This dissertation incorporates coalition formation and probabilistic planning towards a domain-independent automated planning solution scalable to multiple heterogeneous robots in complex domains. The first research direction investigates the effectiveness of Task Fusion and introduces heuristics that improve task allocation and result in better quality plans, while requiring lower computational cost...
In southeast Portugal, some coastal fishing communities have experienced intensified competition for harvestable stocks, and this impacted with some severity on small-scale fishermen who are especially dependent on fishing for their livelihoods. In the last decade or so, various "structural instruments" have been created in order to address this particular...
Fisheries exploited under open-access conditions create externalities, resulting in a range of problems associated with over-capitalisation and stock depletion. One answer to this is to shift the mode of production away from hunting and towards husbandry, an approach which becomes feasible where some control can be exercised over the resource...
The Pacific Arctic is undergoing rapid biogeochemical changes in response to warming air temperatures caused by climate forcing. This is manifesting as changes in seasonal sea ice thickness and sea ice extent, as well as changes in primary production within surface waters. The data and samples analyzed here were collected...
Carbon sequestration in tropical secondary forests growing in all climates must be quantified to understand their potential role in adaptation and mitigation strategies of global climate change. Total aboveground biomass (TAGB), soil carbon, and total ecosystem carbon (TEC) were measured in 54 secondary forests growing along a broad bioclimatic gradient...
It is widely accepted that in sea bottom areas where there is a scarcity of rocky formations and declining marine fish due to fisheries pressure, the deployment of artificial reefs (ARs) is a possible way to mitigate the problem. If ARs have an ecosystem-based fisheries management goal that means their...
Methods for obtaining accurate, spatially explicit estimates of biomass density in tropical forests are required to reduce uncertainties in the global carbon cycle, and to support international climate agreements and emerging carbon markets. Three-dimensional (3-D) remote sensing techniques sensitive to the vertical structure of vegetation provide a unique opportunity for...
The relationship between carbon burial and sedimentation in reservoirs is unknown, exposing gaps in our fundamental understanding of the transport, processing, and deposition of sediment and organic matter in fluvial and lacustrine systems and contributing to uncertainty in our understanding of the net impact of dams to the global carbon...
About 9600 nautical miles of marine gravity, magnetic, and bathymetric data were collected by Oregon State University during the cruise Yucatan'85 in the north and eastern margins of the Yucatan Peninsula, using a research vessel of the Mexican Navy, the Altair. A compilation of Yucatan' 85 marine data and marine...
Full Text:
Yucatan Peninsula, and Adjacent Areas
from 17o30'N to 26oN and from 840W to 93oW
by
Miguel Angel
Seasonality and drought in Amazon rainforests have been controversially discussed in the literature, partially due to a limited ability of current remote sensing techniques to detect its impacts on tropical vegetation. We use a multi-angle remote sensing approach to determine changes in vegetation structure from differences in directional scattering (anisotropy)...
Copper and iron are essential micronutrients that are required by marine primary producers for a variety of metabolic processes. Over 99% of both copper and iron are bound within organic complexes in the marine environment, however the molecular identity of many of these complexes remains unknown. The speciation of these...
The essential oil from two Lantana species (Lantana lucida Schauer and Lantana salzmannii Schauer) were evaluated for their chemical composition by GC-MS. Results showed 17 predominant compounds for L. lucida, among which β-caryophyllene (19.0%) and α- caryophyllene (or humuleno, 33.0%) were the major components. L. salzmannii showed the presence of...
This study examines dissolved rhenium (Re) as a function of water runoff using river samples from two contrasting watersheds, the Eel and Umpqua Rivers in the Pacific Northwest, USA. These watersheds share many key characteristics in terms of size, discharge, climate, and vegetation, but they have a 10-fold difference in...
Continental shelf sediments are sinks for dissolved oxygen and sources of many major and minor nutrients required for oceanic surface primary production, resulting in a strong coupling between benthic and pelagic biogeochemical cycling. However, the influence and spatiotemporal variability of benthic remineralization on bottom-water chemistry and the supply of nutrients...
We investigated the export of particulate organic matter (POM) to the ocean by two contrasting small, mountainous rivers, the Umpqua and Eel Rivers, by collecting suspended sediment samples over a range of discharges and analyzing them for a variety of constituents, including organic carbon, nitrogen, biomarkers with distinct biochemical sources,...
Proceedings of the 2017 Forum of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists, held March 22-24, 2017 in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
The highstanding islands of Oceania are recognized as a source of significant particulate organic carbon delivered to nearshore marine environments. The existing data on carbon export in Oceania are largely derived from small mountainous watersheds (<10,000 km2) with little or no sediment storage capacity and located in subtropical to temperate...
