Tree nuts have been implicated in a number of foodborne outbreaks and recalls in recent years linked to enteric pathogens, particularly Salmonella. Therefore, prior to distribution and marketing, it is necessary to understand the biological risks associated with the consumption of tree nuts and to find effective methods to inactivate...
Influenza A and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) are both enveloped, negative strand
RNA viruses which infect the respiratory mucosa of animals and humans. Despite
decades of research and development of antivirals and vaccines, both of these viruses
continue to be a major health concern throughout the world. The focus of...
⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar incremental heating experiments were performed on volcanic rocks recovered by drilling during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 152, southeast Greenland Margin (63°N), and Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 81, southwest Rockall Plateau (56°N). Both of these legs drilled into thick sections of submerged lava flows, known as seaward-dipping reflector sequences,...
Fast, reliable internet access is shown to have numerous economic benefits, including contributing to growth, increasing GDP, decreasing unemployment and depopulation of rural areas, and encouraging competition. However, in the United States, there are large sections of the population that are left severely underserved – mostly rural, low-income, and minority...
Here presented is a photographic catalogue, a key, and literature review for the 35 genera and 90 species of lepturine longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae: Lepturinae) found in the Pacific Northwest. Several nomenclatural changes, recognized by the global taxonomic community, but previously unknown to North American authors, are adopted, and one new...
When running for a political office, a candidate’s platform is important for the voter to understand what the that individual believes. Candidates do not always lay out a concrete platform and tend to stay away from salient issues, such as climate change and its effects, and run on platforms that...
With trust in the media reaching an all-time low among Americans, I wanted to explore what prompted this shift in attitude. This thesis analyzes how Americans’ perspectives on the credibility of modern-day media and the value they place on the freedom of the press are heavily influenced by their preferred...
An increase in anthropogenic activities since the industrial revolution, primarily due to burning of fossil fuels and changes in land cover, has resulted in a steady increase in the global mean atmospheric CO2 concentrations. While there is unequivocal scientific evidence on global warming and its multidimensional impacts on natural and...
For building robust software applications, it is important for the software engineer to make efficient use of the available building blocks. Learning the basic language constructs is only the first step in this process. It is becoming increasingly important for software engineers, especially students, to get acquainted with the available...
In the literature, a controversy persists over whether speaking multiple languages may result in what has been referred to as a bilingual advantage that is advantages for executive functioning (EF) skills. While evidence in favor of such a has been reported, the reliability of these findings has been questioned. To...
Visual programming languages (VPLs) have been widely used to support end-user programming. However, end users are still not able to reuse code as actively as professional programmers, even when given abundant resources such as a large VPL program repository. One reason may be that current VPL development environments lack features...
Debugging, an integral part of software development, is difficult for end-user programmers, especially in the case of complex programs. The process of isolating errors is time consuming without the help of debugging support provided by the tool. For example, the visual programming tool LondonTube supports creation of custom mobile-cloud-web applications,...
Software maintenance tasks often require finding information within existing code, which is time-consuming and difficult even for professional programmers. For example, programmers may need to know what code implements certain functionality or what is the purpose of certain code. In response, researchers have developed tools to help programmers find information...
The COVID-19 pandemic became the deadliest epidemic since the Influenza pandemic in the early 1900s. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). Every government level across the United States had differing responses to COVID-19, and politicians have been the center of attention for their role in COVID policy support or...
Many older reinforced concrete deck girder (RCDG) bridges contain straight bar terminations of flexural reinforcement. Common bridge design practice of the 1950s did not consider the additional demands on the terminated bars from shear and flexure. Moreover, more stringent code specifications and heavier permit trucks contribute to the insufficient ratings...
Surveys are often used in health studies to collect data about participants for scientific research. An increasing number of health scientists are turning to online data collection methods because they are less costly and can reach a large diverse population quickly. Online surveys also make it easy to track and...
