Many important policy problems entail linkages among multiple economic sectors, and require the use of a general equilibrium economic modeling framework. This economic approach is appropriate when the market for any one good or service is linked to numerous other goods and services, and back to fundamental inputs such as...
Simultaneous translation, which translates concurrently with the source language speech, is widely used in many scenarios including multilateral organizations. However, it is well known to be one of the most challenging tasks for humans due to the simultaneous perception and production in two languages. On the other hand, simultaneous translation...
For mmWave Integrated Circuit (IC) design, co-integration of passives can reduce size and power consumption, increase reliability, and reduce overall cost. However, skin and proximity effects in the metallization are aggravated at mmWave frequencies, resulting in increased attenuation and degradation of overall performance. Furthermore, tight integration of passive components (to...
There are growing interests in designing polynomial-time approximation schemes (PTAS) for optimization problems in planar graphs. Many NP-hard problems are shown to admit PTAS in planar graphs in the last decade, including Steiner tree, Steiner forest, two- edge-connected subgraphs and so on. We follow this research line and study several...
The level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is tightly regulated in biological systems as overproduction can lead to oxidative stress and result in a number of diseases. Due to its negative effects, antioxidants are studied and used against ROS in medicine, pharmaceuticals and therapeutics. Because of issues with the uptake...
In this dissertation, multi-rate array (MRA) architecture and its synthesis are proposed
and developed. Using multi-coordinate systems (MCS), a unified theory for mapping
algorithms from their original algorithmic specifications onto multi-rate arrays is
developed.
A multi-rate array is a grid of processors in which each interconnection may have its
own...
Pseudomonas butanovora, Mycobacterium vaccae, and Nocardioides sp. CF8 utilize distinctly different butane monooxygenases (BMOs) to initiate degradation of recalcitrant chlorinated ethenes (CEs) that pollute aquifers and soils. BMO-dependent degradation of CEs such as trichloroethylene (TCE) can lead to cellular toxicities. The type and severity of TCE transformation-dependent damage can have...
A molecular approach to metal oxides allows to the study to fundamental bonding and formation behavior for such metals. Moreover, the molecular nature of such oxides or metal-oxo clusters allows the possibility of exploitation of the properties of the parent oxides. The tetravalent metals, in specific, (M=Zr, Hf, Ce, Th,...
There has been a tremendous growth in interest in carbon nanodots (C-dots) in the past several years. As a nascent nanomaterial, C-dots have shown great promise in applications that benefit from their superior water dispersibility, low toxicity, non-blinking fluorescent output, chemical and biological compatibility, ease of functionalization and resistance to...
Investigating the structure-property relationships of solid state materials can help improve many of the materials we use each day in life. It can also lead to the discovery of materials with interesting and unforeseen properties. In this work the structure property relationships of newly discovered layered oxypnictide phases are presented...
During the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES) in Christchurch, NZ, an estimated $15B in damages occurred due to liquefaction-induced phenomena, illustrating the importance of understanding site-specific responses to seismic ground motions, as well the importance of accurately predicting liquefaction severity. One potential method for improving the understanding of how a site...
Porphyry Cu-(Au-Mo) deposits are critical sources of several economically important metals. The processes governing the total metal endowment and relative proportions of ore metals at these large magmatic-hydrothermal deposits remain uncertain. The Sulphurets porphyry district, in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, contains four porphyry Au-Cu-Mo deposits that each feature distinct Cu/Au...
Analytical chemistry is an area of chemistry primarily focused on the study and use of instruments for separation, identification, and quantification of an analyte of interest. Specifically, separation science within analytical chemistry often refers to the process of dividing mixtures into their small component parts based on differences in their...
Widespread installation of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, has been delayed by the lack of suitable stationary energy storage solutions. Current large-scale technologies, such as pumped hydro and compressed air, are geographically restricted. This is where electrochemical energy storage - batteries or hybrid capacitors can play a...
The design of a switched capacitor successive approximation A/D converter is discussed in this thesis. This design adopts a novel capacitance mismatch error cancellation algorithm proposed in references [25, 27]. Detailed charge domain analysis is given in this thesis, which results in an improvement of the proposed algorithm by tracing...
Autonomous robotic agents are on their way to becoming in-home personal assistants, construction assistants, and warehouse workers. The degree of autonomy of such systems is reflected by the manner in which we specify goals to them; the abstraction of low-level commands to high-level goals goes hand-in-hand with increased autonomy. In...