Methane is a product of biogeochemical processes which respond to changes in climate. The history of atmospheric methane is recorded by ice cores providing insight into past changes in these biogeochemical processes. This dissertation is comprised of three studies which focus on centennial- and millenial-scale variability of methane from ice...
Following a four-year period of writing, member comment, and multiple revisions, the AFS Position Paper and Policy on Mining and Fossil Fuel Extraction was approved unanimously by the membership at the Society's annual business meeting August 19, 2015, in Portland, Oregon. The entire document can be read at fisheries.org/policy_statements; a...
Many marine bivalves are sensitive to ocean acidification (OA) stress and often show heightened sensitivity during brief early larval and post-larval life stages, potentially leading to population bottlenecks. Most of the evidence to date has been collected in laboratory experiments that focused on physiological responses at the organismal level under...
Reservoirs are artificial ecosystems with multiple functions having direct and indirect benefits to humans; however, they also cause ecological changes and influence the composition and structure of aquatic biota. Our objectives were to: (1) assess the environmental condition of Nova Ponte Reservoir, Minas Gerais state, southeastern Brazil; and (2) determine...
Science has a critical role to play in guiding more sustainable development trajectories. Here, we present the Sustainable Amazon Network (Rede Amazonia Sustentavel, RAS): a multidisciplinary research initiative involving more than 30 partner organizations working to assess both social and ecological dimensions of land-use sustainability in eastern Brazilian Amazonia. The...
The compositions and loadings of organic matter in soils and sediments from a diverse range of environments along the Fly River system were determined to investigate carbon transport and sequestration in this region. Soil horizons from highland sites representative of upland sources have organic carbon contents (%OC) that range from...
Full Text:
Fly 1
River, Papua New Guinea 2
Miguel A. Goñi 1†, Eric Moore 2*, Andrew Kurtz 2§, Evan Portier 3
Enumerative combinatorics is an area of mathematics that is both highly accessible for students and widely applicable to other sciences and areas of mathematics (Kapur, 1970; Lockwood, Wasserman, & Tillema, 2020). One important class of problems in combinatorics is combinatorial proofs of binomial identities, which is a type of proof...
This study is a critical ethnography of my professional career as an educator born and raised in the Shona culture in Zimbabwe. In this metaphysical study I reconstruct a worldview that I consider to be representative of Shona customs and beliefs. Doing this project has challenged my own ethnic identity...
Rain falling at or near low tide is capable of eroding and transporting cohesive sediment from intertidal areas. Given that metals adsorb strongly to silt- and clay-sized particles, it is conceivable that low-tide rainfall may also liberate previously-deposited metals from storage in intertidal sediment. To investigate the potential for rainfall...
In the forest products business and management literature, one common categorization of different types of innovation is product innovation, process innovation and business systems innovation. Forest products companies have long placed high emphasis on process innovations, which are related to yield maximization, manufacturing efficiency and operating costs reduction. This is...
The hierarchical organization of aggregates in soil is responsible for the presence of inter and intra-aggregate pores. This research aimed to investigate effects of soil surface liming, considering lime rates of 0, 10 and 15 t ha(-1), on the intra-aggregate porous system of soil aggregates with equivalent diameters of 2-4...
Two-phase flows in microtechnology based devices are purposefully present in multiphase reactors, phase separators, analytical devices and others. Two-phase flows can also be an undesirable side effect occurring during operation due to phase transitions or, more commonly, introduction of surrounding air through equipment gaps and with process feed. In both...
Reservoirs can have both positive and negative effects on differing fish species depending on the species concerned and reservoir morphology, flow regime, and basin location. We assessed the influence of limnological zones on the ichthyofauna of three large Neotropical reservoirs in two different river basins. We sampled fish through use...
Full Text:
-
volvimento dos Vales do São Francisco e do Parnaíba
(CODEVASF), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Es-
tado de
Although an inordinate fraction of the global sediment flux to the ocean occurs in tropical mountainous river margins, little is known regarding the sources and fate of organic matter in these systems. To address these knowledge gaps, the distribution and composition of organic matter in sediments from the Fly River...
Community driven development (CDD) is one of the recent approaches in the development arena that integrates people into mainstream development. Bringing people together into the development prospects through social capital is an important aspect of this approach that harnesses greater social inclusion and wider participation at the grass root level....
Globally, as surface water quality and quantity diminishes there is increasing reliance on groundwater to buffer water demands of growing populations. Today in many arid regions around the world aquifer pumping rates far exceed recharge rates. Often the groundwater is nonrenewable, or thousands of years old. Despite the known hydrologic...
Restoration programs effectively prevent or mitigate wildfires and pest outbreaks in the forest lands. The most common approach is to selectively harvest smaller and dead trees in order to preserve larger and superior trees. Ponderosa pine, Pinus ponderosa, (PP) lumber is one of the common species harvested from restoration programs...
