Oxidized hydrous intermediate composition magmas are responsible for porphyry copper (Cu ±Mo ±Au) deposits and epithermal Au ore deposits formed globally in the shallow crust (Sillitoe, 2010; Seedorff et al., 2005). Recently, zircon geochemistry has been used to characterize both productive and barren intrusions associated with porphyry Cu-Au ore deposits....
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P Farmer for the degree of Master of Science in Geology presented on
November 29, 2012.
Title
Fire regimes across the western United States have been altered due to past land management and changing land use. Mitigating increased risks of wildfire occurrence in landscapes such as central Oregon requires landscape level management from both governmental and private organizations. Non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners manage a relatively small...
Passage of blood through a sorbent device for removal of bacteria and endotoxin by specific binding with immobilized, membrane-active, bactericidal peptides holds promise for treating severe blood infections. Peptide insertion in the target membrane and stable binding is desirable, while membrane disruption and release of degradation products to the circulating...
The size, shape, and stability of a species’ dietary niche can both influence and reflect a variety of biological patterns, including species interactions, extinction risk, and ecosystem function. This is particularly apparent when dietary changes manifest at ecosystem and clade scales to profoundly affect macroecological and macroevolutionary trajectories. However, many...
Nanomaterials are expected to enable significant advances in several technological fields in coming years. Among them, electronics has emerged as one of the most likely benefactors from the ability to control matter on the nanometer-scale. For many electronic devices synthesized nanomaterials must be integrated into thin film structures. Vapor-based deposition...
This is a listing of both PhD and Master's· theses relating to the areas of forestry issued during the period from July 1976 to June 1981. The
list is arranged first by state, then by college or university within each state. Authors of theses are arranged alphabetically under each of...
I radio-tagged 191 Hatch-Year (HY) and After-Hatch-Year (AHY) female northern pintails (Anas acuta) in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV), California and studied their movements, habitat use and survival during August March, 1991-94.
Overall, 94.3% wintered in central California; the highest percentage left during
the 1991 drought. Tulare Basin and Mendota...
The influence of overstory openness on the reproductive
ecology of Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia Nutt.) was
investigated on 4 sites in western Oregon over 2 years. The
breeding system of T. brevifolia was found to deviate from
pure dioecy under a broad range of canopy and site
conditions. Production of...
This dissertation is a collection of three manuscripts that serve to fill the knowledge gaps and advance methods of detecting the effects of contemporary forest harvesting in experimental catchment studies. While there is a preponderance of studies evaluating the environmental effects of forest harvesting in the western United States, few...
Published November 1957. 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
Reinhabitation is an approach to building local cultures and economies within industrial society. The food system is a vital starting point. What are the principles of reinhabitory food systems? What are the possibilities for a locally adapted food system in the Marys River region of western Oregon? I describe past...
Identifying appropriate units for conservation requires knowledge of evolutionary
patterns and risks of managing at different geographical and genetic scales. I examined
genetic diversity at different geographical scales among 11,400 rainbow trout
(Oncorhynchus mykiss) from 243 locations in 13 major river basins throughout much of
their range and among coho...
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an environmental bacterium as well as an opportunistic pathogen that primarily infects immunocompromised individuals, including those suffering from cystic fibrosis. The density-dependent regulation of gene expression via cell-to-cell communication, also termed quorum sensing (QS), is an important virulence determinant in this organism. Generally, P. aeruginosa uses three...
The enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) can be considered an important policy intervention in the context of the U.S. health care. The ACA supported non-elderly adults to obtain health insurance coverage. While Medicare provided health insurance to almost all elderly-adults (persons over 65), the ACA...
Exercise training has consistently been shown to increase fat utilization during exercise, while conflicting results have been reported on the effects of sex and age on fuel metabolism during exercise. PURPOSE: The primary objective of this investigation was to compare fat and carbohydrate utilization during exercise among males and females...
This document is primarily a review of Best Available Science applicable to Island County wetlands, as needed for categorizing wetlands for regulatory actions and determining widths for buffers (setbacks) that protect the functions of wetlands. The number of technical papers and reports published on these topics is enormous, and none...
RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) has rapidly become the de facto technique in transcriptome studies. However, established statistical methods for analyzing experimental and observational microarray studies need to be revised or completely re-invented to accommodate RNA-Seq data's unique characteristics. In this dissertation, we focus on statistical analyses performed at two particular stages in...
