Disaster response and surveillance operations will increasingly incorporate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)s due to their cost-effectiveness and maneuverability. This trend has driven the research on small-sized quadcopters for varying indoor applications. Small-sized quadcopters' payload and computational capacity limit the usage of complex vision-based collision avoidance algorithms that are employed by...
To facilitate the design of Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) for flood protection, this thesis expands an existing engineering design methodology to NNBF systems. The existing approach is a Level III reliability method for the performance-based design of traditional coastal engineering systems. The expanded methodology incorporates uncertainties inherent to both...
Over time, Open Source Software (OSS) has become indispensable in the creation and upkeep of software products, serving as the fundamental building block for widely used solutions in our daily lives, including applications that enable communication, entertainment, and productivity. A sustainable OSS ecosystem is one that attracts and retains a...
The information in this report is for the purpose of informing cooperators in industry, colleagues at other universities, and others of the results of research in field crops. Reference to products and companies in this publication is for specific information only and does not endorse or recommend that product or...
I conducted a field study using gray wolf and mountain lion urine to investigate white-tailed deer and mesopredator behavioral responses to novel predator cues in a natural setting and to see if any changes in wildlife activity correspond to changes in the local biodiversity of a wetland environment. I created...
Southeast Alaska is located on the traditional territory of the Lingít, Haida, and Tsimshian People. It is comprised of the largest temperate rainforest in the world, with subregions receiving over 500 cm of rain annually. Climate change is predicted to alter the region's timing, type, and magnitude of precipitation and...
Heterogeneous catalysis modulates the rate and selectivity of reaction processes by
stabilizing a series of intermediate states on solid surfaces, facilitating the production
of many commodity chemicals modern society relies upon. Conventional, thermal
catalytic processes—conducted at elevated temperatures and pressures—source
thermal, mechanical, and chemical potential energy from carbon-hydrogen bonds—
combustion...
This study is an ethnographic investigation of residential turnover, organizational memory, and the persistence of Lost Valley, an Oregon ecovillage founded in 1989. Literature on organizational turnover, memory, and persistence is reviewed and integrated with scholarship on intentional communities and ecovillages, generating a theoretical framework for data collection and analysis....
The southern San Andreas fault (SSAF) is the fault segment with the highest 30-year probability of causing a moderate to large magnitude earthquake in California, yet key structural characteristics of the fault remain unconstrained, particularly in the Coachella Valley where the fault splits into the Banning (BF) and Mission Creek...
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...