Current technological shortcomings limit the economic viability of capturing and utilizing small sources of methane. The development of a reactor to overcome these limitations would unlock economic opportunity and incentivize reduced methane emissions. A microfluidic bioreactor containing immobilized methanotrophs has the potential to overcome these limitations by profitably converting small...
The water status of grape vine throughout the growing season is a primary determinant of vine vigor and berry composition. The concentrations of volatile compounds and precursors in grape berries are highly influenced by viticultural practices. Imposing a water deficit on the vine during berry development is an important vineyard...
Deburring of machined parts is a crucial task in the aerospace and automotive industry. This process is still performed manually to a large extent due to the unpredictability of burr formation as well as the complex interactions between the human arm and the workpiece. Poor ergonomics, repetitive stress and strain...
Model Predictive Control (MPC) has previously been investigated on ocean waveenergy converters (WEC) to improve the amount of power captured, while respectingthe system constraints. Previous research done in the same area, focused onbuilding a control scheme by using the knowledge of the past & current statesof the system and predicting...
This thesis examines the bilingual poetry of indigenous, Mexican poet Irma Pineda Santiago. In her work, she composes mirrored poems in Isthmus Zapotec and Spanish. I analyze the ways in which her work brings Zapotec and Spanish into contact with one another, demanding that readers acknowledge narratives of erasure that...
As the future electrical power systems tend towards smarter and greener technology, thedeployment of self-sufficient networks, or microgrids, becomes more likely. Microgridsmay operate on their own or synchronized with the main grid, thus control methodsneed to take into account islanding and reconnecting said networks. Isolation of subnetworks may be necessary...
This project examines two understudied female characters from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales who emerge as subversive figures by striving to maintain control over their bodies and being. Through my analyses of the Knight’s and Second Nun’s Tales, I reveal how virginity correlates with bodily autonomy for the narratives’ respective protagonists,...
The LGBTQ population is widely recognized as an at-risk demographic—as a result ofstigma, studies report sexual and gender minorities experience elevated risk for depression,suicide, anxiety, and substance abuse, as well as greater exposure to sexual, physical, andinterpersonal violence (Logie 1244). Asexuality, a marginalized population traditionallyexcluded from the LGBTQ acronym, poses...
Inadequate access to clean water is an ongoing problem in many developing areas of the world. In developed nations, it is important to plan for access to clean water following natural disasters. In situations without reliable access to electricity and chemical treatment methods, there is a need for an inexpensive...
Background. Many studies addressing the reasons why minority students fail in higher education are based on what is defined as a deficit model. A deficit model documents that a significant number of minority students fail because their culture is distinct from that of the majority population. Numerous minority students do...
During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ∼ 21 ky before present) the atmospheric CO2 concentration was about 100 ppm lower than its pre-industrial (PI)value. The missing carbon from the atmosphere must have been stored in thedeep ocean during this period, but the mechanisms driving such re-distribution ofthe carbon cycle are...
The perception that there exists a lack of leadership can be found throughout history. Currently, according to Robert Putnam, there does appear to be a decline is social capital. This research examines the connection between business leadership style and effects on social capital. Most research on corporate social responsibility focuses...
This dissertation uses manipulative experiments to explore amphibian-Bd infection dynamics. Although there has been almost two decades research since the discovery of Bd, many questions still remain regarding what conditions mediate chytridiomycosis virulence. My research shows how certain host and pathogen factors can influence disease virulence. Identifying how host and...
This research was aimed at providing the foundation for changing standards of care in a critical care setting using Catholic concepts of respect for human dignity, subsidiarity, common good, and solidarity as a matter of social justice. I first unpacked the nature of ICU care and the inevitability of the...
Automatic event extraction from natural text is an important and challenging task for natural language understanding. Traditional event detection methods heavily rely on manually engineered rich features. Recent deep learning approaches alleviate this problem by automatic feature engineering. But such efforts, like tradition methods, have so far only focused on...
Due to a general reduction in pavement program funding levels over the past decade, the current budget is not sufficient to maintain roadways at a high level of service with acceptable roughness levels. Rough roadways with poor ride quality increase drivers’ vehicle operating costs (fuel consumption, vehicle maintenance, and tire-wear)...
A common problem in energy allocation problems is managing the trade-off between selling surplus energy to maximize short term revenue, versus holding surplus energy to hedge against future shortfalls. For energy allocation problems, this surplus represents resource flexibility and is quantified as the surplus energy after meeting the demand. The...
