The black-footed ferret is a meso-predator within the Great Plains region of North America. Before the 1900s, black-footed ferret populations were self-sustaining in large ecological patches throughout the geographical range of the Great Plains. During the 1900s, various factors such as the systematic extermination of prairie dogs (the primary food...
In this comprehensive thesis, we present a series of experiments and findings that highlight the
critical importance of TDC Voltage Sensors in the hardware security domain. Our research begins
by introducing a novel self-calibrating module, demonstrating its efficiency through preliminary
calibration tests. We then delve into the Peak-to-Peak tests, which...
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 recent years, non-renewable and non-biodegradable plastic packaging forms the majority of landfilled waste. These products, mainly made from Polyethylene Tetraphlatate (PET) and other polyolefins, have excellent durability and barrier properties, but take hundreds of years to degrade.
Much focus has been put on developing environmentally friendly alternatives to polyolefins...
Combustion emissions produced from burning real transportation fuels have many environmental impacts. However, detailed chemistry across multiple phases, time scales, and thermodynamic conditions make predicting combustion emissions challenging. Detailed modeling of the gas phase alone is prohibitively expensive, due to the large size and stiffness of the kinetic models. The...
The Northern Rubber Boa (Charina bottae) is a small, secretive boa native to the Pacific Northwest. Despite this being possibly the highest latitude boas and one of only two boas native to the continental U.S., it has received surprisingly little attention. Most of the research on the natural history of...
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable forms of energy in the United States and the world. However, interactions between wind turbines and wildlife have the possibility to injure animals such as birds and bats. Strategies to assess and minimize wind turbine interactions with wildlife are critical for...
Motion planning is a cornerstone of autonomous robots, enabling robots to safely and efficiently perform tasks such as package delivery, infrastructure inspection, and manipulation. However, as the field of robotics matures, robotic systems are being developed that (1) are challenging to analytically model, (2) require computationally expensive model-based controllers, and...
This paper examines the invasion of exotic wilding conifers on the native tussock grasslands of Aotearoa New Zealand. The investigation includes two studies and aims to better understand the structure of Pinus contorta seeds across tree crown positions and the viability rates of P. contorta seeds produced during a trees...
Through a desk-top analysis, this research shows that South African women have gained and utilize specialized skills, behaviors, and adaptations through their daily activities which are useful when applied to water resource management. Further, South African women are shown to build and draw on social capital as a way to...