The knowledge about the intensive agricultural irrigation is very limited, but the use of irrigation is rapidly increasing. As an outcome, the sympathetic ecosystem is accepting modern irrigation that will play an essential function in the present and future for agricultural products. My dissertation will display the modification for investigation...
This dissertation is separated into two parts according to the two major distinct research projects. In Part I, the full account of synthetic studies toward C10-functionalized lycopodium alkaloids is described. In Part II, the detailed discussion on the exploration of the Pummerer cyclization methodology and its application to the total...
The dataset here is used as a document file for presenting supplementary videos in the dissertation Tao, K. (2018). Investigating protein-lipid-membrane interactions in Plant Cells using Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation (Doctoral dissertation).
Keywords: Protein, Lipid, Membrane, Plant Cells, Fluorescent Imaging
Background. As part of the nationwide student completion agenda, the Achieving the Dream (ATD) national reform network was established to help community colleges quickly institute sustainable change scaled to impact all students at the institution in a short period of time. Although ATD has been in existence for over a...
Femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS) is an ultrafast vibrational technique which allows rapid collection of Raman spectra with simultaneously high temporal and spectral resolution. With the recent development of FSRS methodology, three FSRS techniques (conventional, tunable, and anti-Stokes) have been implemented in our laboratory to dissect the excited state structural...
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’)...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are widespread environmental contaminants that occur in complex mixtures. These environmental mixtures can consist of both parent PAHs and their derivatives. Several parent PAHs are known or suspected mutagens and/or carcinogens, and a handful of PAH derivatives are known to be more potent mutagens and/or carcinogens...
Relationship health has many benefits, from physical and emotional health of the partners to their children’s wellbeing. Early intervention programs protect relationships from decline. These programs represent growing public health initiatives. However, most studies on wellness or early intervention overlook lesbian and gay male couples. Research that assumes lesbian and...
Novel donor-typed ternary graphite intercalation compounds (GICs) are synthesized and characterized containing (1) pyrrolidinium cations with DMSO co-intercalates; (2) alkali metal cations with crown ether co-intercalates; and (3) alkali metal cations with polyethylene glycol co-intercalates. Structural and compositional data are obtained for the stable products. A new ether-amine co-intercalate exchange...
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...
In this work we will analyze branching Brownian motion on a finite interval with oneabsorbing and one reflecting boundary, having constant drift rate toward the absorbingboundary. Similar processes have been considered by Kesten ([12]), and more recently byHarris, Hesse, and Kyprianou ([11]). The current offering is motivated largely by the...
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...
Background: Prior research has shown that distance learning courses have higher failure rates at community colleges then equivalent face-to-face to courses. There are a few programs and courses, however, that consistently achieve completion rates as high as or higher than their equivalent face-to-face courses. The research to date has not...
Significant progress has been made over the past 20 years in developing models to estimate the service-life of reinforced concrete systems. The basic understandings of the mechanisms that control the transport of ions and moisture in concrete systems have been well researched and models for determining corrosion initiation, specifically chloride-induced...
Background: The United States has been under-producing college graduates since at least 1980, with many challenges suppressing students’ self-efficacy. One approach to improving student outcomes is through mentorship. This dissertation applied Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and Kram’s Mentor Relationship Development Theory (MRD) to discover whether students’ campus mentorship experiences...
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...
The first part of this manuscript is about the total synthesis of the Arundo donax bis(indole) natural products. The A. donax alkaloids were prepared using the first example of an ynindole Diels–Alder reaction. Each were then separated, isolated, and determined to have stable enantiomeric conformations at room temperature (Chen, J.;...
This work is a culmination of a series of published works related to the use of the Material Point Method (MPM) in modeling wood adhesive bonds. The use of wood as construction material has the potential to play a small role in the solution to the current CO2 and climate...
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...
A significant number of Unreinforced Masonry (URM) buildings exist in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America that is a region of high seismicity, which could be subjected to both crustal and subduction zone earthquakes. The catastrophic and brittle failures associated with URM buildings in the past...
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...
Atomically-thin graphene sheets have unprecedented characteristics for biosensing applications. These characteristics include mechanical flexibility and strength, optical transparency, electrical sensitivity and biocompatibility. The primary theme of this dissertation is the characterization and application of graphene field-effect transistors (FETs) in biologically-relevant physiological environments.Understanding the interface that forms between an electrolyte and...
Shrapnel is an exploration through memory. It’s a work that bends and twists upon itself and, as memory often does, lands within worlds and experiences only for a moment before jumping to the next story or thought. This text is a hybrid work that doesn’t fit neatly within any specific...
