegetable crops to quantify and compare how conventional and organic systems differ in their selection pressures on genotypes advancing through the breeding cycle; especially research utilizing modern sequencing capabilities....
Over the past 42 years clay smoking pipes have been excavated from two U.S. army posts, Fort Hoskins (35BE15) and Fort Yamhill (35PO75) and curated at Oregon State University. These two forts were established in Western Oregon in 1856 and by 1866 both had been decommissioned. Numerous theses have focused...
Hybridization, polyploidy, and apomixis have made phylogenetic estimation in Rubus challenging. I used target capture to sequence approximately 1000 low copy nuclear loci and the chloroplast genome for 94 accessions representing the genus Rubus and distributed worldwide. Species phylogenies were estimated using two coalescent based methods, ASTRAL-II and SVDQuartets, and...
Computer science is, at its core, about solving problems. The "Carry out the Plan" portion of problem solving is often examined and emphasized in CS 1 and CS 2, forgetting to emphasize the other important aspects of the problem solving process. This study focuses on the other problem-solving steps, which...
Lambic and other barrel-aged beer styles are gaining popularity in the United States and Europe and are often treated as a premium product that can command a premium price. However, these styles can be prone to spoilage during the barrel-aging process, which represents a significant time and product commitment by...
Bone is much more than a simple, static organ. While its classical functions of mineral storage, organ protection, and locomotion still hold true, further studies into the skeleton have revealed a dynamic system capable of signaling, communication, remodeling, and responding to various stimuli. Overall skeletal health is critically important to...
The production of high-quality wine is an important target for wineries worldwide, and low crop level (yield) has been one vineyard management criterion long believed to achieve wine quality. Low yields are most often achieved by removing clusters from the grapevine. Some studies show that cluster thinning can enhance grape...
This thesis explores the experiences of ten asexual and aromantic college students at Oregon State University and the strategies they used to navigate their sexualized and romanticized campuses. The questions that guided this research were about belonging, resilience, kinship, and worldview. Did they feel they belonged to anyone or mattered...
Urban agriculture (UA) is defined as the production of food crops or livestock within urban areas. Despite its popularity in the United States, research into UA systems suffers from a general underrepresentation of commercial urban systems. As a result, urban growers often have unique technological needs that are unmet by...
Ecological restoration is needed to mitigate losses to biodiversity. Restoration success is enhanced through the use of native plant materials that are genetically diverse and locally adapted. Seed transfer zones have been developed to delineate geographic areas where native seed can be collected and distributed with reduced risk of maladaptation....
This paper describes the development of an educational project of comprehensive modules focused on Oregon forests for a high school audience. It includes a rationale for the project design and development. An analysis of the current high school forestry programs was conducted and the results are provided. This paper includes...
CLT is becoming global. New countries and regions increasingly realize the potential of what can be done with CLT. As a result, new markets are forming and new companies are entering the industry. Every new region or country that opens its doors to CLT has its own challenges and opportunities....
The Willamette River Basin supports 70% of Oregon’s population and contains the richest native fish fauna in the state, (Hulse, Gregory, & Baker, 2002). The Basin is facing changes that stress its water management regimes. Is the Basin’s water management regime able to adapt in the face of these changes?...
Hereditary variation is a vital component in the development of new and improved cultivars of landscape plants. Sources of hereditary variation include naturally occurring variation, recombination due to controlled crosses, artificial mutagenesis, and genetic modification via biotechnology. Here I explore all methods with the exception of genetic modification via biotechnology....
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...
Housing is a critical component of family life, however, keeping a safe and stable roof overhead is increasingly difficult for the approximately 21 million low-income families in the United States (Urban Institute, n.d.; U.S. Census, 2015). Low-income families struggle to keep a roof overhead within the context of rising housing...
The Cascadia Subduction Zone has recently been identified as a source for an impending great earthquake. The potential of a large earthquake has created widespread interest into the resiliency of lifelines within the potentially affected areas. One critical lifeline is the electrical distribution and transmission systems which relies on legacy...
There are many different organizations and agencies which share responsibility for educating the public about responsible use of aquatic and marine resources. However, organizations specifically focused on particular dimensions of water use, such as Oregon State Marine Board (OSMB), often face challenges when attempting to recruit teachers to implement educational...
This qualitative study explores and examines the experiences of students at a large, public university in the Pacific Northwest who identify with underrepresented religions. Eight participants were asked to share their experiences individually using semi-structured interview questions and their responses were analyzed utilizing a narrative inquiry approach. Six themes emerged...
