Nowadays, woody biomass is becoming increasingly significant because of its renewability and biodegradability. Lots of opportunities have been found to use excessive biological resources to derive products as diverse as fuels, heat, electricity, chemicals, food, clothing, paper, and much more. As such, biomass plays an important role in meeting demands...
A small eddy viscosity or mass diffusivity that varies with height has been found to have unexpected effects on the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability of a stably stratified shear layer near the neutral stability boundary. In particular, varying viscosity can increase the growth rate of the instability in contrast to the...
Directional wave spectra have been estimated in this study based
upon simultaneous subsurface measurements of current and pressure.
Two previously developed methods, the stochastic and deterministic
approaches, have been reviewed and restudied. It is demonstrated by
means of the Correlation Theorem that the stochastic and deterministic
approaches are, under certain...
Optical sensing technologies are pivotal in the manufacturing process, specifically in defect detection, tool condition estimation, and monitoring. The research aims to enhance the accuracy, efficiency, and reliability of manufacturing metrology by employing optical sensing technologies, such as laser profilometers and image processing techniques. The dissertation proposes intelligent and flexible...
Pectic substances in the cell wall have long thought to
be responsible for the textural changes in fruit during
ripening and senescence. Compositional variation within
the pectic macromolecules could affect the external
characteristics of the fruit. Strawberries undergo adverse
quality changes such as softening and juice loss after
freezing and...
The discovery of new blue pigments is a field of great interest, as commercially available pigments present properties that make them undesirable such as poor sustainability, cost, and stability. By researching solid solutions with the melilite structure, we discovered a new solid solution Sr2Zn1-xNixGe2O7, with 0.1 ≤ x ≤ 0.6,...
Cubic phase Li₇La₃Zr₂O₁₂ (LLZO) is a promising solid electrolyte for all solid-state lithium-ion battery, due to its reasonable ionic conductivity, stable against metallic Li, wide chemical window, and thermal and chemical stability. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the influences of different synthesis methods on the structure...
Modulation assistance is widely employed to improve chip management in turning. This process is also known as modulated turning. Modulated turning transforms continuous cutting into intermittent cutting by periodically disengaging the tool tip from the workpiece, resulting in the generation of short, easily managed chips. This novel method improves the...
BackgroundEpidemiological evidence suggests that arsenic (As) exposure during pregnancy may reduce infant birth weight. One significant source of As exposure is diet; thus, As may indirectly affect infant growth by mediating the effect of maternal diet on birth weight (BW). This study evaluated the potential mediating effect of As in...
Learning to recognize objects is a fundamental and essential step in human perception and understanding of the world. Accordingly, research of object discovery across diverse modalities plays a pivotal role in the context of computer vision. This field not only contributes significantly to enhancing our understanding of visual information but...
In this thesis, we introduce a novel Explanation Neural Network (XNN) to explain the predictions made by a deep network. The XNN works by embedding a high-dimensional activation vector of a deep network layer non-linearly into a low-dimensional explanation space while retaining faithfulness i.e., the original deep learning predictions can...
Labeling videos is costly, time-consuming and tedious. These costs can escalate in applications such as medical diagnosis or autonomous driving where we need domain expertise for annotation. Few-shot action recognition aims to solve this problem by annotation-efficient learning mechanisms.
This thesis presents MetaUVFS as the first Unsupervised Meta-learning algorithm for...
As one of the most popular data types, the point cloud is widely used in various appli- cations, including computer vision, computer graphics and robotics. The capability to directly measure 3D point clouds is invaluable in those applications as depth information could remove a lot of the segmentation ambiguities in...
The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to transformative developments across multiple sectors, fostering innovation and redefining our interactions with technology. As AI matures and becomes integrated into society, it offers numerous opportunities to address global challenges and revolutionize a wide array of human endeavors. These advances are driven...
