Jordan has a higher fertility rate (3.8) than the averages of countries similar in income to Jordan (2.2) and compared to the Middle East and North Africa region as a whole (2.8) (WHO, WB, UNICEF, & DHS, 2011). The findings of the 2009 Jordanian Population and Family Health Survey demonstrated...
This study was divided into three stages. The first phase of the study aimed to examine factors influencing the students' participation in physical activity. Eight female and male university students participated in the focus group. It was found that the participants' perceived benefits of physical activity were physical, psychological and...
Variable-retention harvesting was proposed to reduce loss of biodiversity and ecosystem processes associated with late-seral Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forests in the Pacific Northwest. The Demonstration of Ecosystem Management Options experiment was established to test this hypothesis. Analysis presents various challenges to drawing statistical inferences about treatment effects. This dissertation explored...
In this dissertation, we derive and implement a new transport-diffusion hybrid algorithm for solving thermal radiative transfer (TRT) problems. Using the method of nonlinear elimination (NLEM), the TRT system of equations can be written in terms of a transport equation with the absence of scattering and a diffusion equation. The...
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide with human papillomavirus (HPV) being the main cause of the disease. Currently available treatment methods are limited and emphasize the need for discovery of new therapies that improve patient outcome. Chromosomal amplifications have been identified as a source of...
Italian ryegrass populations have been identified with evolved resistance to glyphosate in orchards with a history of glyphosate use. Two of these populations were selected to investigate the inheritance of glyphosate resistance. The mechanisms involved in the herbicide resistance were an altered target site for the population SF and reduced...
The purpose of the study was to identify and examine critical factors that either promote or hinder acute care hospitals decision-making on adopting complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). All acute care hospitals in the states of Oregon and Washington were included in the study. Individual interviews were conducted at the...
The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm brought an ever-increasing dependence on low-power devices to collect sensor data and transmit that information to the cloud, placing greater demand on connectivity and lifespan. In response, rapid worldwide innovation demonstrates the trade-offs in processing, communication, and energy consumption with diverse approaches to low-power...
Fruit juice concentrates- hard pear, soft pear, fig,
prune, raisin, white grape, and pineapple, and sweeteners-invert
beet, invert cane, and high fructose corn syrup
(HFCS) were characterized by sugar profiles, nonvolatile
acid profiles, UV spectral profiles, and mineral content.
These fruit juices and sweeteners were also used to
adulterate commercial...
The purpose of this study was twofold; first, to identify the
values held by Oregon State University students, and second, to
determine if the values of OSU students are different from samples
previously surveyed. A further purpose of the study was to
develop baseline data on a cross-section of the...
The present study was a modified replication of the two pioneer
works in the field of sport and ethnic groups by Pooley (1968)
and Tindall (1973). This study investigated whether participation in
an ethnic basketball league in Japanese-American communities affected
the rate of assimilation of two groups of Japanese-American, high-school...
The central question of this study was to examine the moral orientation and the role of self in subject generated moral dilemmas for information on the developmental and cultural forces contributing to the etiology and maintenance of eating disorders in college women. The research was based on the theories of...
Gene transfer via interspecific hybridization within Phaseolus has
been limited by abnormal hybrid development and the rapid loss of
hybridity in subsequent generations. The most advanced embryo
development occurs in P. vulgaris x P. coccineus where mature seeds
form. However, the reciprocal cross still results in abnormal embryos
unable to...
This study was conducted to determine if there were
possible areas of student individuality and uniqueness
that might contribute to successful completion of distance
education courses as compared to successful completion of
traditional classroom courses. Five areas of possible
differences were identified and studied: 1) differences
between the number of...
Mental illness is a universal phenomenon, but cultural context has a profound influence on how it is perceived, classified, and treated. Most systematic research on public attitudes toward mental illness has been completed in Western societies. The emergence of multicultural psychotherapy in the West has helped professionals recognize the extent...
...................................................................................................... 65
Table 2.2. Cross Tabulations and Chi-square Test Results for Alternative Medicine by
Uncontrolled direct fire rockets exhibit high impact point dispersion, even at relatively short range, and as such have been employed as area weapons on the battlefield. In order to reduce the dispersion of a direct fire rocket, feedback control is employed to fire short-duration solid rocket pulses mounted near the...
Construction remains the most hazardous industry in the United States in terms of the aggregate number of fatalities. Twenty percent of all occupational related fatalities occur in construction; approximately three construction workers die per calendar day. Moreover, this trend has been prevalent for too long. One method to reduce this...
