Succinate dehydrogenase (Sdh) inhibitor fungicides, such as boscalid, are effective for the management of gray mold caused by the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea. Unfortunately, resistance to boscalid was common among isolates of the pathogen from small fruits grown in Oregon. Boscalid-resistance is commonly associated with mutations in Sdh, especially in...
Biogas can be used to generate energy from a wide variety of sources. Wastewater treatment sludge is an effective source of waste to be used for generation of biogas to make energy which can be used to heat homes and run businesses. This would help decrease the use of fossil...
Oregon is the number three producer of strawberries in the nation despite the fact that Oregon strawberry acreage dropped from 2,600 acres in 2005 to 2,000 acres in 2014 (Beeles, 2015; NASS, 2019, Losh, 2017). With over three billion pounds of berries grown nationally each year, strawberries are an important...
Endophytes, foliage inhabiting fungi, are an unexplored source of fungal biodiversity and a potential resource for the production of bioactive natural products. In this research, leaf tissues from the species Arbutus menziesii, Rhododendron macrophyllum and the genus, Ilex and Salix were collected for the isolation of endophytic fungi. Fungal extracts...
Motivated by the Navier-Stokes equations, which are a set of unsolved equations related to fluid motion in R^3, we explored the incompressibility condition and the Neumann boundary problem. After exploring, we noticed that using iterated Riesz transforms of the boundary data could be used to get information about the velocity...
Postpartum uterine inflammation (endometritis) is not uncommon in beef cattle, resulting in infertility and culling. Prolonged calving may contribute to the increased incidence of endometritis in heifers. Commonly used methods to treat endometritis in beef cattle include intrauterine antibiotics and/or hormone injections, which can result in meat residues. Platelet rich...
In 1877 John Kerr described an experiment that demonstrated a quadratic change in refractive index in a plate glass placed in a strong external electric field. This results in a nonlinear relationship between the average electric polarization within the materials and the intensity of the applied electric field. This opened...
Since the advent of graphene, research on 2D materials has exploded. Countless experiments have uncovered novel properties that emerge when different layered crystals are cleaved down to only a few atomic layers in thickness. The most popular of these non-graphene 2D materials is MoS2, a semiconductor which has been of...
Bacterial endophytes have the potential to confer benefits to Douglas-fir ( Pseudotsuga menziesii ), for instance drought tolerance. Bacterial endophytes originating from seeds are especially important. This is because seed endophytes are more likely to be the first endophytes to get established within the young host plant. The goals of...
Exciton polaritons are quasiparticles composed of a quantum superposition of matter and light states that arises from the coupling of a standing wave photon and an exciton. This research has two primary objectives: to design and fabricate a Fabry-Perot microcavity system in which to produce exciton polaritons; and to show...
Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is a great tool not only to study fundamental physical processes such as many-body Coulomb interaction but also to develop ultrafast electronic devices. More specifically, intense THz fields interacting with semiconductors have exhibited strong nonlinear effect involving extreme carrier dynamics. In this experiment, intense THz radiation was...
Phytochemicals from the genus, Fagonia, have been attracting increasing attention due to their potential beneficial effects on human health, particularly, anti-cancer properties. Certain Fagonia species contain various types of phytochemicals such as saponins, alkaloids, cardiac glycosides, flavonoids, terpenoids, and tannins. In this study, we investigated the phytochemical composition of a...
Gamma ray bursts are some of the brightest events in the entire observable universe. Since the late 1960’s, thousands of gamma ray bursts have been observed and they have been researched extensively. However, there are still many mysteries which remain unsolved. One such mystery is whether or not the viewing...
The current American free-roaming horse (Equus caballus) population far exceeds the appropriate population limit set by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to preserve resources on public lands. Several techniques have been tested to assist in decreasing repopulation rates. The purpose of the present study was to analyze two contraceptive...
Currently multi-canonical, and grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations exist, but do not always give all of the necessary information of the system. When using a 1-D (only changing in one variable) broad histogram Monte Carlo method a user would need to run a range of simulations in order to get...
The relationship between the index of refraction and the porosity of a material is that the index decreases with respect to the porosity. This property can be used to change the index of refraction of films which allows control of the reflection of the material. This is important because being...
Multivariable functions permeate physics, mathematics, and other sciences. Understanding how quantities in multivariable relationships change together – or co-vary – is important for studying physical systems. In this project, we asked junior-level physics majors to describe the covariation of quantities in a multivariable context given a 2D graph. We identified...
The ability to focus light through strongly scattering materials is opening up exciting new avenues in many fields, such as optics, computer vision, biology, and medicine, which utilize light delivery and imaging techniques. Efficient, high resolution wavefront shaping and optimization methods are crucial to enabling this new capability.
In this...
Using a plastic bottle, we explore the capabilities of a reflective phase-only Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) in removing wavefront aberrations using a Zernike polynomial phase mask, with the modulators phase depth limited to 0.8π radians. Wavefront aberrations, which can be modeled with Zernike polynomials, distort image transmission through various optical...
Plasmon induced transparency (PIT) describes a spectral response of coupled plasmonic resonators in that coupling between bright and dark modes leads to a destructive interference resulting in a narrow transparency window. This process has many applications in material characterization and advanced optical devices such as slow light devices or ultrafast...