In the heat of summer in the Rogue Valley, yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) raises heads of brilliant yellow flowers rigidly defended by sharp spines. Although bees reap double benefits of nectar and pollen during a season when most native plants no longer are flowering, this nonnative weed is a threat...
Squarrose knapweed, introduced from southwest Asia and the Middle East, became weedy in northern California and Utah by the early 1950s. How it
was originally introduced is not known, but its spread in California
and Utah was associated with the trailing of range sheep. Squarrose knapweed grows in the Klamath,...
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...
This thesis outlines the development of new elastomeric materials and manufacturing processes for soft robotics. Specifically, this work describes the development of custom material formulations for use in additive manufacturing, additive manufacturing processing techniques for silicone elastomers, and multi-component additive manufacturing techniques. Material synthesis and processing is a gap in...
Centaurea solstitialis L. (yellow starthistle) and C. × moncktonii Britt. (meadow knapweed) are members of the genus Centaurea in the Asteraceae family. Both species have become serious management concerns as invasive species in North America, often displacing native vegetation and costing land managers millions of dollars to eradicate. Seven plants...
Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis L.) is a member of the knapweed
(Centaurea L.) complex. It is poor forage for all livestock and causes
“chewing disease,” a nervous disorder, in horses. Yellow starthistle infests
millions of acres in California and the Pacific Northwest. Infestations range
from scattered plants to dense stands...
In many areas of the Western U.S., diffuse knapweed (Centaurea diffusa Lam.)
has invaded into plant communities dominated by bluebunch wheatgrass
(Pseudomegnaria spicata [Pursh] A. Love). The objectives of this study were to compare
growth response of both species when grown under altered moisture and temperature
regimes while in the...
Wild garlic (Allium vineale) was introduced from Europe where it was used as a food flavoring. It is found in pastures, lawns, ornamental beds, and several cultivated crops. It grows west of the Cascades from Vancouver Island south into northwest Oregon.
The encroachment of alien weeds onto western rangelands is one of the most perilous and perhaps least recognized problems facing land managers today. Oregon rangelands are under siege from ever-increasing numbers and distribution of exotic weeds. They threaten Oregon's economy and environmental quality by reducing livestock forage, wildlife habitat, watershed...
A method was developed for the measurement of 19 parent PAHs (PAHs) and 34 hydroxylated
PAHs (OH-PAHs) in urine and personal air samples of particulate matter less than 2.5 um in
diameter (PM[subscript 2.5]) using GC-MS and validated using NIST SRM 3672 (Organic Contaminants in
Smoker’s Urine) and SRM 3673...
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-glucuronidase/arylsulfatase was purchased from Roche Diagnostics
Corporation (Indianapolis, IN). Acetate
As decomposers, fungi are key players in recycling plant material in global carbon cycles. We hypothesized that genomes of early diverging fungi may have inherited pectinases from an ancestral species that had been able to extract nutrients from pectin-containing land plants and their algal allies (Streptophytes). We aimed to infer,...
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ancestors of land plants
Ying Chang, Sishuo Wang, Satoshi Sekimoto, Andrea L. Aerts, Cindy Choi, Alicia
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP) are a class of proteins that lack a three-dimensional structure and their prevalence and diverse functions in the cell have only been discovered relatively recently. The intermediate chain (IC) subunit of the microtubule motor protein complex dynein contains an N-terminal disordered region, N-IC, which is central...
Spring frost damage to pears in the Pacific Northwest frequently
results in substantial crop losses. This research was undertaken to
investigate the effects of frost on pear buds, flowers, and fruit
through controlled freezing tests and field studies in order to better
understand the frost phenomenon and refine frost protection...
In recent decades, there has been increased attention on human exposure to, and subsequently toxicity of, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are widespread organic pollutants and some have been shown to be toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic. This research was focused on understanding the link between global PAH emissions and lung...
Corals have multiple roles in maintaining ocean health and are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. The coral animal is host to a multitude of taxa, including symbiotic dinoflagellate algae, fungi, bacteria, protists, and viruses. Environmental stressors and disease agents can perturb the delicate balance of the coral host...
Previously published in California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Progress Report, 2007, Vol.48; access courtesy of publisher and authors.
