Pacific razor clams (Siliqua patula) are narrow oblong bivalves that can be found in sandy habitats along the western coast of the United States, from Alaska (Aleutian Islands) to southern California (Pismo Beach). In Washington state, the razor clam fishery has been documented to be an important contributor to the...
This thesis explores the common features that unite postcolonial and posthumanist theories, finding that the Cartesian notion of representationalism has enabled the humanist hierarchy that both fields decry. This humanist hierarchy coalesces in the figure of the author, and as such its most effective criticism takes the form of metafiction....
Uncertainties in general circulation model (GCM) representations of marine boundary layer (MBL) shallow cloud cover contribute substantially to the spread in model predictions of future climate. Further uncertainties in GCM output arise from an incomplete understanding of cloud-aerosol interactions. For example, the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on...
Background: According to the National Mental Health Survey (NMHS), the treatment gap of any mental disorder in India among the general population was reported to be as high as 83% (R. S. Murthy, 2017). There is insufficient evidence currently describing the treatment gap among the child and adolescent population. Given...
Children enter kindergarten on unequal footing. Early childhood experiences shape initial disparities and predict academic achievement and life trajectories. One influence, child care, is not available to all children in Oregon as most counties qualify as child care deserts. This paper analyzes if child care access has an effect on...
The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of school-based agriculture education (SBAE) teachers who self-identified as blended pedagogues. This study specifically focused on SBAE teachers' beliefs and how those beliefs influence their blended teaching classroom practice. Teacher beliefs are personal, subjective, and temporally and contextually stable....
Transformation is a major bottleneck for genetic engineering and gene editing in forest tree species. This includes most genotypes of Populus and Eucalyptus, which are some of the world’s most widely-cultivated genera of plantation forest trees. To provide new tools for transformation, I tested the transcription factor-protein chimera consisting of...
Severe wildfires are increasing in the western United States, impacting vegetation structure, and in turn, forest regeneration conditions. These wildfires are also raising a substantial amount of scientific and management concern regarding the resilience of forested ecosystems, or the ability of the ecosystem to return to a pre-fire condition. This...
Black male student-athletes in revenue-producing sports encounter multiple stressors at predominantly White institutions (PWI). These stressors can include identity conflicts, role confusion, feelings of exploitation as revenue producers, academic imposter syndrome, heavy workloads, and racial microaggressions. This study explores how Black male student-athletes in revenue-producing sports define their roles within...
Mosses (Phylum Bryophyta) are widely considered to be among the most ancient groups of land plants (embryophytes) and they are the second most speciose embryophyte phylum with ~13,000 extant species. Despite their diversity and antiquity, mosses have a limited fossil record, which primarily consists of gametophytes entombed in Cenozoic amber....
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”...
Grapevine red blotch virus (GRBV) is a single-stranded DNA virus that causes grapevine red blotch disease (GRBD). Symptoms of GRBD include red discoloring of leaf margins and red veins on the underside of the leaves. GRBD affects the plant's metabolism and photosynthetic pathways, and disrupts carbon translocation and chlorophyll concentrations....
Chlorinated solvents are a class of widespread groundwater contaminants that are toxic, carcinogenic, and difficult to remediate at low concentrations. 1,4-dioxane, a suspected carcinogen, is often a co-contaminant found in mixtures of chlorinated solvent plumes. In-situ bioremediation methods of degrading these chemicals through aerobic cometabolism have shown promise. Permeable Reactive...
NAND flash based solid state drives (SSDs) require out-of-place updating due to the characteristics of flash memories. In addition, due to the mismatched granularity between read/write and erase operations, a cleaning policy involving garbage collection and wear leveling has to perform data migration incurring high overhead. Another challenge is that...
Integrated Distributed Electric Augmented Lift (IDEAL) applies upper-surface blowing in a novel way using an array of electric ducted fans (EDFs) to achieve electric short take-off and landing to meet the growing need for urban air transportation. Additional research on the use of vortex generators (VGs) to reduce flow separation...
A growing body of research has connected bullying victimization to a number of risk factors in adolescents, including substance use. The current study utilizes Agnew’s revised strain theory as a theoretical framework to examine this relationship, as well as patterns of substance use across gender, race, and mental health status....