Over the past several years, increases in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have coincided with the 2007-2008 recession and the higher rates of unemployment in the U.S. With SNAP being the largest program, in terms of spending embedded in the farm bill, it is likely to see some spending...
This thesis investigates the influence of early diagenesis on trace metal and
molybdenum isotope behavior in marine and lacustrine environments. Chapter one is a
synthesis of previous research in all the marine environments investigated, providing an
essential geochemical context for interpreting the observed behavior of Mo in these settings.
Chapter...
A Cu/Fe-spinel-based oxygen carrier designed at the National Energy Technology Laboratory was studied in order to characterize its physical and chemical behavior with cyclic oxidation and reduction treatments at 800°C for applications in chemical looping combustions. Observations were made on individual particles of the oxygen carrier in-situ using a confocal...
The objective of this dissertation is to enhance the monitoring of forest ecosystems through the utilization of remotely sensed data to address the exigencies posed by the Anthropocene. On a global scale, rising temperatures and fluctuating precipitation patterns have strained forests and produced shifts in natural disturbance regimes. Additionally, the...
Humanities have been craving more freedom and conveniences in whatever form. Carriages evolved to cars and ultimately to aircraft so that one can reach any place in the globe within a day. The mobile phone has enabled people to make a phone call without a need to find a phone...
Rhizopus microsporus is a globally ubiquitous opportunistic human and plant pathogen that is known to harbor endosymbiotic bacteria. Differences between populations of clinical and environmental R. microsporus isolates have yet to be assessed on a global scale. Whole-genome sequence data were used to explore fungal biology and to assess potential...
Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) has recently appeared as a promising approach for removing nitrogen from landfill leachates because it requires less oxygen and no organic carbon compared to traditional nitrification-denitrification system, and it produces low sludge volumes, thereby reducing operating and biological sludge disposal costs by over 60%. Anammox bacteria...
As the link between human microbiomes and health has become more established, the interest in applying statistical approaches to microbiome data to understand the mechanisms behind these links has grown. However, microbiome data is often of unmanageable size, and consequently, producing quality lower dimensional representations of samples is a significant...
Anammox (anaerobic ammonium oxidation) bacteria are capable of providing low-cost nitrogen removal for numerous types of wastewaters. However, low growth rates cause long startup-times and inhibition by oxygen and metabolic substrates necessitate close process control to maintain performance. Incorporation of Simultaneous Anammox and Denitrification (SAD) into constructed wetlands could provide...
We describe a series of novel computational models, CERENKOV (Computational Elucidation of the REgulatory NonKOding Variome) and its successors CERENKOV2, CERENKOV3, and Convolutional CERENKOV3, for discriminating regulatory single nucleotide polymorphisms (rSNPs) from non-regulatory SNPs within non-coding genetic loci. The CERENKOV models are designed for recognizing rSNPs in the context of...
Novel donor-type graphite intercalation compounds (GICs) containing tetra-n-alkylammonium (TAA) cations have been synthesized by using both ion-exchange and electrochemical methods. Structural and compositional data of the resulting TAA-GICs are investigated by using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), one-dimensional electron density calculations, thermogravimetric and elemental analyses, and capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). A...
The intriguing size- and shape dependent properties of nanoparticles have garnered recent attention in many science and engineering areas. When the particle size is in the nanometer size range, the material exhibits very different properties such as surface plasmon resonance (of gold nanoparticles) and superparamagnetism (of iron oxide nanoparticles). The...
The increase in the demand for energy is estimated to be 28 TW by a year of 2050, which is twice of the energy produced in 2010, in response to the unprecedented growth of the global population. Current energy market is heavily relying on the fossil fuel, which brings the...
Hyporheic Exchange Flow (HEF) is driven by head gradients defined by the hydro-topography of the stream surface, which is controlled by the particular geomorphology of the stream. We quantified the impact of large wood, which typically exerts a strong control on stream morphology, on HEF in a second order, low...
Deep learning is becoming the latest trend in sensitive applications, such as healthcare, criminal justice, and finance. As these new applications emerge, adversaries are circumventing them.
Further, there have been concerns about the possibility of bias and discrimination in predictive applications.
In order to address these issues, we propose an...
Food waste (FW), brewery waste (BW), and fats, oils, and greases (FOG), are prevalent waste streams in municipalities across the country, particularly in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Anaerobic digestion (AD), the microbial-mediated transformation of organic waste into methane-rich biogas, offers a sustainable, energy-generating, waste management solution for these wastes. Anaerobic...