Plant-parasitic nematodes cause more than US $100 billion in annual agriculture loss worldwide. Thorough knowledge of their genetic diversity, and interactions with endosymbionts and environment have the potential to provide valuable insights into the basic biology of these animals, and assist future efforts aimed at management of these plant parasites....
Cytoplasmic dynein is an ATP-dependent, microtubule-based molecular motor involved in the positioning and trafficking of cellular cargo. The cargo binding sub-domain of dynein contains the natively disordered intermediate chain (IC) and the homodimeric light chains (Tctex1, LC8 and LC7). The structure and stoichiometry of this complex, how the light chains...
Revised edition of the author's "Vegetation of Oregon and Washington", originally published by the U.S. Forest Service in 1973. Reprinted with new bibliographic supplement by the OSU Press in 1988.
The focus of this dissertation was to understand protein function and structure ona molecular level. To do this successfully, a variety of biochemical and biophysicaltechniques were employed. A wide variety of techniques were applied to study theproteins of interest in this dissertation to probe protein-protein interactions, proteinfunction, protein structure, and...
The potential for nanomedicine to reduce toxicity and improve therapeutic response to radiation is vast. Clinically, this potential has thus far only begun to be realized with the recent success of the radioenhancing nanoparticle, NBTXR3 by Nanobiotix. Radioenhancing nanoparticles, however, represent only a small class of nanomaterials that may be...
We monitored the distribution, abundance and productivity of the federally threatened Western SnowyPlover (Charadrius nivosus nivosus) along the Oregon coast from 5 April – 31 August 2016. From north to south, we surveyed and monitored plover activity at Sutton Beach, Siltcoos River estuary, the Dunes Overlook, North and South Tahkenitch...
This dissertation examines the impact of the German naturalist and literary figure Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ideas on twentieth century Anglophone plant morphology and biology. Goethe interpreted the organ forms of flowering plants as metamorphoses of each other. His literary, historical, and philosophical writings suggest themes of alienation from and...
Indole-3-carbinol (I3C) is a naturally occurring plant alkaloid, found in significant concentrations in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I3C is an unstable compound that undergoes rapid oligomerization in an acidic environment to form higher order condensation products (I3C-ACPs), such as 3-3'-diindolylmethane (DIM). Both I3C and DIM are...
Attempts to develop dual-purpose durum wheat cultivars for both pasta and bread-making
have been unsuccessful. To better understand this limitation, thirty durum
genotypes, selected based on their diverse geographical origin, and five bread wheat
cultivars were compared as to their flour mixing properties, dough physical characteristics
and baking performance. The...
We monitored the distribution, abundance and productivity of the federally threatened Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius nivosus nivosus) along the central and south coast of Oregon from 5 April – 14 September 2017. The project area surveyed and monitored for plover activity from north to south included Sutton Beach, Siltcoos River...
Metagenomics has revealed that the marine microbial biosphere is immensely more diverse than originally considered, and is an almost untapped reservoir for the potential discovery of microbial natural products. Despite numerous advances in culturing, biosynthetic engineering and genomic-based screening efforts to uncover much of this diversity in relatively accessible environments,...
Beer is one of the most extensively consumed beverages world-wide and it is almost always brewed with hops (Humulus lupulus, L.). Hops provide beer with bitterness, aroma, flavor and texture and also enhance specific beer properties such as foam stability, clarity (colloidal stability), color, flavor stability and microbial stability. Hops...
Batch cultures of Candidatus Pelagibacter ubique were grown under iron-, organosulfur-, and nitrogen-limiting conditions to understand how this ubiquitous marine bacterium responds to and interacts with environments where growth is limited by the availability of these nutrients. Global gene expression was monitored using microarrays and quantitative mass spectrometry to observe...
This report was prepared for the 2009 Range Field Day held at the Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center in Pendleton, Oregon. It contains research reports on molecular identification of cyst nematodes in wheat and barley; hard red winter wheat production; club wheat breeding in Oregon; growing canola on wide row...
This dissertation has two objectives. The first objective is to determine where best to situate the study of mentoring (i.e. the 'making of scientists') on the landscape of the history of science and science studies. This task is accomplished by establishing mentoring studies as a link between the robust body...