The topics in this dissertation are centered around the way that trees respond to environmental stress in the climates where they occur. Though forests across the planet are expected to experience change in local climate due to historic and ongoing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of climate change will...
College is recognized by many researchers to be an exceptionally stressful period of development. Despite considerable theoretical and empirical attention, many questions still remain regarding the experience of stress among college students. There is a dearth of multivariate investigations in this area and, to date, no clear consensus exists among...
Continual growth of the world's energy consumption and the demand for long-term clean renewable energy resources has led to the development of ocean-based wave energy technologies. Emerging technologies are advancing potential solutions to the complex problem of energy generation in the harsh and corrosive ocean environment. To develop these technologies,...
Predators are fundamentally important for regulating and driving prey population dynamics as well as structuring ecological communities. Over-exploitation of marine resources has caused dramatic depletions of predatory fish species and shifts in marine community composition, with attendant declines in productivity and diversity of marine ecosystems. Despite the important ramifications of...
Forest management in the face of fire risk is a challenging problem because fire spreads across a landscape and because its occurrence is unpredictable. Additionally, management must be adjusted over time as unpredictable fire events are realized. Land managers have some control over the vegetation conditions that facilitate fire spread,...
Cloud reflectivity is a function of cloud liquid water content and droplet number concentration. Since cloud droplets form around pre-existing aerosol particles, cloud droplet number concentration depends on the availability of particles that can serve as cloud condensation nuclei. Given constant liquid water amount, increased availability of cloud condensation nuclei...
Adiabatic parcel models suggest specific relationships between cloud thickness and cloud properties. Such relationships govern cloud radiative forcing and thus cloud feedbacks in the climate system. Current remote sensing techniques work well at measuring these properties in low-level cloud systems that are overcast. Significant biases exist, however, when measuring cloud...
Truckload carriers operating under a Point-To-Point (PtP) dispatching method seek to minimize miles driven with empty loads. This results in driving tours keeping drivers away from their homes for weeks at a time causing high turnover rates industry wide. One proposed solution combines Relay Network dispatching with existing PtP. This...
Experiments were conducted to determine if the plagiotropic
growth habit of rooted cuttings of Douglas-fir might result from a
system favoring the accumulation of indoleacetic acid in the adaxial
side of the shoot in response to vertical placement.
Actively growing excised branch terminals were subjected to
gravitational disorientation to determine...
Vegetation along the banks of mountain streams in the western Oregon
Cascades comprises an integral part of the transition zone between land and
water based ecosystems, and as such, is a vitally important and unique natural
resource. Forestry is a major land use in this region, and harvesting riparian
vegetation...
An outbreak of western spruce budworm Choristoneura
occidentalis in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon in
1983 was treated with helicopter applied carbaryl. Effects
of the spraying on forest ants were determined from pre- and
postspray samples taken from two carbaryl sprayed and
two unsprayed plots. In each 0.75-ha plot,...
Current calls for prison abolition have been met with major public resistance.
It is time for movements for prison abolition to engage with these questions: How
have contemporary people of the United States come to accept mass incarceration and
the prison industrial complex, and, what is the impact? Using an...
The association of frontal formation, development, and movement with
large scale baroclinity is well documented. This investigation
deals with the mean large-scale baroclinic zones near the Asian East
Coast for the last two weeks of February 1975. Two deep, large-scale
baroclinic zones are found to be situated along the axis...
The objective of this project was to investigate the fate of ponderosa pine regeneration from seed to established seedling, and to determine the relative influences of several important stand elements on those fates. The project was carried out in a series of observational and experimental recruitment studies in central Oregon....
The host snail Biomphalaria glabrata and the parasitic trematode
Schistosoma mansoni are valuable subjects for studies evaluating and
defining immunological parameters that determine the outcome of
individual host-parasite encounters. In this thesis, both soluble and
cellular components of the snail's hemolymph were examined to gain
insight into the basis for...
