By emulating natural disturbances such as wildfire, managers hope to maintain biodiversity in managed forests. Leaving residual (live) trees in harvested areas is key to this strategy. However, the effectiveness of this approach is unknown. I surveyed songbirds in 176 stands in the Rocky Mountains of southeastern British Columbia, Canada,...
The FOCUS (Forest, Organisms, Creeks yoU Study) field trip program was developed to provide elementary students in Benton County, Oregon with a hands-on, environmental education experience at Beazell Memorial Forest. Students participated in activities dedicated to specific habitats and organisms found at Beazell that built upon their learning at school....
The micronutrient zinc (Zn) plays a key role in the animal and plant kingdoms. Zndeficient soils impact plant production and can cause yield reductions of 40% or more. Zn is also important for both human and plant development as a cofactor for over 200 enzymes. Zn-deficiency symptoms in plants include...
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Kari van Zee
The micronutrient zinc (Zn) plays a key role in the animal and plant kingdoms
Two forest management objectives being debated in the context of federally managed landscapes in the US Pacific Northwest involve a perceived trade-off between fire restoration and C sequestration. The former strategy would reduce fuel (and therefore C) that has accumulated through a century of fire suppression and exclusion that has...
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...
Weight-based stigmatization (WBS) exists in healthcare and can be categorized as direct, indirect, or structural. WBS is harmful to individual’s health and contributes to worse healthcare engagement, including reduced care satisfaction, patient-centered communication (PCC), and utilization of services. Little is known about young adults’ experiences of WBS in healthcare. Young...
After a 40-year absence from Oregon’s landscape, expanding gray wolf (Canis lupus) populations are reestablishing elements of interspecific competition with sympatric large carnivores, like cougars (Puma concolor). This presents new challenges for management of large carnivores and their ungulate prey populations (e.g., elk, Cervus canadensis nelsoni; mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus)...
Southeast Alaska is located on the traditional territory of the Lingít, Haida, and Tsimshian People. It is comprised of the largest temperate rainforest in the world, with subregions receiving over 500 cm of rain annually. Climate change is predicted to alter the region's timing, type, and magnitude of precipitation and...
Metabolic syndrome (MetS) and abdominal obesity (AbOb) increase the risk of
developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Energy restriction (ER), highprotein
(PRO) intake and high-intensity interval training (HIT) can independently
improve MetS and AbOb. However, ER reduces metabolically active lean body
mass (LBM) in addition to body fat (BF). Purpose: To...
Belowground carbon (C) storage and quality of soil organic matter (SOM) in
forest soils have implications for sustainable forest management and C sequestration,
but how these pools change in response to management is poorly understood. I
investigated whether fertilization and competing vegetation control, applied alone or
in combination early in...
Quantifying and modeling processes involved in the global carbon cycle is important to evaluate the temporal and spatial variability of these processes and understand the effect of this variability on future response to changing climate and land use patterns. Biomass accumulation and Net Primary Productivity (NPP) are large components of...
Background:
There are over four billion YouTube views per day with “music” the most searched topic. Among US internet users, 8.3 million YouTube users are under 18 years old. Incorporation of substance use imagery in YouTube videos has a considerable potential influence on young viewing audience behavior. This study identifies...
Background: Body Mass Index (BMI) is used as a quick and inexpensive tool to measure populations at risk for a number of metabolic and chronic conditions. In part due to its simplicity, BMI has been criticized for its inaccurate prediction concerning health outcomes. Due to the diversity in the United...
YouTube is a free video watching and uploading site that allows endorsing and
sharing of videos. Youth and adolescents as top viewers of YouTube may be exposed to
images and messages on tobacco, marijuana and alcohol use behaviors.
The research project entailed deriving a list of songs from the 2014...
In the United States, rates of youth vaping are alarmingly high. In 2018, the U.S. Surgeon General declared youth vaping as an epidemic (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022b). However, LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately affected. In 2021, current e-cigarette use among high schoolers was 16% with heterosexual students...
Drinking water access is a global concern. While drinking water is widely available in much of the U.S., there are still vulnerable communities that lack access, which signifies the presence of inequity in drinking water access distributions. In response, this research sought to explore solutions and develop reconnaissance-level plans to...
PRC2 (Polycomb Repressive Complex 2) mediated gene silencing plays an important role in cell differentiation, stem cell plasticity, and tumor suppression. In fungi, it is also involved in pathogenicity. The catalytic subunit, KMT6, trimethylates lysine 27 on histone h3 (H3K27me3) at loci targeted for silencing. In animals, PRC1 and PRC2...
