In recent years, unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) have become increasingly affordable and straightforward to incorporate in monitoring applications of forested ecosystems. This shift has facilitated interest in using these tools to monitor aspects of forest ecosystems including vegetation health, forest structure and composition, and potential habitat provided by these systems....
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...
Distributed version control allows developers to manage software evolution among distributed development teams. But it does not eliminate all consistency and concurrency issues, and instead introduces additional complexity when merging code. And resolving merge conflicts is nontrivial when automated merging fails. In such cases, developers are forced to inspect the...
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...
Septoria canker remains the most important disease of poplars in intensively managed forest plantations. Genetic resistance has long been considered the best way to manage for this disease. Transgenic resistance mediated by RNA silencing against pathogens and pests (HIGS: host-induced gene silencing) has shown promise in other pathosystems but has...
The California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME), located on the eastern boundary of the North Pacific Ocean, is highly dynamic, with variable conditions driven by seasonal upwelling, regional oceanography, and broad scale climate patterns. In the last decade, the northeast Pacific Ocean has experienced several marine heatwaves (MHWs), prolonged periods...
Freshwater systems cycle carbon along a spatial and temporal biogeochemical continuum, across which ecosystem processes contribute to transformations of organic matter (OM). Various ecological constraints impact rates OM transformation and production and consumption of the energetic end of respiration, methane. Microbiological processing and complete reduction of carbon substrates to methane...
There is a growing need for individualized instructional designs in 4-year institutions due to: 1) growing undergraduate enrollment trends across the U.S., 2) broader diversity in students backgrounds, and 3) the growing prevalence of asynchronous remote learning. With the growth in computer technology in education, tools such as adaptive intelligent...
Determining the electrical properties of ceria-based materials is important for their use as electrodes in hot-wall magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) power generators with wall temperatures greater than 1500 ̊C. The electrical conductivity of a material can be used in models for predicting the performance of generator designs. More specifically, the temperature dependent...
Coral reefs, found in tropical regions, are renowned for their rich biodiversity and their contributions to ecological, cultural, and economic aspects worldwide. The success of coral reefs hinges on the symbiotic partnership between corals and their dinoflagellate algae, from the family Symbiodiniaceae. The algae reside within the coral host’s gastrodermal...
Human-robot teams involve humans and robots collaborating to achieve tasks under various environmental conditions. Successful teaming requires robots to adapt autonomously in real-time to a human teammate's state. An important element of such adaptation is the ability for the robot to infer the tasks performed by their human teammates. Human-robot...
The dehumanization of Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and marginalized communities does not end once an individual is released from an institution. The dehumanization process is kept alive with ineffective community supervision and the stigma associated with an individual’s incarnation history. Evidence of this continual dehumanization process is reflected...
Metabolomics has recently gained momentum in biomolecule research and complements the genomics and proteomics research space. Metabolomics strives to detect, identify, and quantify all metabolites present in biological samples. In particular, biomolecular analysis using ultra-performance liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) has become increasingly important for metabolomic analyses. Similarly,...
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...
Motivation: Many robots such as legged robots and prosthetic hands/arms are designed to interact with uncertain and time-varying environments to accomplish their tasks.
Observations on humans and animals during their daily tasks suggest that they adapt their leg compliance while traversing with different velocities on different grounds and adjust their...
Streams across the western United States are impaired from human alterations that have reduced freshwater habitat by simplifying channel complexity and disconnecting floodplains (Knox et al., 2022; Waples et al., 2008; Wohl, 2014). Climate change is likely to continue exacerbating these risks by warming summer surface stream temperatures (Crozier et...
This dissertation examines college students' reflections on gender-related topics within a social justice course of a teacher preparation program. Using critical and feminist approaches, this study explores how a strategically designed curriculum focused on the study of gender enhances students' understanding of sexism, gender oppression, and masculinity. The curriculum employs...
Long-term, large-scale studies of meta-ecosystems provide critical information about how global change influences communities. In my dissertation, I analyzed data from studies encompassing 18 years (2006 – 2023) and over 1,000 km of coastline to investigate drivers of rocky intertidal community structure and dynamics. Specifically, I explored the roles of...