This thesis consists of two major components. The first part is concerned with video object instance segmentation (VOS), which is the task of assigning per-pixel labels perframe of a video sequence to indicate foreground object instance membership, given the first frame ground truth mask. VOS has myriad applications, from video...
The abilities of plant biologists to characterize the genetic basis of physiological traits are limited by their abilities to obtain quantitative data representing precise details of trait variation and mainly to collect this data on a high-throughput scale at low cost. Deep learning-based methods have demonstrated unprecedented potential to automate...
Wood-based composites such as plywood and particleboard are produced with a thermoset adhesive via a hot-press process. At present, UF is the most commonly used thermoset adhesive for production of decorative plywood. The emission of the carcinogenic formaldehyde from UF-bonded panels during the use of panels affects the indoor air...
Particleboard is widely used for making bookshelf, furniture, cabinets and many other interior products. At present, particleboard is mainly produced with wood particles and urea-formaldehyde (UF) resins. The emission of carcinogenic formaldehyde in the production and use of particleboard has generated an urgent need for development of a formaldehyde-free wood...
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Kaichang Li
Particleboard is widely used for making bookshelf, furniture, cabinets and many
Heatmap regression has became one of the mainstream approaches to localize facial landmarks. As Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) are becoming popular in solving computer vision tasks, extensive research has been done on these architectures. However, the loss function for heatmap regression is rarely studied. In...
Reverse osmosis (RO) is being increasingly used in treatment of domestic
wastewater secondary effluent for potable and non-potable reuse. Among other
foulants, dissolved biopolymers, i.e., proteins and polysaccharides, can lead to
severe fouling of RO membranes. In this study, the roles of RO membrane surface
properties in membrane fouling by...
The fact that African Americans are under represented in the natural
resource professions is well known and commonly acknowledged. Terms such
as conspicuously absent, manifest imbalance and zero representation have all
been used to describe the current status of African American natural resource
professionals. The data suggests that in the...
Organismal development requires a precisely orchestrated transcriptional program to correctly deploy genetic information into the genome. This process requires sophisticated gene regulatory networks at multiple spatial and temporal levels from early embryonic development to adult physiological conditions. Molecular differences that define cell types are set up during the pattern formation...
A multispectral retrieval method is developed on the 100 km regional scale to extract
the temperature, particle size, fractional cover and 11-μm emissivity of clouds which
may be semitransparent in the infrared based on emitted radiances. The scheme utilizes
the nonlinear relationship between emitted radiances when clouds are semitransparent and...
The main contributions of this thesis are the development and
application of four computationally efficient solutions for
least-squares-based (LS-based) minimum variance spectral estimation
(MVSE). They are: (1) fast computational solution for the 1-D
covariance LS-based MVSE, (2) fast computational solution for the
1-D modified covariance LS-based MVSE, (3) fast computational...
Koi herpesvirus (KHV), is a highly pathogenic virus causing high mortality in common carp and koi, especially in fry. One of the unique features of herpesvirus infections is their ability to become latent following initial infection. During latent infection, only viral genome persists in the host and remains dormant in...
Global warming is an increasingly serious problem around the world. To mitigate the influence of global warming on people’s lives, the Obama Administration put an emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate global warming. The adoption of energy efficient vehicles, including hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid vehicles...
An extensive theory of symmetric error control coding has been developed in the last few decades. The recently developed VLSI circuits, ROM, and RAM memories have given an impetus to the extension of error control coding to include asymmetric and unidirectional types of error control. The maximal numbers of unidirectional...
The purpose of this study was to investigate three research questions: (1) What are the attitudes and beliefs of the pre-service teachers and teacher educators regarding multicultural education, and how do the teacher educators prepare the pre-service teachers to meet the needs of diverse K-12 students in Taiwan? (2) To...
Food allergies are an important health problem and affect up to 2% of the adult population and 8% of children worldwide. Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) of 2004, foods that contain or derive from the "Big 8" allergens (milk, egg, finfish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts,...