Field tests are often the most practical method to assess aerobic fitness, but
demonstrate greater error variability than laboratory tests. Researchers can improve
field tests by identifying factors that contribute to systematic error in VO₂max
estimation. PURPOSE: To examine the validity and reliability evidence of two field
tests of aerobic...
Studies were conducted in the Willamette Valley of western Oregon to evaluate the effects of plowing (7.5-15 cm deep) and disking (5-10 cm deep) in peppermint, Mentha piperita L., on the following factors: 1) emergence of adult "mint root borer", Fumibotys fumalis Guenée; 2) suppression of common groundsel, Senecio vulgaris...
Cell-to-cell communication by chemical signals, termed quorum sensing (QS), is a common regulatory scheme in the microbial world. Pseudomonas aeruginosa¸ an opportunistic pathogen of burn wounds and cystic fibrosis lungs, uses QS to control the expression of hundreds of genes, particularly those necessary for population level benefits such as biofilm...
Recently, changes in human performance following whole-body vibration (WBV) training have been attributed to enhanced neuromuscular function. However, the exact neural and muscular mechanisms responsible for these changes remain less understood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acute and chronic effects of whole body vibration on the...
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic human pathogen that infects immunocompromised individuals such as those suffering from burns or the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis. This organism utilizes a cell-cell communication mechanism known as quorum sensing (QS) to coordinate virulence gene expression and biofilm formation. It has three interconnected QS systems, namely...
Experiments were conducted to characterize the nongenomic effects of
progesterone (P4) on binding of oxytocin (OT) to the ovine oxytocin
receptor (OTR) and signal transduction. The dose-response relationship of
P4 to OT binding to the OTR in endometrium was examined. Progesterone
interfered with the binding of OT to the OTR...
Pseudoperonospora cubensis is an obligate pathogen and
causative agent of cucurbit downy mildew. To help advance
our understanding of the pathogenicity of P. cubensis, we
used RNA-Seq to improve the quality of its reference
genome sequence. We also characterized the RNA-Seq
dataset to inventory transcript isoforms and infer alternative
splicing...
Seasonal abundance and life history traits were compared between populations of the brine fly Ephydra (Hydrokyrus) hians Say (Diptera:Ephydridae), from two western Great Basin alkaline salt lakes. Abert Lake, Oregon, has a relatively low salinity (20-30 g/1 total dissolved solids) and more co-inhabitant benthic species than the higher salinity Mono...
Tropical coral reef ecosystems are very important from both the ecological and economical
points of view. However, they are also particularly fragile, and have been
declining in recent years in most regions of the world, since they are highly susceptible
to anthropogenic stressors operating at global scales (e.g., global warming...
A pest management program for variegated cutworm (VC), Peridroma
saucia (Hubner), in Oregon peppermint was developed based on studies
of pheromone trapping, sampling methods, and economic thresholds.
Pheromone traps effectively trapped VC males and were used to
reflect development and oviposition trends. Trap height was linearly
correlated to moth catch...
Individuals with Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer Type (SDAT) are up to four times more likely to sustain an accidental fall than their non-demented peers. The cause(s) of this elevated risk, however, has not been determined. Prior to the design of balance retraining programs, researchers need to uncover the nature...
The "old-growth controversy" in the Pacific Northwest recognized thinning as the
primary silvicultural practice for land managers to produce wildlife habitat while
continuing to produce timber. For the foreseeable future, forest stands will be harvested to
produce forest gaps and a patchwork of trees of different ages. In order to...
Previous research examining the influences of post-fire salvage logging on abundances of birds has focused primarily on the response of cavity-nesting species. There is limited research in regard to the impact of salvage logging on a broader range of bird species. In addition, little is known about how different intensities...
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John P. Hayes Joan C. Hagar
Previous research examining the influences of post-fire
We present a deterministic spectral method to predict equilibrium temperature distributions, heat flux, and thermal conductivity in homogeneous and heterogeneous media. We solve the Boltzmann transport equation in a second order spatial, self-adjoint angular flux formulation. We implemented this method into the radiation transport code Rattlesnake, built using the MOOSE...