This work investigates the acoustic velocity of gas-liquid mixtures in vertical, co-current flow in a concentric annulus. Acoustic velocity shows promise as a detection parameter for the presence and amount of gas in a liquid flow because of its high sensitivity to gas void fraction in a gas-liquid mixture. However,...
Among the candidates for the next generation of nuclear power plant is the high temperature gas reactor (HTGR). Since the HTGR does not have the same operational history as water cooled reactors do in the United States, investigation into the response of different accident phenomena is still an active area...
Anthropogenic induced climate change is predicted to alter distribution of existing plant populations. As plants migrate over space and time, populations often fragment and contract, affecting basic elements of population dynamics (e.g., population size, gene flow, genetic diversity, etc.). Little is known, however, how these impacts on plant species will...
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...
Forests provide a wide range of timber and non-timber products along with providing a range of ecological services and support for biodiversity. Climate change poses various risks to forest health, as it can disrupt tree growth functions and trigger natural disturbances that increase tree mortality. In recent decades, altered disturbance...
Sediment convergence and divergence zones create subaqueous morphological features that range from ripples O (cm) to coastlines O (km). However, there is a gap in knowledge associated with quantifying the contribution of small-scale ripple mobility to the evolution of large-scale morphology. To address this gap, we investigate how small-scale ripples...
Multiagent learning offers a rich framework to address challenging real-world problems such as remote exploration and healthcare coordination, which require autonomous agents to express elaborate interactions. To be effective in such systems, agents must collectively reason about and pursue high-level, long-term, and possibly nebulous objectives while adapting their strategy to...
Natural products have long been an important source of resources for humans. Many of these compounds possess unique chemical structures and potent biological properties. By targeting natural products with specific chemical properties, we can gain a better understanding of the roles these compounds play in the environment and their interactions...
One of the pervasive problems arising in our modern, digital world surrounds data breaches where an adversary, through zero-day exploitations, phishing, or old-fashioned social engineering attacks, gains access to a service’s data stores. Our society increasingly relies on these cloud-based services for everything from our taxes to personal communication. As...
Background:
The number of people diagnosed with chronic physical conditions is increasing in the United States. Chronic mental illnesses are also common in the country. Low-income women and those on Medicaid bear a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions and these conditions significantly contribute to obstetric morbidity. Prioritizing preventive measures and...
Additive manufacturing has become a promising method for the fabrication of inexpensive, green, flexible sensors and electronics. Printed electronics on low- temperature substrates are very appealing for the flexible hybrid electronics market for their use in disposable and biocompatible electronic applications and in areas like packaging, wearables, and consumer electronics....
Physicists solve problems and communicate their work using many external representations, such as equations, words, diagrams, graphs, sketches, pictures, and more. To learn physics, then, students must learn to use external representations. In this dissertation, I present three manuscripts. Each manuscript discusses how upper-division Paradigms in Physics students use multiple...
Over time, Open Source Software (OSS) has become indispensable in the creation and upkeep of software products, serving as the fundamental building block for widely used solutions in our daily lives, including applications that enable communication, entertainment, and productivity. A sustainable OSS ecosystem is one that attracts and retains a...
A dissertation describing the results of a series of greenhouse experiments conducted to better understand phytoremediation in stormwater bioretention systems.
Diseases can be a substantial threat to woody plant production, a major industry in Oregon. Boxwood (Buxus spp.) and rhododendron (Rhododendron subgenus Rhododendron and Hymenanthes) represent the top two broadleaf evergreen woody plants by farmgate value in Oregon. Historically, Phytophthora root rot has been considered the most destructive disease of...
The Malawi public education system uses Chichewa as a language of instruction and content, with English as an independent subject for the first four years of primary school (Malawi Institute of Education, 2017). From fifth grade, English becomes a language of instruction and content in all subjects except for Chichewa,...
In this dissertation, I examine emerging economic issues which intersect outdoor recreation, environmental quality, public land use, and public health advisories. First, I explore the potential impacts of social media on visitation to public land. Social media, and in particular Instagram, has been suggested by journalist and land managers as...