Development of graphical user interface (GUI) applications is difficult since the process can be both complicated and tedious. We propose a solution directed at reducing programming time and effort required to build a GUI application. Our solution is based on the Petri Network, the Oregon SpeedCode Universe (OSU) Application Framework,...
Oxidative stress is defined as an imbalance that favors the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) over an organism's antioxidant defense. ROS have the ability to damage, either directly or indirectly, biomolecules including DNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. Various pathological conditions and environmental and chronic diseases have been associated with...
This thesis uses an anthropological approach to examine the current social status
of the young elderly in contemporary urban China and explores the problems these people
are facing. A review of literature sets up complementary theoretical frameworks for the
understanding of the interaction between changing social environment and transitional life...
Object categorization is one of the fundamental topics in computer vision research. Most current work in object categorization aims to discriminate among generic object classes with gross differences. However, many applications require much finer distinctions. This thesis focuses on the design, evaluation and analysis of learning algorithms for fine- grained...
An important step in the design of digital networks lies in the derivation of the switching formulas which describe the combinational logic networks in the system. In most large systems the number of gates and the number of connections are major factors that affect the cost of the system. An...
Full Text:
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF
LIN,PEI-CHEN for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE
ETRCTRICAL&COMPUTER
in
To protect and restore environmental quality, efficient and effective conservation policies are needed. Designing policies require a sound understanding of the contributions of natural endowments to economic vitality, and the performance and impacts of conservation programs. This dissertation consists of three essays, and addresses several issues relevant to these two...
We developed an integration-based line detection algorithm. Existing line detection methods such as the Hough Transformation (HT) and its variants are insensitive to image noise. The reason is that HT finds lines by calculating the gradient of the image and assumes that the region where the gradient is the steepest...
Resource Planning and Management (RPM) network is a graphical
representation of input-output relationships among activities and
resources within a system. Both resources (events) and activities
(decisions) are explicitly represented as nodes in all RPM networks.
Depending upon the relationships being depicted, RPM networks can
be classified into Relational (R), Precedence...
The study evaluates performances of three multiple time series
(MTS) forecasting methods; investigates possible improvements in
MTS forecasting operations, and proposes a multiple time series
based forecasting system. Time series considered are finite,
linear, covariance stationary, and discrete.
Specific objectives for the thesis were: (a) conducting comparative
studies of MTS...
Bullying prevents its targets from enjoying a safe, stress-free living, learning, and working environment. For most children, bullying experiences will be merely unpleasant childhood memories. This remains the same in adult's working environment. During the past decade, the concept of workplace abuse has had an increasing resonance within western countries....
Stochastic analysis procedures have been recently applied to analyze nonlinear
dynamical systems. In this study, nonlinear responses, stochastic and/or chaotic, are
examined and interpreted from a probabilistic perspective. A multi-point-moored
ocean structural system under regular and irregular wave excitations is analytically
examined via a generalized stochastic Melnikov function and Markov...
The management options chosen by decision makers in
managing wildlife and fisheries have different effects for
diverse user groups. As a result, natural resource management
agencies often seek information to evaluate the effects of
alternative policies on the benefits provided to different
constituencies. Over the past decade, economists have
developed...
In the past decade considerable research in several disciplines has
been oriented toward the design of optimal capacity expansion plans for
water resource systems. The emphasis of most of these efforts has been
directed toward minimization total cost outlays in project planning.
This focus somewhat limits the full applicability of...
Full Text:
BIING-HWAN LIN
AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF
for the degree of
Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs), primarily indium doped tin oxide, have been widely used in numerous fields since decades ago, such as solar cells, displays, OLEDs and ‘smart windows’ etc. Owing to the scarcity of indium, there is a great demand for new alternative materials. Metal/insulator/metal (MIM) diodes are a critical...
This study examined lifestyle changes as related to the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in Chinese students at Oregon State University (OSU). The study population included male students or scholars from the People's Republic of China who were attending OSU during spring term 1992. Fifty subjects were interviewed using...
