I studied developmental rates in a suite of temperate and tropical passerine bird species from the New World to test the hypothesis that tropical passerines exhibit slower patterns of growth and development than temperate birds. I also investigated how the expression of several developmental rates varied with life history traits...
In this article the authors examine the impact of recent
immigration on rates of serious property crime across communities in
Austin, Texas. The greater Austin foreign-born population has increased
by more than 580 percent since 1980, and Austin is considered a “pre-emerging” immigrant gateway city to the United States. The...
The Van der Pauw method for transport measurements of conductivity and carrier concentration were tested on indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films and silicon wafers, and then implemented on Cu10xAgxZn2Sb4S13 thin films. ITO was used as a test case for high temperature transport measurements because it a well characterized semi-metal. The mobility of...
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted family dynamics, specifically with mothers experiencing unique stressors and challenges. This study explored the association between mothers' anxiety induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and their children’s executive function outcome during preschool. A quantitative approach was used with a sample of 219 families in Oregon, utilizing...
The objective of this dissertation was to examine trade-offs and synergies between multiple ecosystem services derived from plantation forests in the coastal Pacific Northwest. I accomplished this in five chapters. In the first chapter I provided background information for the study. In the next chapter I set the context for...
Mountainous headwater streams make up ~80 % of stream length globally and are strongly connected with catchment hillslopes and riparian areas, which can influence water quantity, quality, and availability for downstream uses. Accordingly, effective management of headwater streams and riparian zones to maintain desired ecosystem services downstream is critical, particularly...
Back end of line (BEOL) metal-insulator-metal capacitors (MIMCAPs) have become a core passive component in modern integrated circuits. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) projections for scaling of analog/mixed-signal MIMCAP applications require simultaneously increasing capacitance density while maintaining low leakage current density and low voltage nonlinearity (characterized by the quadratic...
Free energy is a fundamental property of a thermodynamic system, from which pressure, entropy, and other interesting properties can be derived. It is useful, then, to be able to accurately compute the free energy at various densities and temperatures in a way that can serve as the basis for further...
While robotic systems may have once been relegated to structured environments and automation style tasks, in recent years these boundaries have begun to erode. As robots begin to operate in largely unstructured environments, it becomes more difficult for them to effectively interpret their surroundings. As sensor technology improves, the amount...