Cell signaling under external stimulation is a critical mechanism that governs many biological processes such as cell proliferation, cell migration, and cell apoptosis, etc. For multicellular organisms, the ability to synchronize heterogeneous individual cellular responses through intercellular communication is crucial to maintain normal functionality. However, even though the biological pathways...
In the past two decades, the advancement in data collection and storage have led to the accumulation of complex datasets. Consequently, various industries have sought data-driven solutions to predict and detect anomalies. Temporal patterns have emerged as potential features in prediction models that could improve the performance of the identification...
Hop (Humulus lupulus L. var. lupulus) is a diploid, dioecious plant with an extensive history of cultivation and use in brewing, as a textile, and for its therapeutic properties. Hop is prized for its ability to produce a variety of aromatic and flavor compounds, as well as compounds with anti-microbial...
Early childhood is a crucial time for the holistic development of a child’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical needs to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong wellbeing and learning (Irwin et al., 2007). During this critical period, there is an increased demand for motor skills and executive function...
Melanocytes are dendritic, pigment-producing cells located in the skin and are responsible for its protection against the deleterious effects of solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR), which include DNA damage and elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS). They do so by synthesizing photoprotective melanin pigments and distributing them to adjacent skin cells (e.g.,...
Hydrogen is the green fuel that can be produced from water through electrolysis and used via hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity with zero carbon dioxide emission. The commercialization of electrolyzers and fuel cells is the critical step to achieving global carbon neutrality. However, it is severely hampered by the...
Part I: Plasmonic color filters can be manufactured at lower cost since they can be fabricated in single lithographic process step as compared to Fabry-Perot based filters. In addition, they have narrow passband making resolving sharp features in sample spectrum possible. Due to these benefits, in this thesis, Plasmonic color...
Pseudomonas syringae are plant pathogenic bacteria that cause disease by rapidly multiplying within the aboveground tissues of host plants. Growth of P. syringae within plant host tissues requires the disarmament of host immune defenses that limit microbial growth. To combat host defenses, P. syringae deploys a type III secretion system...
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...
Impedance measurements are increasingly demanded in modern CMOS sensing systems as impedance is the most common electrical signal obtained from sensors, delivering physical, chemical and biomedical quantity changes. Impedance sensing for wide interested frequency, broad dynamic range, and various sensor interfaces has numerous challenges, especially targeted in CMOS miniaturization with...
Vibrio bacteria are commonly found in freshwater, marine, and estuarine environments. Members of this genus can exist in commensal relationships with marine animals or as planktonic bacteria, however, they are well known for their roles as pathogens towards humans and animals. In this dissertation, I investigated aspects of host-bacteria relationships...
The environmental health science community recognizes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as a re-emerging class of environmental pollutants due to their persistence and prominence in mixtures of concern. Due to their widespread distribution in the environment, exposure to PAHs often occur as complex chemical mixtures. Exposures are linked to numerous adverse...
In this dissertation, we explored multiple coding techniques to reduce energy consumption, improve performance, and secure wireless sensor networks specifically and ad-hoc networks in general. With the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G technologies, wireless sensor networks are quickly emerging as an important and key technology in the...
Oregon produces 99% US hazelnuts (Corylus avellana L.), occupying 3% world production. To ensure the quality and food safety of hazelnuts (inshells or kernels), industry and federal standards require freshly harvested nuts to be cleaned and dried to reach a final moisture content (MC) of inshells < 10%, MC of...
The scarcity of wireless spectrum resources and the overwhelming demand for wireless broadband resources have prompted industry, government agencies and academia within the wireless communities to develop and come up with effective solutions that can make additional spectrum available for broadband data. As part of these ongoing efforts, cognitive radio...
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 objective of the present research was to determine, by use of the progesterone receptor antagonist RU-486, whether progesterone by autocrine/paracrine action suppresses phosphatidylinositol hydrolysis, and thus, the production of prostaglandin F2a during the midluteal phase of the estrous cycle in ewes. Two experiments were performed. Experiment 1 consisted of...
Collective migration in animal groups is often guided by distributed leader agents that influence their peers by modulating their motion behaviors. Distributed leadership is a promising navigation strategy for artificial swarms, but designing the leaders’ controllers is difficult due to the swarm’s collective emergent behaviors. The presented research formulates a...
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...