Nickel (Ni)-based alloys with a high chromium (Cr) content are frequently employed in applications where elevated temperatures and/or corrosive environments are present due to their excellent corrosion resistance and mechanical properties. However, a gap exists around the formation, and kinetics of long-range order (LRO) Ni2Cr phase in both model binary...
In an increasingly computation-driven world, algorithms and mathematical models significantly impact decision making across various fields. To foster trust and understanding, it is crucial to provide users with clear and concise explanations of the reasoning behind the results produced by computational tools, especially when recommendations appear counterintuitive. Legal frameworks in...
Violent deaths are a leading cause of mortality in the United States and research suggests American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) are disproportionately impacted compared to all other racial and ethnic groups. Little is known about the true magnitude of the serious threat of violence mortality in AI/AN communities across...
Toxin production by cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) in freshwater systems has lasting ecological and human impacts. Nutrients, light availability, hydrology, and microbial community composition impact the frequency and intensity of toxic cyanoHABs. Climate change will exacerbate toxic cyanoHABs, making real time and predictive monitoring a vital tool for managing...
Natural resources play a crucial role in human society by providing both market value and non-market value. Effective management of these resources is necessary to achieve a balance between economic value and other non-market benefits. Econometric studies focusing on natural resource management help us understand the costs and benefits of...
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 phylum Cnidaria contains three main branches: Anthozoa (corals, sea anemones) Medusozoa (jellyfish, hydra), and Endocnidozoa. This latter branch is characterized by parasitism and contains the microscopic fish-parasites Myxozoa. Myxozoa are highly simplified, consisting of only a few cell types, however they have retained the nematocyst stinging cells and complex...
Multiagent approaches are well suited to designing autonomous solutions for systems that feature complex interactions between many individuals such as in autonomous traffic systems and multi-robot exploration systems. However, creating autonomous agents that function effectively in these systems is a challenging task. In these complex environments, agents need informative reward...
Background: Against global health disparities and a shortfall of medical personnel, community health workers (CHWs) promise a solution based in lived experience and connection to the health system. To address global and upstream health determinants, CHW programs engage the perspectives of both the workers they employ and the communities they...
As a targeted attack is unfolding against LGBTQ+ people across the U.S. right now, the unique experiences of queer and trans people deserve more attention. Transgender people are subjected to unique forms of discrimination and marginalization through cisnormativity (i.e., the assumption that everyone is and should be cisgender) and transnormativity...
This dissertation delves into understanding, characterizing, and addressing dataset shift in deep learning, a pervasive issue for deployed machine learning systems. Integral aspects of the problem are examined: We start with the use of counterfactual explanations in order to characterize the behavior of deep reinforcement learning agents in visual input...
Secure Computation is a powerful tool that enables a set of parties to jointly compute any function over their private inputs, without a trusted third party. Private Set Intersection is a specific case of two-party Secure Computation, where Alice (with private set X) and Bob (with private set Y) specifically...
The intricate relationship between wildlife health and the quality of their environment is well established, with technological advances increasing our understanding and aiding the unraveling of underlying mechanisms. Large herbivores require forage of sufficient quality to maintain their condition to reproduce and survive, all while warding off parasites and predators...
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how the orientations and knowledge of linguistically responsive teaching, as well as personal characteristics of school-based agriculture education (SBAE) teachers, influence the frequency of their implementation of linguistically responsive practices. Grounded in the Linguistically Responsive Teaching framework by Lucas and...
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Sensory stimulation from food-related cues elicits a number of rapid physiologic responses that prepare the gastrointestinal tract for efficient nutrient utilization and help minimize perturbations to metabolic homeostasis. Cephalic phase insulin release (CPIR) is one such response that specifically promotes glucose homeostasis by limiting the rise in blood sugar after...
Expressive motion has been found to be a highly effective tool in communicating intent and motivation in single robot human-robot interaction, but work in exploring how groups of robots can use motion in interactions with humans is relatively nascent. There are many additional complexities to consider expanding from single robot...
The purpose of this study was to explore how campus climate at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) influences degree completion for Black women. As the number of HSIs has increased in the past decade, there exists a need to understand how Black women fare in such an institutional context. Though there is...