Transportation systems are facing safety and operational challenges with a cost of billions of dollars annually in lost production time and wasted fuel. Infrastructure expansion, previously held as a panacea to most transportation challenges has lost its appeal due to financial, land-use and environmental constraints. Interest is surging in intelligent...
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...
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 electrical stability of amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thinfilmtransistors (TFTs) is investigated for flat-panel display applications. Althoughproducts incorporating a-IGZO TFT backplanes are already commercially available,e.g., iMac with 5K retina display, technical challenges need to be addressed for nextgenerationapplications, e.g., active-matrix organic light-emitting diode displays.Device stability is one crucial issue. The...
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...
The role of ground motion duration on the seismic performance of civil engineering structures remains unclear. Thus, the role of earthquake strong ground motion duration is assessed in a three manuscript thesis, which includes: (1) assessment of the effects of ground motion duration on the seismic performance of a model...
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...
Electrochemical capacitors and batteries are two major electrochemical energy storage technologies, which have been investigated extensively to meet the rapidly-growing demand for higher energy, higher power, lower cost and enhanced safety in the past few decades. With the charge storage mechanism of electrostatic charge adsorption desorption via electrical double layers,...
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...
Biological invasions and climate change represent two preeminent threats to ecological communities and biodiversity, altering the distribution and abundance of species, disrupting existing species interactions and forming unprecedented ones, and creating novel ecological communities. Many of the most successful invasive species are also ecosystem engineers, species that physically modify the...
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...
Physical experimentation in various scientific and engineering areas continues to be a useful and often necessary approach that is applied in research, development, and for general problem solving. The experimental design process however, is iterative and often involves trial and error. Alternative designs are proposed and evaluated on cost and...
Sepsis is an inflammatory reaction occurring throughout the human body to infections caused by bacteria, fungi, and or other forms of pathogens. It is essential to find an alternative treatment method for sepsis, to lessen the dependence on antibiotics. Hemoperfusion is an absorbent device that removes select targets from blood,...
Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUASs) equipped with optical sensors are capableof remotely sensing landscapes and wildlife at spatial and temporal resolutions that werepreviously inaccessible due to technical and budgetary limitations. Conventional remotesensing and photogrammetric workflows can be applied to the resulting high resolution imageryto facilitate new types of scientific inquiry....
This project examines the production histories of two films that Alfred Hitchcock directed, his Hollywood debut Rebecca (1940) and the memorable Psycho (1960). The first chapter explores how Hitchcock succeeded and failed at influencing the picture as he, despite directing the movie, had to follow the vision that his producer,...
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) bans all nuclear explosion tests for military or civilian purposes. The International Monitoring System (IMS) was established to verify compliance with the treaty. It consists of several monitoring stations that detect: seismic activities, hydrocoustic activities, infrasound waves, and radionuclide particles and noble gases. Radioxenon detection...
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...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of environmental contaminants consisting of fused benzene rings. Parent-PAHs, methylated-PAHs (MPAHs), and PAHs with molecular weight of 302 a.m.u (MW302-PAHs) are considered as unsubstituted-PAHs. These unsubstituted-PAHs undergo transformation reactions resulting in the formation of PAH-transformation products (PAH-TPs), or substituted-PAHs, including nitrated-, oxygenated-, and...
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...
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...
For spatial data visualization, we approach two problems and provide solutions: heat map resolution selection, and heat map confidence interval presentation. Analysts often present spatial data in gridded heat maps, at some chosen resolution. However, many data types vary in density across the domain. We develop variable-resolution heat maps to...
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...
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...
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 photophysical properties of two-dimensional (2D) layered van der Waals (vdW) materials, and their heterostructures are manifestly distinct from crystalline bulk materials. Recently, the discovery of new 2D vdW materials and strongly-bound interlayer excitons in these materials has created a new branch in nanoscience. As such, there are a number...
Lilacs are a group of ornamental trees and shrubs in the Oleaceae family consisting of 22 to 30 species. There are six series within genus Syringa: Pubescentes, Villosae, Ligustrae, Ligustrina, Pinnatifoliae, and Syringa. Fertility and cross-compatibility among cultivars, species, and series have yet to be formally investigated. Over three years,...
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...
Turbines at wind projects pose a threat to birds and bats flying at altitudes within the rotor swept area. These animals die from colliding with the turbine blades. Estimating mortality, or the total number of bird or bat fatalities at a wind project, is critical to understanding environmental impacts of...
The number of women in doctoral programs is increasing each year and women now comprise the majority of doctoral students in America (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Previous research has shown the high levels of complexities and stresses that female doctoral students face during their studies (Mallinckrodt & Leong,1992) and...
