In the mountains of central and southern California, high elevation wilderness areas lack epiphytic lichens that can be used to inform us about atmospheric deposition in multiple ways. Epiphytic lichens are capable of accumulating elements proportionally to the local atmospheric concentration, establishing them as commonly used biomonitor of key elements....
Naked barley is a rich source of fiber and phytonutrients but is not widely consumed by humans. The author contends that increasing population-wide consumption of wholegrain naked-barley would accrue a net positive public health benefit by helping to increase total fiber and phytonutrient consumption. Many of the leading causes of...
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are plant symbionts that associate with the vast majority of terrestrial plants species. The AMF colonizes the plant roots by penetrating the root cortical cells, where the fungi exchanges mineral nutrients with the host plant for photosynthates. This association exists as a complex system in which...
In this thesis, I present the variational database management system, a formal framework and its implementation for representing variation in relational databases and managing variational information needs. A variational database is intended to support any kind of variation in a database. Specific kinds of variation in databases have already been...
This dissertation is a memoria histórica of the Guatemalan Civil War that centers queer and trans Maya people in its imaginings. Using Maya backstrap weaving practices, “constellating” as defined by the Cultural Rhetorics Theory Lab, and ghost stories as a Maya-centered queer/trans rhetorical methodology, I argue for a shift from...
Many animals and robots move through the world by coupling cyclical changes in shape called gaits to an interaction with the environment. Because mobility is an important aspect of such robots, a key metric when evaluating design and performance of mobile robots is the efficiency of their optimal gaits. The...
Soil nitrogen exists largely as organic matter, including plant liter, dead animal matter, and microbial necromass. About 90% of soil organic nitrogen is proteinaceous material that is too large for plants and microorganisms to assimilate directly. Protein depolymerization therefore plays a critical role in mobilizing this organic source of nitrogen,...
This thesis mainly consists of two parts: (1) comparing statistical modeling methods based on the area-based approach (ABA) for predicting forest inventory attributes using airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data (Chapter 2), and (2) suggesting a new methodology fusing the individual tree detection (ITD) approach and the ABA for...
Marine diatoms are unicellular photosynthetic organisms that produce unique nanomaterials, energy dense lipid-molecules, and specialty carbohydrate molecules that can be all extracted from a single microorganism. The centric marine diatom Cyclotella sp. was used as a model organism for cultivation in a biorefinery system, where multiple co-products can be harvested...
The increasing human demands on natural resources, in combination with uncertainties about ecosystem dynamics due to global change, has led the scientific community to conclude that new approaches in understanding of ecological systems are needed to tackle environmental issues in an efficient manner. One development that has received more attention...