The increasing human demands on natural resources, in combination with uncertainties about ecosystem dynamics due to global change, has led the scientific community to conclude that new approaches in understanding of ecological systems are needed to tackle environmental issues in an efficient manner. One development that has received more attention...
Software systems are becoming an essential part of the lives of both individuals and organizations, and as a consequence, these systems are getting bigger and more complex. Because of this, the tasks of maintaining the quality in these complex software systems are becoming increasingly difficult. Furthermore, these systems are subject...
Influence of abiotic and biotic factors were examined in selected
winter wheats previously identified as representing a range of
responses to septoria infection. In the greenhouse two and three
inoculations identified resistance when disease severity was assessed
either for the top four leaves or the flag leaf respectively. Kernel
number...
A growing body of literature exists on how human population growth and changes in climatic factors influence the availability of water (Elliot et al. 2014, Prudhomme et al. 2014). These studies typically conclude that climate change is expected to have negative consequences on water availability, an effect that is magnified...
This is a qualitative research project that seeks to understand the meanings that Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors (CADC's) have ascribed to their life experiences in relation to their choices about higher education. The participants are four Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors in Oregon who have less than bachelor degrees....
In this thesis, I present the variational database management system, a formal framework and its implementation for representing variation in relational databases and managing variational information needs. A variational database is intended to support any kind of variation in a database. Specific kinds of variation in databases have already been...
The theme for the 1989 Starker Lectures concerned uncertainty surrounding forests and forestry in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. It was a timely theme.
Indeed, the uncertainties concerning trade-offs among commodity production
and environment and the allocation of forest land, especially public lands, loom large as we enter the decade...
This thesis examines the internet phenomenon of the “Sad Girl,” a name given to young women who identify and present themselves as inherently melancholic people online. I position the internet community of the Sad Girl, which spans across three social media platforms, Tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram, within a larger history...
In this dissertation I explore the Arms representation and activities for teaching quantum mechanics invented at Oregon State University. In the Arms representation students embody quantum states. The Arms activities are presented as an exemplar of the unique physics classroom culture of the upper-division Paradigms in Physics program. In the...
High vegetative growth of Pinot Noir vine is a common problem in most vineyards of Oregon's Willamette Valley, where sunlight exposure and heat accumulation are limited. Consequently, growers in this region commonly use vineyard management strategies to regulate vine vigor and improve grape and wine quality. Wine quality is greatly...
Interest by public health organizations in scaling-up efficacious health interventions is increasing as the prevalence of arthritis increases and treatment becomes more costly. Although arthritis evidence-based interventions (EBIs) have been found efficacious in improving healthy behaviors and the ability to self-manage symptoms, little research has examined whether scaled-up delivery of...
The goal of many machine learning problems can be formalized as the creation of a function that can properly classify an input vector, given a set of examples of that function. While this formalism has produced a number of success stories, there are notable situations in which it fails. One...
Ecological domains seeking to understand the environment and the behavior of species have received little attention in machine learning (ML), despite the fact that environmental changes have a significant impact on humans as well as ecosystems. Some ecological problems can be formulated similarly to other common ML applications, but there...
This dissertation explores algorithms for learning ranking functions to efficiently solve search problems, with application to automated planning. Specifically, we consider the frameworks of beam search, greedy search, and randomized search, which all aim to maintain tractability at the cost of not guaranteeing completeness nor optimality. Our learning objective for...
Environmental crime around the world, such as trafficking in illegal timber, is directly related to political instability. Traffickers exploit weak, fragile, and chaotic political circumstances to illegally extract high-value commodities, challenging the extent to which conservation goals are achievable in resource rich developing countries. Rosewood is the largest traded endangered...
Low completion rates have created serious "leakage points" (Astin, 1988) and "severe hemorrhaging" (Lango, 1996) in higher education to a large number of Hispanics. Traditional research on college persistence, which has blamed the students' culture for low performance, is inaccurate. Little research has specifically investigated academic persistence from a cultural...
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...
The purpose of this study was to determine consumer perception
and acceptance of color change in textile fabrics, and the relation of
acceptance to age, sex, and socio-economic level. Eighteen null
hypotheses were drawn to investigate if relationships existed between:
(1) the degree of color change perceived and found acceptable...
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...
Ian Angell, in the New Barbarian Manifesto, said “A ‘brave new world’ is being forced upon unsuspecting societies by advances in information technology.” It would seem then, that technological advances happen automatically and have a life of their own. There is a logic to technological advancements that is outside human...
Efficient and effective climate policies require cost estimates supported by empirical analysis at multiple spatial scales. Fine-scale spatial analysis of climate impacts for rural land markets represents a gap in the current climate change economics literature. In this dissertation I estimate relationships between climate, risk and parcel-level land values for...
Differences in the chemical composition of calcified structures can be used to reveal natal origins, connectivity, metapopulation structure, and reconstruct the environmental history or movement patterns of many marine organisms. Sharks, skates, and rays (elasmobranchs) lack the calcified structures, known as otoliths, that are typically used for geochemical studies of...
Published February 1998. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
This dissertation is divided into two major chapters. The first chapter covers the geologyof the Encuentro deposit with emphasis in the intrusion sequence, vein mineral assemblages and distribution, and age of mineralization. The data used for this section includes field mapping, petrography, elemental analysis of biotite, and isotopic geochronology. The...
Variations in ocean conditions influenced by climate fluctuations may impact fish populations by changing their spatial distribution, physiology, survival, and other ecological features. Somatic growth is a crucial aspect of the biology of fishes and an important contributor to biomass fluctuations. Climate variability also affects somatic growth rates along the...
The black grass bug genus Irbisia Reuter was revised. Over 18,000
specimens were examined and information concerning the biology, host
plant and distributional relationships of the species was compiled.
In addition to external characters, the male claspers and vesica, and
the female dorsal libiate plate of the bursa copulatrix and...
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are the de-facto formalism for studying sequential decision making problems with uncertainty, ranging from classical problems such as inventory control and path planning, to more complex problems such as reservoir control under rainfall uncertainty and emergency response optimization for fire and medical emergencies. Most prior research...
The yields of 235 projectile-like and target-like fragments from the interaction of ¹³⁶Xe with a thick target of ²⁰⁸Pb at a center-of-mass energy, E[subscript cm], of 450 MeV were measured using γ-γ-γ coincidence data from Gammasphere and off-line γ-ray spectroscopy. The results give an expansive picture of the production cross...
Teachers may be attracted to the use of a game in a learning activity under the presumption that students will find the game experience to be more “fun” than typical classroom activities. The use of a game in a learning activity should help students attain important learning outcomes and engage...
Brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), (Halyomorpha halys, Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) is an invasive species that damages numerous agricultural crops including grapes. Related damage include lower berry weight with increased exposure and cracked berries as a result of BMSB feeding activity. The insect is currently detected in 43 US states including Oregon,...
This research is an effort to explore the nature of good work, a concept that describes work that is beneficial to the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of its stakeholders, including and especially the worker. This effort is divided into four distinct parts. First, the construct of good work is...
The search for the stand density that optimizes growth and hence generates the maximum amount of wood is one of the philosopher’s stone in modern forestry. Since scientific methods were applied to forestry, numerous generations of foresters have studied the relations between stocking density and growth, obtaining diverse results and...
The competition or rivalry for the use of water resources
among economic sectors of the Pacific Northwest and among geographical
regions of the western United States has intensified in recent
years. This rivalry and the long run prospects for water shortages
have increased the demand for research concerning the productivity...