Protein microcapsules (PM) were developed as a tool for investigating aspects of dietary protein utilization by mussels, Mytilus edulis trossulus. Digestion of PM in vitro by protease, trypsin, amylase and extracts from the gut of mussels varied significantly depending on the type of protein encapsulated or whether carbohydrates were added...
Polyfunctional thiols are sulfur containing compounds that are important to the flavor and aroma profile of some foods and beverages. S. Cerevisiae has been shown in wine yeast that it is capable of producing these thiols to create a fruity aroma and flavor profile. IRC7, a gene that codes the...
A new method for encapsulating low-molecular weight, water-soluble substances in lipid-walled microcapsules (LWMs) for delivery to marine bivalves was developed, characterized, and tested. LWMs produced by a spray technique (spray microcapsules, SMs) were demonstrated to encapsulate both aqueous (polymeric dye or oxytetracycline hydrochloride) and particulate (riboflavin) core materials within a...
This study quantified the frequency of simple versus
complex races of Puccinia striiformis Westend. in mixtures
of wheat cultivars possessing different race-specific
resistance genes. A simple race of a pathogen can infect
only one component, and a complex race of the pathogen can
infect two or more components of an...
Characteristics of bacterial clearance were investigated in the
purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Echinodermata:
Echinoidea). Primary clearance kinetics were determined for three
bacteria, a marine Gram negative motile rod, a marine Gram positive non-motile
rod, and a fresh water fish pathogen, Aeromonas salmonicida.
Various doses of live bacteria were injected...
Repurposing internal combustion engines as petrochemical reactors (i.e., Reactor engines) could offer a smaller, scalable alternative to traditional full scale chemical processing facilities. For many chemical processes, incorporating catalyst particles in fluidized beds is expected to result in superior performance over both monoliths and packed beds. Conversion of ethane into...
Drone strikes have become a defining strategy in the US War on Terror. Since the first combat drone strike in 2001, the executive branch has intentionally increased the deployment of drones for counterterrorism operations throughout the Middle East and North Africa. This thesis explores the moral and legal justifications for...
Most studies of plant disease epidemiology have focused on epidemics in host
populations composed of a single genotype. But crop plant diversity can be a useful
means of improving the deployment of resistance genes. In a series of experiments with wheat stripe rust and potato late blight, we studied factors...
Deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate (dNTP) concentrations measured in cells are not symmetric. dGTP almost always represents only 5-10% of the total dNTP pools in cells. In an in vitro replication system involving semiconservative replication from an SV 40 origin, the mutation frequency of an M13 phagemid replicated by human cell extracts in...
Organic compounds which contain one or more nitrogen atoms are especially important as they are disproportionately represented among biologically active molecules. As a result, significant effort has been focused on the development of methods for the synthesis of nitrogenous molecules. We identified the aminal as an under-explored functional group. Despite...
Many conventionally reinforced concrete deck girder bridges (RCDG) and their intermediate supporting bent caps were designed during the Eisenhower interstate era of the 1950’s with the AASHO design equations at the time, which subsequently place higher demand on the concrete. The referenced components may exhibit diagonal cracking due to the...
Two experiments involving interactions between wheat
(Triticum aesitivium L.) cultivars and rust pathogens were
investigated. One experiment evaluated the aggressiveness
(measured by infection efficiency and latent period) of
populations of Puccinia recondita Rob. when inoculated on
the cultivar they were isolated from, their "own" cultivar,
and when inoculated onto other...
Realizing the vast amount of energy available in ocean waves, an industry has emerged that is progressing towards the deployment of grid–connected wave energy converters. Likely to be deployed in arrays, a challenge to the wave energy industry is maximizing the energy production of such arrays. We have been developing...
This dissertation focuses on the importance of pelagic subsidies in the Northeast Pacific to rocky shore community regulation. My results document the patterns of pelagic subsidy supply, determine if those subsidies are correlated with community structure, and examine if community regulation differs between areas of high- and low-subsidies. Understanding how...
