Self-regulation in early childhood encompasses higher-order executive function processes and lower-order emotional responses that enable children to navigate the classroom environment. Although self-regulation and executive functions are overlapping constructs, self-regulation represents a broad assessment of children’s ability to call upon executive function processes in order to meet contextual demands. Prior...
Early learning skills, such as executive function (EF), are a key component of healthy development and predict long-term academic success. Yet many children are entering kindergarten without the necessary skills (including EF) that are needed to set them on a successful learning trajectory. Early prekindergarten classrooms that encourage a high...
School interventions have typically focused on academic and psychological outcomes for children, but can children carry positive effects home from school to influence their parents and home environments? Developmental research typically focuses on how parents influence development in their children, but this study flips this lens to ask whether children...
Self-regulation skills lay the foundation for short- and long-term school success, and strengthening these skills in early childhood can have significant implications for immediate and future life outcomes (e.g., Blair & Diamond, 2008; McClelland, Acock, Piccinin, Rhea, & Stallings, 2013). A large body of literature has investigated how characteristics of...
In the United States, children from underserved racial/ethnic backgrounds encounter greater environmental risk both in terms of the physical environment (e.g., housing quality, access to resources like health services and jobs, and exposure to environmental toxins) and the social environment (e.g., social support, neighborhood crime, racism, and discrimination), due to...
A parent’s criminal justice involvement (CJI) can have a lasting impact on their children. Additionally, if these children are involved in Child Protective Services (CPS) they have often faced a form of abuse or neglect and they may be increasingly vulnerable to additional risks. Although a literature base exists that...
Strong self-regulation skills can predict academic success in early childhood contexts, specifically for math and literacy skills, thus laying the foundation for future success (McClelland & Cameron, 2012; McClelland & Ponitz, 2011). Children’s exposure to increased instructional time in school through programs such as full day kindergarten (FDK) has also...
Decisions about college are significant in the lives of students and their families, especially since these are often the first major life-decisions that adolescents are able to make largely on their own (Galotti, 1995; Galotti & Mark, 1994). It is widely recognized that family history plays a role in whether...
Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a primary cause of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer and thus represents a critical public health concern. Skin cancer risk behavior research lacks an instrument designed to assess health beliefs about UV exposure that may increase skin cancer risk by increasing risky UV exposure...
English Language Learners (ELLs) represent a culturally and linguistically diverse population in US schools. ELLs enter kindergarten with a range of academic and self-regulation skills, but can face multiple challenges navigating the school context (Zwiers, 2013). Previous research documents that low-income ELLs lagged behind in academic achievement, self-regulation, and English...
During the first full school year of the Covid-19 pandemic, two central contexts for adolescent development—home and school—changed utterly. In Oregon, most middle- and high schoolers attended school entirely remotely from the beginning of the pandemic, in March, 2020, through the end of April, 2021, removing both the supports available...
The use of electronic cigarettes (often referred to as vapes or e-cigs) has grown rapidly in the past decade. While these devices may not deliver the same level of carcinogens and toxicants as combustible cigarettes, they can deliver nicotine (a known developmental toxicant) as efficiently. Previous work suggests that, during...
A critical component in diabetes management is diabetes self-management education (DSME). Additionally, poor self-management behavior and negative health outcomes are associated with participants that do not complete diabetes education (Gurdiacci et al., 2007). Despite the widespread use of DSME, many do not obtain the wide range of benefits these programs...
The quality of parenting, in particular mother-child interactions, is important for children’s development. Sensitive and responsive interactions between the mother and child are linked to children’s language, emotion and behavioral regulation, brain development, and activity in the stress response system (NSCDC, 2007; Mintz et al., 2011, Gunnar & Quevedo, 2007)....
Tanzania has seen a steady decrease in HIV prevalence over the past decade; however, the current HIV prevalence is 4.8% among Tanzanian adults. HIV testing is the first step in the treatment cascade and is key to getting those living with HIV in Tanzania linked to care and reducing their...
Sexual and gender minority (SGM) samples report elevated rates of substance use and substance use disorder compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts across a wide variety of substances (Connolly & Gilchrist, 2020; Krueger et al., 2020; Rice et al., 2019), in part due to the experience of minority stress....
