Using the hydrographic data collected by the ACONA from June
1961 to May 1963, the Oregon coastal front has been examined. Representative
sigma-t surfaces were chosen to delineate the front, and
changes in position of these surfaces with time were used to obtain
zonal flow rates for the frontal and...
Multiple linear regression was used to develop equations for 12-,
24-, and 36-hour surface wind forecasts for the wind energy site at
Goodnoe Hills. Equations were derived separately for warm and cool
seasons. The potential predictors included LFM II model output, MOS
surface wind forecasts extrapolated from surrounding stations, pressure...
A procedure for model-assisted climate impact assessment is
developed. The approach combines data from observations and
atmospheric general circulation models (GCNs), and provides the basis
for a potentially valuable means of using information derived from
GCMs for climate impact assessments on local scales.
The first component of this procedure is...
This research addresses the relationship between television
programming and body image. It specifically investigates what the Music
Television network's (MTV) dance show, "The Grind," communicates
about female body image. Two studies were conducted. Study one used
seven coders from a western United States high school to record female
body images...
A large number of river otter (Lontra canadensis) males were collected
from areas of high and low contaminant concentrations throughout western
Oregon and Washington during the fall and winter of 1994-99. Few significant
non-reproductive organ morphometric differences were found in the large series
of male otters collected, except for adrenal...
A large number of river otter (Lontra canadensis) males were collected
from areas of high and low contaminant concentrations throughout western
Oregon and Washington during the fall and winter of 1994-99. Few significant
non-reproductive organ morphometric differences were found in the large series
of male otters collected, except for adrenal...
Mercury (Hg) is a bioaccumulative metal that can threaten the health of wild birds. Feathers are commonly used biomonitoring tools for non-lethally estimating Hg exposure in birds because they contain stable Hg concentrations upon completion of feather growth, when blood flow to the feather has stopped. Despite the common use...
The Arctic has long been considered to be a pristine environment, far
from population centers and pollution sources. The detection of synthetic
organochlorine compounds in various elements of the Arctic food web has confirmed
the global dispersion of pollutants, particularly of persistent compounds such as
organochlorines and heavy metals. Levels...
Several states, including Oregon, Massachusetts and California, have been the focus of major health reform efforts in recent years. Oregon utilized a citizen-led commission to generate policy recommendations that led to the enactment of health reform legislation in 2009. This commission helped to create momentum and provide political cover for...
In this thesis I present the results of a comprehensive assessment of the Pacific-North American (PNA) teleconnection pattern in general circulation models (GCMs) and a regional climate model (RCM). The PNA teleconnection pattern is a quasi-stationary wave field over the North Pacific and North America that has long been recognized...
This qualitative study was designed to identify factors
that might affect the psychological and educational wellness
of nontraditional students in nontraditional graduate
programs in Education.
Specifically, informants were selected purposefully
from three Oregon State University extended-campus graduate
programs in Education. Student informants were working
professionals with family obligations. Faculty informants...
Supervolcanic eruptions are among the most catastrophic phenomena on Earth,
erupting 100s-1000s of cubic kilometers of magma, and producing devastating local effects and global climate perturbations. The largest supervolcanic eruption of the last 28 Ma was the 74 ka Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT) eruption from Sumatra, Indonesia, which erupted 2,800...
A declining population of ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) was
studied at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge (TLNWR) from the summer of 1990
through the spring of 1993. Pheasant densities/50 ha at TLNWR in 1989, 1991, and
1992 were considerably lower (16.86, 8.49, and 6.81) than the >62 density seen in...
Chemicals must be bioavailable for there to be a potential for exposure and consequent risk to human or environmental health. Passive sampling devices (PSDs) are used to quantify the time-integrated concentration of bioavailable contaminants. We demonstrate that PSDs can be paired with the zebrafish developmental toxicity bioassay to produce site-specific,...
The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill operated between 1890 and 1962. The mill produced predominately woolen blankets and woolen fabrics for outerwear garments. Mission Mill Museum Association purchased the woolen mill after its closure in order to develop the property as a museum. The purpose of this study was to provide...
