North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are ecological engineers that improve biodiversity and can improve the health of riparian ecosystems. Beavers are generalist herbivores with some evidence of species preference, utilizing woody material for both food source and dam construction. In the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Charleston, Oregon, a...
North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are ecological engineers that improve biodiversity and can improve the health of riparian ecosystems. Beavers are generalist herbivores with some evidence of species preference, utilizing woody material for both food source and dam construction. In the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Charleston, Oregon, a...
Wildland fire refers to an unpredictable and uncontrollable fire that happens in wildland areas. Regardless of the beneficial impacts of wildland fires on ecosystems, the destructive impacts of wildfires on air quality, economy, public health, etc. are considerable. An essential goal in the fire community is that the wildland fires...
Senate Bill 762, Oregon’s 2021 omnibus wildfire bill, directed Oregon State University to conduct a wildfire risk assessment including mapping socially vulnerable communities to help inform decisions and allocate resources related to state wildfire prevention, response, and recovery. This dataset was curated to identify socially vulnerable communities and largely follows...
Object detection models are being widely used in many applications, such as autonomous driving, construction management, and cancer detection. Evaluating the performance of the object detection model is more complicated than other computer vision models such as image classification models. Most of the images have several objects to be detected,...
Freshwater flux from the Greenland Ice Sheet has the capacity to affect regional and
global circulation as well as contribute to sea level rise. Outlet glaciers are an important part of
this process. They provide pathways for inland glaciers and ice sheets to melt and drain into the
surrounding oceans....
Disproportionate exposure to exploitative working conditions, social marginalization, and a lack of equitable living conditions are among the many issues that migrant Latinx populations face daily in the United States. However, such issues cannot be addressed by relying solely on traditional academic research approaches without the participation and direction of...
Metallic nuclear fuels have long been studied for use in advanced nuclear reactors, with efforts invested in improving the viability of metallic nuclear fuel elements and overall safety of advanced reactor design concepts. During reactor operations, fuel forms undergo restructuring due to a variety of physical phenomena. Expansion of the...
These datasets were used in the prospective meta-analysis of northern spotted owl reproductive rates over 25 years across 11 study areas located throughout the range of the owl. A multi-state occupancy file was created by collapsing site-specific information on owl reproductive status into bimonthly (2 per month) survey occasions. These...
With the unique conceptual and mathematical backgrounds of every introductory physics student, there is no way to design a rigid curriculum that anticipates and meets every student’s needs. We can employ machine learning to explore the correlations that exist in the voluminous data from educational settings. That is, institutional, gradebook,...
Due to increasing populations, food production must increase significantly to be sustainable. The Internet of Things has been shown to have potential in the field of agriculture to make farming practices more efficient. However, for IoT to be properly integrated into agriculture, sensors must be applied within the field and...
Tracr is a modern browser-based user interface, designed to be used with languages that can generate customized explanations from execution traces. While Tracr is primarily designed for use with the Xtra language, Tracr defines a generalized interface that would allow it to be used with other languages as well. Explanations...
A fully-saturated poroelastic medium is confined by the sides of a cylinder, and the regions below and above the medium are filled with fluid at respective constant pressures. The filtration flow of fluid through the poroelastic medium and the small deformations of the medium are described by a quasi-static Biot...
Recognized as a site of risk, innovation, and inspiration, failure is a growing area of multidisciplinary inquiry. My thesis draws attention specifically to the way composition studies approaches failure in order to ask: how can we implement failure pedagogies safely, and how do rhetorics of failure move toward social justice...
This arts-based autoethnography explores the experience of a graduate student of mathematics at a mid-sized research university through a collection of collage, songwriting, and personal essays. This research identifies issues in the mathematics academic pipeline associated with gender, burnout culture, perfectionism, mental health, qualifying exams, and isolation. The present research...
This study compares three approaches in the design of an autonomous machine listening agent that predicts harbor porpoise ultrasonic echolocation clicks in diverse noise environments. Considering the temporal variations of noisy coastal ocean soundscapes which the harbor porpoises inhabit, we propose a leave-one-day-out (LODO) cross-validation strategy in the training of...