In Bayesian analysis, means are commonly used to
summarize Bayesian posterior distributions. Problems with
a large number of parameters often require numerical
integrations over many dimensions to obtain means. In this
dissertation, posterior modes with respect to appropriate
measures are used to summarize Bayesian posterior
distributions, using the Newton-Raphson method...
In this research, the possibility of the precessional magnetization switching by focused surface acoustic waves, without external magnetic field, has been demonstrated. The technique of generating an effective magnetic field by applying stress to a magnetostrictive material via a surface acoustic wave is applied to perform field-free magnetization switching. It...
This investigation deals with the chaotic rocking response and overturning
stability of offshore equipment subjected to base excitations due to wave-induced
motions of the supporting compliant offshore structural system. The equipment
compliant structural system is modelled as a free-standing rigid object subjected
to horizontal and vertical base accelerations. Three of...
Damping-off of table beets is of widespread occurrence in the
Willamette Valley of Oregon. Pythium ultimum Trow., Pythium
debaryanum Hess., and Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn. were found to be the
important pathogenic fungi causing the disease.
Trichoderma viride, Penicillium spp. Streptomyces spp. and
certain isolates of bacteria, all saprophytic organisms associated...
The tissue and substrate degradational enzymes, acid hydrolases,
in endosperm were studied in order to discern the mechanism of seed
shriveling in triticale (XTriticosecale Wittmack).
Acid hydrolases in crude extract of 7-week-old developing
endosperm of 2 lines each of triticale with shriveled (6TB,JZBS) and
plump seeds (6TA, RBP) were successfully...
The purpose of the study was to compare differences among 18 personality
trait scales of the California Personality Inventory (CPI), six American Association of
Health, Physical Education and Recreation (AAHPER) tests of physical fitness, and
Ponderal Index (PI, or body mass) measurements for a population of ethnic Chinese
and aboriginal...
In order to estimate wind turbine residL2;characteristics
in the presence of atmospheric turbulence, the important atmospheric
sources for the force excitations felt by the wind turbine system
must be identified and characterized. The goal of this research
is to develop the wind turbulence input model for horizontal axis
wind turbines....
Small broomrape (Orobanche minor) is a parasitic weed that attaches to the roots of red clover (Trifolium pratense). Small broomrape invasion presents a significant threat to the future of red clover seed production in Oregon. This study was conducted to investigate and develop small broomrape management options for red clover...
Precipitation is one of the most important components contributing to hydrological
dynamics. Spatially distributed precipitation data can be obtained by satellite, radar,
rain gages, etc, to serve various purposes. Currently, the most commonly used
precipitation data still rely on gage-based measurement techniques that provide
timely precipitation information with high quality...
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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF
Wei Lin for the degree of
The fouling characteristics of a desalted crude oil were investigated in a systematic
investigation. There are two main parts in this study, the dry bulk tests (dehydrated crude
oil) and the wet bulk tests (to which desalter brine was added). Three barrels of desalted
crude oil provided by Amoco Oil...
The prevalence of herbal supplement use by the elderly and factors that influence regular versus occasional use were investigated in a group of independent residents of a continuing care retirement community in Salem, Oregon. A nine-page questionnaire was delivered to 402 residents of Capital Manor; 318 questionnaires were usable (84%...
In this dissertation, we investigate three numerical methods for inverting the Laplace transform. These methods are all based on the trapezoidal-type approximations to the Bromwich integral. The first method is the direct integration method: It is a straightforward application of the trapezoidal rule to the Bromwich integral, followed by convergence...
The effect of non-zero, but small, viscosity and diffusivity on the marginal stability
of a stably stratified shear flow is examined by making perturbations around the
neutral solution for an inviscid and non-diffusive flow. The results apply to turbulent
flows in which horizontal and vertical turbulent transports of momentum and...
