This study examined fish movements and assemblage dynamics in the Wenaha, Grande Ronde, Snake river system of northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. I investigated the role of fish movement in the dynamics of stream fish assemblages and evaluated relationships between species movement, assemblage structure, and the heterogeneity of habitat at...
Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking using a life history–hydrodynamic...
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W. MILLER,
KIMBERLY L. DIBBLE, ERIC W. KORTENHOEVEN, ANYA N. METCALFE, AND COLDENV. BAXTER
Dams
Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking using a life history–hydrodynamic...
Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking using a life history–hydrodynamic...
Migration and spawning phenology of Pacific Salmon is linked to the hydroregime, and thought to be triggered by increases in river discharge and decreases in water temperature. However, little data exists that describes direct fine-scale linkages between the hydroregime and spawning in Coho Salmon. This study evaluated the spatial and...
Falls caused by slips are a major health risk to older adults and place a large financial strain on the health care system. Previous research has found that individuals can learn to recover their balance after being exposed to a series of simulated slips. However, training large numbers of older...
The objective of many simulations is to study the
steady-state behavior of a nonterminating system. The
initial conditions of the system are often atypical because
of the complexity of the system. Simulators often start
the simulation with the system empty and idle, and
truncate, or delete, some quantity of the...
Black liquor recovery boilers experience significant fire-side fouling problems due to the deposition of entrained particulate matter. Increased understanding of the mechanisms by which particles deposit on these surfaces will lead to more effective management of the resultant problems. There is some evidence which suggests that the sub-micron fraction of...
The Willamette River flows north between the Cascade Mountains and Coast Range of western Oregon within a 29,728-km² basin. The fish community in the geologically young basin consists of 36 native species, but introductions of non-native fishes have added 33 additional species for a total of 69 fish species. During...
The behavior of the thin liquid film formed between a bubble and hydrophobic membrane is of high interest in applications where separating two-phase mixtures is beneficial. One such application is in-situ vapor extraction heat sinks. In these systems, high heat transfer rates are accomplished by taking advantage of the high...
Education as a right has taken off internationally with expanded national policies in recent years. Across Africa over 80% of countries have abolished tuition fees for primary education and several have made the leap to free secondary education as well. With decreased financial barriers keeping kids out of the classroom,...
The purpose of this study was to investigate one individual difference,
i.e., rate of response, and the effect on student performance
when teachers recognize this difference. Using disadvantaged third
grade students as subjects, three null hypotheses were formulated as
follows:
1. Slow responding accurate students' (Group LH) scores will
show...
Laboratory experiments were conducted to study those factors which control the rate at which salts, such as magnesium chloride and sodium chloride, are removed from titanium sponge. The sponge was prepared by reducing titanium tetrachloride with either magnesium or sodium, and the resulting sponge salt mixtures were treated by vacuum...
Models were developed that described cohort strength of female
Dover sole (Microstomus pacificus) and female English sole (Parophrys
vetulus) in stocks off the Columbia River as functions of environmental
variables. The environmental variables considered were those
that could hypothetically influence spawning success or survival.
They included a spawning power index,...
Land use alters the physical and biological structure of stream ecosystems and potentially alters their capacity to process nitrogen (N), an essential nutrient that has nearly doubled in abundance on the biosphere
during the past century from human activities. In this dissertation, I quantified uptake and transformation of nitrate (NO₃⁻)...
This thesis presents a progression of novel planning algorithms that culminates in a new family of diverse Monte-Carlo methods for probabilistic planning domains. We provide a proof for performance guarantees and analyze how these algorithms can resolve some of the shortcomings of traditional probabilistic planning methods. The direct policy search...
Understanding the behavior of hydrophobic membranes is important for applications where separating a gas from a liquid-gas mixture is beneficial. For example, in-situ vapor extraction can be used in microscale heat sinks to improve heat transfer and flow stability. In this study, gas is experimentally evaluated flowing through flexible polytetrafluoroethylene...
Relationships between resident cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii) and six hydrologic indices were investigated using correlation analysis in two experimental headwater catchments in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains of western Oregon. This investigation was to determine if characteristics of discharge explained inter-annual variability in trout abundance. Eight years of...
Gonadectomy has been associated with a 1.5-2 fold increase in the occurrence of canine hip dysplasia and a 2-3 fold increase in the occurrence of canine anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. In intact dogs, luteinizing hormone (LH) is secreted from the adenohypophysis to stimulate the synthesis of gonadal hormones, which...
The littoral zones of seven reservoirs in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon were sampled with a boat electroshocker during the summer months of 1995 and 1996. Shoreline substrates were inventoried before sampling sites were randomly selected. Sampling sites consisted of 9 of 12 possible habitat types including four substrate...
Land management policies are ideas about nature projected onto the landscape. Culminations of social, economic, and scientific influences, these policies create standards affecting the function of ecological systems. In the case of riparian lands in the Oregon Coast Range, policy requirements vary considerably across federal, state, and private land ownerships....
In watersheds across the American Pacific Northwest, changes in the cultural and regulatory landscape have increased pressure to restore and protect populations of anadromous fish. But restoration of anadromous fish populations constitutes a ‘wicked problem’, relentless in character, affecting diverse stakeholder groups, and defying ‘once and for all’ solutions (Weber...
We tested the potential of a selective flatfish trawl to reduce bycatch of slope rockfish in the upper continental slope bottom-trawl fishery (250–500 m) on the U.S. West Coast. The trawl we tested differed from typical slope trawls in that it was a low-rise, two-seam trawl with a severely cut...