After the 1996 national welfare reform known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was enacted with more stringent eligibility and work requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, a plethora of analyses have followed assessing the...
Phytochemicals from cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, contain a multitude of bioactive compounds that prevent and suppress cancer and promote optimal health. Some of the health promoting effects of cruciferous vegetables are attributed to a class of compounds known as isothiocyanates (ITCs), a potent nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2...
Nanoscale polymers (including nanoplastics) are widely present through commerce and make their way into the environment. As the improper disposal of plastic waste leads to continued accumulation and degradation of plastic pollution, the presence of plastic particles less than 1 micron (μm) in size (nanoplastics) will increase. Heightened concern over...
Skeletal muscle mitochondria are highly plastic organelles, integral to whole-body health. High-fat diet (HFD) and exercise remodel the skeletal muscle mitochondria. Whereby, altered skeletal muscle mitochondrial function is linked to decreased skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity which can be reversed by exercise. However, the mechanisms that contribute to skeletal muscle remodeling...
This dissertation consists of three essays that provide comprehensive insights into the complex dynamics shaping entrepreneurial and organizational outcomes. In the first essay I incorporate the Biophilia Hypothesis and the Challenge Hindrance Stressor framework to study entrepreneurial creativity. The findings emphasize the importance of more frequent nature visits for entrepreneurs...
For many young bilingual students in school settings, demands of curricula and standardized assessments take precedence over writing pedagogies that invite and welcome students’ identities and languages into their writing. Pedagogies of voice are a means of providing culturally and linguistically responsive instruction that support bilingual students learning to write...
This dissertation develops a framework for Curandera feminism, informed by familial healing practices, women of color feminisms, and institutional critique. My research centers my family’s generational Curandera practices. As I honor the call to be critical of the master’s tools, I seek possibilities for institutional change through Curandera feminism. Institutions...
Persistent reading difficulties are prevalent in U.S. schools and can lead to lower student performance across all subjects as well as distress, anxiety, and depression. In 2022, only 32% of fourth graders in the United States tested as proficient in reading. While there are many factors which affect reading progress...
The concept of reducing laboratory operations into microfluidic devices has been an attractive area of research for several decades. Due to several advantages of porous-media microfluidic devices including low mass, portability, power-free fluid transport, and the ability to store dried reagents in the porous structures, these devices show great promise...
Grasslands in the Pacific Northwest are characterized by seasonally wet, acidic soils that mainly support cool season grasses and a limited number of legume species. A major limitation to efficient animal production in grass-dominant pastures is the decline in the herbage growth rate and nutritional quality of forage from late...
Machine learning applied to computer architecture has rapidly transitioned from a theoretical novelty to being a driving force behind design, control, and simulation in practically all components. These machine-learning-based methodologies are further notable for their scalability to increasingly complex design challenges, which has allowed these methodologies to surpass the prior...
The dominant narrative of U.S. Muslims in higher education is associated with violent rhetoric, anti-American values, and terrorism. After terrorist attacks took place on September 11th, 2001, this narrative expanded to include a depiction of U.S. Muslims as being oppressed and submissive. Hate crimes, discrimination, and Islamophobic attacks towards Muslims...
Investigation on barley genotype contribution to beer flavor is a relatively new area of research but has interest from members of the malting barley supply chain. This body of work builds upon previous studies by approaching it from new angles that further supports the malting and brewing industries’ interests around...
While human tool-use proficiency helped define our history, the cognitive and perceptual mechanics of how humans use tools are not fully understood. This question is of great value to the design of hand-held tools and prosthetics. A prominent theory, tool embodiment, suggests that tool use is facilitated by a flexible...
Following European-American colonization of North America and associated landscape changes, barred owls (Strix varia) underwent a dramatic expansion of their historical range. The barred owl expanded across the previously tree-less Great Plains that had limited their distribution, and into the forests along the west coast. In these western forests they...
Based on current trends both pesticide and plastic production are expected to continue to rise in the coming decade. A growing global population coupled with the effects of climate change are the main drivers of increased pesticide use. Throughout this dissertation pesticides refer to herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Plastic production...
