Digital Commons Network^™

Differences In Syntactic Complexity In The Writing Of El1 And Ell Civil Engineering Students, Santiago Gustin

Dissertations and Theses

Traditional studies in syntactic complexity consider increased clausal complexity to be characteristic of development, proficiency and growth in written language production. However, this stereotypical view ignores two important facts. First, complexity differs by register (i.e. daily speech versus formal writing). Second, as the proficiency of writers increases, their complexity in formal writing changes from clausal complexity to phrasal complexity (i.e. lower-proficiency writers have more subordinate clauses whereas higher-proficiency writers tend to have more noun phrases). Therefore, in this study, I argue for the need to consider not just clausal complexity but also phrasal complexity measures when assessing development and performance …

The Influence Of Neighborhood Landscape Characteristics On Native Bird Communities: Implications For Increasing Biodiversity In Our Yards, Michael E. Vermeulen

Dissertations and Theses

Avian communities, because of their potential high diversity, are ideal for studying the response to potential quantity of resources provided by local and regional habitat. Urban neighborhoods vary in types and magnitudes of anthropogenic stressors they experience, resulting in a continuum of anthropogenic disturbance, often referred to as a gradient of urbanization. The aim of this study was to investigate anthropogenic drivers of urban bird communities in three Portland, OR neighborhoods (Hillsdale, Lents, and Pearl). The three major questions of this study were: 1) What are the significant landscape traits that characterize the neighborhoods? 2) Is there evidence that the …

Hiv, Stigma, And Attribution Of Causal Emotions, Zoe Elizabeth Larson

Dissertations and Theses

Stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS is considered a major barrier to the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Attribution theorists have examined stigmatizing attitudes as a product of causal emotions; to wit, people face greater judgment and stigmatization when their actions are perceived as controllable and less stigmatization when actions are perceived as out of the realms of personal control. The current study examined attribution of causal emotions for three different circumstances of HIV acquisition, which varied in their perceived controllability. The results showed statistically significant differences in participant evaluations of responsibility, blame, and anger. Statistically significant correlations were found …

The Tangle Of Institutional Care And Control At A Shelter For Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth, Liat Tzvia Mayer

Dissertations and Theses

My cultural anthropology master's thesis focuses on the workings of Inanna House, an emergency shelter/residential program for commercially sexually exploited (CSEC) youth in Portland, Oregon. In the summer of 2017, I did participant observation and interviewed youth and direct care staff members at the CSEC shelter I had been working at for 2 years. I begin by situating ideas about domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) within larger historical, legal, economic, and political contexts. I consider concepts of childhood, race, class, gender, and sexuality on the story of DMST in the United States.

Next, I explore the ways humans and institutions …

Non-Contact Distillation, Rawand Muzafar Rasheed

Dissertations and Theses

Leidenfrost phenomenon has been studied extensively for its role in applications ranging from nuclear reactor cooling, to metals manufacturing, combustion, and other fields. Herein, Leidenfrost phenomenon is pursued towards non-contact distillation processes with hopes of reducing or even eliminating contaminant fouling. In particular, the microgravity environment of a drop tower is exploited to demonstrate the facility with which droplets achieve and sustain the Leidenfrost state. Dynamic Leidenfrost impacts in microgravity are presented for impacts on hydrophilic and superhydrophobic planar substrates, macro-pillar arrays, confined passageways, and others. Nearly ideal elastic non-contact impacts and droplet oscillation modes are observed. Dynamic Leidenfrost impacts …

Do Corporate Owned Adaptive Learning Platforms Perpetuate Banking Style Learning? Integrating Technology For Activism Into Transformational Sustainability Education, Tina M. Garner

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

We live in a world that tends to be controlled by corporations. The public school system should be wary of the problems that corporate control has on education. Even though public schools should not have corporate influence, the fact remains that they do, and this perpetuates Freire's banking style learning. Through time, the corporate influence in education was through educational materials such as book sales. Since the decline of the use of books and the growth of the use of technologies, corporations have followed suit through the sales of Adaptive Learning Platforms. Through leveraging the technology which students enjoy using, …