To describe the life histories and demography of a fluvial population of Bull Trout Salvelinus confluentus, we PIT-tagged and radio-tagged Bull Trout captured in Mill Creek, a tributary of the Walla Walla River (Washington–Oregon), during 1998–2009. Adult abundance declined 63% during 2006–2010, driven primarily by a 10-fold reduction in subadult-to-adult...
This thesis is a report of a phenomenological-informed study of public university student spiritual development. The research was based primarily upon semi-structured personal interviews and a focus group with undergraduate students at a large, public research institution on the west coast. Since the introduction of scientific objectivity into the academy...
Urban rivers with a history of industrial use can exhibit spatial and temporal variations in contaminant concentrations that may significantly affect risk evaluations and assessment of remediation efforts. To more effectively estimate human and ecological health risks, we evaluated the spatial and temporal distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in...
In this study the impact of episodic events on levels of bioavailable trace metals Zn,
Cu, Cr, Cd, Pb, and As (III) were determined for the lower Willamette River in Oregon.
In addition, a comparison among three alternative methods for estuary sampling was
conducted. Potential adverse human health risk associated...
Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a human pathogen which is prevalent in marine environment. Consumption of raw or undercooked seafood contaminated with V. parahaemolyticus can cause foodborne illness. This study investigated the application of probiotics in depuration for reducing V. parahaemolyticus in raw Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) and the utilization of green...
In the environment, it is the unbound fraction of chemical (Cfree) which is able to diffuse across environmental interfaces and biological membranes. It is therefore Cfree which drives many important biological-environmental processes including contaminant transport, bioaccumulation and toxicity. Passive sampling devices (PSDs) offer a simplified and more accurate approach for...
Studies of anisotropic and isotropic Raman line shape yield information about the rotational motion (rotational correlation function) and non-reorientational (vibrational) lifetimes. The rotational motion of carbon disulfide has been studied previously by the techniques of Raman spectroscopy (6, 43), Rayleigh scattering (43, 46) and direct measurement (47). This work was...
The number of drones and genetic diversity among drones are
essential components to a well mated queen. Varroa destructor
preferentially parasitizes drone brood, and is thought to be
responsible for the loss of feral populations that once provided
additional drones for honey bee mating areas. It is necessary to
use...
Germination of immature (Stage III) and mature (Stage V) wheat (Triticum aestivum L. var. Chinese Spring and Yamhill) embryos is prevented by the inclusion of 10⁻⁴ M abscisic acid (ABA) in culture medium. In addition, Stage III embryos develop into mature embryos in culture medium containing ABA. In the absence...
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production of poplar biomass grown under four management conditions in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the U.S.A. was conducted. While the extraction of fossil fuels and the subsequent generation of energy have environmental impacts, the alternative of extracting poplar biomass also has impacts...
A custom radiation monitoring system was developed by Oregon State University at the request of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to measure radioactive cesium contaminants in the ocean waters near Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Plant. The system was to be used on board the R/V Ka’imikai-O-Kanaloa during a 15 d...
In host-associated microbiomes, the mechanisms that regulate community composition or the principles that govern dynamics remain far from clear. However, understanding how the structure of microbial communities shift as the system moves away from a healthy state is critical to assessing disease progression and to formulate any potential mitigation strategy....
Invasion by nonnative brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) often results in replacement of bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) in western North America, but the causal mechanisms are not well understood. Removal of brook trout from 1992 to 2000 from Sun Creek in southern Oregon, provided an opportunity to investigate the changes in...
Electrical stimulation of beef carcasses (n=18) did not cause a
significant reduction in microbial population on three different sampling
positions immediately following slaughter. In constrast, significant
microbial reduction (P > 0.05) was found at position 2 (muscle
above aitch bone), but not at position 1 (inside of neck) or position...
Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across...
In this work, colloidal PbSe quantum dots (QDs) are shown to be synthesized in a controlled manner by changing the growth time and reaction temperature in a microwave synthesis method. It is explained why quantum dots make such a unique material to create electronic devices and the specific benefits that...
The marine psychrophilic bacterium Vibrio marinus MP-4
possessed a maximum temperature and hydrostatic pressure of
20 C and 425 atm for growth. The effects of temperatures of 21 and
25 C and hydrostatic pressures of 200, 400, 500, and 1,000 atm on
protein, RNA and DNA synthesis by V. marinus...
A new pulse method for measuring differential double layer
capacitances has been developed in this work. The technique is based
on the determination of the cell time constant which, for an ideally
polarized test electrode-solution interface, is composed of the double
layer capacitance and solution resistance. By applying small step...
The object of the present study was to investigate the stimulatory
or inhibitory effects of barium, boron, bromine, cadmium,
chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, iron, manganese,
molybdenum, nickel, rubidium, selenium, strontium, vanadium, and
zinc upon in vitro rumen microbial activity as measured by the amount
of cellulose digested. Washed suspensions...
New approaches are needed to quantify and understand spatial patterns of stream fishes and their environment. Concepts in riverine ecology emphasize the importance of thermal zones and gradual longitudinal changes in physical habitat and biota, but little is known about spatial variability within the river continuum. I present a conceptual...
Marine bacteria play vital roles in every niche of the ocean, from small-scale symbioses to large-scale productivity and the regulation of Earth’s climate. Recent advances in molecular tools now allow us to probe the genetic potential of entire microbial communities. The next step is linking these diverse communities to the...
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hatchery. Results indicate that local growth drives elevated
abundances of the oyster-pathogen V
South Pacific humpback whales were devastated by commercial whaling in their Antarctic feeding areas during the 20th century. Understanding migratory connections and current abundance of these isolated breeding stocks is crucial for the allocation of historical Antarctic catches in population dynamic models used to assess current recovery. However, only a...