Shrapnel is an exploration through memory. It’s a work that bends and twists upon itself and, as memory often does, lands within worlds and experiences only for a moment before jumping to the next story or thought. This text is a hybrid work that doesn’t fit neatly within any specific...
More and more people have incorporated GIF in their messaging these days and often send gif as a reply. GIF is Graphics Interchange Format and is a short-animated picture without a sound. Searching a trivial gif with a regular emotion is easy to find but if some iconic expression is...
Previous research has shown significant improvements in standard measurements of student learning in traditional classroom settings when constructivist instruction techniques are skillfully applied as opposed to its traditional counterpart, direct instruction. The purpose of this study is to apply the concept of constructivism in musical instruction. The working hypothesis is...
Despite numerous techniques for measuring and estimating water depth, bathymetry in the nearshore zone is notoriously difficult to map. Dangerous sea states, noisy environmental conditions, and expensive survey operations, particularly in remote areas, contribute to the difficulties of obtaining data along the coast. Global datasets, derived mainly from satellite altimetry...
Classification of Streams and stream habitats is useful for research involving establishment of monitoring stations, determining local impacts of land use practices, generalization from site-specific data, and assessment of basin-wide, cumulative impacts of human activities on streams and their biota. This thesis presents a framework for a hierarchical classification system,...
The first part of this manuscript is about the total synthesis of the Arundo donax bis(indole) natural products. The A. donax alkaloids were prepared using the first example of an ynindole Diels–Alder reaction. Each were then separated, isolated, and determined to have stable enantiomeric conformations at room temperature (Chen, J.;...
People like going on trips with friends and tend to plan their trips well in advance to have the best possible experience of a destination and get the most out of the places they visit and/or the activities they plan to partake in. Right now, the Internet provides a wealth...
The transfer of air travelers with disabilities between a mobility aid and an aircraft seat is a major source of injury for both the travelers and the airline personnel assisting in the transfer. The risk to both parties might be reduced through the biomechanical study of the transfer task. Such...
Cheese has been produced since ancient times and continues to be an important nutrient-dense staple in many diets around the world. Cheese quality is of high importance to consumers, and it is important for cheese producers to establish process controls to prevent and control cheese spoilage. Fungal spoilage is of...
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is known for altering the social and political landscape of the United States during a particularly tumultuous, divided period. The novel, which tells the story of enslaved man Uncle Tom, had wide influence and was considered to help “lay the groundwork for the Civil...
This research investigates shape optimization process, using b-spline models and panel methods, to achieve a high lift to drag ratio for an aerodynamic structure. This research is a proof of concept for further research in aerodynamic shape optimization. The coupled process, involving the design and optimization of a random shape,...
The relationship between partisan gerrymandering and voter participation has still not been fully understood. Although it is clear that there are many factors that affect voter participation, the effect of gerrymandering on voter participation still has not been studied. In this study, I will be examining if partisan gerrymandering affects...
Few plant mitochondrial genomes have been published to date
because of their structural complexity and difficulties in their physical
isolation. Plant mitochondrial genomes are known to have a high level
of heteroplasmy and can exist as several different circular or linear
strands. Sequencing additional mitochondrial genomes will help to
understand...
The overall concept of reducing laboratory operations to a scale that fits on a single microfluidic chip has been an attractive area of research over the last several decades. Despite a surge in research, few commercial success stories have been written. Lab-on-a-chip technologies have the capability to be cost effective...
These studies are part of the Demonstration of Ecosystem Management Options (DEMO) study, a program researching the effects of different levels and patterns of green-tree retention on ecological, economic, and social phenomena. We restricted our studies to the 15% basal area, evenly dispersed retention treatment. Our objectives were, first, to...
Prior research has suggested that homework activities that encourage learners to think more conceptually about to-be-learned material can have positive benefits on overall content learning. Can such activities be implemented successfully in online coursework, and does it produce the anticipated benefit? In two sections of an online Psychology course, participants...
