Cultural practices in snap bean production were evaluated at the Oregon State University Vegetable Research Farm Corvallis, Oregon. In addition, decision-making in snap bean production was assessed on five farms in the Coburg-Junction City-Harrisburg regions of the Willamette Valley, Oregon. A field experiment with cover crop and tillage techniques was...
Cucurbits are grown in production agriculture in Oregon as well as in smallholder agriculture in tropical South America. Experimental research was performed at the OSU Research Farm in 2001 with direct-seeded cucurbits, and literature reviews were conducted to develop a characterization of smallholder farming in tropical South America. The two...
Organophosphate insecticides may produce sublethal, adverse effects on salmonid
growth, reproduction, maturation, swimming, and feeding. Chlorpyrifos, an
organophosphate insecticide, was detected by the Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality in the Hood River and tributaries during March 1999 at levels exceeding state
water quality standards in the range of 0.011-0.482 μg/L....
When treating highly infectious diseases, patient compliance with caregiver recommendations is crucial. Many patients who contract Ebola Virus Disease have symptoms including vomiting and severe diarrhea and die from the resulting dehydration if they do not drink enough fluids. Telepresence robots are useful in the context of Ebola treatment for...
A small eddy viscosity or mass diffusivity that varies with height has been found to have unexpected effects on the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability of a stably stratified shear layer near the neutral stability boundary. In particular, varying viscosity can increase the growth rate of the instability in contrast to the...
This thesis aims to determine the impact that Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices have on social interactions, and then improves the AAC user experience through a user focus design process. AAC devices enable people who cannot speak to communicate with others. Unfortunately, they are tedious to use and make...
This dissertation focuses on personal privacy in human-robot interaction, which we call "privacy-sensitive robotics." Our understanding of "privacy" is very broad, including not just information privacy but also physical, psychological, and social privacy. We begin by surveying the scholarly literature on privacy and talking about why it applies to interactions...
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...
Numerous diseases and injuries can limit a person's ability to perform everyday tasks -- things like getting dressed, bathing, and eating. Anything that requires physical activity can be affected; even simple things like turning on the lights can become difficult or impossible. Until recently, the only way for a person...
Automating pick-and-place operations for large steel castings in a foundry is challenging, particularly from a perception point of view. Accurately estimating the identity and orientation of a given part is an open and complex problem, especially if that part sits in a bin of very similar parts. The problem is...