I studied developmental rates in a suite of temperate and tropical passerine bird species from the New World to test the hypothesis that tropical passerines exhibit slower patterns of growth and development than temperate birds. I also investigated how the expression of several developmental rates varied with life history traits...
My thesis, entitled "Fantastic Histories: How Malory's Morte Darthur
Influenced Tolkien's The Silmarillion," argues that J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion
shares distinct similarities in style and content with Sir Thomas Malory's Morte
Darthur, primarily in the lack of detail in the descriptions of characters and events, as
each attempts to create a...
The thermal regime of a postulated descending lithospheric slab
is calculated. The gravity anomaly associated with such a structure
is large in amplitude and long in wavelengh. Observed free-air
gravity anomalies in the Pacific Northwest do not indicate a gravitational
effect due to a descending slab.
Two hypothetical compensation models...
The purpose of this project is to modify the Transportation Options Health Impact Estimator (TO Estimator) tool to quantify the health impacts of outdoor recreation in Oregon. The TO Estimator tool uses the Integrated Transportation and Health Impact Model (ITHIM) to quantitatively estimate the hypothetical health impacts of transportation mode...
Net uptake of carbon from the atmosphere (net ecosystem production, NEP) is dependent on climate, disturbance history, management practices, forest age, and forest type. To improve understanding of the influence of these factors on forest carbon flux in the western U.S., a combination of federal inventory data and supplemental ground...
The purpose of this dissertation was to increase understanding of adolescent school counseling groups including a literature review of the quantitative outcome research on group work with adolescents in the schools and a qualitative exploration of the adolescent experience of cohesion in rural school counseling groups. Outcome research on group...
Water temperature in rivers and streams is an important factor for aquatic ecosystem health. Measurement of stream temperature has traditionally been accomplished by point temperature measurements, continuous point temperature loggers, and more recently, airborne remote sensing techniques such as Forward-Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) or Thermal Infrared Radiometry. While each of...
This collection of poetry explores faith and isolation while questioning the ability of language to adequately express subjective experience. Gustie has provided a deeply contemplative, though rarely completely serious, romp through the lives of others who, ultimately, are reflections of the self. The three sections of the collection establish a...
Climate change will impact the location of suitable habitat for tree species in the Pacific Northwest. Locations that become unsuitable will experience increased levels of tree mortality and diminished levels of tree growth. Understanding how these impacts will spatially manifest is vital for efficient management of natural resources. An invaluable...
The past decade of research has potentiated a revolution in our understanding of mammalian health and evolution by revealing that the gut microbiome plays a central role in mammalian physiology. Our ability to unlock this potential hinges upon the identification of specific groups of gut microbes that elicit effects on...
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....
The interactions between microbial taxa have been under great research interest in the sci- ence community given the microbiome data deluge. Several methods have been proposed to model and estimate the conditional dependency between microbial taxa for their interac- tions, in order to eliminate spurious correlation detections. However, these methods...
As important ecological cornerstones, coral reefs face threats from a myriad of sources, such as global climate change, and importantly, disease, the latter often as a result of microbial pathogens. An understudied group of major corals, fire corals, and their even less understood microbiome present an opportunity to learn more...
As a metafictional work of science fiction literature, A Novel Elysium explores the timelessness of
both the human mind and its literary surroundings, comparing the self-awareness of its characters to
the sometimes tragic or empowering metaphysical realizations of human beings. Within this
framework, any concrete place or time is unimportant;...
Published May 2001. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Globally, it is estimated that over 2,518,200 tons of hides and skins were exported in the year 2011 alone, with an estimated world production yield of 23 billion square feet of finished leather (FA0, 2011; Mwinyihija, 2011). While some manufacturers have adopted eco-friendly production methods, most tanneries still practice the...
Animals aggregate and interact in nonuniform and nonrandom patterns, which lead to group level characteristics that have important evolutionary and ecological consequences. Network analysis provides a useful conceptual framework for linking animal interactions at all scales from dyads to communities, to populations and ecosystems. Despite exciting theoretical and applied advances...
A massive reduction in historic populations of Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida), the only native oyster found on the west coast of North America, has contributed to a loss of ecosystem and cultural services once provided by this species. Resource management agencies and environmental organizations are working to protect and enhance...
This dissertation presents a different approach to understanding how amphibians are responding to disease through ontogeny. Although numerous efforts have been conducted to understand host responses to the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), studies have been restricted to distinct developmental stages. This dissertation provides information on host response to Bd across...
Always Talk to Strangers contains the first seven chapters to a novel. The novel focuses on the friendship between Amanda and Maria, two fourteen-year-old girls who are experiencing their last summer before high school in Madison, Wisconsin. Their friendship is a complicated one: Maria was kidnapped four years ago, the...
Phytoplankton initiate the marine carbon cycle by fixing carbon dioxide into biologically available compounds. These abundant single celled organisms mediate carbon flux from the atmosphere to the deep ocean and are the base of the marine food web, supplying new carbon to higher trophic levels. Phytoplankton are highly diverse and...
Two lots of six White Leghorn male chickens were fed diets containing
7.3% linoleic acid and either .075% ethoxyquin (lot 1) or 32.4
mg/kg of added vitamin E (lot II) for 47 weeks both of which were
designated as positive controls. A third group (lot III) containing 30
males received...