Recently concerns over anthropogenic carbon pollution have received increased global attention and research in forest biomass and carbon sequestration has gained momentum. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) remote sensing has in the last decade demonstrated forest measurement and biomass estimation potential. The project objective was to compare LiDAR forest biomass...
Human alteration of natural landscapes leads to biodiversity loss, often from a combination of area effects and fragmentation effects. Smaller habitat patches support fewer species than large ones and incur additional consequences from isolation. Efforts to preempt biodiversity loss from insular habitat fragments are complicated by individualistic species responses and...
The purpose of this research was to evaluate a web-based training program for mentors of distance graduate students enrolled in a distance Master of Science Dietetic Management Program. The online training program was designed to consist of four modules focusing on mentoring skills, communication, research methods and university mandated guidelines...
The purpose of the workshop was to exchange information on sampling procedures, research methodologies, preparation and
interpretation of specimen material, terminology, and the application
and significance of findings, emphasizing the relationship of dendrochronology procedures to fire history interpretations.
Pesticides are among the most pervasive environmental contaminants and they are an important potential risk for human health. Agricultural workers are constantly exposed to pesticide spray, drift and residues in the soil and foliage. Many agricultural pesticides are readily absorbed by the body, through contact with the skin, the respiratory...
Two Oregon reservoirs contaminated by different mercury
sources were compared for mercury distribution in sediment and
bioaccumulation by fish. The average mercury concentration in
the sediment of Cottage Grove reservoir (0.67 ± 0.05 μg/g dry
wt) was higher than for Dorena Reservoir (0.12 ± 0.01 μg/g dry
wt). Sediment mercury...
Female mink (Mustela vison) are highly sensitive to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-induced reproductive impairment. The goal of this research was to develop a better understanding of the mechanism of PCB-induced effects on female mink, mink embryos, and surviving mink kits. Anestrous, juvenile female mink and pregnant, adult mink were exposed to...
Program comprehension is important in program testing, debugging, and maintenance. Programming style impacts program understanding. However, there has not been any systematic identification of individual style factors and their contribution to program comprehension. In this thesis we present a programming style taxonomy composed of three classes: typographic (program layout and...
In this research, we have captured, in pattern form, key elements of programming and design in four programming paradigms (imperative, object-oriented, functional and logical) as well as multiparadigm programming. These pattern sets have formed a foundation upon which we were able to build a deeper understanding of multiparadigm programming and...
Suicide has become a national health crisis over the last twenty years in the U.S as rates have increased 35%. Rates of suicide among rural and youth (10-24 age range) populations have been shown to disproportionately contribute the most to upwards trends though, and this is especially true in Klamath...
This dissertation explores one overarching question relevant to the
paleoclimate of the latest Pleistocene glacial cycle (approximately the last
130,000 years): “How did spatial and temporal evolution of ocean
temperature, both at the surface and interior, relate to other parts of the
climate system in the late Pleistocene?” Results from...
This study examines the relationship between organizational absorptive
capacity and organizational responsiveness to changes in their environment exhibited
by growth-oriented SMEs in Russia. Adopting the theoretical framework and
methodology used by Liao, Welsch and Stoica in their 2003 study of the absorptive
capacity and organizational responsiveness of U.S. growth-oriented SMEs,...
This thesis is an investigation of the natural products deriving from marine algae and cyanobacteria and has resulted in the discovery of eleven new secondary metabolites. The structure elucidations of these new molecules were performed using a variety of spectroscopic techniques. Four new macrolides were isolated and characterized from the...
Characterization of the 5' flanking region of rainbow trout ki-ras gene was begun with the cloning and sequencing of this region by the inverse PCR technique and dideoxynucleotide chain termination method. In total, a nucleotide sequence of 1080 bp upstream from the first coding ATG was sequenced. Although this region...
When changes are made to programs - to enhance their functionality, to improve performance, to migrate from one language or machine to another, or to convert a serial program to parallel form - there is no easy way to verify that the changes maintain program correctness. Checking the final result...
Understanding connectivity among exploited populations is critical to their sustainable management and long-term viability. In the marine environment, estimates of connectivity often rely on the use of genetic markers, as dispersal primarily occurs during a planktonic larval phase which is difficult to track using direct methods. In this thesis, we...