Previous research has shown that traveling in a work zone involves a higher risk of crashing compared to normal (non-work zone) driving conditions. Research further suggests that the severity of work zone crashes is greater on average than non-work zone crashes. The period of time in which the traffic control...
This research presents a u-channel based study of the natural remanent magnetization (NRM), the laboratory magnetization, Anhysteretic Remanent Magnetization (ARM), and magnetic susceptibility (k), from the upper 100 m of International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 383 Site U1543 in the eastern South Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. Alternating...
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...
This case study investigated the reasons for, implementation of, and possible problems with the
current push for green infrastructure projects in Tennessee. Lack of canopy, nearly impermeable
soils, and excess hardscape are all common features in middle Tennessee which affect our
infrastructure. This study will review 4 recent green infrastructure...
Purposive stakeholder involvement in public lands management has grown in the United States in recent decades as government bodies have initiated advisory groups in addition to public comment modalities of participation. While advisory groups and collaboratives on federal lands have been studied extensively, much less is known about network governance...
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a broad class of anthropogenic chemicals characterized by highly stable carbon-fluorine (C-F) bonds. PFAS are widely used in industrial and consumer products for their surface-active and stain-resistant properties and are ubiquitously detected in environmental media, biota, and human biomatrices. Although some PFAS are known...
Currently, a popular approach to image classification uses the deep Transformer architecture. In a Transformer, the attention mechanism enables the model to learn efficiently with fewer computational resources than the convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In this thesis, we study the sparse attention mechanism widely used in the Transformers developed specifically...
Diatomaceous soils are a geological material whose engineering properties do not readily conform to the widely accepted and used mechanical and behavioral frameworks. This ambiguity results in design difficulties and geotechnical failures which can be costly. Diatomaceous soils have diatoms in their matrix. Diatoms are unicellular algae with an inert...
Many home users nowadays use various smart devices to improve the efficiency and convenience of their home environments. Trigger-action platforms such as “If-This-Then-That” (IFTTT) enable end users to connect different smart devices and services using simple apps to control these devices and automate the tasks (e.g., if the camera detects...
Despite the importance of fire for maintaining the health of many ecosystems, the social and economic costs of wildfires have risen sharply in recent years. Across the western United States, historical land and fire management practices combined with climate change and modern human development pressures, are contributing to increased wildfire...
Aroma is one of the major components that determines the quality of wine and consumer acceptability. Fruitiness is a highly desirable aroma quality in white wines and has been well accepted by consumers across the globe. Tropical fruit aroma has been substantially studied in Sauvignon Blanc wines due to its...
Metallic glasses (MGs), also called amorphous metals, are metals or metallic alloys trapped in a disordered glassy state. Their amorphous nature and absence of features such as crystal lattices and defects (dislocations, grain boundaries etc.) endows them with a host of properties that far surpass those of common crystalline materials....
Pre-spawning mortality (PSM) presents a major problem for population recovery of spring Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in the Willamette River basin. In certain reaches and years, PSM has exceeded 90%. Histology has been used as the primary diagnostic method to investigate PSM in the Chinook Salmon, and a collection of...
In recent years, there has been an increase in episodic coastal hypoxia along the mid to inner-shelf waters off the Oregon Coast. Wind-driven coastal upwelling events can exacerbate the magnitude of these hypoxic events, causing extremely hypoxic bottom water (<0.5ml l-1 dissolved oxygen) to move onshore towards the inner shelf....
Previous research has found some bicyclists disregard circular red indications and stop signs. Possible justifications include a desire to increase safety, save energy, save time, and increase visibility. Because of this, many bicyclists feel as though stopping at stop signs, especially in the absence of conflicting vehicular traffic, is an...
Machine common sense remains a broad, potentially unbounded problem in AI. Our focus is to move toward AI systems that can develop common-sense reasoning similar to humans to detect anomalies. In particular, we study the problem of detecting the violation of expectations when object appearance or motion dynamics change from...
We present a method for decentralized, multi-robot exploration in adverse environments where communication is minimal. A key conceptual feature of our method is enabling implicit coordination between robots by training a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) as a heuristic for planning using Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). Our method consists of...
