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Songbird Diversity In Oak Woodland And Riparian Habitats In The Los Padres National Forest, San Luis Obispo County, California, Trevor Pell

Biological Sciences

Diversity in songbirds (Passeriformes) between riparian and oak woodland habitats has not been studied before in the Los Padres National Forest around the Hi Mountain Lookout in San Luis Obispo County. Surveys of avian populations were conducted by point counts on fifty variable circular plots; surveys were performed between July and August of 2010. Diversity was calculated using the Shannon-Weiner method, and then squared for normality. No significant results were found when comparing the diversity values between riparian and oak woodland habitat (F = 0.52, p = 0.472). Although the results showed no significance, the data are still important, as …

Utilization Of Geographic Information System For Research, Management, And Education In The Natural Resources Management Department At California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, David In Yun

Master's Theses

Geographic Information System (GIS) is “an organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel designed to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information” (ESRI, 1997a). The Natural Resources Management Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, hereafter NRM, was one of the early users of GIS technology. Although GIS was primarily used as an educational tool, it was also used for cataloging and displaying resource information for management planning and research projects. As the computing technology advanced, GIS became more powerful and easier to use. NRM faculty and …

Laser Etched Pmma Microfluidic Chip Design And Manufacture With Applications In Capillary Zone Electrophoresis, Evan Allen Barbre

Master's Theses

This thesis encompasses a feasibility study of using low-cost materials to manufacture microfluidic chips that can perform the same functions as chips manufactured using traditional methods within an acceptable range of efficiency of chips created with more exotic methods and materials. The major parts of the project are the selection and characterization of the fabrication methods for creating the channels for fluid flow, the methods for sealing the channels to create a usable chip and the electrophoretic separations of carboxylated microspheres of different potentials. In this work we seek to answer the question if laser-etched PMMA microfluidic chips are comparable …

A Microsimulation Of Traffic, Parking, And Emissions At California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, Steven Michael Kilbert

Master's Theses

Traffic and parking congestion are significant issues at many universities nationwide. The delays experienced result in wasted time, money, and fuel for students, faculty and staff, not to mention the negative contributions to the environment. This paper quantifies the amount of vehicle emissions generated during an average morning peak hour in the university environment. Using VISSIM and CMEM microsimulation packages, a model is created for California Polytechnic State University- San Luis Obispo to aggregate the collective transportation behaviors and practices of the campus and recognize the implications these behaviors pose on the transportation network as a whole. Reasonable estimates are …

Sar Map Of Gel Phantom In A 64mhz Mri Birdcage By Fiber-Optic Thermometry And Fdtd Simulation, Chirag Mukesh Patel

Master's Theses

As implantable medical devices are being used more often to treat medical problems for which pharmaceuticals don’t suffice, it is important to understand their interactions with commonly used medical modalities. The interactions between medical implants and Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines have proven to be a risk for patients with implants.

Implanted medical devices with elongated metallic components can create harmful levels of local heating in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) environment [1]. The heating of a biological medium under MRI is monitored via the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). SAR, defined as power absorbed per unit mass (W/kg), can be calculated …

Mustang Daily, January 31, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Mustang Daily, January 27, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

January 26, 2011 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Mustang Daily, January 26, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Executive Committee - Agenda, 1/25/2011, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Mustang Daily, January 24, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

January 19, 2011 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Mustang Daily, January 18, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Traversing Swanton Road, 3rd Ed., James A. West

Academic, Government & Associated Organizational Research Resources

Situated at the northwest end of Santa Cruz County and occupying circa 30 square miles of sharply contrasted terrain, the Scott Creek Watershed concentrates within its geomorphological boundaries, at least 10-12% of California's flora, both native and introduced. Paradoxically, the use/abuse that the watershed has sustained over the past 140+ years, has not necessarily diminished the biodiversity and perhaps parallels the naturally disruptive but biologically energizing processes (fire, flooding, landslides and erosion), which have also been historically documented for the area for +60 years. This is an early edition of an extensive document by James A. West. Please visit the …