Skeletal muscle is the largest organ in the body by mass, comprising roughly 40% of total bodyweight in adults. It plays diverse and unique roles that include movement, locomotion, and support for posture and internal organs, among others. The structural foundation for all skeletal muscle in adults is formed early...
This dissertation addresses object recognition in challenging settings, where distinct object classes are visually very similar (e.g., species of birds and insects) and/or access to training examples of object classes is limited (e.g., due to the associated high costs of data annotation). In this dissertation, we present a variety of...
Most of today’s Internet of Things (IoT) applications assume that data will be moved offdevices into centralized cloud platforms. While existing IoT systems leverage cloud-based analytics for meaningful data reasoning, the assumption that data should always be moved off the devices is problematic. The amount of data to be moved...
Currently the production of biofuel from algae is not economically competitive with petroleum fuel. However, co-production of high-value products may be able to justify the cost of large-scale algae cultivation. The basic goal of this study is to develop a techno-economic analysis (TEA) and Life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the production...
This dissertation focuses on extending the application scope of surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy to gas sensing. The method we propose is incorporating plasmonic nanostructures with nano-composite material, metalorganic framework, which can selectively preconcentrate certain gas molecules into the nanopores. The preconcentrating property is first demonstrated by applying metal-organic framework...
Functional control at the nanoscale forms the foundation of biological systems. These work at the cellular level by manipulating ions and molecules. Nanoscale devices that give functional control at this scale are also becoming an important component in diverse fields such as electronics, medicine, engineering, and manufacturing. Moreover, scientific advances...
Despite significant advantages in terms of portability and cost, near-infrared (NIR) gas sensing still remains a great challenge due to its relatively weak overtone absorption from the fundamental vibrational bond absorption at the mid-IR frequency. In this paper, we demonstrated ultra-sensitive NIR gas sensing for carbon dioxide (CO₂) at 1.57...
In a mostly abandoned block, capped by concrete, the building at 210 East 1st Street, The Dalles, Oregon still stands as one of three remaining structures. This building housed the Wing Hong Hai Company, a mercantile store and Chinese laundry, from 1889 to 1926. Beneath the modern concrete that encircles...
Time-dependent electronic transport is increasingly important to the state-of-the-art device design and fabrication. The development of nanoscale sensing, the harnessing and control of structural fluctuations, and the advancement of next-generation materials all require a treatment of quantum dynamics beyond the level of traditional methods and a more nuanced approach to...
The thesis documents research about combining the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit Program with the Impact 2002+ methodology to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for wastewater treatment processes. The LCA for the operational phase of a local wastewater treatment plant was performed and the environmental impacts caused...
Red Signal Countdown Timers (RSCTs) are devices placed at intersections to inform drivers of the time remaining on a red indication before it turns green, typically to improve intersection efficiency. This study examines the visual attention of Oregon drivers to circular red (CR) indications with RSCTs as compared to standard...
The objectives of this study were to evaluate the physicochemical properties and bioactive compounds from four different types of fruit pomace, including apple, blueberry, raspberry, and cranberry, and further to investigate the feasibility of creating apple pomace based biocomposite boards using thermal compression molding and to optimize the biocomposite formulations...
Kramers’ theory frames chemical reaction rates in solution as reactants overcoming a barrier in the presence of friction and noise. For weak coupling to the solution, the reaction rate is limited by the rate at which the solution can restore equilibrium after a subset of reactants have surmounted the barrier...
In this paper, we report a fiber-optic carbon dioxide (CO₂) near-infrared (IR) absorption sensor with only 8-cm sensing length that is coated with nanoporous metalorganic framework material Cu-BTC (BTC = benzene-1,3, 5-tricarboxylate). The multimode optical fiber was etched by hydrofluoric acid to remove the cladding and part of the core,...
Plant pathogenic Rhodococcus species are persistent pathogens able to cause severe growth deformities on a large range of hosts. The most well studied species, R. fascians is predicted by current models to synthesize a mixture of cytokinins that act to directly perturb the hosts' hormone balances, which results in abnormal...
The role of A-site non-stoichiometry was investigated in lead-free piezoelectric ceramics based on compositions in the 1-x(Bi₀.₅Na₀.₅TiO₃)-xBaTiO₃ system near the morphotropic phase boundary where x = 0.055, 0.06 and 0.07. The samples were prepared by a conventional solid state mixed oxide route with the A- site stoichiometry modified to incorporate...