When assessing differential gene expression from RNA sequencing data, commonly used statistical tests tend to have greater power to detect differential expression of genes encoding longer transcripts. This phenomenon, called "length bias", will influence subsequent analyses such as Gene Ontology enrichment analysis. In the presence of length bias, Gene Ontology...
RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) is the current method of choice for characterizing transcriptomes and
quantifying gene expression changes. This next generation sequencing-based method provides unprecedented
depth and resolution. The negative binomial (NB) probability distribution has been shown to be a
useful model for frequencies of mapped RNA-Seq reads and consequently provides...
Pacific Energy Ventures has partnered with utility industry and variable energy resource characterization experts, Ken Dragoon (Ecofys), Jeff King and Gordon Reikard to provide the Oregon Wave Energy Trust (OWET) a comprehensive analysis aimed at further validating wave energy as an economical and viable part of the Northwest’s energy portfolio....
Differential expression (DE) analysis is a key task in gene expression study, because it uncovers the association between expression levels of a gene and the covariates of interest. This dissertation pertains to two particular aspects of DE analysis—identifying stably expressed genes for count normalization and accounting for correlation between DE...
The soil bacterium Pseudomonas protegens Pf-5 can colonize root and seed surfaces of many plants, protecting them from infection by plant pathogenic fungi and oomycetes. The capacity to suppress disease is attributed to Pf-5's production of a large spectrum of antibiotics, which is controlled by complex regulatory circuits operating at...
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1, Benjamin Philmus 2, Cedar Hesse 3, Max Kohen 1, Jeff H. Chang 1 and
Joyce E. Loper 1, 3*
1
The first through fifth instars of the gypsy moth were tested for development to adults on
326 species of dicotyledonous plants in laboratory feeding trials. Among accepted plants,
differences in suitability were documented by measuring female pupal weights. The majority of
accepted plants belong to the subclasses Dilleniidae, Hamamelidae, and...
Forest harvesting practices can expose mineral soils, decrease infiltration capacities of soils, disturb the stream bank and channel, and increase erosion and fine sediment supply to stream channels. To reduce nonpoint source sediment pollution associated with forest management activities and to maintain the high water quality typically provided from forests,...
Background
Potato Virus Y (PVY) is one of the most important plant viruses affecting potato production. The interactions between potato and PVY are complex and the outcome of the interactions depends on the potato genotype, the PVY strain, and the environmental conditions. A potato cultivar can induce resistance to a...
Background: Potato virus Y (PVY) is one of the most important plant viruses affecting potato production. The
interactions between potato and PVY are complex and the outcome of the interactions depends on the potato
genotype, the PVY strain, and the environmental conditions. A potato cultivar can induce resistance to a...
White mold, caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary, results in severe losses in the production of common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, especially snap bean varieties. Advanced backcross QTL analysis was used to identify quantitative trait loci for resistance to white mold in an interspecific cross of P. vulgaris and P....
Hydrologic processes control much of the export of organic matter and nutrients from
the land surface. It is the variability of these hydrologic processes that produces variable
patterns of nutrient transport in both space and time. In this paper, we explore how
hydrologic ‘‘connectivity’’ potentially affects nutrient transport. Hydrologic connectivity...
Our study provides a review of theories that were used to study race and racism between 2010 and 2019 in higher education. We conducted a content analysis to identify concepts, statements and models used in higher education studies focused on race and racism in the three most highly read United...
We present high resolution records of atmospheric methane from the GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2) ice core for four rapid climate transitions that occurred during the past 50 ka: the end of the Younger Dryas at 11.8 ka, the beginning of the Bølling-Allerød period at 14.8 ka, the beginning...
Background: Like other transformative healthcare initiatives, patient-centered medical home (PCMH) implementation requires substantial investments of time and resources. Even though PCMH and PCMH-like models are being implemented by multiple provider practices and health systems, little is known about what facilitates their implementation. The purpose of this study was to assess...
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medical home implementation
Randall C Gale1*, Steven M Asch1,2, Thomas Taylor1, Karin M Nelson3,4,5, Jeff
The soil bacterium Pseudomonas protegens Pf-5 can colonize root and seed surfaces of many plants, protecting them from infection by plant pathogenic fungi and oomycetes. The capacity to suppress disease is attributed to Pf-5's production of a large spectrum of antibiotics, which is controlled by complex regulatory circuits operating at...