Systems theory and role theory were used in this study to
develop a management model, integrating the managerial and
psycho-social subsystems of the family system. The integrated theory
and model were used to derive hypotheses concerning whether or not
type of task and actual/relative amount of time spent on household...
Programming is integrated across the workflow of multiple domains where end-user programmers, those who need to program as a means to an end, regularly need to code. In the modern setting of collaborative development, end-user programmers have to interpret the intentions behind existing code to contribute and build solutions to...
Assessing AI systems is difficult. Humans rely on AI systems in increasing ways, both visible and invisible, meaning a variety of stakeholders need a variety of assessment tools (e.g., a professional auditor, a developer, and an end user all have different needs). We posit that it is possible to provide...
This thesis describes a Mossbauer effect and electron
paramagnetic resonance study of iron (III) tetraphenylporphyrinatobenzenethiolate
benzene thiol, an analog compound
for bacterial cytochrome P-450. The compound is unusual in
that it provides a model for the two ferric reaction states
of cytochrome P-450. The iron in the model compound exhibits...
Given the recent advancements in the field of pulsar timing pertaining to the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB), it is now the perfect time to perform tests of gravity via exploration of the correlation signature between the timing data of pairs of pulsars induced by the polarization...
Billions of pounds of bisphenol A (BPA) are produced annually around the globe for the manufacture of numerous consumer products, including polycarbonate food and water containers, the protective resin linings of food cans, thermal printing paper, and dental fillings. BPA exposure during nervous system development has been associated with learning...
Greenhouse and growth chamber experiments were conducted with
the following objectives: (a) to study the effects of N-1-naphthylphthalamic
acid (naptalam) on shoot and tuber production, rhizome transformation,
and growth of yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus L.) plants;
(b) to study the effects of N-phosphonomethyl glycine (glyphosate) on
nutsedge plants at different...
Quick and accurate measurements of nanoparticles have important applications in biology, environmental and non-proliferation areas. Calculation of isotopic ratios, particularly in special nuclear materials, has relied on integration of nanoparticle counts and limited the capability of counting minor isotopes. Rapid transient detection method of nanoparticles has demonstrated the effectiveness of...
Chronic hepatitis B disproportionately affects Asian Americans. Although Asians make up only 4.2% of the total United States (U.S.) population, they account for more than half of those infected with hepatitis B. If left untreated, chronic hepatitis B could lead to cirrhosis, liver damage, and liver cancer. Studies show that...
Knowledge workers are struggling in the information flood. There is a growing interest in intelligent desktop environments that help knowledge workers organize their daily life. Intelligent desktop environments allow the desktop user to define a set of “activities” that characterize the user’s desktop work. These environments then attempt to identify...
The Late Spring Secondary Precipitation Maximum in the
Interior Pacific Northwest results from a complex system of climatic
controls. The Secondary Maximum is most strongly developed over the
high plateau of Oregon immediately in the lee of the Cascade
Mountains. Local topographic
organization exerts strong control
over the magnitude and...
The performance of an organism or organismic subsystem is
the result of the interaction between the performance capacity of
the system and Its environment. Environmental conditions can
stress an organism and thus affect it's performance. In this
study, three whole organism performances were examined: critical
swimming speed, fatigue time and...
When hops are added to beer, varying degrees of hoppy aroma persist in the finished beer as a result of a number of factors. Dry-hopping is a technique whereby hops are added to beer post-fermentation to leverage the maximum aroma potential of the hop essential oils while minimizing bitterness contribution...
This study compared wives defined as underemployed by educational
mismatch with not underemployed wives on four major predictor variables--
relative market work advantage; degree of competition in the
female labor market; time demands from family members; and assistance
with childcare and other housework. The data were from NE 113, An...
This dissertation centers on development of two web-based, in class learning tools, the AIChE Concept Warehouse (CW) and the Web-based Interactive Science and Engineering Learning Tool (WISE), and describes the investigation of student learning through their use. The intent of these tools is to promote deeper conceptual understanding in students...
Accurate taxonomy is essential to preservation and management of native
grasses. Four problems in fescue taxonomy were investigated: the identity of the
native fescue that dominates western Oregon and Washington prairies, the relationship
of native Festuca roemeri to closely related grasses, the status of F. howellii and F.
washingtonica, and...
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...