The practice of green infrastructure is synonymous with collaborative partnerships. Expertise from engineers, land care professionals, planners, and natural resource consultants are often required for successful project implementation. Traditionally, these professionals perform their responsibilities in their disciplinary “silos,” but this evolving area of sustainable development is creating a demand for...
Although machine learning systems are often effective in real-world applications, there are situations in which they can be even better when provided with some degree of end user feedback. This is especially true when the machine learning system needs to customize itself to the end user's preferences, such as in...
Collaboration is tricky, but often beneficial in the context of numerous software related activities, from learning core concepts, to the design and implementation of large software products. The growth of online classes, from small structured seminars to massive open online courses (MOOCs), and the isolation and impoverished learning experience some...
Cell-cell communication in bacteria is understood to facilitate the coordination of population-wide cooperative behavior in the form of concerted gene expression. The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses such a communication mechanism to regulate a large group of genes important to virulence strategies in this bacterium. This general mechanism of communication...
Human alterations of landscapes take many forms, one of which is anthropogenic pollution. Mercury (Hg) is a complex contaminant because its uptake into the food web is not driven entirely by loading to the system; methylation is necessary to make Hg bioavailable and toxic to fish and wildlife. Because methylation...
This thesis considers the problem of training convolutional neural networks for online visual tracking. A major challenge for single object visual tracking is that most training sets with frame-level track annotations are quite small, due to the prohibitive cost of manual annotation. Current training approaches either supplement the annotations with...
Aqueous hydroxo Hf nanoclusters enable studies to identify and codify steps in the deposition of Hf-based oxide thin films from solution precursors. HfOCl2 reacts with combinations of H2O2(aq), acids, and TMAH to produce polymetal species at high pH and low pH. X-ray scattering and spectroscopic methods reveal the nature of...
This dissertation focuses on extending the application scope of surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy to gas sensing. The method we propose is incorporating plasmonic nanostructures with nano-composite material, metalorganic framework, which can selectively preconcentrate certain gas molecules into the nanopores. The preconcentrating property is first demonstrated by applying metal-organic framework...
Gall-associated phytopathogens have unique evolutionary histories that haveshaped both their modes of infection and genomic structures. Pathogenicity of the gall-associated plant pathogens of the Rhodococcus, Agrobacterium, and Rathayibactergenera is mediated by horizontally acquired virulence loci. The relative ease of gainand loss of the virulence loci has confounded accurate characterization of...
In 2014, W. Bogley identified a relation between the algebraic and geometric prop- erties of cyclically presented groups Gn (w) in the case where w = x0xkxl is a positive word of length three. Specifically, it was shown that the dynamics of the shift θG on the group G =...
Organic semiconductors are used in a wide variety of applications including transistors,solar cells, and light emitting diodes. These materials are solution-processable,low cost, and tunable. Many successful organic optoelectronic materials utilizeblends of several types of molecules (such as donors and acceptors) in order topromote charge generation. As blends are an inherently...
Natural selection, in its most basic form, is described as a process in which traitsincrease or decrease in frequency depending on their fitness, and only the trait withthe highest fitness will remain in the population. Yet, populations rarely have asingle `optimal' trait. The way natural selection maintains this observed variationwithin...
School forests in South Korea are trees and vegetation areas within schoolyards, and they provide natural environments for schools and neighborhoods. After the Korea Forest Service (KFS) and local governments create these school forests, the management of school forests transfers to the host schools. Some studies suggest that experiences with...
River impoundment by dams, along with other human driven changes, has threatened the health of riparian forests in the northern Great Plains for much of the last century. Two major concerns in the region are the impediment of natural recruitment of plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides Marsh. subsp. monilifera (Ait.) Eckenw.)...
Ground failures, in particular landsliding, liquefaction and lateral spreading can be triggered by seismic sources. The frequency, magnitude, and impact of these ground failures are highly dependent on the topography and geology of the site including its slope, depositional environment, and geotechnical properties as well as the proximity of the...
The present research sought to investigate individual differences in the way individuals process intuitive risk judgments. The present investigation is centered on Fuzzy Trace Theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 1991), a developmental dual process theory of cognition which posits two ways in which individuals process information, gist and verbatim processing. 228...
