The story of Leo Szilard has not been told in its full complexity. This is especially so of the role imagination played in Szilard’s worldview. Szilard, like many other scientists in the mid-twentieth century, worked on the Manhattan Project. Like these other wartime participants, the work and relationships formed during...
This research is an exploration of empathy in the classroom from the standpoint of how instructors experience it and understand themselves to communicate it to their students, particularly students from different cultural backgrounds. The research method used was ethnographic analysis of a classroom observation and a one-hour semi-structured interview with...
The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of therapeutic non- directive play treatment with third grade boys who were low achievers in reading and to determine how treatment was associated with changes in reading achievement: vocabulary and comprehension; reading attitude and academic self-concept; role expectations and self-adequacy....
The Bondwoman’s Narrative, the first novel written by an enslaved Black woman, borrows heavily from other texts and genres to investigate what freedom looks like in the context of slavery. Crafts rewrites characters, scenes, and plots, adapting them to her setting and placing herself as a heroine within them. Scholars...
Sixteenth century Elizabeth I of England has long been a figure of interest to Renaissance scholars, and their work largely focuses on how her gender impacted the power, politics, and culture of her day. Many have perceived her to be a heroine whose ingenuity and determination circumvented the limitations imposed...
The ongoing “method war” in literary criticism that has manifested as the impasse between Critique and Postcritique, which are identified respectively with paranoid and reparative modes of reading, raises existential questions about criticism in the face of its declining social value under neoliberalism. This thesis enters that impasse to suggest...
The effectiveness of a three-hour nutrition education workshop
for home economics teachers given in 18 locations in Oregon was
evaluated based on responses from 138 teachers. Changes in knowledge
of and attitude toward four nutrition topics (fast foods, vegetarianism,
weight control, and food exchanges) were measured using
questionnaires completed at...
This study discusses common struggles of first-generation Polynesian football players’ university experiences with cultural adaptation. There is little research on this topic. Because of the importance of these issues and the exploratory nature of this study, a qualitative approach was needed. Interviews were conducted with 15 first-generation Polynesian football male...
Osteoporotic vertebral fractures are a common and costly public health problem with a high occurrence in older women due to menopausal-onset bone loss. Recent findings suggest that mechanical loading created by upper body resistance training can stimulate bone growth in the lumbar spine, reducing osteoporosis-related bone loss and associated fracture...
The diverse community of bacteria living within and on host organisms, known as the microbiome, has an important role in maintaining host health. Dysbiosis, known as a change in the healthy community of the microbiome, has been associated with a number of diseases across host organisms and body sites including...
The aim of the study was to explore the possibility of relationships
existing between social aspiration and the use of clothing for
prestige among lower middle class working women.
A review of the literature dealing with aspirations among
various groups indicated that more aspiring individuals generally
used clothing for prestige...
This study was designed for the purpose of expanding knowledge
of the correlates of role-taking as measured by Feffer's Role-Taking
Task. The variables of perception, sex, age, reading achievement,
and ordinal position were investigated. The perceptual variables
measured were visual memory, field dependence/independence,
auditory memory, and organizing and synthesizing ability....
The purposes of the study were to explore the possibility of
relationships existing among clothing behavior, attitudes toward
certain clothing standards, interest in clothes, religious orthodoxy,
and conformity among a group of Seventh-day Adventist college girls;
and to determine whether or not factors of socio-economic level,
type of secondary education...
The likelihood of achieving an effective environmental health communications
program increases with a knowledge of the target audience's attitudes toward their
environmental health concerns, source credibility, preferred channels of communication,
and desire to participate in environmental issues. With this in mind, the purpose of this
study was threefold: 1) to...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of therapeutic
self-directive play as a means of developing positive self-concepts
and motivation of educationally handicapped children.
Further consideration was also given to behavioral changes as viewed
by the classroom teacher and aide. The population of the study consisted
of...
Animals aggregate and interact in nonuniform and nonrandom patterns, which lead to group level characteristics that have important evolutionary and ecological consequences. Network analysis provides a useful conceptual framework for linking animal interactions at all scales from dyads to communities, to populations and ecosystems. Despite exciting theoretical and applied advances...
Most wild animals are concurrently infected with multiple parasite species for most of their lives. These parasite species assemble into rich and diverse communities, with parasites using host tissues for growth and reproduction as well as evolving strategies to evade the host immune system. The net effect of these ecological...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship
between self-directive play and social behavior and between self-directive
play and self-concept in matched pairs of first grade
children.
The sample consisted of 12 pairs of first grade children
matched for sex, age, school experience, and number of siblings.
The...
This study investigated the relationships between selected
perceptual-motor behaviors and the following: achievement in reading,
achievement in mathematics, academic self-concept, academic
motivation and classroom behavior. This investigation was designed
to explore the suggestion of Newell Kephart that there is a relationship
between perceptual-motor behavior and school success, and to
provide...
This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between
the Human Development Program (HDP) and reading achievement and
between HDP and the self-concept of selected fourth grade students
attending a public school. A further purpose was to investigate the
relationship between fourth grade students' measured feelings of
responsibility for the...
Hazardous materials data from business and industrial chemical information and incident databases were analyzed to study the types of chemicals located in Linn, Benton, and Lincoln Counties, Oregon. Federal and Oregon Department of Transportation data were analyzed to study traffic patterns and truck and railroad traffic levels. Results indicate more...
The purpose of this problem was to compare young, middle-aged, and older women's attitudes concerning clothing, and to see
what influence the husband's position and income had on the clothing
attitudes of the wife.