Compared to conventional amorphous silicon (a-Si) TFTs, amorphous metal oxide TFTs have superior device performance such as
higher mobility, better sub-threshold swing, and lower off-state current. Amorphous metal oxide TFTs have an additional advantage
on the device uniformity due to the lack of grain boundary issues in the poly-Si TFTs....
We compare the Landauer, Kubo, and microcanonical [J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 16, 8025 (2005)] approaches
to quantum transport for the average current, the entanglement entropy, and the semiclassical full-counting
statistics (FCS). Our focus is on the applicability of these approaches to isolated quantum systems such as
ultracold atoms in engineered...
This thesis consists of three studies to better understand the environmental sustainability potential for algal-based biofuels. Initially, a comparison of recent life cycle assessments (LCA) of theoretical full-scale algal biofuel facilities was developed. These studies include varying boundaries and scope, functional units, and technology maturity assumptions. The comparison converted results...
Relaxor characteristic of the solid solution (1-x)BaTiO₃-(x)Bi(Zn₁/₂Ti₁/₂)O₃ (BTBZT) was investigated in this research. X-ray diffraction technique and Raman spectroscopy revealed the crystal structure of BT-BZT at various compositions. For compositions with x ≤ 0.08, the solid solutions exhibited clear tetragonal symmetry and transitioned to pseudo-cubic symmetry as the content of...
Human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide (CAMP/LL-37) is a cationic antimicrobial peptide that is widely expressed by myeloid and epithelial cells at the human-environment interface. It possesses broad spectrum antimicrobial capacity against bacteria, fungi and viruses. In addition to its direct antimicrobial activity, CAMP/LL-37 also attracts and recruits monocytes, neutrophils and other...
The study of time-dependent, many-body transport phenomena is increasingly within reach of ultra-cold atom experiments. We show that the introduction of spatially inhomogeneous interactions, e.g., generated by optically controlled collisions, induce negative differential conductance in the transport of atoms in one-dimensional optical lattices. Specifically, we simulate the dynamics of interacting...
DNA has a well-defined structural transition-the denaturation of its double-stranded form into two single strands-that strongly affects its thermal transport properties. We show that, according to a widely implemented model for DNA denaturation, one can engineer DNA 'heattronic' devices that have a rapidly increasing thermal conductance over a narrow temperature...
Much recent research has focused on the development lead-free perovskite piezoelectrics as environmentally compatible alternatives to lead zirconate titanate (PZT). Two main categories of lead free perovskite piezoelectric ceramic systems were investigated as potential replacements to lead zirconate titanate (PZT) for actuator devices. First, solid solutions based on Li, Ta,...
We provide here a comparative genome analysis of ten strains within the Pseudomonas fluorescens group including seven new genomic sequences. These strains exhibit a diverse spectrum of traits involved in biological control and other multitrophic interactions with plants, microbes, and insects. Multilocus sequence analysis placed the strains in three sub-clades,...
We provide here a comparative genome analysis of ten strains within the Pseudomonas fluorescens group including seven new genomic sequences. These strains exhibit a diverse spectrum of traits involved in biological control and other multitrophic interactions with plants, microbes, and insects. Multilocus sequence analysis placed the strains in three sub-clades,...
Microbial electrochemical systems (MESs) have attracted much research attention in recent years due to their promising applications in renewable energy generation, bioremediation, and wastewater treatment. In a MES, microorganisms interact with electrodes via electrons, catalyzing oxidation and reduction reactions at the anode and the cathode.
The bacterial community of a...
The objectives of this project were to investigate the critical factors impacting the physicochemical and antibacterial properties of β-chitosan based films derived from jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) pens, and to evaluate the feasibility of improving water solubility of β-chitosan through Maillard reaction. The studies examined the effect of molecular weight...
A method for improving performance/watt of an embedded single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) architecture using application-guided a priori scheduling of hardware resources is presented. A multi-core architectural simulator is adopted that accurately estimates power, performance, and utilization of various processor components (logic, interconnect and memory). A greedy search is then performed on...
This work presents a new energy saving technique for modern digital designs. We propose Time Interleaved Multi-Rail (TIMR) - a method for providing two dynamic supply rails to a circuit. This technique uses the first supply rail to mask the transition delay while changing the voltage of the second rail....
Using the microcanonical picture of transport-a framework ideally suited to describe the dynamics of closed quantum systems such as ultracold atom experiments-we show that the exact dynamics of noninteracting fermions and bosons exhibits very different transport properties when the system is set out of equilibrium by removing the particles from...