To begin to understand freshwater seasonal floodplain fish communities in the context of human alteration of the physical system, species introductions and wetland restoration efforts, I studied fish assemblages in fifteen seasonal floodplain wetlands within four geographic regions (coastal, upper Columbia River estuary, Puget Sound and eastern Oregon/Washington) in the...
During the first full school year of the Covid-19 pandemic, two central contexts for adolescent development—home and school—changed utterly. In Oregon, most middle- and high schoolers attended school entirely remotely from the beginning of the pandemic, in March, 2020, through the end of April, 2021, removing both the supports available...
Plant sexual reproduction requires a broad array of molecular mechanisms to proceed successfully. Some of these mechanisms are well-studied, but our knowledge of them as a whole is fundamentally incomplete. Pollen tube growth is a key part of this process, facilitating the delivery of the sperm cells to the female...
Small molecule drugs have been instrumental in our fight against diseases, beginning when some of the earliest ancient cultures used plant remedies to treat illnesses. More recently, the skill of isolating and characterizing the active ingredients within bioactive plants and microbial extracts has led to the isolation and design of...
Early and later successional stages of the assemblage of turf algae and sessile
animals of a Macrocystis kelp forest were studied off San Nicolas Island, California
from 1980 through 1981, and 1983 through 1984. Kelps were manipulated to
determine if differences in illumination could account for dominance by turf algae...
Imazamox-resistant wheat (Clearfield®) cultivars carry the Imi1 gene, which confers resistance to the imidazolinone (IMI) herbicide imazamox. Imazamox provides selective control of jointed goatgrass and other weeds in IMI-resistant wheat. Imi1 gene flow between IMI-resistant wheat and jointed goatgrass may occur via hybridization and backcross events. In 2009 and 2010,...
The gut microbiome has been previously implemented in a number of diseases. Of note is its substantial role in metabolic syndrome, which encapsulates a group of conditions that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke. Understanding the causal relationships between the gut microbiome and host processes...
The parameters of separable coupled channels s-wave potentials for the strong
KN interaction are determined from low energy K⁻p scattering data with
additional constraints from π⁻p π∑K° production data. The shifts and
widths of the Coulomb bound states in kaonic hydrogen are calculated with
these potentials and compared with experiment....
The uses of computer technology in the fields of art
and graphic design in Thailand were investigated for the
purpose of identifying levels of current computer use from
280 responses to a specifically designed questionnaire
among: 1) full-time graphic design educators, 2) art and
design students, and 3) graphic design...
Through this dissertation, the quality of freely available physical activity promotion web articles that lay adults would likely locate online was critically appraised and theoretically analyzed. Three broad categories were considered. They were 1) message consistency with national health guidelines for physical activity; 2) suitability for health-related communication; and 3)...
............................................................................ 40
Table 2. Chi-square goodness-of-fit test: Percent of web articles that presented at least
Humans and viral disease are inextricably intertwined. Viral disease plays an immeasurable role in human life, from the disease and economic burden associated with every facet of contending with human viral disease, to managing the consequences of viral disease in organisms important to our food supply, economy, and entertainment. The...
Two light sensitive mutants of the green alga Scenedesmus obliquus strain D₃ have been characterized. The photodynamic nature of their sensitivity has been established, the subchloroplast site of photodamage has been investigated, and their noncarotenogenic character has been verified. The two mutants possess several similarities, although mutant L. S. -41...
The rural two-lane highway in the southeastern United States is frequently associated with a disproportionate number of serious and fatal crashes. The major research objectives are to investigate the relations between probabilities of fatal crash type occurrence and potential contributing factors from road geometric design characteristics and roadside, environmental features....
Discrete columns, such as stone and soil-cement columns, are often used to improve the liquefaction resistance of loose sandy ground. In particular, stone columns are considered to increase resistance potential by densification, drainage, and reinforcement mechanisms. For silty soil, the shear stress reduction resulting from the reinforcing effect of stiffer...
) ................................................................................................................. 182
Figure C.4: Normalized power spectral density versus frequency plot for unfiltered
Chi-Chi
The goal of this dissertation was to improve our abilities in acquiring critical in vivo data by establishing embryo-larva zebrafish as an exemplary model to quantitatively evaluate cancer progression. The living environment that encompasses a tumor has a significant effect on how cancer develops, grows and metastasizes. In order to...
Data from nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer regions (nrITS) and chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) have failed to resolve phylogenetic relationships in Pinus. To provide greater interspecific resolution, five low-copy nuclear genes were developed from mapped conifer anchor loci. Four genes were sequenced from species representing all Pinus subsections. Individual loci do...