In the 21st century, environmental deterioration is now an indisputable fact. Reliable and economically viable electricity systems based on renewable sources are urgently needed to replace the environmentally detrimental fossil fuels. The feasibility of incorporating renewable-but-intermittent solar and wind energy heavily depends on the development of cost-effective and safe technologies,...
Urban forests are fundamental to the health and sustainability of urban communities. In 2012, the U.S. Forest Service launched the Vibrant Cities, Urban Forests: A National Call to Action initiative which posed a variety of recommendations to advance urban forest management and programs throughout the country. In response to that...
Environmental archives provide records of natural and anthropogenic variation in the environment at different temporal and spatial scales. Lead (Pb) concentrations and isotopic ratios are useful tracers of anthropogenic emissions from industrial activities including mining, smelting, and leaded gasoline use, however, methods of measuring Pb are largely limited in low...
Wine is known to have been enjoyed since ancient times. Although early civilizations where unaware of scientific mechanisms of the properties of wine, empirical methods allowed them knowledge of its intoxicating effects as well as its healthful properties. These properties lead the ancients to use wine for many purposes including...
While water scarcity and energy demand are continuously increasing in the world, alternative sources are needed to meet the requirement of a growing population. Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is a sustainable technology that converts organic matter in wastewater into electricity, thus it can be a potential alternative source for water...
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...
Nanoparticles (NPs), defined by their size (1-100 nm), are increasingly incorporated into commercial and industrial products due to their high surface area and unique properties. They can be designed for specific applications by manipulating composition, size, shape, and surface functionalization. As NP production and complexity increases, there is a need...
The grand plan of carbon neutralization and COP26 in Glasgow require a quick shift of energy sources from conventional fossil fuel to a more renewable substitute such as wind, or solar energy. However, the intermittency of those renewable energy sources does not meet the demand of the energy, which requires...
The electrical performance of on-chip interconnects has become a limiting factor to the performance of modern integrated circuits including RFICs, mixed-signal circuits, as well as high-speed VLSI circuits due to increasing operating frequencies, chip areas, and integration densities. It is advantageous to have fast and accurate closed-form expressions for the...
Proteins are essential to all biological systems. Proteins participate in numerous cellular processes by interacting with other proteins, other metabolites and membranes in a dynamic environment. Studying the structural and conformational properties of proteins in the solution phase is necessary to understand their protein folding and interaction dynamics. This research...
The research presented in this thesis seeks to further our understanding of the geochemical signatures that can be used to trace and quantify non-ferrous smelting emission inputs into the environment. Strong evidence suggests that emissions from the non-ferrous smelter in Trail, BC are the primary source of metals deposited from...
Microtechnology was used to study the chemical reduction of dissolved carbon dioxide into useful products. A novel TiO₂ photocatalyst was used to activate the reaction under ultraviolet irradiation. CO₂ was dissolved in aqueous and 50% BMIM-BF₄ (ionic liquid) solutions. The introduction of an ionic liquid increased the solubility of CO₂...
The diffusion of divalent nickel (Ni²⁺) from wet silica gels was investigated.
Silica gel is gaining interest as an encapsulation matrix for biological components.
The transport of biologically relevant species within the gel is determined by the
structural characteristics of the gel, which are in turn governed by synthesis
parameters....
The deglacial behavior of the sub-Arctic North Pacific is poorly constrained, with many published records suffering from limited age control due to extensive post- depositional biogenic carbonate dissolution. Potential alternative dating methods could include the correlation of stable-isotopic and/or paleomagnetic secular variation records to an independently-dated regional template, however no...
Standard larval Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) rearing systems can be described as either static or continuous flow. While rearing oyster larvae in static cultures can be a low-cost and simple method, static systems require significant husbandry effort, floorspace and can produce highly variable results due to environmental variance among cultures....
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the oldest known domesticated crops. Originally cultivated for human consumption, other end-uses have gained importance over the millennia. Barley is the fourth most important cereal crop in the world (FAO-STAT, 2011), and today it is mainly used as animal feed or malted for...
The issue of chloride-induced corrosion of reinforcing steel in concrete and its economic impacts are well-known. Chlorides that cause reinforcement corrosion can be from constituent materials used to prepare concrete or can enter the hardened concrete when the structure is exposed to chloride environments. To minimize the risk of reinforcement...
