Climate exerts considerable control on wildfire regimes, and climate and wildfire are both major drivers of forest growth and succession in interior Northwest forests. Estimating potential response of these landscapes to anticipated changes in climate helps researchers and land managers understand and mitigate impacts of climate change on important ecological...
The relative enrichment of skin sebaceous gland lipids with deuterium-labeled α-tocopherol was compared with plasma enrichment to evaluate the delivery of vitamin E to skin. For the first week of this study, each subject consumed a daily dose of deuterated vitamin E (150 mg of an equimolar mixture of RRR-α-[5-(C²H₃)]-(d₃)...
This thesis follows two studies performed with simple robots. The first follows a robot interacting with eight improvisers to create scenes and perform five isolated gestures (towards, away, sideways, spin, and circle) for interpretation. The second follows a group of three robots performing the same five isolated gestures at two...
Self-harm is a frightening phenomenon that affects adolescents and young adults all over the world. While non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has a high prevalence rate, it is not a new behavior. One of the earliest documented cases of NSSI was in ancient Greece and it has gained popularity amongst adolescents. NSSI...
The present study examined the process by which couples, in the context
of a heterosexual romantic relationship, participate in sexual activity. As they did
so, their interactions helped to construct their relationship. Social construction
theory and the gender perspective provided the theoretical foundation for this
qualitative research.
Nine heterosexual couples...
Identifying factors related to adolescent sexual activity is an important
issue for health care, education, and public policy. This research explores the
idea that sexual identity relates to adolescent sexual activity and the riskiness of
the behavior. Sexual identity is composed of many factors, including self-esteem,
sexual self-efficacy, body image,...
A subjective model based on county demographic characteristics
and regional variation in election issues was used to predict
county by county election outcome on an effort to repeal mandatory
comprehensive land planning in Oregon. The subjective model consisted
of four county factors: 1) population density; 2) percent of urbanization;
3)...
The study focuses on how to use entertainment method approach to prompt people with best practices for COVID safety. During COVID times, there have been many robots deployed in public places such as social distancing enforcer or a robot that provide facial masks, but few investigations have been done to...
This thesis seeks to make developing multi-robot comedy performances more accessible to developers and performers, and suggests the use of duo comedy for robot-run research experiments. It involved four main steps: technology development, experimental deployments in the general public, the development of the Multi-Robot Comedy Performance System, and an analysis...
User studies in human-robot interaction and social robotics in general involve human participants and their reactions, observations and expectations of robots. This thesis presents two innovative experimental methods aimed at gaining access to high-stakes social data not typically collectable with traditional user studies. The Actor Method provides access to data...
Expressive motion has been found to be a highly effective tool in communicating intent and motivation in single robot human-robot interaction, but work in exploring how groups of robots can use motion in interactions with humans is relatively nascent. There are many additional complexities to consider expanding from single robot...
We do not fully understand reasons behind extinction of populations and species. Consequently, our ability to anticipate extinction (which can be considered a permanent type of an ecological threshold) has remained elusive. In particular, it is not clear how the attributes of episodic disturbance regimes can elicit extinction. In this...
Bud break is a key adaptive trait that can help us understand how plants respond to a changing climate from the molecular to landscape scale. Despite this, acquisition of bud break data is currently constrained by cost, scale, and a lack of information at the plant scale on the environmental...
Citizen science is a term broadly used to describe activities that typically involve the public in the process, methods, and standards of scientific research with the aim of advancing scientific knowledge or application. Engagement in citizen science for project and program volunteers is influenced by much more than an individual’s...
: ______________________________________________________
Heather A. Fischer
Abstract
Citizen science is a term broadly used to describe activities that
Anthropomorphism is described as the human tendency to see human-like shapes in the environment and robots have the potential to be anthropomorphized. However, it is unclear if anthropomorphic robots are effective in human-robot interactions (HRI). Using the context of hand sanitizer service as an application, this work assessed whether a...
A chair, once placed, will stay put until moved. Or will it? With the rise of technology being embeddable into everyday objects, what if that chair could move itself? Such robotic furniture has been featured in advertisements, art, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. Existing methods for operating robotic furniture have...
Being human is often portrayed as desirable in fiction. Many fictional beings, particularly robots and androids, seek out being human as a goal. Although current robotics is not advanced enough for robots and androids to be deemed sentient, the world of fiction is quickly becoming reality. With the integration of...
This capstone report provides an overview of the emergence of the bigleaf maple sugaring industry in Oregon. This report consists of a literature review and three case studies. The literature review compiles information relevant to bigleaf maple sugaring within the wider context of maple sugaring in North America. The three...
Eight studies from a meta-analysis on St. John's wort by Klaus et. al. (1996) were analyzed according to the severity of depression manifest by their patients. The studies were chosen according to inclusion criteria: 1) the study was random, 2) the study compared St. John's wort to a placebo or...
The purpose of this study was to determine new international
students' perceptions of United States professors upon entrance into the
university and after two months in class, and if differences in expectations
exist between groups of students based on demographic variables. A survey
designed to assess these expectations was administered...
Species' distributions across the landscape are perhaps the least understood yet most conspicuous features of life on earth. Ecologists have long studied species' distributions; yet, many questions remain about why species occur where they do. Such questions persist largely because species' distributions are complex systems with challenging properties like non-linearity,...
The following paper is an objective view on the viability of growing the truffle Tuber melanosporum in the Willamette Valley. Included in this study are the history of the truffle, biological cycle, habitat description, method of cultivation and an enterprise budget for commercial production in the Willamette Valley. The truffle,...