In the U.S., childhood overweight and obesity has grown to epidemic levels. The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) found that nationwide, approximately 32% of children 10–17 years old are identified as overweight, over half of them (nearly 17%) are obese. This is a concern because these rates continue to...
Frailty is a clinical syndrome characterized by decreased resilience to stressors, resulting from dysregulation across multiple physiological systems. Frailty is prevalent in elders and is associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes including death, disability, hip fracture, and falls. In the absence of a gold standard, there is a...
In 2008, the “Great Recession” gained its momentum and quickly grew into a global crisis that led to massive gross domestic product declines and job losses in countries around the world. Relative to prior economic downturns, young adults were greatly affected by the Great Recession. This likely placed a premium...
The family as a social unit is the earliest and most fundamental socialization influence and is an important contributor to children's development. Studies of family communication patterns (FCP) have emphasized two particular dimensions--a family's conversation orientation and their conformity orientation. However, many studies of FCP and its related outcomes have...
Few remote health monitoring (RHM) studies have included Mexican-origin Latinos, and even fewer have explored RHM acceptance and utility, reasons for RHM uptake success or failure, or how cultural values influence RHM use among this population. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the remote health monitoring (RHM)...
Empirical studies and theory have identified many early predictors of children's academic achievement and externalizing problems. Moreover, research shows that children's early cognitive abilities and behavioral problems are strong predictors of later academic achievement and externalizing problems. The current dissertation studies extend previous work and unpack how early predictors relate...
The metabolic fate of cholesterol delivered to rat hepatocytes by rat plasma lipoproteins was determined. Binding and degradation of rat low and high density lipoproteins (LDL and HDL) in rat hepatocytes were studied. ¹²⁵I-labelled LDL and HDL were incubated with cells in the presence of varying concentrations of unlabelled lipoproteins...
Livestock grazing is the prominent land use in Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis [Beetle & A. Young] S.L. Welsh) steppe and has been present since the late 1800’s. There have been calls to remove livestock grazing from rangelands as historic grazing practices resulted in the degradation of some...
Timber-concrete composite (TCC) solutions originated in the early twentieth century. There has been a renewed interest in TCC solutions in modern mass timber buildings, especially for floor systems. However due to lack of data, design standards, and code acceptance, TCC solutions require that new mass timber solutions be tested, and...
DNA mismatch repair (MMR) plays an important role in preserving genomic stability and reducing cancer risk. Environmental exposures to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are believed to contribute significantly to carcinogenesis. PAHs are found in food, air, water and soil and upon bioactivation can form diol epoxides which are electrophilic in...
Reinforcement learning (RL) is the study of systems that learn from interaction with their environment. The current framework of Reinforcement Learning is based on receiving scalar rewards, which the agent aims to maximize. But in many real world situations, tradeoffs must be made among multiple objectives. This necessitates the use...
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a highly valuable crop that makes up a large portion of the world’s food. However, breeding for improved varieties with desirable characteristics can be a challenge. This research examined two different issues wheat breeders deal with throughout the selection process all the way to production of...
Oxidative stress that occurs during cryopreservation may be reduced by the addition of antioxidants. Vitamin E (Vit E), Vitamin C (Vit C), glutathione (GSH), lipoic acid (LA), glycine betaine (GB) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) were applied at four steps of the PVS2 vitrification protocol (pretreatment, loading, rinsing, and regrowth). Shoot tips...
The growing urban development and the inadequate installation of settlements has caused environmental challenges such as landscape destruction, loss of urban tree biodiversity, therefore, the objective of this study was to identify the ecosystem services of urban trees in the 'Monumental Zone' of the city of Iquitos, in the Peruvian...
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is an enabling technique for many new micro- and nanoscale technologies. The self-limiting surface chemical reactions by which ALD fundamentally operates give rise to uniquely high precision (atomic) control over deposited film thickness, uniformity over large areas, and conformality over complex and extreme topographies. One such...
Italian ryegrass [Lolium perenne L. ssp. multiflorum (Lam.) Husnot] resistant to multiple herbicide sites of action continues to limit winter wheat production in western Oregon. In addition to impacting wheat production, multiple resistant Italian ryegrass may threaten the market for annual ryegrass seed for cover crops if wheat fields with...