The lower Willamette River, located between river mile 4.0
and 26.5, is the most seriously polluted section of the Willamette
River Basin.
Low dissolved oxygen concentrations of 2.0 to 3.0 mg/1 are
observed annually in this section of the river due to the pollutional
loads discharged into it. Waste discharges...
Fowl sperm are believed to be immotile prior to ejaculation. The concentration of
potassium found in deferent duct fluid is approximately 8 times higher than that found
in blood plasma, which is 5 mM in Gallus domesticus. The effect of ionic potassium
on fowl sperm motion was tested in a...
Industries such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), continue to employ fewer women compared to men. These professions that are traditionally considered more masculine sustain gender-imbalanced work forces and are also unattractive to women at an academic level. This thesis explores the hypothesis that performance can be a powerful...
There is a strong campaign underway to promote increased physical
activity among the U.S. population. The U.S. Surgeon General and the U.S.
Dietary Guidelines have presented physical activity recommendations in terms
of the amount of time accumulated in physical activity and/or in terms of
energy expenditure over the course of...
Rates of electronic cigarettes (or “e-cigarettes”) use among youth are so high that the Surgeon General declared them to be of “epidemic proportions” (A Report of the Surgeon General, 2012). If these rates go unchanged, e-cigarettes will likely be responsible for the creation of a new generation of combustible cigarette...
Histones, as part of nucleosomes, are responsible for DNA packaging in chromosomes. They also affect DNA expression by a multitude of post-translational modifications, especially prevalent on the amino terminus of histones. Co-activator protein complexes “write”, “read”, or “erase” histone modifications, and in balance determine which sections of DNA are free...
In the first experiment the minimum dietary toxic levels of vitamin A were determined in pregnant rabbits over three parities. The treatments consisted of basal diet plus 10,000, 30,000, 60,000, and 90,000 IU/Kg added vitamin A. The basal diet was formulated to be free of vitamin A and beta-carotene; rice...
Aging is a major risk factor for the deterioration of biochemical pathways that lead to many chronic neurodegenerative disorders (i.e. Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's Disease). Cellular senescence is a hallmark of aging, a condition characterized by stable growth arrest resulting in a cell that no longer divides, but is metabolically active....
Silicic caldera-forming eruptions are some of the largest and most destructive volcanic eruptions known, and present significant local and global hazards. The underlying processes within crustal magma plumbing systems that lead to the accumulation and eruption of large volumes of evolved magma remain enigmatic, yet there is broad consensus that...
Purpose: Many programs are available to engage people in health-promoting behaviors or behavior change, but most target specific behavior outcomes (e.g., weight loss, smoking cessation) rather than wellness. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a tracking-based health challenge focused on overall wellness, with or without peer support.
Methods:...
At This Point, an undergraduate-focused science podcast, works to expand the accessibility of science by exploring topics that, at this point, may seem too complex to understand. This thesis project describes the process of creating At This Point and demonstrates how the podcast fulfills the criteria of effective science communication....
Coarse woody debris (CWD, comprised of snags and downed logs) is an important component of the structure and function of forest ecosystems, one which both influences the availability of fuel for wildfires and can be a result of wildfires. We studied snag persistence, and changes in mass of CWD in...
The following text is a consolidated version of the Cakrasaṃvara Samādhi, along with the Guru Maṇḍala, Sūryārgha, Pañcagavya, Guru Pādārgha, Kāybhaḥ Pūjā, Rahasya Pūjā, Kalaśa Pūjā, Vāruṇī Pūjā, Bali Pūjā, Kīgaḥ Tine, and a Pātra Jñāna. The Cakrasaṃvara Samādhi, as has been discussed above, is the primary pūjā and sādhanā...
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Stuart Sarbacker
The following text is a consolidated version of the Cakrasaṃvara Samādhi, along
This work is concerned with determining whether nicotine has a role in promoting oxidative damage in human tissue, particularly in lung tissue. This follows from recent reports of a novel lung disease found in some E-cigarette users, characterized by oxidative damage and elevated levels of neutrophils (termed “vaping disease”). It...
The Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site has a long-term partnership with the University of Oregon Environmental Leadership Program (ELP), providing service-learning opportunities for undergraduate students to facilitate field trips for middle school students to the Andrews LTER site. Undergraduate students develop field trip lessons based on Andrews Forest...
The Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) catalyzes genome transcription repression through the methylation of lysine residue 27 in the amino terminal region of histone 3 (H3K27me1/2/3) [2], [7]. PRC2 is made up of three highly conserved core subunits: Kmt6, Eed, and Suz12. Accurate distribution of PRC2 is essential for proper...
The STEM Research Center at Oregon State University was invited by Guerilla Science and Pratt Institute to evaluate the professional development experiences for two cohorts of science and art professionals. Each professional development experience consisted of a three-day workshop and field experience in August and September 2019. We used workshop...
This research examines women's magazine editors' perspectives of the relationship between editorial and advertising content in women's magazines. It specifically investigates how this relationship affects both general editorial content and more specifically, social topic stories. Mainstream women's beauty/fashion magazine editors—including editors-in-chief—were queried as to the nature of these relationships. Interviews...
Otoferlin is a protein that is essential in the process of hearing. Mutations in otoferlin are associated with profound recessive deafness. The long-term goal of the Johnson lab is to understand how otoferlin contributes to hearing and why certain mutations result in deafness. This project sought to characterize the difference...
Bacteria are abundant in marine environments. They play important roles in nutrient cycling and form symbiotic interactions with eukaryotes. However, the vast majority of bacterial taxa are difficult to maintain in laboratory cultures, meaning that most microbiological research of the past century has focused on a small subset of bacteria....
With a national policy on catch shares in progress in the United States and
increasing use of transferable fishing rights in fisheries worldwide, it is
important to understand how the markets created by these programs
function in the real world. This paper presents information collected from
interviews with Florida spiny...
All of the data was collected at the FIGMENT art festival in New York City on June 23 and 24, 2018. The data was collected through: 1) paper survey for attendees to Guerilla Science activities, 2) short interviews (entry and exit) for attendees to Guerilla Science activities, and 3) short...
Creative projects at the interface of science and art can be appealing to both science-interested and art-interested audiences. They therefore present a unique opportunity to connect with cultural and learning identities of a wide range of people, and to preach beyond the already-interested and science-engaged “choir” that make up a...
Windthrow has been studied extensively as a cause of mortality and as a landscape
disturbance agent in temperate forests throughout the United States. The effects of
windthrow mortality on stand species composition and structure, forest regeneration and
seral development have been well described at the site (e.g. single gap) and...
Novel mucosal vaccines (LL-M2e, LL-HAe, SG-HAe) were constructed from live, non-pathogenic Lactococcus lactis or Streptococcus gordonii that express conserved regions of HA or M2 antigens from avian influenza virus (AIV) A. All three vaccines evoked antigen-specific serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) responses in vaccinated chickens. The addition of the adjuvant cholera...
The central purposes of this study were to review the
historical sources of David Kolb's formulation of experiential
learning theory, and to determine the effect and
application of Kolb's theory and Learning Style Inventory
as reflected in the literature between 1971 and 1990.
It was found that Kolb based his...
Bruno Latour’s Facing Gaia provokes us to embrace our Earthboundedness to approach the problematic political ecologies of the Anthropocene. Latour’s call for the Earthbound is to re-trace networks of society, institutions, and meaning and to challenge, as enemy, those that would continue to behave as if we lived on more...
Patients with end-stage renal disease undergoing hemodialysis have a high incidence of oxidative stress-related diseases. This study evaluated oxidative stress and inflammatory markers in patients undergoing hemodialysis before and during vitamin E supplementation. Blood samples were obtained before and after dialysis during two separate dialysis sessions to establish baseline measurements....
The Leeuwin Current in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia differs from the other major eastern boundary currents, e.g., California Current, since it flows rapidly poleward against the prevailing equatorward wind. The first large-scale study of the Leeuwin Current was conducted between North West Cape (22°S) and the south-western corner...
Environmental education programs seek to foster an appreciation for the natural world while introducing students to scientific thinking. Citizen science engages non-scientists in the systematic collection and analysis of data. The Betts Forest Landscape Ecology Lab combines both goals by inviting teachers in Corvallis, Oregon, and surrounding areas to participate...
Enduracidin is an antibiotic produced by Streptomyces fungicidicus that is effective against Gram-positive bacteria. Previous work identified seventy-eight mutations in an S. fungicidicus strain that produces a significantly higher level of enduracidin than the wild type strain, ATCC 21013. Eleven mutations were analyzed individually to identify those that may contribute...