Eccentric rate of force development (ECC RFD) is a measure of the rate at which muscles can generate decelerative forces. However, it has traditionally been measured while jumping on force plates, which are not easily accessible or easy to use in a practical setting. With technology advancements it may be...
This project blends personal narrative with scholarly work to recognize the interplay between these genre categorizations and to affirm the academic value of lived experience. Through this method, I play in the intersections of trans pedagogies, queer pedagogies, and pedagogies of love and care. By recounting how I blended these...
Institutions of higher education are working to be more inclusive of underrepresented groups, including first-generation and low-income college students. Broadly, data show a significant population of diverse students are now entering higher education, but completion rates are comparatively lower than entry rates. To combat this, we need to evaluate ways...
Bovine herpes virus 2 is the causative agent for bovine herpes mammalities, one of the many causes of mastitis in lactating dairy cattle. Primarily caused by bacterial infections, mastitis is a major cause of economic loss in dairy herds, and the causative agent is not always identified due to costs...
Automated systems have become increasingly important to human decision making and task performance in a wide variety of complex fields and situations. Decision aids, a specific form of automation, assist human operators in making complex decisions under conditions of uncertainty, such as air traffic control or combat identification. When humans...
Starch is a significant component of the human diet and the glucose produced through its digestion provides a critical source of energy. When starch enters the mouth, salivary α-amylase hydrolyzes it into maltooligosaccharides (MOS, degree of polymerization [DP] 3-20) and maltopolysaccharides (MPS, DP >20). Previous studies have found that humans...
When observers monitor for infrequent signals for extended durations, they generally experience a decline in detections over time. This decline is termed the vigilance decrement. Current theories of vigilance attribute the decrement to three potential mechanisms: conservative shifts in response bias, losses of sensitivity, and an increased rate of attentional...
As life expectancy continues to rise, adults over 65 are one of the fastest-growing age groups in the United States. As we have made significant strides in mitigating disease, we now have to consider health states that lead to disablement and the inability to age-in-place, including falls, frailty, functional mobility,...
Early life stages of marine fishes exert substantial control on the productivity and resilience of marine fisheries, as these life stages represent periods of extreme mortality. Additionally, eggs and larvae of marine fishes respond rapidly to environmental change and can thus be used to infer ecosystem-wide responses to climate change...
Latinx youth in the US experience stark inequities in sexual and reproductive health, including rates of unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. One promising way to reduce these inequities is to provide culturally centered, comprehensive sexual health education. However, such curricula are rarely offered to Latinx youth, in part because...
Prompt radiation accounts for 3% of the energy released in a nuclear blast. Simulating the prompt radiation will help identify the potential changes to the ambient temperature and pressure of air around the blast. The changes in ambient conditions may alter blast wave effects. The relationship between the energy deposition...
The objectives of this project are to 1) evaluate the fish passage for Lamprey at the Alder Creek, Corvallis, OR using HEC-RAS, and 2) develop a worksheet for the scour analysis if the culvert is removed. Fish passage criteria from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife were applied to determine...
Early childhood is a crucial time for the holistic development of a child’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical needs to build a solid and broad foundation for lifelong wellbeing and learning (Irwin et al., 2007). During this critical period, there is an increased demand for motor skills and executive function...
Computational statistical mechanics leans heavily on the class of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms. Many such algorithms exist, and simulations can run for several weeks, making the selection of algorithms a difficult, but critical task. In this work, we introduce a benchmark system of two quadratic wells with an analytical...
In the face of the global climate crisis, paired with current and future risks over water resources, the importance of effective water resources management cannot be overstated. However, there is a significant lack of specific metrics used to track water stewardship on a broad scale. Thus, in order to track...
The Arctic climate system is changing dramatically as a response to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Key indicators of Arctic change include thinning and retreating of Arctic pack ice, thawing permafrost, greening tundra, and rising surface temperatures. The structure of the atmospheric boundary layer influences and is influenced by processes...
This thesis argues for the importance of justice of recognition not only for humans, but the entire non-human world in the face of environmental destruction and climate crisis. The common response to the degradation of the world’s ecological sphere is to act with technological, scientific, and material based responses. However,...
