Background: Mycobacterium abscessus (MAB) is a rapidly growing opportunistic pathogen that causes infections in immunocompromised patients. The highly impermeable cell wall and surface transport systems are major contributing factors to MAB intrinsic resistance, influencing the efficacy of bactericidal antibiotics. Phages are promising alternatives to antibiotics and have been used in...
“Active carbon” is a rapidly cycling soil organic carbon (SOC) fraction that acts as an energy and nutrient source for the microbial community. Dilute permanganate oxidation has been used to measure an “active carbon” fraction with the assumption that permanganate oxidation mimics enzymatic decomposition. Permanganate oxidizable carbon (PoxC) has become...
This paper describes the construction and use of a cost-effective custom-built atomic layer deposition (ALD) system, as well as the investigation of aluminum oxide atomic layer deposition using trimethylaluminum and water. For this research, a cost-effective ALD system was constructed for less than $8,000 using existing parts that were given...
As climate change contributes to larger and more severe wildfires in California, areas of fire refugia – considered unburned and low-severity burn patches – are playing an increasingly important role in sustaining ecosystem resilience, maintaining biodiversity, and supporting post-disturbance recovery. At the same time, climate refugia – which are areas...
Magmatic-hydrothermal ore deposits are giant geochemical anomalies in the earth’s crust most often generated by normal magmatic terrestrial processes. They are often associated with oxidized and hydrous intermediate to highly evolved magmas that have concentrated metals and have the necessary components to efficiently extract and transport them as ascending magmatic-hydrothermal...
Scour is the main cause of bridge failures in the United States. Bridge failures raise a hazard to the safety of the traveling public as well as the massive economic consequences due to the high cost of constructing a new or a replacement bridge. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT)...
Heavily acceptor doped Pb1.02Dx(Zr0.5Ti0.5)1-xO3 ceramics, where A is the dopant, were investigated in this research. Dopants studied included iron, magnesium and manganese at mole concentrations x ≤ 0.20. X-ray diffraction data along with scanning electron microscopy images revealed the solubility limits of these ceramics. All doped compositions exhibited a shift...
We explore the application of deep learning to the disparate fields of natural language processing and computational biology. Both the sentences uttered by humans as well as the RNA and protein sequences found within the cells of their bodies can be considered formal languages in computer science, as sets of...
In this thesis, we explore a general method for constructing path sums in a discrete spacetime using a jump amplitude matrix. This is accomplished by deriving a composition law that relates jump amplitudes to the propagator. Then properties of causal sets are used to average this relationship over sprinklings. This...
There are currently three main models used to describe the pattern of hemispheric specialization (i.e., lateralization) for emotion perception: the right hemisphere hypothesis, the valence model, and the motivational model. Although evidence exists in support of all three, the variation between each pattern of results may be due to differences...