The problem dealt with five specific aspects of women's dress:
(1) appropriate dress, (2) impressing others,...
The objectives of the study were (1) to determine the differences
in ability of seniors and freshmen to apply principles learned
in a clothing selection course to selection of clothing, (2) to determine
retention of concepts learned in the course, (3) to determine if
age, grades, social class, and occupational...
Waste generated by the health care industry has been cited as a major source of toxic pollution, including mercury and dioxins, which poses a serious threat to public health. The purpose of this study was to investigate pollution prevention activities of health care facilities in Oregon related to environmentally preferable...
The purposes of this investigation were to: (1) assist the elementary schools of
Oregon in the development and implementation
of elementary school guidance programs, and (2) develop recommendations
for improving programs of guidance as well as counselor
preparation programs.
The investigation focused upon the personal and educational
background of current...
The individual through earliest recorded history reveals contradictory views of the
human life-span. "Am I a free and unique individual, able to make choices and decide my
own destiny?, or, "Am I only a victim of circumstance, a speck of dust in the universe's
whirlwind of fate?"
Each view is...
Online fanfiction communities have received attention for providing spaces of creativity and individual empowerment. Yet as critics have sought to establish fanfiction as a worthy object of study, many have not grappled with the ways that fanfictions not only trouble, but also reinforce various discourses and ideas of gender and...
The purpose of this study is to examine how members of the Oregon State University polo team negotiate aspects of their social identity. Over the course of the 2011-2012 school year, 15 interviews and 30 hours of observations were conducted. From the data, five overarching themes were identified: inclusion as...
The research of genealogy and family history can represent a means of self-discovery, connection, and preservation of the past. The experience is individualistic, unique to the intricate intertwining of lives that helped create and influence who we are today. Through the analysis of historical biographies, family documents, and autobiographical vignettes,...
In this creative non-fiction thesis, the author reads her own life, suggesting that she believes in the details of experience and knows truth in and through experience even though the truth is not always clear. The first chapter includes several narratives from her childhood experience. In the second chapter, the...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are among the most widely known and studied environmental contaminants, originating from a range of natural and anthropogenic sources. PAHs are known to occur in the environment as complex mixtures, containing both unsubstituted PAHs, as well as a range of PAH derivatives. Among the less-studied of...
Bark beetle outbreaks have left a legacy of tree mortality across fire-prone landscapes of western North America that could influence how these forests will burn and regenerate. While research has been focused on forests in the western United States, the potential interactions between mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks and wildfires...
We evaluated genes previously identified from a large scale functional genomics screen for their potential value to help enhance carbon sequestration in planted trees. We used poplar as a model tree species because of its abundant genetic variation, ease of gene transfer, and availability of large databases for genomic, anatomical,...
Geologic CO₂ sequestration is a climate change mitigation strategy that prevents CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere by capturing CO₂ gasses from large point source emissions streams and then pressurizing and pumping the supercritical-state CO₂ into underground geologic storage reservoirs. Once underground, CO₂ is prevented from buoyant migration to the surface...
Modeling and analyzing the combined effects of disease and population dynamics
is important in understanding the effects of mechanisms such as pathogen transmission
and direct competition between host species on the distribution and abundance of different
species in an ecological community. Mathematical analysis of such models in a
spatially explicit...
In the midst of the sixth mass extinction, understanding wildlife disease spillover is critical to maintaining protected wildlife areas. Studying ecoimmunology and wildlife disease ecology helps to understand immune and disease traits in an ecological context, which is invaluable in preventing pathogen spillover between livestock and wildlife. To investigate this...
Unknown questions remain concerning the health of migrant farm workers,
seasonal farm workers, and other rural poor people. The objectives of this study were to
determine the demographic profile of a sample from a Community and Migrant Health
Center; to determine the prevalence of disease in migrant farm workers, seasonal...
Little research has investigated girls’ and college women’s reactions to non-objectified media images of women, including those that depict women in instrumental activities like playing a sport. This study examined open-ended responses to images of performance athletes, sexualized athletes, and sexualized models. Participants were 258 adolescent girls (ages 13-18) and...
In Oregon, the effects of climate change on agriculture are already being felt. In the Northwest, climate change impacts agricultural pest pressure, especially insects, whose life cycles are tied directly to weather and climate. The goal of this research was to record and analyze Oregon fruit and vegetable farmers’ relationships...
This study investigated how manipulating vineyard nitrogen status, irrigation levels and cultivation practices would effect nutrient composition, and anthocyanin and phenolic accumulation in Pinot noir juice and wine from a commercial Willamette Valley Oregon vineyard. Pinot noir fruit was sourced from a vineyard trial in the Benton Lane Vineyard, located...
Geological carbon sequestration, as a method of atmospheric greenhouse gas reduction, is at the technological forefront of the climate change movement. During sequestration, carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas effluent is captured from coal fired power plants and is injected into a storage saline aquifer or depleted oil reservoir. In an effort...
A team of three people at the Republic of Palau Division of Marine Resources interviewed 54 women in seven of Palau's 16 states in a three-month study to determine the role of women in nearshore fisheries. The interviews, which generally lasted over an hour each, found that most of the...
Drought events have been shown to impact species distributions and are predicted to increase in frequency as the climate changes. As this occurs, ecologists predict species distributions will shift dependent upon species ability to track climate. These shifts in species distribution are expected to be particularly acute in arid and...