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609 NAD(P)H quinone oxidoreductase, quinone family 1 0 0 1 0 0
PFL_3514 Energy metabolism 20 1254
On coral reefs, disturbances rarely occur in isolation. Global stressors such as increasing seawater temperature often coincide with local stressors like nutrient pollution. In the face of increasing anthropogenic stress, corals can function as environmental sentinels, although little is known about how multiple stressors interact to disrupt their associated bacterial...
Muscle weakness and fatigue are debilitating symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). Approximately 50% of muscle weakness and fatigue have been attributed to deficits within the peripheral nervous system, specifically mechanisms residing in the muscle. The goals of this study were to identify the cellular mechanisms of contraction within the muscle...
Exercise may be the most effective strategy to reduce osteoporotic fractures in older adults because of its potential to reduce both bone loss and fall risk. It is unclear whether water exercise is an effective strategy to reduce fracture risk in postmenopausal women. PURPOSE: To examine the effects of a...
The bioavailability of chemical compounds in the marine environment fundamentally influences the growth and physiology of microorganisms. Organic and inorganic chemicals that are produced by some marine plankton can be consumed by other plankton for energy production, growth, or to initiate essential physiological processes. Cultures of the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana,...
Recombinant human calpain-5 was expressed in insect cells using a baculovirus system. The expressed calpain-5 was purified by both traditional chromatography and by affinity-column chromatography. Both methods yielded active protease. Calpain-5 displayed very limited hydrophobicity. This indicated that calpain-5 is not a membrane binding protein. Calpain-5 had pI of 8.3....
Photoacclimation is the process by which plants and phytoplankton adjust the concentration and composition of their photosynthetic machinery (i.e. their photoacclimation state) in response to changes in their light or nutrient environment. The purpose of photoacclimation is to balance the rate at which light energy is absorbed with the energetic...
Pseudomonas fluorescens WH6 secretes a germination-arrest factor (GAF) that we have
identified previously as 4-formylaminooxyvinylglycine. GAF irreversibly inhibits germination of the
seeds of numerous grassy weeds and selectively inhibits growth of the bacterial plant pathogen
Erwinia amylovora. WH6-3, a mutant that has lost the ability to produce GAF, contains a...
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factor
Rachel A. Okrent,1 Anne B. Halgren,2 Mark D. Azevedo,2 Jeff H. Chang,1,3
Dallice I. Mills,1
Pseudomonas fluorescens WH6 secretes a germination-arrest factor (GAF) that we have
identified previously as 4-formylaminooxyvinylglycine. GAF irreversibly inhibits germination of the
seeds of numerous grassy weeds and selectively inhibits growth of the bacterial plant pathogen
Erwinia amylovora. WH6-3, a mutant that has lost the ability to produce GAF, contains a...
Electric power needs will only grow over the next decades as more humans ascend from poverty into the middle class. Currently, the majority of electric power is generated by burning fossil fuels. To help mitigate the undesirable effects of burning fossil fuels research is being done to increase the efficiency...
My dissertation focuses on the factors that influence variation in female reproductive success in plethodontid salamanders and in toads. Variation in reproductive success fuels evolutionary change. Although, females often have been overlooked in studies of reproductive success due to perceived lower levels of variation when compared to variation in male...
Frontier research of non-aqueous actinide clusters is discussed. Since the inception of the uranyl peroxide clusters over the last decade, they have only been synthesized and characterized as solid crystals and in aqueous solution. This thesis provides thorough characterization of aqueous uranyl clusters and the first demonstration of uranyl cluster...
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are responsible for approximately $17 billion in crop production per year in the United States, and are arguably the most important pollinators in the nation. The future of crop pollination and production is threatened by widespread national honey bee colony losses, which have averaged approximately 30%...
The effect of seedbed preparation on the emergence and survival of winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata (Gueldenstaedt)) and squirreltail (Elymus elymoides (Raf.) Swezey)) seedlings was determined, while quantifying nutritional changes through the dormant season for four range species. In November of 2004 twenty 9m x 8m plots were randomly prepared with one...
In 2012, Oregon began it enrolling its Medicaid beneficiaries in an accountable care model called Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs). As one of the of the earliest state-wide efforts to implement this type of healthcare reform among Medicaid enrollees, and thus one of the most mature, Oregon’s CCO implementation provided a...
