A common problem in postal surveys of human populations
arises when some of the sampled people fail to respond to the questionnaire.
The problem is that the answers provided by the respondents
may not be typical of the answers the nonrespondents would
provide if these had been solicited more successfully....
I examined the relative roles of biotic and abiotic factors in structuring redband trout
Oncorhynchus mykiss distributions in the South Fork John Day. I first examined the
relationship between the biological traits of the fish assemblage and riparian-geomorphic features in context of prevailing theories of stream ecology stemming from the...
Cyclic nitramines are a class of compounds that include most of the commonly used explosives today. These are among the most common toxicants released into the environment as a result of human activity, generated on military ranges, battlefields, and production sites. Of these, hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5- triazine (RDX) is of particular interest,...
The immune systems of various teleost fish have been studied in some detail for
the past several decades. One aspect of fish immunity, that of endogenously produced
modulating factors, has recently received a great deal of attention. Understanding the
functions and roles of endogenous factors that regulate fish immunity is...
The dissertation focuses on the engineering of light-matter interaction using plasmonic nanoparticles and metamaterials to achieve enhanced luminescence and based on which to improve the performance of biosensing and light-emitting technologies. We designed and fabricated a spectrum of nanostructures to exhibit particular dispersion relations capable of controlling the spontaneous emission...
Deep learning has recently revolutionized robot perception in many canonical robotic applications, such as autonomous driving. However, a similar transformation has yet to occur in more harsh environments including underwater and underground. This is due in part to the difficulty in deploying robots in these environments, which lack large real...
Marine ecosystems can be exposed to natural and anthropogenic disturbances that can lead to ecological failures. Marine reserves have been lately suggested to protect marine populations and communities that have been affected by habitat destruction and harvest. This research evaluates the potential role of two marine reserves established in Oregon...
The performance of deep learning frameworks could be significantly improved through considering the particular underlying structures for each dataset. In this thesis, I summarize our three work about boosting the performance of deep learning models through leveraging structures of the data. In the first work, we theoretically justify that, for...
The Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are increasingly explored in varies of fields including designing and optimizing computer systems. Recent research, such as optimizing memory/cache prefetching by ML training or predicting traffic pattern in throughput processors, also exhibits a promising future of introducing ML into computer system design and optimization. Throughput...