Starch is a significant component of the human diet and the glucose produced through its digestion provides a critical source of energy. When starch enters the mouth, salivary α-amylase hydrolyzes it into maltooligosaccharides (MOS, degree of polymerization [DP] 3-20) and maltopolysaccharides (MPS, DP >20). Previous studies have found that humans...
Prebiotics are a subset of dietary fiber that is growing in demand within the food industry. The health benefits of prebiotics have been well established, leading to the increase in its incorporation into various food products. Given the importance of prebiotics as functional ingredients, it is important to understand their...
Oceanic carbon cycling plays a major role in determining global atmospheric CO₂. A better understanding of dissolved organic matter and its constituents in the water column and how it affects marine carbon cycling is sought after. This study successfully measured osmolytes, low molecular zwitterionic compounds derived from amino acids, in...
Juvenile Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) have a finite amount of energy that they can use to move from their riverine habitat to their oceanic habitat. Fish in the Willamette River Basin are prevented from moving to the ocean easily by dams which create reservoirs, where they reside for up to...
Reactor modeling is largely limited by the computational time required to perform accurate full core calculations. There are many different methods and techniques employed in different reactor simulation codes, but properly modeling all of the physics that takes place in the system requires extensive computational effort. The Coarse Mesh Finite...
The enantioselective total synthesis of quinolizidine-containing natural product cermizine D and formal syntheses of senepodine G and cermizine C has been achieved. These natural products are members of the lycopodium alkaloids, which have attracted significant attention due to their exciting biological activities and the diverse structural scaffolds. Key steps in...
Complex organic transformations, such as the addition of pyrrole to ketene using planar chiral organocatalyst (*PPY), the four-component anhydride- Manniach reactions, and the site-selective desymmetrization of meso-1,2-diol, are remarkable synthetic reactions that provide high yield and high selectivity. However, the exact mechanism and origins of stereocontrol for theses synthetic organic...
There has been a tremendous growth in interest in carbon nanodots (C-dots) in the past several years. As a nascent nanomaterial, C-dots have shown great promise in applications that benefit from their superior water dispersibility, low toxicity, non-blinking fluorescent output, chemical and biological compatibility, ease of functionalization and resistance to...
Azaspiracid-1, a novel marine toxin that contains 9 rings and 20 stereogenic centers, has drawn considerable attention from synthetic groups worldwide due to its structural complexity, which includes a unique trioxabisspiroketal fused to a tetrahydrofuran ring (ABCD rings), a piperidine-tetrahydrofuran spiroaminal system fused to a 2,9-dioxabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane system (FGHI rings), a...
The development of microfluidic devices for heavy metal extraction is presented in this dissertation. Various research areas, covering subjects from photochromic compound syntheses to microchip fabrication techniques are explored to develop microfluidic devices capable of extracting heavy metal ions from drinking water. Through integration of the beneficial characteristics of both...
With the rise of resistant bacterial pathogens, currently prescribed antibiotics are rendered useless. In recent years, marine natural products (MNPs) have emerged as novel sources for drug leads. The ocean is a complex environment where marine animals cohabitate with many, and sometimes harmful microorganisms and viruses, but resist infections. Developed...
The bimolecular reaction of two carbenoid species resulting in the formation of a carbon-carbon double bond (pi-system), referred to herein as carbenoid eliminative cross-coupling (CEXC), involves a series of three fundamental steps: (i) ate-complex formation (transmetalation), (ii) 1,2-metalate rearrangement, and (iii) beta-elimination. All three steps are stereospecific and so the...
The consumption of seafood in the United States has increased rapidly in recent years due to high quality protein and health benefits of seafood. Seafood can be a carrier for bacteria normally distributed in the marine environment and, in some cases, can be contaminated by human pathogens. Therefore, there is...
Two improvements to the established procedures for synthesis and response detection of ion-selective optical sensors (optodes) were introduced.
The first improvement addresses the drawback of organic dye (optode-localized chromoionophore) photobleaching. This positively impacts fluorescence response and allows for (1) direct measurement of hydrogen ion activity upon binding with the dye,...
Potato varieties characterized by non-conventional skin and flesh colors (purple, red, yellow) have the potential to revitalize consumer demand for fresh market potatoes because of their unique appearance and health benefits. Red and purple potatoes contain anthocyanins, which are flavonoids responsible for red, blue, and purple pigments in plants. Yellow...
Traditional approaches for the direct preparation of alkenes are unable to fully control either the stereochemical configuration of the carbon-carbon double bond or else the regiochemistry of the substituents surrounding it. The recently introduced concept of carbenoid eliminative cross-coupling (CEXC) offers a remedy to these deficiencies by providing for a...
Fisheries management that is based on quantitative assessment has commonly relied on estimating the unfished biomass of a fished stock to compare current and historical population size. Developing predictive models for this requires many years of catch and abundance data. Smaller, new, or mainly recreational fisheries may not have the...
β-chitin/chitosan extracted from newly utilized jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) pens were investigated in respect to their physicochemical properties, polymeric structures, deacetylation and depolymerization characteristics, and antioxidant and antibacterial activities. These functional properties were further compared with α-chitin/chitosan prepared from shrimp shells. Due to the low mineral content (< 1%) and...