Limnology is undergoing a transition to high-throughput -omic analysis of freshwater
bacterial communities. An important first step in making the transition is to
characterize several genomes that can be used as references to guide metagenome
assembly and analysis. Here I characterize four new freshwater cyanobacterial
genomes, a pair of lake...
Forest composition in Paraguay has been in a state of change for the past half century due to land management practices, forest fragmentation, and deforestation for agriculture. How these factors affect dendrological diversity and wood anatomy in Paraguay is not well understood. This thesis documents Paraguayan forest composition on the...
Many non-native weed pests of food, fiber, and nursery crops pose threats to U.S. environment and agriculture. Noxious weed regulations play an important role in preventing the introduction and spread of non-native plants, thereby protecting the local biodiversity, environment and economic activities. However, these regulations could also hamper agricultural trade....
An economic analysis and optimization of forest biomass processing and transportation at the operational level is presented. Renewable sources of energy have captured the interest of public and private institutions to develop cost-effective supply chains to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The production of energy from forest harvest residues constitutes...
Background: The Oregon Wrestling Weight Monitoring Program establishes the athlete’s minimum wrestling weight (MW) for the season. This program specifies the
wrestler’s maximum weight loss rate and was implemented in order to reduce
unhealthy weight-cutting behaviors commonly practiced by wrestlers. Aims: (1) To
compare differences in percent body fat (%BF)...
Technological growth in agriculture increases crop output but it could lower output price in the market. Economic impact assessment in ex-ante analysis usually does not include these indirect supply responses, which can overestimate the economic potential of new technology. This dissertation provides an integrated farm-level ex-ante impact assessment model to...
The likelihood of achieving an effective environmental health communications
program increases with a knowledge of the target audience's attitudes toward their
environmental health concerns, source credibility, preferred channels of communication,
and desire to participate in environmental issues. With this in mind, the purpose of this
study was threefold: 1) to...
Island systems and species are susceptible to extinction because of their small population size and an ecological naiveté from an evolutionary past lacking strong competition and predation. For example, only one-fifth of the world’s bird species occur on islands, yet more than 90% of the avian extinctions witnessed during historic...
Differential expression (DE) analysis allows us to identify genes that respond differently under varying experimental conditions, therefore granting us an understanding of the molecular basis of phenotypic variation. Following the identification of significantly differentially expressed genes, it is often of the researcher's interest to elucidate hidden patterns or groups in...
This qualitative study explored the experiences of transgender students at a large, public university. The focus of this study was to identify where transgender students found support systems and obstacles at Rivera University. Six students, who self-identified as transgender, participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews directed by three research questions: (a)...
The wood products industry is influenced heavily by family ownership along the entire value chain. Although family ownership affects each link of the wood products value chain, there has been little research into the importance of products originating from family forestland. Specific attributes of products, such as origin or environmental...
Edge effects resulting from forest fragmentation are likely to alter the distributions and
interactions of resident species. I evaluated changes in species composition, species
turnover, and relative abundance of ground arthropods across replicated transects
extending from regenerating clearcuts into old-growth Douglas-fir forests. Arthropods
were collected from 3-August to 14-September in...
This dissertation investigates the relative importance of firm-specific and
geographic characteristics for export behavior in the Chilean primary and processed
food industries. The first essay develops a new method for measuring geographic
characteristics to account for economic activity in adjacent, but separate spatial units.
In the application to the Chilean...
Parasites are ubiquitous members of ecological communities, capable of contributing to the decline of vulnerable populations. Therefore, monitoring parasite level is a critical component for host management. Molecular tools, such as quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), can be valuable additions to monitoring protocols that assess parasitic disease risk to hosts....
Reef building corals are the foundation of an entire ecosystem, but they are threatened primarily by rising ocean temperatures due to climate change. Corals depend on a thermally sensitive symbiosis with intracellular dinoflagellates. As oceans warm, this symbiosis is disrupted and results in coral mortality, declining populations and degraded reefs....
Competition for soil water resources between newly planted Douglas-fir seedlings and aggressive early-seral plants, such as Senecio sylvaticus [L.] (Woodland groundsel, Senecio), can create drought conditions that impact tree seedling physiology, growth and likelihood of mortality. However, the specific impact of Senecio on soil moisture dynamics and inducement of water...