Background/Purpose: US public health, criminal justice, and many other social and scientific processes are affected by the quality of data obtained about death. Yet, little research has focused on how death investigations are conducted. The overall goal of this research was to examine the process by which information was obtained...
As the fifth generation of mobile communication systems (5G) is being deployed, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) serves as one of its enabling technologies where reliable and ultra low latency communications are achieved while being power and spectrum efficient. This thesis studies the security aspect of massive MIMO system from the...
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a ubiquitous environmental microbe, opportunistic pathogen, and a highly social organism. P. aeruginosa utilizes a wide array of cooperative behaviors to adapt to the environmental conditions around it. These behaviors include quorum sensing (QS), a form a cell-to-cell signaling that coordinates the expression of secreted products in...
The field of toxicology is challenged with a vast number of environmental chemicals and mixtures to which humans and ecosystems are exposed with limited toxicity data available. Chemical hazard assessment traditionally utilizes mammalian models and can be both cost- and time-limiting and may pose ethical concerns. To rapidly tackle this...
Oxidative dysfunction can affect dairy animals during periods of heightened stress, particularly during the transition from pregnancy to lactation and during diseases, such as intramammary infection (IMI), and can contribute to increased inflammation, immune dysfunction, and cell death. As such, methods for ameliorating oxidative stress and restoring redox regulation may...
Greenwashing is a relatively novel, diversely interpreted, and under-researched social phenomenon. Therefore, studying greenwashing concepts, methodological yardsticks, and the dynamic behind its pervasiveness provides an excellent opportunity to improve our understanding of it, refine our detection tools, and illuminate its influencing factors and impacts on society. This study aims to:...
Connectivity of fish populations is a crucial question for fisheries conservation and the development of spatial management plans. Both adult and larval movement define the extent and direction of ecological and evolutionary overlap between geographic regions and, therefore, how we define stocks for management purposes. Within that context, my work...
Entrepreneurship is regarded as a viable way for women to enter the economy and improve their quality of life (Morris et al., 2018). However, little attention has been paid to understanding how women, and specifically women of color, utilize their ways of knowing to learn entrepreneurship. Grounded in Chicana/Latina feminism...
At a time when environmental conditions are rapidly changing, understanding how thermal extremes impact wildlife is imperative to fully understanding the consequences of climate change in natural ecosystems. While many organisms are currently impacted by rapidly warming and more erratic environmental conditions, identifying and investigating model species whose life histories...
The scale of pest and disease dispersal is often larger than the scale of individual farms. Therefore, an individual grower’s response to pests and diseases can affect and is affected by their surrounding growing region. Individual growers are also not isolated, and engage in various forms of information gathering, sharing,...
Multi-robot teams offer promising solutions for many long term deployments in remote and dangerous domains, such as extraterrestrial or underseas exploration. However, long term deployments present many problems preventing robot teams from operating effectively. Learning over long time scales is makes it difficult to assign credit to robots' actions, as...
This work explores contemporary human-nonhuman relations in the Columbia River Basin of the Pacific Northwest United States. Specifically, it draws from Columbia sea lions to illustrate how salmon-sea lion-human relations are entangled in the North American Wildlife Management model of nonhuman genocide. It follows a multispecies ethnographic design where over...
The dominant narrative of Asian Americans in higher education is one of high achievement, success, and wellness. Dominant voices of white supremacy have primarily constructed this narrative. Asian Americans are regarded as the model minority or the dichotomous “model” while simultaneously maintaining “minority” status. This study centers on seven Asian...
Secure two-party computation (2PC) is the task of performing arbitrary calculations on secret inputs provided by two parties, while maintaining secrecy if at least one party is honest. 2PC has been applied to privacy-preserving record linkage and machine learning, in areas such as medicine where maintaining privacy is crucial. One...
The focus of this thesis is to design, characterize, and apply novel computational methods and molecular systems to interrogate heterogeneous human gut microbiome-related phenomena. In Chapter 2, I design, implement, and characterize a method for embedding co-occurrence patterns derived from massive 16s amplicon datasets. I use this method to 1....