Recently researchers have discovered that groups of small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play regulatory roles in gene expression and participate in various biological processes. For example, pathogenesis of many diseases, cell cycle regulation, and signaling pathways. Intracellular and live cell imaging of small ncRNA groups will reveal their relative expression levels...
Analytical chemistry is an area of chemistry primarily focused on the study and use of instruments for separation, identification, and quantification of an analyte of interest. Specifically, separation science within analytical chemistry often refers to the process of dividing mixtures into their small component parts based on differences in their...
Two distinct strategies were explored for the enantioselective synthesis of α-heteroatom substituted alkyl boronic esters by stereoselective reagent-controlled homologation using transient chiral carbenoid reagents CHYMX (Y = heteroatom, X = nucleofuge, M = electrofuge). In the first case, a stereospecific reagent-controlled homologation (sStReCH) approach to α-alkoxyalkylboronates using α-metalated S,O- and...
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation drew public ire during the 1980s and 1990s when activist groups forced the declassification of 19,000 documents and discovered proof of accidental and intentional releases of radioactive materials into the environment. These releases had been kept from the public. Although many locals had for decades wondered...
With the rapid advancement of educational technology and the need for personalized, engaging content to accommodate diverse learning needs, Virtual Reality (VR) holds promises for the present and future. However, VR applications suffer from challenges, including usability concerns, lack of pedagogical value, and evaluation standards. This thesis focuses on two...
With robots becoming increasingly commonplace in today’s society, we need to find ways to help robots to become better accepted. One common method used to gain acceptance and build rapport is through the use of humor. Currently, research in robot comedy exists, albeit it is fairly limited. Our goal with...
Podosphaera macularis, causal agent of hop powdery mildew, is known to produce cleistothecia (syn. chasmothecia) in eastern North America and Europe, but ascocarps are not reported from the Pacific Northwestern region of North America. Reasons for the apparent absence of cleistothecia in the Pacific Northwest are unknown. We established that...
In computer science, learning abstract fundamental programming concepts requiring students to understand memory management can be very difficult and lead to misunderstandings that carry on into advanced topics. This is especially true in data structures with abstract data types. Understanding how novice students think and reason about data structures is...
The rapid pace of climate change is increasing tree mortality and highlighting the need to improve the mechanistic understanding of plant function under increased water stress. However, the processes that control soil moisture availability in steep mountainous terrain are poorly understood, as are the relative effects of atmospheric and soil...
Various soil tests are routinely used in the United States to predict soil lime requirement. New non-hazardous methods have recently been proposed for adoption in Oregon, however the accuracy of these methods for Oregon soils has not been established. The objectives of this investigation were: (a) to document and describe...
This dissertation focuses on personal privacy in human-robot interaction, which we call "privacy-sensitive robotics." Our understanding of "privacy" is very broad, including not just information privacy but also physical, psychological, and social privacy. We begin by surveying the scholarly literature on privacy and talking about why it applies to interactions...
The research conducted here originated with the question of what caused the massive build-up of nuclear arsenals, which included ever larger and more powerful bombs and delivery systems from them, in the United States and the Soviet Union, even though the consensus beforehand was that nuclear energy should be prohibited...
Spike morphology characteristics and the free-threshing habit of wheat have been extensively investigated because of their evolutionary significance and practical importance. Several genetic systems that govern these traits have been reported. Some studies suggest polygenic inheritance while others have identified major genes. This study was conducted to identify and locate...
When observers monitor for infrequent signals for extended durations, they generally experience a decline in detections over time. This decline is termed the vigilance decrement. Current theories of vigilance attribute the decrement to three potential mechanisms: conservative shifts in response bias, losses of sensitivity, and an increased rate of attentional...
In order to mitigate climate change and increase sustainability, many states and nations have introduced policies intended to support the growth of renewable energy sources. Among these sources, wind energy has risen most prominently in the 21st century. However, its rise has been accompanied by various constraints and by local...
Automated decision aids can improve human decision-making but the benefits are often compromised by inefficient use. The current experiment examined whether metacognition—the ability to assess self-performance—and numeracy—the ability to understand and work with numbers—predict the efficiency of automation use in a signal detection task. Two-hundred twenty-one participants classified random dot...
The early marine phase following freshwater emigration has been identified as a critical period in salmonid (Oncorhynchus spp.) life history, characterized by high but variable mortality. Consistent with the “growth-mortality” and “bigger-is-better” hypotheses, at least some of the mortality during the critical period appears to be size-dependent – with smaller...
A method for isolating the salt gland (SG) from the larval brine
shrimp has been developed. This extra-renal organ is removed from 5-10%
of Stage Inauplii by vortexing after incubating the animals at 37°C for
8 hours in a saline solution buffered with 100 mM sodium phosphate at pH
7.6....
Strawbreaker foot-rot is a major limiting factor to cost efficient winter wheat
production in the Pacific Northwest. Development of resistant cultivars has been
hindered by the lack of adequate levels of genetic resistance and screening techniques
which can consistently detect desired genotypes.
Studies were conducted to determine if the reported...