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,...
During the past 30 years, numerous studies have focused on the toxicities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Laboratory and field studies have helped elucidate the detrimental effects of these chemicals on growth, reproduction and immune response. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are in the priority list of chemicals to be studied by...
Field biologists are in need of more specialized and technical equipment than they are able to produce on their own in order to collect data more efficiently or gather data that is not currently available. This presents a challenge for design engineers because these products are typically highly specialized and...
Dysferlin is a ∼230 kDa terminally anchored membrane protein that is ubiquitously expressed, but is particularly enriched in skeletal and cardiac muscle tissue. Mutations covering the length of the protein have been linked to muscle wasting diseases including limb-girdle muscular dystrophy and Myoshi myopathy. Dysferlin has been shown to play...
Prior to 2005, ammonia oxidation, the first step of nitrification, was thought mediated mainly by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB). However, the discovery of Thaumarchaeota carrying the genes coding for the ammonia monooxygenase (AMO) enzyme led to the discovery that ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) also contribute to nitrification. Despite the uptick in studies...
In this work we propose a curve approximation method that operates in the curvature
domain. The curvature is represented using one of several different types of
basis functions (linear, quadratic, spline, sinusoidal, orthogonal polynomial), and the
curve's geometry is reconstructed from that curvature basis. Our hypothesis is that
different curvature...
The rare earth elements (REEs) have been established as powerful tracers for a range of physiochemical processes occurring in the natural environment. They also hold significant economic importance as many technological advancements are reliant upon the REEs for their unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical characteristics. In sedimentary settings, understanding the...
Neisseria gonorrhoeae is the sexually transmitted pathogen responsible for millions of cases of gonorrhea worldwide each year. Rapidly-spreading antibiotic resistance is diminishing the ability to effectively treat a disease with significant consequences to female and male reproductive health, as well as to neonatal well-being. A protective vaccine has the potential...
In this dissertation, the process of computational modeling of amorphous oxide materials is studied. Amorphous oxides have random atomic arrangements with no long-range structural order which makes it difficult to study structure-property relationships. Despite the difficulties, amorphous oxides have great uses as semiconductors and dielectrics in thin-film transistors. The ability...
Iodine-129 is a key risk driver at sites where nuclear materials have been fabricated or processed, and it is a predominant isotope of concern in long-term waste storage strategies. I-129 exists primarily as iodate in the subsurface at the Hanford Site in south-central Washington State. Between 15 and 40% of...
With confirmation of non-nutritive sugar, erythritol, having insecticidal properties to Dipterans, this thesis research focuses on use of erythritol as a human-safe management tool for small berry and cherry pest, Drosophila suzukii, commonly referred to as spotted-wing drosophila. Drosophila suzukii is a destructive invasive fruit fly from Asia with an...
There is an emerging interest in developing wearable electronics as a platform, which
provides the flexibility of a wearable while maintaining its promising functionality as smart textiles. Metal-halide semiconductors are attractive materials with tunable optical and electrical properties. Researchers have widely studied and applied it for advanced
photonics and optoelectronic...
Ethanol production from lignocellulosic feedstock has been under intense scrutiny as a transportation fuel due to its potential to address concerns of increasing energy consumption, limited fossil energy resources, climate changes due to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, and especially use of non-food biomaterials, which address the biggest limitation...
Skin is the largest organ in the body that protects the organism from environmental, chemical and physical traumas of each passing day. The protective skin epidermal permeability barrier (EPB) is formed within the exterior layers of the epidermis, which are regularly sloughed off and repopulated by movement of inner cells....
Smart home devices, such as voice assistants, smart lights, and smart video doorbells have become a part of end users' daily lives. Many of these devices combine their features with other services and smart devices to create a simple and efficient user experience. This is partly because of the contribution...
We report the use of MIL-120 as a water-stable and cost-effective metal-organic framework (MOF) for selectively capturing CO₂ from wet flue gas. Synthesized using inexpensive and environmentally benign reagents in water, MIL-120 possesses one-dimensional pores decorated with hydroxyl-bridged Al(III) ions and benzene rings with an interstitial spacing of 4.78 Å....
EF-hand proteins are a conserved family of proteins that are modulated by divalent cations and regulate diverse cellular activities. In the present study we characterized the molecular determinants of myosin regulatory light chain (RLC) interaction with several subunits of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-type glutamate receptor. Myosin RLC is an EF-hand protein...