Increasing complexity and demand of healthcare has not been matched with policy changes and improvements in healthcare training. In Linn, Benton, and Lincoln Counties (LBL), a few challenges that prevent the efficient training of healthcare providers are (1) limited training capacity due to clinical placements and availability of qualified faculty...
A common problem in energy allocation problems is managing the trade-off between selling surplus energy to maximize short term revenue, versus holding surplus energy to hedge against future shortfalls. For energy allocation problems, this surplus represents resource flexibility and is quantified as the surplus energy after meeting the demand. The...
Topology optimization (TO) is a mathematical method to find the optimal size, shape and connectivity of a domain under specified conditions, and has had many applications in engineering design. However, challenges remain in realizing TO as an effective design tool for many design situations. Uncertainty is ubiquitous in nature and...
New MS in CS students in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science school at OSU are required to file their Program of Study by the end of their 2nd term. Many of them, especially international students, are in a totally new ecosystem, so they find it overwhelming to choose the...
Kombucha is a fermented sweet tea beverage of Asian origin which has become popular in the West due to its distinct flavor and possible health benefits. Kombucha is fermented by inoculating sweet tea with yeast and bacteria until a pellicle, referred to as a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and...
Kombucha is a traditional fermented beverage that has become increasingly popular in the United States due to its perceived health benefits and unique flavor profiles. The drivers of kombucha flavor have not been fully characterized, at least in part because it is produced using a complex microbial community, leading to...
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) enable software developers to utilize and create functionality that would otherwise take a lot of time and effort to build from scratch. Consequently, an essential part of software engineering training is for students to learn how to use APIs effectively. The existing jTutors system enables an...
There are many uncertainties that complex engineered systems will face throughout their lifecycles due to changes in internal and external conditions. It is desirable for complex engineered systems to be resilient against various uncertainties. The ability to overcome such uncertainties should be embedded into the system from the beginning. However,...
Carbonation of Carbon is of concern for reinforced concrete bridges. While long-term environmental deterioration of structures is unavoidable, protective design allows a structure to fulfill its service life without any significant serviceability or strength loss due to deterioration. Understanding the process of concrete carbonation and the effect it has on...
Given the unique nature of interpersonal interactions via microblogging sites (such as Twitter), it has become clear that a new generation of political candidates will need to appeal to a new generation of voters by way of an entirely new mechanism: Social networking sites (SNS’s). In order to address the...
One of the distinctive features of mitochondria is that they have their own DNA. When compared to nuclear DNA, it is known that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) not only has a much higher rate of spontaneous mutation, but also arises from metabolically distinct precursor pools. Others from our laboratory have demonstrated...
Seamless, high-resolution topobathymetric digital elevation models (DEMs) of rivers are important for generating hydrodynamic models, studying water quality and related ecological issues, modeling flood vulnerability, and numerous other applications. However, such DEMs can be difficult to generate, due to a lack of topographic and bathymetric source data. Even where the...
Social media platforms use many techniques to engage users' attention with their platforms, including notifications, popups, and gamification elements. The impact of social media on physical and mental health has been studied, but limited publicly available research exists on how social media users can be helped to disengage from these...
Online survey data collection is becoming popular because it provides benefits in cost, ease of collecting and managing data, flexibility in format, and access to a diverse population. Surveys are often used for health studies such as Oregon State University’s WAVE Project, which utilizes the WavePipe system, a server enabling...
Wheat stripe rust (WSR), also called yellow rust of wheat (Tricitum spp.), causal agent Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici (Pst), is a foliar disease of major economic importance on wheat, especially grown in temperate locations. WSR causes major losses of wheat yield, estimated at nearly $ 1 billion per year, and...
Since the discovery of molecular chirality in 1848, this notion has had a substantial impact on medicine, biology, and chemistry. Extensive effort has been directed towards the construction of chiral molecules that contain sp³ hybridized stereogenic centers. In contrast, less effort has been dedicated to molecules that are chiral by...