In August 2012, Oregon began enrolling Medicaid beneficiaries in coordinated care organizations (CCOs), a unique mandatory-enrollment accountable care organization (ACO) model with payment methods strongly tied to preventive care; care coordination; and integration of physical, mental and dental health care through patient-centered medical homes. This dissertation, consisting of two studies,...
The fabrication of nano-scale devices is a challenging, but potentially important, technology that has drawn a great deal of interest among researchers. Such nanoscale constructions utilizing a bottom-up approach for device building have many foreseeable applications in areas as diverse as miniaturized electronics, sensors, and biomedical devices.
One of the...
Cyanobacteria are rich in biologically active secondary metabolites, many of which have potential application as anticancer or antimicrobial drugs or as useful probes in cell biology studies. A Jamaican isolate of the marine cyanobacterium, Lyngbya majuscula was the source of a novel antifungal and cytotoxic secondary metabolite, hectochlorin. The structure...
Plant sexual reproduction requires a broad array of molecular mechanisms to proceed successfully. Some of these mechanisms are well-studied, but our knowledge of them as a whole is fundamentally incomplete. Pollen tube growth is a key part of this process, facilitating the delivery of the sperm cells to the female...
Discordance in bone mass between young adult swimmers and soccer players may be a direct result of differences in bone loading patterns that influence bone mineralization during growth. Our aim was to evaluate whether sports participation (soccer and swimming) had an independent effect on bone mass accrual at the hip...
The predicted effects of climate change call for methods to assess the performance of agricultural systems across economic, environmental, and social dimensions over different spatial and temporal scales. For research and development to have an impact on system efficiency, potential impacts of climate change and adaptation strategies need to be...
Alterations in gait patterns are commonly observed in individuals with transtibial amputation (TTA) who use a prosthesis. Current commercially available ankle-foot prostheses (AFP) offer very little range of motion (ROM) at the ankle joint. Previous researchers have hypothesized that lack of ankle ROM significantly contributes to alterations in TTA gait...
The purpose of this study was to identify competencies
which are perceived as important by Thai adapted physical
educators, to determine the differences that exist in the
way physical education professors and adapted physical
educators judge the level of each competency, and to
recommend a set of competencies for adapted...
Estimates of nitrogen (N) available from long-term application of organic
amendments are required to balance N inputs with crop N requirements. Two studies
were conducted to (1) determine N mineralized from organic amendments (manures
and composts) during year 2 after application, and (2) compare plant-available N
(PAN) determined via in...
This dissertation is composed of two self-contained essays, which examine two
different factors that could affect human capital accumulation in a developing country.
Both essays utilize cross-sectional data from the second round (2003/04) of national level
household survey from Nepal.
In the first essay, I estimate the impact of remittances...
More women than ever before survive breast cancer with 89% of those diagnosed becoming survivors (NCI, 2008). However, according to the National Cancer Institute (2005) some groups of women bear a greater burden of difficulty in survivorship. Sexual minority women (SMW), or women who partner with other women in romantic...
The dependent transfer of a traveler with disabilities on board an aircraft places the transferors, as well as the traveler, at risk of disabling lower back injury. This risk is increased on board an aircraft due to the confined space in which the transfer takes place. The purpose of the...
Environmental monitoring poses two challenges to statistical analysis: complex data and complex survey designs. Monitoring for system health involves measuring physical, chemical, and biological properties that have complex relations. Exploring these relations is an integral part of understanding how systems are changing under stress. How does one explore high dimensional...
The fungus Nothophaeocryptopus gaeumannii is the causative agent of Swiss needle cast (SNC), a foliar disease of Douglas-fir. Disease is characterized by premature loss of foliage and reduced growth resulting from the inhibition of photosynthesis due to the occlusion of stomata by the ascocarps of N. gaeumannii. Although the disease...
Drug policies in the United States are rapidly changing at the state and national level paralleling a shift in drug culture from a societal perspective. This dissertation addresses current public health policy topics with a focus on three recent drug policies. As of 2015, medical cannabis is legal in 23...
Investigations of 16S rRNA gene sequences hallmark modern microbiology. These sequences provide culture-independent insight into the abundance and distribution of microbiota and serve as a principle resource through which microbial community diversity is measured. Consequently, researchers rely on 16S gene sequences to test hypotheses rooted in ecology, evolution, and disease....