The critically endangered Maui's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori maui) and the endangered Hector's dolphin (C. h. hectori) are endemic to the coastal waters of New Zealand, where their primary threat is fisheries-related mortality. The Maui's dolphin is among the most critically endangered cetaceans in the world, with its remnant population primarily...
Fall-planted barley makes the best use of available precipitation in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. This growth habit is also suitable to many other areas of the world. A prerequisite for production in most of these areas is tolerance of low temperature during the vegetative growth stages. Fall-planted...
Traditional localization techniques rely on triangulation or trilateration, where in a set of three or more stationary known locations is used to estimate a “client” position. For inertial navigation, these techniques can estimate client positions merely using the measured data from tri-axial accelerometers and gyroscopes. However, the use of double...
Transparent and electrically conductive metal oxide nanoparticles have attracted much attention, and can be used to improve the performance of solar cells, transparent electrode materials, and gas sensor technology. Specifically, indium tin oxide (ITO) nanocrystals (NCs) are potentially useful nanomaterials, having technological applications in enhanced sensitivity of optical spectroscopy due...
It is estimated that for every 1 kg of cheese produced, approximately 9 kg of whey is created. For smaller producers something needs to be done to keep it out of water ways and potentially to valorize it. However, access to efficient secondary whey processing to isolate protein and lactose...
European hazelnut, Corylus avellana L., is the only economically important nut crop
in the family Betulaceae. One of the threats to the hazelnut industry in the Pacific
Northwest is the fungal disease eastern filbert blight (EFB) caused by the
pyrenomycete Anisogramma anomala. Host genetic resistance to EFB identified in the...
Metal-oxo clusters can be described as soluble pieces of metal-oxide frameworks. Metal-oxo clusters are also the building blocks for the Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and coordination polymers. A better knowledge of metal-oxo clusters helps fundamentally understand geosciences, molecular engineering, catalysis, single-molecule magnetism, and MOFs for synthesis, design, and modification of these...
Learning to recognize objects is a fundamental and essential step in human perception and understanding of the world. Accordingly, research of object discovery across diverse modalities plays a pivotal role in the context of computer vision. This field not only contributes significantly to enhancing our understanding of visual information but...
The action of pendant, polyethylene oxide (PEO) brush layers as nonfouling coatings for
biomedical materials is well understood. However progress toward clinical application of stable, high density PEO coatings has historically been impeded by the lack of cost effective, noninvasive methods for their preparation. Triblock polymers featuring a hydrophobic, polypropylene...
The role of the high density lipoprotein (HDL) molecule is currently an area of great interest within the scientific community. Previously, mouse and human studies have demonstrated an inverse association between HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and cardiovascular disease. Recent clinical trials, which increased HDL-C, have failed to reduce the number...
The complicated nature of trauma and the epistemological discord as to what constitutes best evidence for exercise intervention programs for transient youth populations are problems that linger when creating evidence-based programs for the transient youth population predisposed to trauma. Consequently, to ensure program quality and effectiveness, it remains salient to...
In this dissertation, the primary objective is to discover more sustainable electrode materials and study new reaction mechanisms using aqueous electrolytes. The first study conducted reveals a reversible conversion reaction from copper to Cu2CO3(OH)2. The reaction mechanism uses OH- and CO32- as charge carriers at the cathode. The results open...
The fate and transport of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) such as titanium dioxide (TiO₂) are of concern due to their increasing use in consumer products. Although analytical methods for detection and quantification of ENPs in environmental matrices are being developed, these methods are difficult, time consuming, and not easily validated for...
The Hippo signaling pathway is an evolutionarily conserved regulator of cell growth, proliferation, and apoptosis. A key function of the pathway is to regulate the subcellular distribution and activity of Yorkie in Drosophila or Yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcription co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) in mammals. The dysregulation of the...
This research focused on anaerobic transformation of trichloroethene (TCE), a
groundwater contaminant. The mixed anaerobic Evanite culture (EV) was studied to determine community behavior and composition responses to different electron donors and chloroethene electron acceptors. The potential toxicity from high concentrations of TCE and its daughter product cis-1,2-dichloroethene (cDCE) was...
Mycobacteriosis is a common disease of laboratory zebrafish (Danio rerio). Different infection patterns occur in zebrafish depending on mycobacterial species. Mycobacterium marinum and M. haemophilum produce virulent infections associated with high mortality, whereas M. chelonae is more wide spread and not associated with high mortality. Identification of mycobacterial infections to...
