Coastal flooding and erosion are major concerns for low lying coastal communities -- particularly in light of accelerated sea level rise and climate change. To improve quantitative understanding of the physical drivers of both flooding and coastal landscape change, this dissertation explores coastal morphodynamics bridging the land-sea interface on modally...
Mixed linear models are a time honored method of analyzing correlated data. However, there is still no method of calculating exact confidence intervals or p-values for an arbitrary parameter in any mixed linear model. Instead, researchers must use either specialized approximate and exact tests that have been developed for particular...
Markov chains have long been used to sample from probability distributions and simulate dynamical systems. In both cases we would like to know how long it takes for the chain's distribution to converge to within varepsilon of the stationary distribution in total variation distance; the answer to this is, called...
Ornithology is an exciting field with novel research emerging everyday. Researchers in bioacoustics often spend hours within the wilderness recording bird calls to analyze later in their lab. The burden of sifting through hours of audio recordings from the field continues to remain a time-consuming and manual task, despite the...
For more than 35 years we have known that the accuracy of DNA replication is controlled in
large part by the relative concentrations of the four canonical deoxyribonucleoside 5'-triphosphates (dNTPs) at the replisome. Since this field was last reviewed, about eight years ago,
there has been increased understanding of the...
Nine feeding trials and four laboratory scale experiments were conducted in this study. The study consisted of: (1) use of grass straw:corn juice (CJ) silages with fishmeal and/or alfalfa hay supplementation in beef heifers, sheep, pregnant dairy heifers, water buffaloes and Hereford cows; (2) use of cull onions:grass straw silages...
Carbon and energy fluxes were measured with the eddy covariance technique
above two semi-arid ecosystems, ponderosa pine and juniper/sagebrush, located in
central Oregon. The two ecosystems have low LAI and a very open canopy structure.
The energy closure was ~70-80% at both ecosystems, equivalent to an imbalance of
150-250 W...
Baculoviruses comprise a diverse group of pathogens
infectious for members of the insect orders Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera
and Diptera. Of the three subgroups, two (subgroup A, nuclear
polyhedrosis virus (NPV) and subgroup B, granulosis virus (GV) are
occluded in a crystalline protein structure while the remaining
subgroup (subgroup C, non-occluded virus)...
Vaccinia virus (VV) is a large DNA virus belonging to the Orthopoxvirus
family. The viral replicative life cycle takes place solely within the cytoplasm
of a mammalian host cell. The VV genome contains 196 open reading frames
which are expressed in a highly regulated and temporal fashion in order to...
The first committed step in DNA biosynthesis occurs by direct reduction of
ribonucleotides. This reduction is catalyzed by ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), an
enzyme which uses a unique radical mechanism to facilitate the transformation. All four
DNA precursors are synthesized by a single enzyme. Therefore, an intricate pattern of
regulation has...