Robots have the potential to protect health care workers, provide patient care, and ultimately save lives in infectious disease outbreaks. Nevertheless, infectious disease outbreak scenarios present unique technological and social challenges for robotics. This work explores what robots can and should do in the fight against infectious diseases. We present...
The purpose of this thesis is to better understand how students who experience anxiety that interferes with their daily functioning perceive and interact with their formal learning environments such as classrooms and lab spaces so that instruction in these spaces may be improved. Specific attention was paid to the ways...
Understanding the effects of habitat disturbance on a species' habitat selection patterns, and demographic rates, is essential to projecting the trajectories of populations affected by disturbance, as well as for determining the appropriate conservation actions needed to maintain those populations. Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a species of conservation concern...
Citizen science work has built the foundation of much of our knowledge on regional-scale large cetacean spatial patterns through historical whaling data. Historical whaling data on sperm whales was used as an example to show the type of ecological questions large-scale, long-term citizen science datasets can address. Results from the...
The movement of Chinook salmon through space and time, across political boundaries, and through fisheries, creates one of the most complex marine resource management problems in the world. Information garnered from the recovery of coded-wire tags (CWTs) has been used since the 1970s to direct management decisions. Growing concern surrounding...
Prenatal exposure to excess androgens, testosterone in particular, has clear effects on potential ram fertility. Utilizing breeding soundness examinations in male sheep will assess the ram's potential ability to impregnate a certain number of healthy females during a defined breeding season. Identifying rams that have high breeding potential can provide...
The term "Intuitive use" has become a common phrase to describe interfaces and products, however it is rarely defined. Research regarding intuitive use is in its infancy, beginning primarily in 2003. With the development of new terms in Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction, it is important for Designers and Users...
Small landowners in the state of Oregon find it difficult to be competitive with larger companies to provide traditional forest products to consumers. Additionally, many landowners hope to be profitable from their land, but are not necessarily interested in or have the capability to harvest large tracts of timber. Specialty...
Crystal-rich (40-50 vol.%) intermediate lava has been the primary eruptive product of several recent hazardous eruptions: Mt. Pinatubo, Philippines (1991), Soufriere Hills, Montserrat (1995-present), and Unzen, Japan (1990-1995). Despite this association with such devastating eruptions, the formation, timing, and evacuation of such magma is not well understood: do such eruptions...
Flax seed is a rich source of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Feeding broiler birds flax seed can increase n-3 fatty acids (FA) in meat tissues and can increase human intake of n-3 FA. However, non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) in flax seed decrease digestibility of lipids and proteins and have a negative impact...
Although science is widely accepted as a fundamental source of information underlying decisions about forest management and conservation, considerably less attention has been paid to the inevitable role that normative values and beliefs play in such decisions. This thesis highlights the normative dimensions of "ecological forestry," a strategy of forest...
With the resurgence in the interest of using natural textile dyes, a solution must be found that will overcome the limitations of traditional natural dyes. This solution must also be safer for both humankind and the environment than are synthetic dyes. This study compares the colorfastness of commercially available synthetic...
The Pebble porphyry Cu-Au-Mo deposit in Alaska is one of the world's largest Cu-Au mineral resources. Late Cretaceous magmatic evolution in the Pebble district culminated with the intrusion of the Kaskanak Batholith and associated porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum mineralization. The Kaskanak Batholith is a multiphase granodiorite intrusion with an estimated footprint of...
Ungulates comprise some of the most well researched and intensely managed wildlife populations on earth. As such, they are recognized as ideal study subjects for developing and modifying management tools or theories (Danell et al. 1994, Shipley 2010). An introduced moose (Alces alces gigas) population on the Copper River Delta...
Consumption of seafood products continues to grow each year, but post-harvest losses and inedible seafood waste remain as high as 25%. Ice-based systems are the most common form of preservation to increase shelf life, preserve product quality, and enhance product safety. Slurry ice is a type of chilling media, consisting...
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is an important crop worldwide, however, in recent years concerns have been raised regarding two health issues, celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, and their relationship to wheat consumption. This increase has led to questions regarding potential changes over time in the composition of gluten (glutenin and gliadin)...
Here presented is a photographic catalogue, a key, and literature review for the 35 genera and 90 species of lepturine longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae: Lepturinae) found in the Pacific Northwest. Several nomenclatural changes, recognized by the global taxonomic community, but previously unknown to North American authors, are adopted, and one new...