Library Space: Dimensions Of The Imagination, Michael D. Miller

Robert E. Kennedy Library

For those who can live with ambiguity and who are not risk adverse, these are exciting times to be working in libraries. We are a profession that is reinventing itself and how we do business. The 20th century model of the library is fading and the successful 21st century library model is only beginning to emerge. The impact of technology is radically and permanently changing the nature of our collections, services, and staff and with it our use of space. There is a story evolving about how the creative repurposing of library space is changing the perceptions of the library …

Executive Committee - Meeting Minutes, 1/4/2011, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Executive Committee - Agenda, 1/4/2011, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Mustang Daily, January 3, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Performance Screening Of Chemostat Adapted Recombinant Zymomonas Mobilis Strains, Deirdre M. Beard, Nancy Dowe

STAR Program Research Presentations

Corn stover biomass can be pretreaed and hydrolyzed into soluble sugars to be fermented by microorganisms to ethanol. NREL has developed a recombinant bacteria Zymomonas mobilis 8b that metabolizes both five and six carbon sugars. During pretreatment, toxic inhibitors such as furfural and acetate are produced. NREL has made an attempt to adapt two sub-strains of Z. mobilis 8b to acetate and furfural by using a chemostat method. During the chemostat process, cultures were frozen back in glycerol and saved. In this study, those frozen cultures were revived and analyzed for performance in environments with varying concentrations of furfural and …

Verification Of The Kcat Value Of Aat Via Copasi, Jeremy A. Waddell, Roque Troz, Melissa P. Hill, Delmar S. Larsen

STAR Program Research Presentations

PLP is a chromophoric cofactor required for catalytic activity by a wide variety of enzymes. While PLP enzymes are thermally activated in vivo, it has been reported that some PLP enzymes can be activated by UV light. One enzyme that uses PLP as a cofactor is apsartate aminotransferase (AAT). Previous studies with AAT suggest that the carbanionic quinonoid intermediate is photogenerated by UV laser excitation. AAT is central to nitrogen metabolism in all living systems and has a large body of literature. As such, it is a useful prototype for the fundamental studies on this class of enzymes which …

Caffeine Metabolism And Cytochrome P450 Enzyme Mrna Expression Levels Of Genetically Diverse Inbred Mouse Strains, Neal Addicott, Michael Malfatti, Gabriela G. Loots

STAR Program Research Presentations

Cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes activate or eliminate medications and other xenobiotics, and Caffeine has been used as an indicator of activity for some CYPs. The natural genetic variation in the human population for caffeine metabolizing CYPs does not yet have an established animal model for comparison, but the natural variation in inbred mouse strains presents an attractive starting point. The project gave four different strains of mice a 40mg/kg dose of caffeine and sampled blood and liver tissue after 30 minutes. Samples were analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), reverse transcription PCR (rtPCR), and quantitative PCR (qPCR). The DBA/2J …

Contrasting Effects Of Flow On Adult And Juvenile Ascidian Life History Stages, Including The Global Invasive Didemnum Vexillum, Tren C. Kauzer, C Sarah Cohen

STAR Program Research Presentations

Few studies have quantified a relationship between recruitment, growth, survival and flow with colonial filter feeders. In this study, the growth of D. vex and larval recruitment were evaluated under different local flow conditions in Half Moon Bay, California, USA. Tunicates were subjected to four different flow conditions, three of which included objects to differentially obstruct flow, and growth and recruitment were measured. A direct relationship was seen between increases in flow and adult growth, and an inverse relationship was seen between increases in flow and recruitment. These trends suggest that optimal flow conditions differ for juveniles and adults. The …

College Of Liberal Arts Magazine, Fall 2010/Winter 2011, College Of Liberal Arts

College of Liberal Arts Magazine

No abstract provided.