National Geographic’s June 2018 magazine titled “Planet or Plastic?” drew attention to a growing problem throughout the world: ocean plastic. The eight plastic-related articles in the magazine are an example of science communication as a critical method of not only disseminating information but also raising awareness of the marine debris...
When people talk about the one-child policy in China, it always relates to topics like human rights violations or the population control dilemma. The one-child policy was published in the 1980s, around the same time as the Economic Reform, and these twin policies brought Chinese society tremendous changes. This paper...
The dissertation focuses on the engineering of light-matter interaction using plasmonic nanoparticles and metamaterials to achieve enhanced luminescence and based on which to improve the performance of biosensing and light-emitting technologies. We designed and fabricated a spectrum of nanostructures to exhibit particular dispersion relations capable of controlling the spontaneous emission...
The Northern California Current (NCC) ecosystem exhibits extreme seasonal, interannual and interdecadal shifts in the abiotic environment and shifts in primary and higher production. This variability is also apparent in the spatial structure of the ecosystem with nearshore-shelf waters (<150 m isobath) being highly productive and having a different community...
An innovative silver nano-dimple arrays (Ag DAs)-integrated microfluidic device was developed to achieve highly sensitive fluorescence-based nucleic acid detection. The Ag DAs were utilized to produce surface plasmon resonance (SPR) for strong fluorescence enhancement. We systematically investigated the plasmon-enhanced fluorescence by controlling the nanostructure dimension of the Ag DA substrate....
Rubber without reinforcement has limited applications. The strength of reinforced rubber composites can be ten times stronger than that of unreinforced rubbers. Therefore, rubber composites are widely used in various applications ranging from automobile tires to seals, valves, and gaskets because of their excellent mechanical elastic properties. Silica and carbon...
The decline of many Pacific salmon stocks has stimulated interest in the early life history and habitat requirements of juvenile salmon. Although estuarine habitat associations of juvenile salmon have been investigated in many coastal areas of the eastern Pacific Ocean, until recently, little was known about juvenile salmonid ecology within...
This study examined the distribution and behavior of adult spring chinook salmon
(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) related to patterns of stream temperature and physical
habitat at channel unit, reach, and basin-wide spatial scales in both a wilderness stream
and a disturbed stream in the John Day River basin in northeastern Oregon. Thermal...
Deep learning has recently revolutionized robot perception in many canonical robotic applications, such as autonomous driving. However, a similar transformation has yet to occur in more harsh environments including underwater and underground. This is due in part to the difficulty in deploying robots in these environments, which lack large real...
I used current water management practices in central and eastern Oregon and Washington as natural experiments to quantify the effects of irrigation water withdrawals on macroinvertebrate community structure and life history strategies. Reduced discharge had direct (e.g. decreased velocity and wetted habitat) and indirect (e.g. increased conductivity and temperature) effects...
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David Wooster Judith L. Li
I used current water management practices in central
The extent of biological invasions, their role on the feeding of
native fishes and their impact on community stability were
investigated in Alsea Bay and Yaquina Bay, two estuaries on the
central Oregon coast, USA. Most nonindigenous species (NIS)
introduced in these intermediately invaded estuaries are
considered byproducts of culturing...
The performance of deep learning frameworks could be significantly improved through considering the particular underlying structures for each dataset. In this thesis, I summarize our three work about boosting the performance of deep learning models through leveraging structures of the data. In the first work, we theoretically justify that, for...
Atherosclerosis is the underlying cause of ischemic heart disease and stroke and is the leading cause of death worldwide, especially in developed countries. As an inflammatory disease of arteries in a hyperlipidemic milieu, expression of adhesion molecules, such as endothelial-leukocyte adhesion molecule-1 (E-selectin) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), on endothelial...
In genome-wide association studies, it is often challenging to have consistent findings from independent studies. This "lack of reproducibility" issue is partially caused by the relatively small sample size compared to the number of genetic markers in every single study. Therefore, researchers have developed statistical methods to integrate multiple studies...