This paper addresses the high model complexity and overconfident frame labeling of state-of-the-art (SOTA) action segmenters. Their complexity is typically justified by the need to sequentially refine action segmentation through multiple stages of a deep architecture. However, this multistage refinement does not take into account uncertainty of frame labeling predicted...
Mycobacterium avium subsp hominissuis (MAH) is an opportunistic environmental pathogen that causes respiratory and gastrointestinal illness in immunocompromised persons such as those with chronic respiratory diseases or AIDs, respectively. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the incidence of nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung infections, including in cystic...
Social media sources such as Twitter represent a massively distributed social sensor over diverse topics ranging from social and political events to entertainment and sports news. However, due to the overwhelming volume of content, it can be difficult to identify novel and significant content within a broad topic in a...
Recently researchers have discovered that groups of small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play regulatory roles in gene expression and participate in various biological processes. For example, pathogenesis of many diseases, cell cycle regulation, and signaling pathways. Intracellular and live cell imaging of small ncRNA groups will reveal their relative expression levels...
In the next decade, technology trends--smaller dimension, lower voltage, higher operating frequency--introduce new technical considerations and challenges for radiation effects in integrated circuits. Semiconductor based circuits and traditional dynamic random-access memories will malfunction when exposed to extreme environments, such as space and nuclear reactor. The mechanisms for radiation effect are...
The work described in this dissertation focused on chemistry related to the use of aqueous sodium hydroxide as a treatment in the processing of wheat straw. A major emphasis was the comprehensive evaluation of straw component partitioning due to sodium hydroxide (NaOH) processing. This was evaluated over a range of...
In recent years, many studies have focused on the molecular and biochemical mechanisms regulating the development of wine grapes. The course of grape berry development is directed by genetic design and is mediated by phytohormones, which regulate grape berry growth and development by orchestrating a complex network of interacting genes,...
This dissertation focuses on the analysis, design, and application of inductor-capacitor (LC) oscillators for wireless sensor networks (WSNs).
First an analysis and design optimization approach for enhanced swing, low power CMOS LC oscillators is presented. A phasor based analysis is used for determining the amplitude and phase noise of these...
Nanotechnologies continue to permeate a multitude of industries, with diverse applications ranging from pesticides to fuel additives. The unusual behavior of nanomaterials that drives their innovation also complicates the job of toxicologists tasked with assessing their potential environmental and public health impacts. This dissertation investigates the underlying reasons for uncertainty...
β-chitin/chitosan extracted from newly utilized jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) pens were investigated in respect to their physicochemical properties, polymeric structures, deacetylation and depolymerization characteristics, and antioxidant and antibacterial activities. These functional properties were further compared with α-chitin/chitosan prepared from shrimp shells. Due to the low mineral content (< 1%) and...
The results of the research presented in this work are related to synthesis and investigations of novel color inorganic pigments having various structures and shades. Inorganic pigments play a major role in contemporary life. They are used in paints, rubber, plastic, cosmetics etc. Searching for new, stable, environmentally benign and...
Background
Feline injection-site sarcoma (FISS) is a rare and aggressive tumor associated with vaccines, drug injections, and skin trauma in cats. The understanding of FISS remains limited, posing challenges in its diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. In this study, we analyzed the differential expression of miRNAs and their target genes in...
Gap acceptance behavior is critical to the safety and operational performance of unsignalized intersections. The complex nature of the human behavior and its dependence on various socioeconomic and environmental parameters makes it challenging for transportation professionals to assess the performance of such intersections. To investigate the behavioral patterns of drivers...
Interferon tau (IFN-τ) is the pregnancy recognition signal secreted by the trophectodermal cells of the developing bovine embryo that prevents luteolysis and maintains critical progesterone production. Recent evidence has suggested in addition to the mechanism of action identified in the uterus, there may be a direct effect of IFN-τ on...
The ever-increasing environmental degradation in China is leading people to pay more attention to environmental protection. Although Chinese government has made progress in dealing with environmental problems, the environment still gets worse. Thus, ordinary people began to take part in environmental issues, and make contributions to environmental protection. With increased...
This dissertation addresses the problem of video labeling at both the frame and pixel levels using deep learning. For pixel-level video labeling, we have studied two problems: i) Spatiotemporal video segmentation and ii) Boundary detection and boundary flow estimation. For the problem of spatiotemporal video segmentation, we have developed recurrent...
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...