Spot fires caused by lofted embers (i.e., firebrands) can be a significant factor in the spread of wildland fires. Embers can be especially dangerous near the wildland-urban interface (WUI) because of the potential for the fire to be spread near or on structures. Many studies have investigated the transport of...
The YA4-H! program engages youth from across the state of Oregon in Youth Participatory Action Research in their own communities surrounding topics that they feel are important to them.
Full Text:
Youth in Participatory Health Education and Research
Tyler Davenport, URAP Researcher; Dr. Mary Arnold
Pediococcus cerevisiae, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus plantarum,
Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Lactococcus diacetylactis Bifidobacterium
bifidum, Leuconostoc oenos, and mixed cultures of Propionibacterium
shermanii and P. cerevisiae were used to ferment cucumber juice brine
(CJB) at 22-26°C for 1.5 months. Sugar utilization ranged from 14.6 to 86.1%.
pH of the fermented CJB ranged from...
Pectinmethylesterase (PME) activity in fresh cucumber
fruit was determined. The effects of several cationic
species, temperature, pH, and acetic acid on the activity
of cucumber PME was investigated. The efficacy of
blanching, infiltration with CaCl₂ or acetic acid, and
fermentation with 0 and 40 mM CaCl₂ on inhibition of
cucumber...
Stormwater runoff is a significant cause for impairment of many water bodies, a problem that will inevitably escalate due to increasing land-cover change associated with urbanization. The effect of stormwater runoff has spurred legislation and the subsequent development and adoption of Best Management Practices (BMPs) to treat stormwater. This work...
A year-long bench-scale treatability study was performed to assess the feasibility of using an activated sludge sequencing batch reactor (SBR) to treat a mixture of domestic wastewater and landfill leachate. A 50/50 (v/v) of domestic wastewater and landfill leachate was treated in a 1 L SBR operated on a 12...
Models of a species’ distribution and models of a species’ spatially explicit density are valuable tools for conservation. They allow researchers to estimate changes in distributions, densities, and populations, based on changing environmental conditions. To trust such estimates, however, the quality of models is exceedingly important. Model performance can be...
Anaerobic digestion is a microbially mediated process by which organic matter is decomposed in the absence of oxygen. The end products of anaerobic digestion include treated sludge and biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, which can be recovered and used for energy generation. The majority of wastewater treatment...
Stormwater picks up pollutants as it flows over impervious surfaces before ending up in water resources. Best management practices are implemented to remove pollutants from stormwater. Puralytics manufactures a stormwater treatment product called the LilyPad. The LilyPad consists of a titanium dioxide nanoparticle photocatalyst immobilized on polypropylene substrate. Treatment of...
Airports are required by the Federal Aviation Administration to perform deicing of aircraft pavement during icy conditions. Until recently, there were no discharge controls in place and deicing fluid contaminated nearby water bodies from storm water runoff. EPA regulations now require airports to collect the deicing fluid and meet discharge...
This project determined how the presence of environmental biofilms on sand, granular activated carbon and biochar affected the sorption capacity and desorption quantity of copper, zinc, nutrients and organic carbon from stormwater. These contaminants have harmful and toxic environmental impacts on aquatic life, can lead to eutrophication of surface waters,...
Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) has recently appeared as a promising approach for removing nitrogen from landfill leachates because it requires less oxygen and no organic carbon compared to traditional nitrification-denitrification system, and it produces low sludge volumes, thereby reducing operating and biological sludge disposal costs by over 60%. Anammox bacteria...
Acid whey is the largest byproduct of the dairy industry but to date has few useful applications and is frequently discarded as a result. However, acid whey has a high carbon content, making it a suitable co-substrate for anaerobic co-digestion with raw sewage sludge. The synergistic effect of co-digestion has...
Anaerobic co-digestion of fats, oils, and grease (FOG) for increased methane (CH4)
production has been of increasing interest to municipal wastewater treatment plants
(WWTP) due to the potential economic benefit of using the produced biogas for
cogeneration of energy. FOG loading increase must be done carefully to mitigate the
risk...
Incompatibility between Fenton’s Reagents and a potassium dichromate COD test provides interference that prevent accurate measurements of the concentration of organics from oxidized samples. Several treatment options were tested to remove this interference. Oxidation of reagents was eliminated as a potential method for removal of interference due to sample contamination....
The OSU-Benton County Green Stormwater Infrastructure Research (OGSIR) Facility was created to test various methods of stormwater treatment. At this facility, runoff from the Benton County Development Department property is captured and pumped into a bioswale. This bioswale is comprised of layers of rock, gravel, sand, and soil, and is...
Urban stormwater runoff contains pollutants that have a detrimental effect on pond water quality and watershed water quality. Stormwater best management practices (BMPs), such as a constructed wetland, can treat these pollutants through processes like infiltration, adsorption, and plant uptake. It is hypothesized that the surface-runoff fed pond at Bruce...
Over the last two decades, urban stormwater management has grown to include green infrastructure, such as bioswales. These systems were primarily designed to mitigate hydraulic peaking during rainstorms but were also found to remove particulate and dissolved contaminants. However, little is known about the fate of these particulate contaminants after...
Food waste (FW), brewery waste (BW), and fats, oils, and greases (FOG), are prevalent waste streams in municipalities across the country, particularly in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Anaerobic digestion (AD), the microbial-mediated transformation of organic waste into methane-rich biogas, offers a sustainable, energy-generating, waste management solution for these wastes. Anaerobic...