In order to advocate for a nonviolent future, I argue throughout this thesis that we must redefine our sense of self within a social context. I assert that Communitarianism, which seeks balance between the individual and their many overlapping communities, can situate our identities as less absolute and more constitutive...
We explore the application of deep learning to the disparate fields of natural language processing and computational biology. Both the sentences uttered by humans as well as the RNA and protein sequences found within the cells of their bodies can be considered formal languages in computer science, as sets of...
Scour is the main cause of bridge failures in the United States. Bridge failures raise a
hazard to the safety of the traveling public as well as the massive economic
consequences due to the high cost of constructing a new or a replacement bridge. The
Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT)...
Magmatic-hydrothermal ore deposits are giant geochemical anomalies in the earth’s crust most often generated by normal magmatic terrestrial processes. They are often associated with oxidized and hydrous intermediate to highly evolved magmas that have concentrated metals and have the necessary components to efficiently extract and transport them as ascending magmatic-hydrothermal...
This paper describes the construction and use of a cost-effective custom-built atomic layer deposition (ALD) system, as well as the investigation of aluminum oxide atomic layer deposition using trimethylaluminum and water. For this research, a cost-effective ALD system was constructed for less than $8,000 using existing parts that were given...
This work explores the hypothesis that proton irradiation is a feasible alternative to simulate accelerated thermal aging for Ni2Cr long-range ordered phase formation within NiCr and NiCrFe alloys. In this study, various model alloys and commercial alloys 690 and 690+P (0.01 wt.% P) were subject to 2 MeV proton irradiation...
Spontaneous quasicrystal (QC) formation has not been observed in pure metals either in computation or in experiments (excluding epitaxial growth of thin atomic layers on a QC template). In this thesis work, dodecagonal QC (DDQC) grains are first discovered to spontaneously form during thermal devitrification of pure tantalum (Ta) metallic...
Affective reactions to daily stressors are known mechanisms through which daily stressors impact health and well-being (e.g., Charles et al., 2013; Piazza et al., 2013; Sin et al., 2015; Stawski et al., 2019). Therefore, understanding what may promote resilience or vulnerability to such affective reactions is imperative. Theoretical perspectives (Almeida,...
The increasing focus on internationalization in Taiwan’s language-in-education policy has expanded the use of cross-cultural co-teaching pairs consisting of a native English-speaking teacher and a local non-native English-speaking teacher. While the model holds great potential for combining unique strengths, navigating cross-cultural communication in these co-teaching collaborations can be complex. This...
The experience of empathy is one of the essential counselor capacities considered necessary for developing a robust therapeutic relationship. However, as the development of technology made therapeutic interaction possible in virtual settings, the experience of empathy in telemental health via videoconferencing (TMH-V) has not been researched until now. Understanding the...
When studying robot systems, it is common to ask about optimal approaches to accomplish a given task. In the context of mobile systems, particularly biomimetic systems, optimization tasks are closely related to the relevant dynamics of locomotion. In this thesis, building on prior work from the geometric mechanics community, we...
Intensifications in seasonal temperature variation, attributed to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, are having an adverse effect on the forest composition of the northeastern United States. New York’s temperate broadleaf forests are undergoing alterations including a decline of the native sugar maple (Acer saccharum), as the species’ population begins to decrease...
An often overlooked student population within higher education, former foster youth, is a population that needs support. Students who were formerly a part of the foster care system who have since aged out, are left to navigate higher education institutions on their own. College support services tailored for the needs...
Pesticides benefit agriculture by increasing crop yield, quality, and security. However, pesticides may inadvertently harm bees, which are valuable as pollinators. Thus, candidate pesticides in development pipelines must be assessed for toxicity to bees.
Leveraging a data set of 382 molecules with toxicity labels from honey bee exposure experiments, we...
Spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is an invasive insect that was first discovered in Pennsylvania in 2014, and has since spread across the Northeastern United States. States in the Northeast have created quarantine zones, regulations, outreach, reporting systems, and management efforts for the control of spotted lanternfly. Despite states’ efforts, spotted...