This study explored the motivations, expectations, and experiences of tenure-track faculty members at a public research institution. Through semi-structured interviews with twelve participants, the study utilized a constructivist paradigm to qualitative research to address the individual experiences of faculty members entering the professoriate and pursuing tenure. With this methodology and...
This collection of poems and essays is about the folklore of family and the shadowy imprint family myth can leave on its members. At the center of the argument is a struggle about coming to terms with these shadows from a speaker trying to find a sense of a self...
present a unique modeling approach to investigate the
potential impacts of future land use alternatives on amphibian population
dynamics in two agricultural watersheds in central Iowa. An individual-based
spatially explicit population was used to predict the consequences of alternative
landscape design and management for populations of four amphibian species. The...
Floodplain forests play many important roles in the fluvial processes and environments of large alluvial rivers, including acting as geomorphological influences and habitat for native fish during high flows. Many large, gravel-bed river systems have undergone substantial change in recent centuries, resulting in loss of forested area to agriculture, reduction...
Institutions of higher education are increasingly being held accountable and experiencing pressure to demonstrate how well their students are achieving intended learning outcomes. External and internal influences fuel this pressure. After decades of rhetoric on student learning outcomes assessment there remains a question of whether the practice has been fully...
Oxidative stress occurs when the balance between reactive oxygen species and antioxidant defense mechanisms in the body becomes tipped heavily in favor of the reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species can be present in excess due to elevated O2 levels, radiation, infection, smoking, or even excessive exercise. It is also...
In previous papers by Awrejcewicz in 1986 and Narayanan and Jayaraman in 1991, it was claimed that the nonlinear oscillator with dry friction exhibited chaos for several forcing frequencies. The chaos determination was achieved using the characteristic exponent of Lyapunov which requires the right-hand side of the differential equation to...
Annual applications of fresh or composted dairy manure were assessed for their effects on root rots of sweet corn and snap bean and damping-off of cucumber in a field soil. Soil biological and physical properties were measured as possible indicators of root rot suppressive potential. Regardless of amendment type or...
In the field of Human-Computer Interaction, provenance refers to the complete history and genealogy of a document. Provenance can be useful in identifying related resources, such as different versions of the same document or resources used in the creation of a new document. Though methods of provenance collection and applications...
Westward transport of water vapor across the Panama Isthmus helps to
maintain the salinity contrast between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, important in
thermohaline circulation and global climate. Relatively low sea-surface salinities and a
strong, shallow pycnocline in the eastern Pacific warm pool (EPWP) region near
Central America reflect high...
I focus on addressing knowledge gaps relating to management of cryptogams in Oregon's public lands in Pseudotsuga menziesii-Tsuga heterophylla forests on the west side of the Cascade Range and dryland steppe in the Cascade Range's rainshadow.
While a great deal of research has illustrated the importance of late-successional forests for...
While there are many more species of reptiles in the tropics than in temperate
latitudes, relatively little is known about the natural history of tropical species of
snakes. Even basic information, such as reproductive ecology and behavior, is lacking. Patterns of reproduction in tropical species differ from patterns in temperate...
School counselors are challenged with creating a wide range of programs to
address three developmental domains: personal/social, career, and academic, with an
increasing requirement to provide accurate and sufficient data substantiating their
professional contributions to students’ academic achievement. At the same time, the
professional literature reports that during adolescence there...
Direct anthropogenic stressors have caused drastic declines in wildlife populations over the past two centuries. In the face of these threats, spillover of infectious disease from domestic animals and livestock into wildlife, and novel interactions between parasites and pathogens within wildlife communities, have further suppressed already vulnerable populations. As management...
The increasing complexity and connectedness of energy networks has opened pathways for new forms of collaboration with energy consumers. Despite the emergence of the smart grid an array of policy options like demand-side management (DSM), many families continue to disregard daily household energy consumption, particularly during peak-use times of day....
The health and environmental impacts associated with traditional methods of household cooking and heating have driven the development and dissemination of many types of improved cookstoves and fuels. However, adoption rates, household cooking practices, and even household ventilation can directly influence the magnitude of real-world impacts. Given the highly contextual...
With rising concentrations of CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere causing
concern about climate change, many solutions are being presented to
decrease emissions. One of the proposed solutions is to sequester excess
CO₂ in geological formations such as basalt. The deep subsurface is known
to harbor much of the microbial biomass...
This dissertation focuses on science relevant to the design and implementation of marine reserves. The chapters explore a range of topics related to among-site variation in population, community, and ecosystem dynamics. My results demonstrate the value and feasibility of integrating this knowledge into more comprehensive conservation and management approaches. While...
Seed piece to plant transmission of the potato late blight pathogen, Phytophthora infestans, occurred with isolates of the clonal lineages US-8 in Oregon and US-11 in Washington in field trials. Average transmission rate across potato cultivars was 0.5 and 2.4% with US-8, and 0.8 and 1.0% with US-11 in 1999...
Approximately half of the 6.4 million pregnancies occurring each year in the
United States are unintended (Finer & Henshaw, 2006). Unintended pregnancies, defined
as pregnancies not wanted at the time conception occurs, regardless of contraceptive use
(Chandra, Martinez, Mosher, Abma, & Jones, 2005) can have serious repercussions on
women, children,...
A new technique is developed to recover elemental tellurium (Te) from cadmium telluride (CdTe) which is abundantly available in photovoltaic semiconductor waste. The method is based on microchannel fluid flow with the use of a supported liquid membrane (SLM) between the donor (feed) and acceptor (strip) channels. A predictive theoretical...