Mathematical modeling plays a pivotal role in understanding the mechanism of radiation-induced cellular effects, and also in quantifying the radiation risk to the cell. However, there are still compelling challenges facing the conventional modeling in radiobiology, such as lacking a generalized theory structure of quantifying target effect and non-target effect...
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...
This thesis is separated into three distinct projects. First, synthetic studies towards the furanosteroid viridin shown in part I. Second, synthetic studies towards the diperene obtusanal shown in part II. Third, the analysis, characterization, and synthesis of coronene derivatives towards their application in organic batteries shown in part III. Significant...
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...
Missing data is one of the major methodological problems in longitudinal studies. It not only reduces the sample size, but also can result in biased estimation and inference. It is crucial to correctly understand the missing mechanism and appropriately incorporate it into the estimation and inference procedures. Traditional methods, such...
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 dissertation works towards determining the mechanisms driving the Mo isotopic composition of soils, and how these signals may be used to refine the use of Mo as a proxy of biogeochemical processes. The first step towards quantifying Mo fractionation in soils is to determine the mechanisms controlling Mo accumulation,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Markov chains have long been used to sample from probability distributions and simulate dynamical systems. In both cases we would like to know how long it takes for the chain's distribution to converge to within varepsilon of the stationary distribution in total variation distance; the answer to this is, called...
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...
The trend towards higher resolution, faster refresh rate active-matrix liquid-crystal displays (AMLCDs) as well as the emergence of active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays is driving the demand for amorphous oxide semiconductor thin-film transistors (AOS TFTs) with higher mobility. A physics-based model for carrier transport in an amorphous semiconductor is...
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....
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...
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...
Counselor educators have a responsibility to serve as effective gatekeepers to the counseling profession by graduating only those counselors professionally prepared to serve the public in a myriad of counseling roles. However, despite its importance and the extant literature, gatekeeping still seems poorly understood and inconsistently applied. Although the literature...
Traditional analysis in population genetics evaluates differences among groups of individuals and, in some cases, considers the effects of distance or potential barriers to gene flow. However, many forces may shape genetic variation of organisms in riverine systems. Similarly complex research linking habitat heterogeneity and configuration to genetic structure has...
Soft keyboards come in different shapes, sizes, and layouts. Each layout is designed to help the users in different inputting tasks. Most of these layouts, however, focus on general text entry as opposed to computer programs. This dissertation addresses the problems with current input mechanisms on touchscreen devices. The dissertation...
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,...
The Columbia River delivers the greatest amount of freshwater to the coastal ocean along the U.S. Pacific coast. This freshwater forms the Columbia River plume, a mesoscale plume with significant implications on coastal ocean physical, biological, chemical, and geological processes. The plume is transported south and offshore during the upwelling...
In the U.S., childhood overweight and obesity has grown to epidemic levels. The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) found that nationwide, approximately 32% of children 10–17 years old are identified as overweight, over half of them (nearly 17%) are obese. This is a concern because these rates continue to...
The contribution of delayed adaptive reiteration to crown maintenance was explored across a wide range of adjacent open space conditions in early-mature (approximately 60 year old) Douglas-fir located on the eastern slope of Oregon’s Coast Range. The stands had experienced uniform thinning in 1964-65 and 1980-81 to release dominant and...
Tropical peatlands play an important role in global climate system by storing an immense of carbon that had been accumulated over thousands of years. Peatlands provide another important ecosystem service by regulating the hydrology. It is believed that peatlands act like a giant sponge by absorbing substantial amounts of water...
This dissertation seeks to understand Yi farmers’ livelihoods in the midst of an agricultural transition in Yunnan, Southwest China. This dissertation examines a community’s traditional knowledge related to wild edible plants (WEPs), analyzes socio-ecological vulnerability and resilience in the face of agricultural transition from subsistence farming to cash cropping, and...
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...
Life on Earth intimately depends on the function of countless proteins. For the majority of studied proteins, function absolutely depends on conformation (i.e. 3-dimensional shape in solution). The exact nature of how a protein goes from an unfolded linear polypeptide chain to an organized folded molecule is still not known,...
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...
Pyroprocessing is an advanced technology for recycling used nuclear fuel. Pyrochemical processes encompass a wide range of chemical, physical, and electrochemical methods to partition fission products and other components from used nuclear fuel, which allows for the reuse of the actinides in nuclear fuel. This dissertation investigates two chemical systems...
Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) is an ecologically significant species that plays a critical role channeling energy throughout the Arctic marine food web. Arctic cod is uniquely adapted to occupy ice edge habitats, however, a basic understanding of its larval physiology and habitat requirements is lacking due to widespread sea ice...