Species distribution models (SDM), which quantify the correlation between the distribution of a species and environmental factors, are increasingly used to map and monitor animal and plant distributions in the context of awareness of environmental change and its ecological consequence. For perfect data, this is a straightforward classification problem from...
Seed dormancy is defined as the inability of viable seeds to germinate under conditionsotherwise favorable for germination. Dormancy provides a strategy for seeds to germinateat an appropriate time. Abscisic acid (ABA) is a major hormone involved in the regulationof seed dormancy. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms of dormancy, the twoexperimental...
The common cherrylaurel (Prunus laurocerasus) and Portuguese cherrylaurel (P. lusitanica) are economically important landscape shrubs across the United States. To gain a better understanding of physiology and morphology in these higher level polyploids (P. lusitanica, 2n = 8x; P. laurocerasus, 2n =22x), a variety of breeding experiments were performed. The...
Currently, fungicide applications are the predominant method of control for the cool weather pathogen Microdochium patch (Microdochium nivale). Increasing pesticide restrictions have generated concern regarding management of Microdochium patch. Three separate field trials exploring non-traditional fungicides were conducted between 2013 and 2015 on an annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) sand-based...
Some of the most pressing conservation concerns involve declining populations of species with low fecundity and highly specialized foraging and reproductive requirements. Yet, we often lack a functional understanding of how individuals of those species interact with their environment, specifically how their movement is affected by human-induced changes. In order...
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...
Currently there is a great amount of interest in the phenomena of natural circulation as a cooling mechanism for normal operation as well as emergency conditions in nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools. In order to better understand this phenomena for the specific geometry of vertical, heated rods in water,...
Populations of Western Tragopans Tragopan melanocephalus were studied at two areas (Machiara and Salkhala) in the Neelum Valley of northeastern Pakistan. A total of 130 sightings of birds was noted during the breeding seasons in 1982 and 1983, but only 100 were re-located for vegetation analysis. More sightings of birds...
Seed yield in perennial ryegrass is the product of yield components
that develop during the life of the plant. Crop yield potential is
defined by the number of fertile tillers, spikelets per spike, and
florets per spikelet. It has been shown that perennial ryegrass
realizes only a small percentage of...
Mechanical behavior of Nb-Ti superconducting composites with copper matrices have
been studied experimentally and theoretically.
Experimental work includes extensive measurements of Cu/Nb-Ti composite system.
Techniques for fine fiber testing and composite wire measurement have been developed.
Experimental parameters examined in this research include geometry, hardness, Young's
modulus, Poisson's ratio, yield...
Farmers in the high plateau region of Algeria are
assumed to exhibit risk averse behavior, particularly, due
to highly variable weather conditions inducing income
instability over time. This in turn directly affects their
production behavior. The Eastern High Plateau (Setif) is
not a homogeneous region. In the El-Eulma daira, for...
Biological invasions pose one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity, but many naturalized invaders coexist with the native community. Community ecology theory provides a framework for understanding the mechanisms by which invaders might coexist with native species or exclude them from the community, thus informing management practices to maximize...
Large areas of non-coniferous communities in southwestern Oregon are thinned to reduce fire hazard and accomplish ecosystem restoration, under the assumption that current fuel loads are unnaturally high. Although Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) woodlands are a characteristic landscape component in this region, little is known about their current or...
As a preliminary step toward the establishment of a
70 mm. aerial photo timber inventory system capable of
generating accurate stand tables, stock tables, and gross
volume estimates, this project focuses on the development
of a system which (1) eliminates the need to measure tree
height on the photos through...
North American cultivation of Ribes L. may expand as small fruit growers seek species to diversify horticultural crops. The Ribes industry was suppressed for decades out of fear that cultivated black currants and gooseberries would intensify the fungal disease white pine blister rust (WPBR) on five-needle pine (Pinus L. section...
Cordia alliodora is used for reforestation programs and farm income in northern Costa Rica. This study investigated: 1) responses of C. alliodora associated with stand density, or trees/ha (TPH), and 2) plant diversity and biomass in the understory of C. alliodora plantations. Three Nelder plots, 31 temporary plots and 6...