English sole is a major contributor to Oregon and Washington groundfish resources. In accordance with the continued trend of increasing fishing effort, in 1975 Oregon State University Sea Grant
funded an extensive groundfish research program: the Pleuronectid Project. The purpose was to provide information to assist resource management agencies. This...
A market survey of aluminum users' purchasing
policies and the concept of opportunity costs are combined
in a quantitative decision model designed to
assist aluminum suppliers' efforts in directing products
and services improvements.
The opportunity cost, as the percentage of business
forgone, is determined for seven criteria representing
the products...
Gazing behavior is a vital part of nonverbal communication, as it can provide information about attentional state, subtext, environment, and point of view. Both dogs and cats have previously been shown to display gazing behavior when presented with an unsolvable task, as well as follow nonverbal directional ques given by...
An emmission sampling system was developed to measure pollutants
emitted from a mobile agricultural incinerator developed at
Oregon State University. The system was designed to collect a particulate
sample on an 8" x 10" fiber glass filter and collect a gaseous
sample in a plastic bag. Pollutants measured were particulates...
Agricultural tile drainage is one of the major causes of increasing nitrate (NO3-) concentrations in surface water bodies thanks to the usage of nitrogen fertilizers and manure. Denitrifying bioreactors are constructed at the edge of agricultural lands in order to remove NO3- from drainage water through labile carbon substrates intended...
Oregon English sole catch data from 0 to 80 fathoms between Coos
Bay and Cape Lookout were examined for the years 1973, 1975, and 1976.
English sole is a major target species of this inshore trawl fishery.
Comparison of depths of maximal values of catch per unit effort, effort,
and...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are significant pollutants in aquatic environments. Many are carcinogenic and lead to DNA fragmentation and adduct formation in marine and freshwater organisms. Previous research demonstrates that rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) compensate to long-term PAH dietary exposures and reduce the DNA damage.
The aim of this study...
The Penn-State/NCAR MM5 mesoscale model was adapted for mesoscale simulations of the Martian atmosphere (the OSU MMM5). The NASA Ames Mars GCM provides initial and boundary conditions. High-resolution maps for albedo, thermal inertia and topography were developed from Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) data; these baseline maps are processed to appropriate...
Beginning with the inception of American art history as a formal discipline in the 1940s, the dominant mode of interpreting nineteenth-century American landscape painting has been to view aspects of the landscape as symbols for grand cultural, religious, national, and moral narratives. While this method of interpretation highlights some key...
Janet Lamberson noted the presence of birds around her home during 1985-1990. She noted 10-33 species each month, 48-57 species each year, and a total of 72 species overall. 63 species were terrestrial birds, most of which were observed in all six years of her observations.
The semimonthly occurrence for...
Dietary cyclopropenoid fatty acids (CPFA) have long
been known to cause pronounced physiological disorders in
both farm and laboratory animals. Past work has shown
CPFA to be a powerful promoter of carcinogenesis in trout,
rats and mice. Sterculic and malvalic acids (CPFA's) are
found in seed lipids of plants from...
Pectic substances in the cell wall have long thought to
be responsible for the textural changes in fruit during
ripening and senescence. Compositional variation within
the pectic macromolecules could affect the external
characteristics of the fruit. Strawberries undergo adverse
quality changes such as softening and juice loss after
freezing and...
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...
Delta-sigma data converters have gained popularity in both analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters (ADCs and DACs) due to their simplicity, high linearity and immunity to many analog circuit imperfections. These data converters include features such as oversampling, noise-shaping, and (historically) single-bit quantization. Single-bit converters are preferred for their inherent linearity. This...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are complex mixtures that form when organic matter is burned. Humans are primarily exposed to PAHs via air pollution from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass, such a motor vehicle exhaust, cigarette smoke, wood smoke, or industrial emissions; or via ingestion of PAHs bound to...
The recency of the Food and Drug Administration menu-labeling regulations and the lack of research available on restaurateur response initiated this study. Advocates claim the new regulations will protect consumers and foster the selection of nutritious choices, however, critics believe the regulations will result in restaurateurs removing all nutrition information...
Anaerobic digestion is a biological process in which organic matter is decomposed by a community of microbes in the absence of oxygen. The end product of anaerobic digestion is biogas, composed of methane and carbon dioxide, which is often recovered and used to generate energy. Commonly, biogas is not produced...
The overall focus of this thesis is on the distribution of specific lipids and membrane proteins of the external and internal membranes of plant cells, in the context of the roles that those lipids and proteins may play in microbe-plant interactions. The work includes the development of several new tools,...
A dissertation describing the results of a series of greenhouse experiments conducted to better understand phytoremediation in stormwater bioretention systems.
Contaminants in stormwater such as heavy metals, PFASs, PCBs, and PAHs are an issue for public infrastructure and remediation practices. Biochar, granular activated carbon (GAC), OGSIR soil, and commercial adsorbent materials have been evaluated with the heavy metals Cu2+ and Zn2+. Copper and zinc as stormwater contaminants were treated with...
Species distribution models (SDMs) are currently being used to identify essential fish habitat and guide
fisheries management worldwide. We present SDMs based on generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) of
the fall distribution or occurrence of juvenile American shad (Alosa sapidissima) and juvenile striped bass
(Morone saxatilis) in the Hudson River...