Vibrio bacteria are commonly found in freshwater, marine, and estuarine environments. Members of this genus can exist in commensal relationships with marine animals or as planktonic bacteria, however, they are well known for their roles as pathogens towards humans and animals. In this dissertation, I investigated aspects of host-bacteria relationships...
The environmental health science community recognizes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as a re-emerging class of environmental pollutants due to their persistence and prominence in mixtures of concern. Due to their widespread distribution in the environment, exposure to PAHs often occur as complex chemical mixtures. Exposures are linked to numerous adverse...
In this dissertation, we explored multiple coding techniques to reduce energy consumption, improve performance, and secure wireless sensor networks specifically and ad-hoc networks in general. With the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G technologies, wireless sensor networks are quickly emerging as an important and key technology in the...
Oregon produces 99% US hazelnuts (Corylus avellana L.), occupying 3% world production. To ensure the quality and food safety of hazelnuts (inshells or kernels), industry and federal standards require freshly harvested nuts to be cleaned and dried to reach a final moisture content (MC) of inshells < 10%, MC of...
The scarcity of wireless spectrum resources and the overwhelming demand for wireless broadband resources have prompted industry, government agencies and academia within the wireless communities to develop and come up with effective solutions that can make additional spectrum available for broadband data. As part of these ongoing efforts, cognitive radio...
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...
The objective of the present research was to determine, by use of the progesterone receptor antagonist RU-486, whether progesterone by autocrine/paracrine action suppresses phosphatidylinositol hydrolysis, and thus, the production of prostaglandin F2a during the midluteal phase of the estrous cycle in ewes. Two experiments were performed. Experiment 1 consisted of...
Collective migration in animal groups is often guided by distributed leader agents that influence their peers by modulating their motion behaviors. Distributed leadership is a promising navigation strategy for artificial swarms, but designing the leaders’ controllers is difficult due to the swarm’s collective emergent behaviors. The presented research formulates a...
The high level of parallelism in throughput processors such as GPGPUs has resulted in significantly changed on-chip data traffic behaviors. This demands new research to identify and address the limiting factors of networks-on-chip (NoCs) in the context of throughput processors. In this work, we first quantitatively analyze the performance of...
Skeletal muscle is the largest organ in the body by mass, comprising roughly 40% of total bodyweight in adults. It plays diverse and unique roles that include movement, locomotion, and support for posture and internal organs, among others. The structural foundation for all skeletal muscle in adults is formed early...