Clean technologies can address multiple challenges associated with climate change, environmental protection, and human health. However, the impact desired by introduction of such technologies is achievable only if new options effectively replace inefficient, conventional practices. This ‘design for adoption’ requires understanding of user motivations, associated beliefs, context of use, and...
Accessing information on the Web has become ingrained into our daily lives, and we seek information from many different sources, including conference and journal publications, personal web pages, and others. Increasingly, web-based information retrieval systems such as web-based search engines, library on-line catalog systems, and subscription-based federated search systems are...
Imaging spectra of plant tissues yield considerable potential and useful information
for basic studies and agriculture practice. We constructed an imaging spectrophotometer
with spectral range from 400 nm to 1100 nm, which was used to study various
physiological events of plant germplasm: location of bundle sheath and mesophyll cells in...
Studies with fluorodifen were conducted to gain more information
about its field performance and the influence of light quantity,
quality and timing of exposure on its phytotoxic properties. Uptake
and trans location in three plant species were also investigated.
These studies were aimed at evaluating the usefulness of this chemical...
The consumption of cruciferous vegetables is associated with several health benefits, including cancer prevention. Many of these benefits are attributed to the phytochemical, sulforaphane (SFN), which is derived from cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and broccoli sprouts. These vegetables contain glucoraphanin (GFN), SFN’s precursor, which is converted to SFN by...
Stony corals are the ecosystem engineers of the vital, dynamic, and complex marine ecosystem known as coral reefs. Globally, coral reefs are undergoing degradation from multiple anthropogenic stressors. Coral reef organism holobionts, or the host along with its microbial components, are key to reef ecosystem success and functioning. Marine microbes...
Pseudomonas is a diverse, ubiquitous, and widely studied genus of bacteria. As Pseudomonas species occupy a wide range of niches in the ecosystem, they have made remarkable biological impacts. Better understanding of Pseudomonas biology, genetic diversity, and functional interactions with other organisms and the environment will provide valuable insights into...
My work on computing complex catalyzed organic transformations reveals that only a few subtle chemical factors, e.g. non-classical hydrogen bonding, (hyper)conjugation and steric effects, common across different catalyst manifolds are critical for catalysis and selectivity. Rational manipulation and exploitation of these factors has led to improved catalyst designs, which has...
Sex steroids, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH),
luteinizing hormone (LH) and gonadotropin releasing hormone
(GnRH) were measured in monosex and mixed sex populations of
rainbow trout during early development. Steroids declined
following fertilization, increased at hatch, then fell and
remained constant thereafter. Trends toward differences in
steroids between males and females...
The presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), organic contaminants first synthesized in the 1940s, has been reported worldwide in a variety of environmental matrices and ultimately in biological systems including humans. Ongoing research into PFAS has included identifying novel PFAS, assessing their fate and transport in the environment, and...
Mass timber (MT) offers viable eco-conscious solutions within the building industry, with its high strength ratings, dimensional stability, light weight and renewable nature enhancing its status as a low carbon alternative to conventional building materials like steel and concrete. Moisture intrusion, coupled with the inherent organic nature of wood pose...
The solution structure determination of DNA molecules has been an important part of structural biology. NMR solution structures are a complement to structures solved via X-ray crystallography; the two methods are the only ways of obtaining three dimensional coordinates of macromolecules. Because of the nature of the molecule, the solution...
Background: The numbers of Southeast Asian women in higher education, whether within administration, teaching faculty, or counseling and student services are scarce. The specific needs of minority women go largely unnoticed and remain unaddressed and may contribute to the low numbers of minority women in higher education leadership.
Purpose: The...
This was a cross-cultural comparative study that examined college students' physical activity behavior in both the United States and the Republic of China on the basis of the full Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of behavior change. Although current investigations do support TTM as a powerful model of physical activity behavior change,...
Sudden oak death is caused by the clonally reproducing generalist oomycete Phytophthora ramorum. The pathogen can infect more than 130 different plant hosts including Quercus spp., Larix kaempferi, and Notholithocarpus densiflorus, as well as common nursery genera such as Rhododendron and Camelia, where it causes symptoms ranging from bleeding cankers...
Local adaptation in plants may hold the key to understanding the level of resilience of an ecosystem and probability of persistence of a species in the face of rapid anthropogenic changes in climate and disturbance regime. Clonal species are especially important in wetlands, one of our most productive and vulnerable...