The Columbia River Treaty (CRT), signed in 1964, is known widely as a successful transboundary river treaty between the United States and Canada. It was designed with a basic dual functional purpose, to increase flood prevention in the lower basin and to maximize hydroelectric power output between the two nations....
The bimolecular reaction of two carbenoid species resulting in the formation of a carbon-carbon double bond (pi-system), referred to herein as carbenoid eliminative cross-coupling (CEXC), involves a series of three fundamental steps: (i) ate-complex formation (transmetalation), (ii) 1,2-metalate rearrangement, and (iii) beta-elimination. All three steps are stereospecific and so the...
This paper aims to increase the knowledge on establishment practices for four fast-growing species (Guazuma crinita Mart., Eucalyptus grandis x E. urophylla, Bixa orellana L., Psidium guajava L.) in areas degraded by gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon. The study was carried out in Madre de Dios region, located in...
As technologies like 3D printing increase in prevalence and capabilities, having a robot hand specifically designed for a given manipulation task also becomes more feasible. Leading to the question of how to design a robot hand for a specific manipulation task. To answer this question, I propose we need three...
Wildlife behavior is a common research topic in conservation studies; however, the relationship between wildlife behavior and human disturbance, specifically in protected areas, is seldom studied. Previous studies have identified relationships between various different types of behaviors of both humans and wildlife, indicating correlations between avoidance behaviors, habituation, and physiological...
Wildlife trafficking, specifically snake trafficking, has been an issue that affects endangered snake species and newly discovered snake species mainly due to inadequate habitat and invasive species. For example, burmese pythons in Florida are a nonnative snake that compete with the native snakes as a result of accidental release into...
Beginning with the inception of American art history as a formal discipline in the 1940s, the dominant mode of interpreting nineteenth-century American landscape painting has been to view aspects of the landscape as symbols for grand cultural, religious, national, and moral narratives. While this method of interpretation highlights some key...
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...
To evaluate and monitor insecticide resistance in onion thrips Thrips tabaci on onion (Allium cepa), we conducted a study using three field populations in the Treasure Valley of eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho using the insecticides Lannate (methomyl) and Exirel (cyantraniliprole). To evaluate these two insecticides, biological assays were conducted...
A vital aspect of concrete construction is quality assurance and control (QA/QC). Engineered structures must meet pre-determined and agreed-upon strength and durability requirements. Concrete falls into a specific category of infrastructure material because in most cases, these strength and durability requirements cannot be found until the material has at least...
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...
This thesis focuses on the fundamental behavior of CLT floor-to-wall connections during a fire.
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) panelized structures rely on floor-to-wall connections for the load path and stability of the structure. Additionally, the fire performance of these connections is critical to prevent horizontal or vertical fire spread within these...
Livestock grazing is the prominent land use in Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis [Beetle & A. Young] S.L. Welsh) steppe and has been present since the late 1800’s. There have been calls to remove livestock grazing from rangelands as historic grazing practices resulted in the degradation of some...
O&E Magazine is published by Oregon State University Division of Outreach and Engagement to engage the people of Oregon in learning and discovery. In this inaugural issue of O&E magazine, we celebrate the centennial of OSU Extension and look forward to the next 100 years of outreach and engagement with...
In this thesis, a new learning algorithm is introduced that is targeted towards individual fairness. In order to be individually fair, mispredictions need to be avoided as each such prediction means the learning algorithm was unfair towards some individual. Therefore, achieving individual fairness implies having a perfect classifier, which is...
Iterative algorithms are simple yet efficient in solving large-scale optimization problems in practice. With a surge in the amount of data in past decades, these methods have become increasingly important in many application areas including matrix/tensor recovery, deep learning, data mining, and reinforcement learning. To optimize or improve iterative algorithms,...
The Ni-les’tun tidal wetland restoration project in the Coquille River Estuary in southern Oregon is one of the largest and most well-studied tidal restoration projects on the Pacific Northwest coast. However, ecological data on restoration effectiveness and ecosystem change following restoration are relatively rare for projects more than a few...