One of the main problems in debugging parallel programs is in determining how far a parallel program has executed when it crashes or stops. Even if the program dumps core files for all the parallel processes, the information is at such a low level that it is difficult to interpret...
Cichelli has presented a simple method for constructing minimal perfect hash tables of identifiers for small static word sets. The hash function value for a word is computed as the sum of the length of the word and the values associated with the first and last letters of the word....
Emerging infectious diseases are increasing globally and are a threat to human, wildlife, and ecosystem health. The emerging fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), or amphibian chytrid fungus, is associated with worldwide amphibian population declines and extinctions. Bd has been found on every continent where amphibians exist and has been documented...
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...
Indole-3-carbinol (I3C) and 3,3'-diindolylmethane (DIM), a primary I3C
derivative in vivo, are known chemopreventive agents available as dietary supplements.
I3C was found to suppress or enhance tumors in several animal models.
Chemoprotection is attributed to the ability of indoles to alter carcinogen metabolism
effectively blocking initiation. However, mechanisms for enhancement...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with a molecular weight (MW) of 302
and oxygenated-PAHs (OPAHs) have demonstrated toxicity beyond that of
frequently monitored and known carcinogenic PAHs. Airborne particulate matter
(PM) was characterized for MW 302 isomers to evaluate risk and air quality
indices and OPAHs in order to fill data...
Cnidarians, such as anemones and corals, engage in an intracellular symbiosis with
photosynthetic dinoflagellates. Corals form both the trophic and structural foundation of
reef ecosystems. Despite their environmental importance, little is known about the
molecular basis of this symbiosis. In this dissertation we explored the cnidariandinoflagellate symbiosis from two perspectives:...
For ras gene mutation analysis in the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus
mykiss) model system, a partial trout ras sequence was identified
using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Two synthetic
oligonucleotides based on rat K-ras gene sequence were used as
primers for the PCR procedure. A 90 base pair (bp) sequence,
referred...
Geospatial data analysis is a multifaceted discipline encompassing the collection, processing, and visualization of diverse datasets. It models and delineates the interactions of people, objects, and phenomena within geographical spaces and predicts patterns based on the relationships between different locations. Despite significant advancements in geospatial data engineering and analytics over...
The earth is undergoing a “biodiversity crisis” characterized by loss of populations, species, genetic diversity, and ecosystem services. Part of this crisis consists of population declines, extinctions, and increased incidence of deformities in amphibians. It is unknown whether deformities contribute to these declines. Many cases of population declines in amphibians...
Caspian terns (Hydroprogne caspia) and double-crested cormorants
(Phalacrocorax auritus) nest in large colonies on East Sand Island in the Columbia
River estuary, the largest known colonies for the two species in the world. Both
species of piscivorous colonial waterbirds have been identified as predators with a
significant impact on the...
The extent of biological invasions, their role on the feeding of
native fishes and their impact on community stability were
investigated in Alsea Bay and Yaquina Bay, two estuaries on the
central Oregon coast, USA. Most nonindigenous species (NIS)
introduced in these intermediately invaded estuaries are
considered byproducts of culturing...
The seasonal distribution of bioavailable organochiorine contaminants in surface
water and the potential environmental factors influencing their bioavailability were
evaluated. The study was carried at the lower Willamette River at Portland Harbor, Oregon
where surface water runoff varied according to season. Bioavailable water concentrations of
DDTs and PCBs were determined...
The purpose of this research was to determine if differences
existed in mathematical skills needed for entry-level employment in
selected electricity-electronics occupations in Oregon. The four
primary objectives of the study were to:
1. Identify mathematical skills from task analyses of key
electricity-electronics occupations.
2. Validate the identified mathematical skills....
The Willamette River, one of only 14 American Heritage Rivers, flows through the most densely populated and agriculturally productive region of Oregon. Previous biological monitoring of Willamette River fish detected elevated frequencies of skeletal deformities in fish from certain areas of the lower (NP [NP], rivermile [RM] 26-55) and middle...
The nearshore waters off the Oregon coast (< 73 meters) are a region of high productivity and economic value, with a variety of habitats that include rock outcrops. Temperate reef habitats are important to many commercially important fishes inhabiting the Pacific coast, including canary rockfish (Sebastes pinniger) and yelloweye rockfish...