Composition scholars who have written about trauma have typically focused on creating classrooms that are conducive to healing and learning. In doing this work, however, they have considered neither how PTSD nor other people’s responses to it can impact one’s perceived rhetoricity in the college classroom. In other words, they...
Detailed bathymetric survey data were collected along the Peruvian
continental margin and were compiled by the author and other
investigators to construct a new bathymetric map for the area between
6° to 18°S latitude. Based on this map and individual bathymetric
profiles, the continental shelf topography is essentially flat. Four...
The level of polymorphisms of many biochemical and DNA markers are low in
cultivated sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). The number of mapped public DNA
markers is limited. Molecular markers have not been developed for the most
important diseases of sunflower, such as downy mildew. The objectives of this
study were...
Olympia oysters, “Ostrea conchaphila,” were once common along the west coast of North America. A popular delicacy, native oyster populations began to decline in the late 1800’s due to over‐harvest, degraded water quality, and habitat loss. Interest in re‐establishing the native oyster in a small Oregon estuary, Netarts Bay, culminated...
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...
The pressure history of a continental magmatic system can be deciphered by analyzing the composition of amphiboles in the eruptive products where the pressure of equilibration correlates with the depth of the magmatic system. This can reveal vertical evolution of the magma as amphibole composition varies significantly with temperature and...
The bioavailability of chemical compounds in the marine environment fundamentally influences the growth and physiology of microorganisms. Organic and inorganic chemicals that are produced by some marine plankton can be consumed by other plankton for energy production, growth, or to initiate essential physiological processes. Cultures of the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana,...
The seasonal life history of the cereal stem moth (CSM), Ochsenheimeria
vacculella Fischer von Roslerstamm, (Lepidoptera : Ochsenheimeriidae) was investigated
in a commercial field of annual ryegrass in the Willamette Valley, OR from January
1993 to August 1994. Phenology of life stages, effect of temperature on eclosion, and
development of...
A method for the assessment of volatile compounds in dairy products
was developed using solvent desorption dynamic headspace sampling. The
method was first applied to assay for diacetyl and acetoin in buttermilk.
Major buttermilk volatiles recovered included diacetyl, acetic acid, and
acetoin. Normalized detector responses were linear over the range...
The Cackling goose (Branta hutchinsii minima) population has increased from a low of 20,000 in 1984 to the current population of 220,000-300,000 (Stehn 2012, Sanders 2013). As the Cackling goose population began to recover in the late 1990s, the majority of the population relocated from wintering in California to the...
Anomaly timescales for the last 90 million years, derived from
marine magnetic profiles and published prior to mid-1979, are summarized,
illustrated for comparison, and critically reviewed. A revised timescale
is constructed using calibration points which fix the ages of anomalies
2.3', 5.5, 24, and 29. An equation is presented for...
Several experiments involving broilers and laying hens
were conducted to study the effects of feeding crab meal,
dried whey and cellulose. The positive responses of crab
meal as a substance for improving the utilization of dried
whey and cellulose were examined. Cellulose treated with
concentrated H3PO4 in broiler diets and...
Igneous oceanic crust encompasses ~60% of Earth’s surface and is composed of basalt glass and mafic, ultramafic, and felsic minerals. A vast marine aquifer lies within the crust, exchanging geochemically altered fluids with seawater from the overlying ocean at ridge crests, flanks, seamounts, and outcrops where permeable crust is exposed....
Corals have multiple roles in maintaining ocean health and are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. The coral animal is host to a multitude of taxa, including symbiotic dinoflagellate algae, fungi, bacteria, protists, and viruses. Environmental stressors and disease agents can perturb the delicate balance of the coral host...
A detailed understanding of the foraging ecology of species preying upon
threatened or endangered prey may contribute to identifying and evaluating
management options to reduce predation, when such management is deemed
appropriate. In the Columbia River estuary, Caspian terns (Sterna caspia) and
double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) have been identified as...
Electrodeposition is a versatile polymer deposition technique to create nano-microscale materials using an electrical field generated from a charged droplet of solution and a grounded collector. Electrospinning or electrospraying can occur during electrodeposition, leading to the creation of nanofibers or bead-like materials depending on the process parameters. Photopolymerization of the...
Patterns of nest attendance behavior by breeding birds represent a parent-offspring trade-off in which adults balance self-maintenance with parental care decisions.
Incubation, in particular, is of interest because adults must provide an environment
suitable for embryonic development through nest-building and contact-incubation.
We evaluated how adult incubation constancy and nest visitation...
As rates of obesity continue to rise in the United States, interest in restaurant menu labeling has become a growing phenomenon. Many proposed initiatives to require posted nutrition information at the point of sale or decision point for choosing restaurant fare are gaining attention. Research to explore how nutrition labeling...
Chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are often used for the study of plant genetics and evolution. Plastid and mitochondrial genome sequences have allowed us to investigate plant evolution on a genetic level to infer molecular evolutionary rates, population-genetic processes, co-evolutionary phenomena, and numerous evolutionary questions and hypotheses. Ficus...
In this creative non-fiction thesis, I present a collection of personal essays that examine my significant moments of awkwardness with failed communications or frustrated relationships when I wanted to draw people closer with language, but was unsuccessful. In the twelve stories, I discuss these issues in my interpersonal communication interwoven...