There has been an increasing realization of the value of innovativeness, the orientation toward innovation, for firms thriving to gain competitive edge. The US forest products industry is no different in this respect and many companies have active initiatives to bring about creativity from their own employees. At the same...
The increasing demand for forest products and restricted use of natural forests has resulted in a shortage of high-strength wood fiber. The area covered by plantation forests is steadily rising, but the fiber produced by these forests is often unsuitable for high-strength applications. One attempt to combat this problem is...
Past studies of the Oregon and Washington coast have shown a rapid change in the coastal ocean conditions with the onset of upwelling in spring. This process, called the spring transition marks the change from winter to summer conditions along the west coast of Unites States. To examine the interannual...
The search for the stand density that optimizes growth and hence generates the maximum amount of wood is one of the philosopher’s stone in modern forestry. Since scientific methods were applied to forestry, numerous generations of foresters have studied the relations between stocking density and growth, obtaining diverse results and...
The Law of Transboundary Aquifers, introduced to the United Nations General Assembly in December 2008, encourages nations to make multilateral arrangements for the proper management of transboundary aquifers.
This study seeks to answer the question: “What are the main challenges for successful collaboration in assessing and managing Transboundary Aquifer Systems...
Sometimes there are movies that do more than just tell a story; sometimes they make a character come to life in such a way that the audience is profoundly moved. In this thesis I have compared and explored two movies that truly impacted my view on life. Il Postino and...
While the heartwood of many wood species exhibits excellent resistance to fungal and insect attack, this resistance is sometimes diminished in second-growth material of the same species. The reasons for the reduced durability are unclear, but they may reflect a combination of both higher proportions of sapwood as well as...
In the wake of the ``third wave'' of democratization, scholars and practitioners were optimistic regarding the ease with which countries could adopt democratic norms and institutions. However, after four decades of democracy, many competitive regimes have not improved government probity or developed strong forms of accountability. Levels of economic and...
DNA microarray technology is a powerful tool for analyzing patterns in gene expression data for thousands of genes. Due to a number of systematic variations in microarray experiments, the raw gene expression data is often obfuscated by undesirable technical noises. Various normalization techniques were designed in an attempt to remove...