On January 2, 2016 a militia occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and captured national attention. The militia vowed to occupy until certain demands were met, and among these demands was a call for less federal control of land. While the occupation lasted 41 days, the militia remained...
Sintering of nanoparticles to create films and patterns of functional materials is emerging as a key manufacturing process in applications like flexible electronics, solar cells and thin-film devices. Further, there is the emerging potential to use nanoparticle sintering to perform additive manufacturing as well. While the effect of nanoparticle size...
Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is a widely distributed, ecologically important, and commercially valuable tree species in North America. However, climate change is expected to adversely impact Douglas-fir trees, and assisted migration may become necessary to lessen the effects of climate change. Because drought stress is one of the projected effects of...
Mary Collins composed the award-winning book American Idle in 2009 after her recovery from an awful bicycle accident. This bicycle accident inspired Mary Collins to take a trip of discovery. Mary Collins visited historical locations to see changes in peoples’ physical activity over time. Collins interviewed individuals whose professions varied...
Monoterpenes are important volatile compounds to the aroma of many white wines. Many monoterpenes are chiral and found in wine as different isomers. These isomers (also known as enantiomers) are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, maintain the same molecular structure and in many instances possess different sensory characteristics. Much...
The increasing human demands on natural resources, in combination with uncertainties about ecosystem dynamics due to global change, has led the scientific community to conclude that new approaches in understanding of ecological systems are needed to tackle environmental issues in an efficient manner. One development that has received more attention...
C. perfringens type A isolates are the causative agents of C. perfringens type A food poisoning (FP) and non-food-borne (NFB) human gastrointestinal diseases. In this study, we evaluated the antimicrobial effect of essential oil constituents (cinnamaldehyde, eugenol, allyl isothiocyanate (AITC), and carvacrol) against C. perfringens FP and NFB isolates grown...
Understanding which factors motivate farmers to adopt certain practices is an important part of helping to solve many agri-environmental issues. This study uses 19 interviews with farmers along Oregon’s Willamette River, a statewide producer survey, and select interviews with organizations and agencies active in the farming community to examine the...
In this dissertation, we introduce a family of fully discrete finite difference time-domain (FDTD) methods for Maxwell’s equations in linear and nonlinear materials. Onecategory of methods is constructed using multiscale techniques involving operator splittings. We present the sequential splitting scheme, the Strang Marchuk splitting scheme,the weighted sequential splitting scheme including...
In this project, I explore the use of monomania as a literary and rhetorical device that pathologizes deviance from certain norms—in this case, sexual and political norms— and allows for contradiction, dissonance, and reform. Using Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” and Edmund Clarence Stedman’s poem “How Old Brown Took...
Private forest landowners can adapt to climate change by altering their timing and intensity of harvests, by changing thinning or fertilizing activities, and by altering the tree species growing on their land. The well-being of humans is closely tied to the ecosystem services that forests provide as both market and...
Climate change and the increase in meteorological drought have generated global concern over the persistence of ecosystems already in decline from decreased moisture. Evidence suggests dryland ecosystems have been more impacted by drought because of their tightly coupled growth-water relationships and high sensitivity to environmental shift. Removal of competing vegetation...
Time-dependent crack growth mechanisms in Alloy 617 at 800°C in air were studied using compact tension samples machined in the L-T direction, cracked at temperature using an induction furnace and servo-hydraulic load frame. The application of different loading waveforms, including triangular, hold time, and sustained loading, were studied with relation...
Strong self-regulation skills can predict academic success in early childhood contexts, specifically for math and literacy skills, thus laying the foundation for future success (McClelland & Cameron, 2012; McClelland & Ponitz, 2011). Children’s exposure to increased instructional time in school through programs such as full day kindergarten (FDK) has also...
Commercial fishing is a culturally and economically significant industry on the Oregon coast. The importance of this industry to human communities is often neglected in fisheries research, with economic and ecological data being favored by managers and decision makers. Recent observations in many coastal communities have indicated aging of fishermen...
Celebrity culture is part of a long history of fame, but the modern celebrity individual came into focus in the nineteenth century. The first part of this thesis distinguishes modern celebrity – including its morality – from other types of fame, explores the intersection of celebrity and gender through the...
Evacuation strategies have been established for most user groups in tsunami inundation zones; however, surprisingly little information is available for a growing visitor group - surfers. For near-shore tsunami events, Oregon surfers, who recreate in the nearshore region, must make life or death choices when deciding what to do in...