Put generally, the work I have conducted in my time at Oregon State University has been to answer two questions. The first of these is “Why do I get this particular product from this particular chemical reaction?” and the second is “How do the reagents in this chemical reaction lead...
Soils contain the largest pool of carbon that is actively cycling on human timescales, leading many to view soils as a natural climate solution with multiple co-benefits. The field of soil science is rapidly evolving, but without a unified understanding of soil carbon dynamics. This dissertation leverages two distinct long-term...
Learning latent space representations of high-dimensional world states has been at the core of recent rapid growth in reinforcement learning(RL). At the same time, RL algo- rithms have suffered from ignored uncertainties in the predicted estimates of model-free or model-based methods. In our work, we investigate both of these aspects...
North American bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) have experienced significant declines and population extirpations due to novel pathogens such as Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae. This disease continues to limit the population restoration of bighorn sheep. Therefore, understanding the demographic consequences of pathogen presence and the risk of contact between bighorn populations and potential...
The rates of biological introductions and invasions are increasing, driving up the associated harms to ecosystems and economies. The spread and effects of invasive organisms depend on the specifics of the introduction, the character of the invaded ecosystem, and multiple traits of the invasive organism itself. One mechanism by which...
Small-scale fisheries account for at least 40 percent of global fisheries catch, 90 percent of the people employed along capture fisheries value chains operate in small-scale fisheries, and 45 million women participate in small-scale fisheries globally. The past few years have brought warnings from policymakers and resource managers about risks...
This dissertation presents novel, field-activated smart material systems for the actuation and control of autonomous robots. Smart materials, a type of material whose properties can be changed with an external stimuli, represent a promising direction to expand upon existing robotic control and actuation methods, particularly in the sub-fields of soft...
Cell signaling is often mediated by protein-protein interactions, which must be specific, tunable, and transient to allow agile responsiveness to cellular messages. Due to their unique properties, multivalent, intrinsically disordered proteins make ideal candidates to accomplish these vital tasks. A single protein with multiple binding sites may bind numerous partners,...
Riparian zones are ecotones between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Processes in streams are strongly influenced by riparian forest communities, age, stage and structure. Temperate forests across much of North America, including riparian areas, are recovering from historic land clearing with many stands in the stem-exclusion phase of development in which...
Robotic Bipedal locomotion holds the potential for efficient, robust traversal of difficult terrain. The difficulty lies in the dynamics of locomotion which complicate control and motion planning. Bipedal locomotion dynamics are dimensionally large problems, extremely nonlinear, and operate on the limits of actuator capabilities, which limit the performance of generic...
Smoldering combustion in wildland fires is a critical phenomenon that needs in-depth study because it can initiate with weaker ignition sources, can persist for long periods, is difficult to suppress, and can transit to flaming combustion. Cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin are the major organic constituents within biomass, in varying proportions...
Climate model simulations and paleoclimate proxies are two tools that enable an understanding of the climate history of the Earth. When utilized together, they form a powerful paradigm for understanding past changes. Proxies are the only physical link to the past conditions on Earth, and models “fill in the gaps”...
Wildfire impacts have intensified in many ecosystems across the western United States due to the combined impact of fire exclusion, climate change, and land management practices. However, on many of these landscapes, fire is a fundamental ecological process that has shaped vegetation structural and compositional diversity, ecosystem function, landscape pattern,...
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...
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative pathology currently affecting nearly 44 million individuals worldwide, yet there are not currently any effective treatments or preventions for AD despite the rapid development in our understanding of the disease over the last four decades. The medical and sanitary innovations of the last century...
Hop (Humulus lupulus L. var. lupulus) is a diploid, dioecious plant with an extensive history of cultivation and use in brewing, as a textile, and for its therapeutic properties. Hop is prized for its ability to produce a variety of aromatic and flavor compounds, as well as compounds with anti-microbial...
Ultrafast spectroscopy has recently gained momentum as a powerful, noninvasive characterization toolset capable of studying a diverse array of samples with applications in chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, and more. Two popular ultrafast spectroscopic techniques include femtosecond transient absorption (fs-TA) and femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS). The latter of these techniques...