Increased automation and computerization have led to new demands and people are quickly transitioning to monitoring automated process and autonomous machines. Human oversight of automated process is important and desired, but people often require aid to navigate information from autonomous sources. An effective way to manage this information is with...
In order to more effectively design large, complex systems, risk must be accounted for throughout the design process. A systematic way to account for risk is by using system model simulation. During the conceptual design phase, functional models can be drawn to help the engineer design their system's functional architecture....
During the interstate expansion of the 1950s, many conventionally reinforced concrete
deck girder bridges were built throughout the country. These now vintage bridges
commonly exhibit diagonal cracking and rate inadequately for shear, thus they are
candidates for shear strengthening to extend their useful life. Near-surface mounted
(NSM) retrofitting is a...
Camelids are known for frequent occurrence of general ill-thrift. In other species, neutrophil dysfunction has been identified as a cause of ill-thrift, and linked to chronic fungal and bacterial infections. However, no reference values exist for neutrophil function testing in camelids, which inhibits accurate evaluation of neutrophil deficiency in this...
One of the surprising things about the 2016 presidential election was how much each presidential candidate was disliked. In this historic election, questions about whether voters made their decisions by supporting their candidate or voting against another have arisen. Studies have been done in the past that examine which traits...
Uploading everyday information about food intake, sleep, number of steps and then generating consolidated peer visual reports for participants in large-scale health studies, often divided into multiple treatment groups, can be challenging.
This challenge is even bigger if subjects are young teenagers between the age of 14-19 active in sports,...
While damages due to ponding are common and expensive, provisions for design and
construction of flat roof systems lack guidance regarding these loads. The goal of this research is
to present methods of designing or building flat roofs that are less vulnerable to this condition. An
investigation of the literature,...
There is strong interest in the energy community to develop technologies that can diffuse low-cost, renewably generated electricity into difficult and slow to decarbonize sectors. One of the emerging areas of interest is renewable natural gas (RNG). RNG has low or no associated net greenhouse gas emissions and can be...
Pile caps are structural elements used to transmit loads from structural columns into pile groups. A pile cap is generally constructed of reinforced concrete and contains only minimal flexural reinforcing steel. Using modern design methods, the anchorage of the flexural steel may limit the design capacity of existing pile caps....
Due to age, original design that is deficient by modern standards, inadequate maintenance, environmental conditions, and increasing loads, large numbers of bridges in United States and elsewhere are classified as deficient and in need of rehabilitation or replacement. According to a national bridge inventory established by the Federal Highway Administration,...
Marine bivalves are globally recognized as ecologically and commercially valuable species and, for over a century, researchers have been studying their feeding, digestion and other related physiological processes. These studies have shown that marine bivalves have complex feeding and particle processing behaviors to maximize growth in dynamic environmental conditions. Additionally,...
Aaron Copland is known by many as the founder of American Music and is still considered one of the pre-eminent composers to come from the Americas, particularly North America. He composed from 1917-1973, with many of his most recognizable works composed in the early 1940s. Duo for Flute and Piano...
In this paper, we explore the effect of critical events in shaping the responsiveness of elected officials to gender issues. In particular, we explore whether U.S. House Representatives discuss women’s issues more after the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a sexual harasser and the growth of the MeToo movement. To...
President Kennedy's construction of civil religion, but more importantly, his morality and moral perception, enabled great success for the United states in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the evasion of nuclear catastrophe.
The global Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) industry has changed dramatically within the past decade, with expansion outside of its start in Alpine Europe. The societal focus on more sustainable options within the built environment has led to an increased use of mass timber construction and its products including cross-laminated timber. Examining...
Fungicide resistance has become an increasing problem in North American populations of Zymoseptoria tritici, the causal agent of septoria leaf blotch of wheat. The goal of this experiment was to determine whether Z. tritici’s resistance to one azole fungicide would predict resistance in other fungicides within the same family. Cross-resistance...