All mammals host communities of commensal microbes in and on their bodies. Recent technological advances, combined with experimental studies in laboratory animals, are beginning to reveal the ubiquitous links between the gut microbiome and host disease, metabolism, immunity, and numerous other host functions. A new challenge of microbiome research is...
This work explores the electric field induced strain mechanisms in environmentally benign Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3 (BNT) based piezoelectric thin films. Although BNT-based materials show promise as replacements for toxic Pb-based piezoelectrics, the displacement mechanisms are not consistent between thin films and bulk materials, and the differences have yet to be well understood....
Inquiry into the cause of men's premature mortality has been historically framed in a biological deterministic perspective. This research takes an alternative view whereby the possible interactions of psychosocial variables with men's health promoting and health seeking behaviors are examined using cross-sectional survey data with older men. Specifically, this research...
Parenting education is a process of providing information to parents on the
challenges of parenting, services available for families, and ideas on how to interact with
children. The federal Even Start family literacy program, designed to increase the
educational opportunities of parents and children, has a strong parenting education
component....
Wheat stripe rust (WSR), also called yellow rust of wheat (Tricitum spp.), causal agent Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici (Pst), is a foliar disease of major economic importance on wheat, especially grown in temperate locations. WSR causes major losses of wheat yield, estimated at nearly $ 1 billion per year, and...
Processes of metamorphosis, settlement, and growth were examined in Pacific sanddab
using field studies and otolith microstructure. This flatfish transforms at large sizes, has a
gradual metamorphosis, and settles to a nursery on the middle continental shelf. Eye migration
takes 3 months and "metamorphosis proper" which begins after completion of...
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...
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...
Exposure assessment is necessary to determine the frequency and magnitude of environmental contaminants, especially since exposure may lead to adverse health outcomes. Traditional personal exposure assessment tools such as biological samples are limited in their ability to capture a wide range of chemical exposures from a single sample, and others...
The utility of high-throughput, computational screening has become an invaluable asset to the field of materials science. In the hierarchy of computational methods, the most accurate methods are often the most computationally expensive. However, as both the efficiency and fidelity of numerical techniques advance, high-quality screening of large materials datasets...
Obesity and metabolic syndrome (MetS) affect over 1.9 billion adults and 12.7 million youth in the US. If all of today’s obese American youth become obese adults, the total societal costs over their lifetime may exceed $1.1 trillion. We show that feeding rodents a high-fat diet supplemented with xanthohumol (XN)...
Grape powdery mildew (Erysiphe necator) causes economic damages to grape worldwide due to the cost of management and injury to berries. Each region where European grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is grown experiences a unique epidemic, and disease prediction models that are based on empirical correlations of weather data to disease fail...
Herbs have been used for many centuries in diverse civilizations for the treatment of heart disease. Only a few natural supplements claim to have direct cardiovascular actions including hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) and berberine derived from the Berberidaceae family. Several different studies indicate important cardiovascular effects of hawthorn and berberine. For...
Marine sediments are one of the largest habitats for microbial life on earth. These microorganisms play critical roles in biogeochemical cycling both within the subsurface and between the sediment and water columns. However, microbial communities in sediments are highly heterogeneous and the factors defining microbial community structure and metabolic function...
Professional software engineers have an arsenal of techniques such as unit testing and assertions to check their specifications, but these techniques require tools, motivation, experience and training that programmers without professional software engineering training may not have. As a result, professionals in other fields, such as scientific modelers, face greater...
Establishing a therapeutic alliance or a therapeutic bond has long been seen as an essential component of obtaining positive treatment outcomes in clinical practice. More recently, the idea of recognizing therapeutic alliance ruptures (disagreements about the tasks or goals of therapy or a problem in the therapeutic bond) during counseling...
Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a leading cause of acute gastroenteritis associated with consumption of seafood, particularly raw oysters. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 45,000 cases of V. parahaemolyticus infection occur each year in the U.S. A recent CDC report revealed that the incidence of...
A general analytical framework was established to investigate the scale-related variabilities in remote
sensing. The variabilities were studied first by investigating canopy structure, canopy interaction with
light, relation between spectral reflectance and plant phenological parameters. The variabilities
simulated by the plant model were compared with the actual spectral data acquired...
Genomic analysis is a new approach for the characterization and investigation of novel genes, gene clusters, the function of uncharacterized proteins, and genetic diversity in microorganisms. These approaches are important for the study of chlamydiae, a system in which several genomes have been sequenced but in which techniques for genetic...