The integration of photodetectors with IC circuits provides a significant
improvement over conventional designs. Featuring noise reduction, extended frequency
responses, lower power consumption, and data operations, these integrated devices open
challenging opportunities for many applications. One type of photodetector has the
potential for important applications in the life science and...
In this dissertation, we address action segmentation in videos under limited supervision. The goal of action segmentation is to predict an action class for each frame of a video. The limited supervision means ground truth labels of video frames are not available in training. We focus on three types of...
There is an emerging interest in developing wearable electronics as a platform, which
provides the flexibility of a wearable while maintaining its promising functionality as smart textiles. Metal-halide semiconductors are attractive materials with tunable optical and electrical properties. Researchers have widely studied and applied it for advanced
photonics and optoelectronic...
Further enhancement of energy generation is desired for practical application of anaerobic microbial systems such as microbial fuel cells (MFC) and anaerobic digesters (AD). A possible approach is to enhance the ability of microbial communities to transfer electron extracellularly in the form of electrical current. Critical to perform direct extracellular...
The Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are increasingly explored in varies of fields including designing and optimizing computer systems. Recent research, such as optimizing memory/cache prefetching by ML training or predicting traffic pattern in throughput processors, also exhibits a promising future of introducing ML into computer system design and optimization. Throughput...
RNAs play important roles in multiple cellular processes, and many of their functions rely on folding to specific structures. To maintain their functions, secondary structures of RNA homologs are conserved across evolution. These conserved structures provide critical targets for diagnostics and therapeutics. Thus, there is a need for developing fast...
The high level of parallelism in throughput processors such as GPGPUs has resulted in significantly changed on-chip data traffic behaviors. This demands new research to identify and address the limiting factors of networks-on-chip (NoCs) in the context of throughput processors. In this work, we first quantitatively analyze the performance of...
Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are relatively new amorphous materials that have received much attention in recent years. Rapid cooling methods from the liquid state provides the possibility to bypass crystallization during solidification. Due to the lack of crystal defects such as grain boundaries and dislocations, BMGs can have some special...
Grid-scale energy storage systems are urgently needed to increase the flexibility and rigidity of the grid for modern society and take full advantage of the renewable green energy resources such as solar energy and wind energy. Na-ion batteries (NIBs) and K-ion batteries (KIBs) have been emerged as one of the...
Culture, thought worldview and language have been
discussed for a long time in different fields from various
perspectives. However, the basis of this study is the view
of language as both the product and producer of people just
as people are the producer and product of language. Each
language requires...
A VLSI system for image compression based on two dimensional discrete cosine transform
(2-D DCT) is designed and its performance is estimated. The focus is mainly on the reduction
of power consumption and a reasonable speed. A 2-D DCT algorithm called row-column
decomposition is chosen for the VLSI design of...
IC designers are continuously facing the challenges from reduced CMOS feature sizes and supply voltages. ADCs that deliver satisfactory resolutions/speeds while utilizing the state-of-the-art technologies to save power are in high demand. The analog circuits are more and more assisted by various digital calibration techniques to get boosted performances. This...
A characterization of the antigenic determinants (epitopes) of the glycoprotein (G) of infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) was made with different regions of the G gene expressed in Escherichia coli. A cDNA copy of the G gene was divided into four fragments after Taq I digestion and these fragments were...
This dissertation seeks to understand Yi farmers’ livelihoods in the midst of an agricultural transition in Yunnan, Southwest China. This dissertation examines a community’s traditional knowledge related to wild edible plants (WEPs), analyzes socio-ecological vulnerability and resilience in the face of agricultural transition from subsistence farming to cash cropping, and...
Rainbow trout cystatin C cDNA has been isolated from
trout liver. The full-length cystatin cDNA (674 bp)
included the 5'untranslated region and the polyadenylation
signal sequence AATAAA in the 3' region. Translation of
the cDNA defines 132 amino acid residues. Comparison of
the amino acid sequence with those of family...