Infertility is an issue affecting millions of women across the globe, yet the causes are not fully understood, and treatment options are often ineffective. The evaluation of reproductive hormones has been a common tool used by fertility clinics as a way to predict the ovarian response to treatment and gain...
There is an urgent need to lower the concentration of sulfur in diesel fuels. Growing concern over environmental effects caused by burning sulfur-containing diesel has led the world to higher standards in fuel refinement. Because of these lower standards, many techniques have been researched to remove sulfur containing compounds or...
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,...
As the aging population continues to grow worldwide, age-related complications are becoming more apparent within the aging population. One of the first age-related complications to become apparent is age-associated memory impairment and it can make the elderly more dependent on caregivers early on. The N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor is important to...
Cerebral palsy is a permanent neurodevelopmental disorder that affects physical activity level as well as perception and cognition and is often accompanied by secondary disorders (Rosenbaum, 2006). In order to gain the most health benefits, research shows that meeting the physical activity requirements of strength and cardiorespiratory training should be...
Full Text:
dosSantos, 2013).
The purpose of this exploratory study was to
examine the effect of an
Cerebral palsy is a permanent neurodevelopmental disorder that affects physical activity level as well as perception and cognition and is often accompanied by secondary disorders (Rosenbaum, 2006). In order to gain the most health benefits, research shows that meeting the physical activity requirements of strength and cardiorespiratory training should be...
Full Text:
increase overall quality of life for children with cerebral palsy (Neves dosSantos, 2013).
The purpose of
Background: We present a model for reporting accelerometer paradata (process-related data produced from survey administration) collected in the International Study of Childhood Obesity Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE), a multi-national investigation of >7000 children (averaging 10.5 years of age) sampled from 12 different developed and developing countries and five continents....
Full Text:
,
MSc, Sara Isabel Sampaio Pereira, BA, Daniel Monteiro de Vilhena e Santos,
PhD, Fernanda Karina dos
Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is an insect of global concern that causes serious damage to soft-skinned fruits. D. suzukii is widespread in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia and is listed as an invasive pest with strict quarantine protocols governing import and export. Given the damage caused by D....
Five genotypes from California (Ventana, Caniarosa, San Miguel, 13G97, and Venice) and Oregon (Totem, Puget Reliance, Puget Summer, Hood and Independence) were evaluated for quality. The volatile compounds were analyzed using head space solid phase micro extraction-gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GGFID) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Odor activity values of...
Forests are major components of the global carbon cycle, providing
substantial feedback to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations¹.
Our ability to understand and predict changes in the forest carbon
cycle—particularly net primary productivity and carbon storage—increasingly relies on models that represent biological processes
across several scales of biological organization, from tree...
Full Text:
Stephenson, N. L., Das, A. J., Condit, R., Russo, S. E., Baker, P. J., Beckman, N.
G., ... & Zavala, M. A
Twelve N, N'-bis(hydroxy- and methoxybenzoyl)ethylenedi-amines and piperazines have been prepared, tested for antifungal
activity, and screened for gross pharmacological activity in mice.
All twelve compounds showed some activity against Candida albicans,
Trichophyton mentagrophytes and Microsporum gypseum but in every
case the activity was less than that of salicylanilide used as...
The seasonal climate drivers of the carbon cycle in tropical forests remain poorly known, although these forests account for more carbon assimilation and storage than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Based on a unique combination of seasonal pan-tropical data sets from 89 experimental sites (68 include aboveground wood productivity measurements and...
Full Text:
, Jérome Chave23, Emmanuel N. Chidumayo24, Deborah A. Clark25, Flavia Regina
Capellotto Costa26, Camille
We evaluate a regional-scale simulation with the WRF-Chem model for the VAMOS (Variability of the American Monsoon Systems) Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study Regional Experiment (VOCALS-REx), which sampled the Southeast Pacific's persistent stratocumulus deck. Evaluation of VOCALS-REx ship-based and three aircraft observations focuses on analyzing how aerosol loading affects marine boundary layer (MBL)...
The Cretaceous Merín aborted-rift basin of eastern Uruguay is composed of sub-alkaline Paraná-Etendeka province basaltic flows and shallow intrusives (~133 to 131 Ma), rhyolitic ignimbrites (~130 to 128 Ma) and associated mildly alkaline to alkaline intrusions and volcanic rocks (~128 to 127 Ma). Four intrusive complexes from 20 to >30...
Oomycetes are an important group of organisms with a variety of ecological roles similar to fungi. Although many are well-studied plant pathogens known for their devastating effects on agricultural systems, most are little-studied saprobes and parasites of plants and animals in nearly every ecosystem on earth. The advent of affordable...
Melanocytes are dendritic, pigment-producing cells located in the skin and are responsible for its protection against the deleterious effects of solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR), which include DNA damage and elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS). They do so by synthesizing photoprotective melanin pigments and distributing them to adjacent skin cells (e.g.,...