California Polytechnic State University 2011-2013 Catalog, Academic Affairs, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo

Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

A Brief Historiography Of U.S. Hegemony In The Cuban Sugar Industry, Justin Mccollum

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Development And Evaluation Of An Integrated Simulation Model For Assessing Smallholder Crop-Livestock Production In Yucatán, Mexico, David Parsons, Charles F. Nicholson, Robert W. Blake, Quirine M. Ketterings, Luis Ramírez-Aviles, Danny G. Fox, Luis O. Tedeschi, Jerome H. Cherney

Agribusiness

Mixed farming systems constitute a large proportion of agricultural production in the tropics, and provide multiple benefits for the world’s poor. However, our understanding of the functioning of these systems is limited. Modeling offers the best approach to quantify outcomes from many interacting causal variables in these systems. The objective of this study was to develop an integrated crop–livestock model to assess biophysical and economic consequences of farming practices exhibited in sheep systems of Yucatán state, Mexico. A Vensim™ dynamic stock-flow feedback model was developed to integrate scientific and practical knowledge of management, flock dynamics, sheep production, partitioning of nutrients, …

Ecological Strategies In California Chaparral: Interacting Effects Of Soils, Climate, And Fire On Specific Leaf Area, Brian Anacker, Nishanta Rajakaruna, David D. Ackerly, Susan Harrison, Jon Keeley, Michael Vasey

Biological Sciences

Background: High values of specific leaf area (SLA) are generally associated with high maximal growth rates in resource-rich conditions, such as mesic climates and fertile soils. However, fire may complicate this relationship since its frequency varies with both climate and soil fertility, and fire frequency selects for regeneration strategies (resprouting versus seeding) that are not independent of resource-acquisition strategies. Shared ancestry is also expected to affect the distribution of resource-use and regeneration traits.

Aims: We examined climate, soil, and fire as drivers of community-level variation in a key functional trait, SLA, in chaparral in California.

Methods: We quantified the phylogenetic, …

Landfill Temperatures Under Variable Decomposition Conditions, Nazli Yesiller, James L. Hanson, H. Yoshida

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This study was conducted to evaluate temperature, gas, and leachate data at two landfills in similar climatic regions (Detroit, Michigan, USA and Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan) to determine the interrelations between heat production and resulting waste temperatures and gas and leachate levels in landfills under variable decomposition conditions. Significant temperature increases occurred under long-term anaerobic conditions. Stable elevated temperatures under anaerobic conditions were observed for wastes at central locations. Seasonal fluctuations in both temperature and gas existed at shallow depths and near perimeter locations. Placement of an overfill of fresh wastes over old wastes affected temperatures, yet did not significantly influence …

Surface Reconstruction Of Maltese Cisterns Using Rov Sonar Data For Archeological Study, C. Forney, J. Forrester, B. Bagley, W. Mcvicker, J. White, T. Smith, J. Batryn, A. Gonzalez, J. Lehr, T. Gambin, C. M. Clark, Zoë J. Wood

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We present a methodology and algorithm for the reconstruction of three dimensional geometric models of ancient Maltese water storage systems, i.e. cisterns, from sonar data. This project was conducted as a part of a four week expedition on the islands of Malta and Gozo. During this expedition, investigators used underwater robot systems capable of mapping ancient underwater cisterns and tunnels. The mapping included probabilistic algorithms for constructing the maps of the sonar data and computer graphics for surface reconstruction and visualization. This paper presents the general methodology for the data acquisition and the novel application of algorithms from computer graphics …

Microfluidic Paper-Based Analytical Devices: From Pocket To Paper-Based Elisa, Andres W. Martinez

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (microPADs) began as a simple idea with an ambitious goal. The idea was to make microfluidic devices out of paper instead of plastic or glass. The goal was to develop low-cost and portable paper-based diagnostic devices to improve healthcare in developing countries. Over the past 6 years, many developments have been made in the emerging field of paper-based microfluidic devices. Reviewing the development of these devices in the Whitesides group at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) can provide some insight into the future of the field and encourage scientists from a variety of backgrounds to contribute …