Avian Dispersal Networks, Metacommunity Structure, And Bryophyte Community Assemblages, Matthew Wojciech Chmielewski

Dissertations and Theses

Spatial processes have a profound influence on the structure and function of community assemblages. The dispersal of organisms from their place of origin to the location in which they live out their reproductive life is particularly important for plant communities, which generally cannot adjust their location post-germination. Connection between communities at a landscape scale can also influence species persistence, local and regional diversity, and functional turnover at the metacommunity scale. Animals have been shown to disproportionately deposit propagules in particular microsites in many plant species, facilitating the arrival of plants to appropriate niche-space. Birds are particularly notable seed dispersers, given …

Water Quality Analysis Of Ecoroof Runoff In Portland, Pranoti P. Deshmukh

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Portland, Oregon is internationally recognized for its implementation of sustainable stormwater management technologies. Ecoroof is one of the sustainable solutions to reduce stormwater runoff which also provides multiple environmental benefits. However, very little is known about the impact of ecoroofs on water quality of roof runoff. Stormwater runoff carries a significant amount of pollutants, which, if it directly enters a stream or river, degrades water quality and severely harms aquatic life.

This study evaluates the trends in the long-term water quality data from ecoroofs and conventional roofs in the Portland area. Mann Kendall trend test was used to detect the …

Modeling Vertical Migration Of Cyanobacteria And Zooplankton, Corina Christina Mae Overman

Dissertations and Theses

Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, often cause harmful algal blooms and release toxic substances that can harm humans and other animals. Accurately modeling these phytoplankton is a step towards predicting, preventing, and controlling such blooms. Cyanobacteria and zooplankton species are known to migrate vertically in the water column on a daily cycle. Capturing this behavior is one aspect of correctly modeling their dynamics. Here, several models of cyanobacteria vertical movement were tested in proof-of-concept models before being applied to data from field studies. These models included both continuum and particle-tracking frameworks. Four continuum-framework models of cyanobacteria vertical migration were …

The Relationship Between Undergraduate Research Training Programs And Motivational Resources For Underrepresented Minority Students In Stem: Program Participation, Self-Efficacy, A Sense Of Belonging, And Academic Performance, Jennifer Lindwall

Dissertations and Theses

Although calls for a more diverse workforce in biomedical fields have been widespread, racial and ethnic gaps in biomedical degree attainment persist. In order to succeed, URM STEM students must persevere despite numerous challenges and stay continuously motivated on the long road to degree attainment in biomedical disciplines. Past higher education research has identified two key self-appraisals, a sense of belonging and self-efficacy, as crucial for student success. These beliefs, which can serve as motivational resources for students, include students' convictions about whether they are a valued member of their academic community and whether they have what it takes to …

"All Things To All Men": The Life And Work Of Monsignor Thomas J. Tobin, Priest Of The Archdiocese Of Portland In Oregon, Samuel Richard Mertz

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is a biographical study of the life and work of Monsignor Thomas J. Tobin, a priest of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. It covers his leadership in the labor movement during World War II, his participation in the Liturgical Movement, and his efforts to bring the Catholic Church in Oregon into ecumenical dialogue with other Christians. It culminates in his involvement in the Second Vatican Council. His activism can only be truly understood within the context of Oregon's vibrant progressive movement, a movement that carried disproportionate influence in a state that was in many ways politically conservative …

'Waifs' And 'Strays': An Examination Of Shakespeare’S Author Function In Three Apocryphal Plays, Andreas P. Bassett

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

The Shakespeare Apocrypha is a group of anomalous works that exist on the fringe of the conventional Shakespeare canon. Extant apocryphal plays, notably ones that originate from the Lord Chamberlain’s/King’s Men, complicate and challenge this established canon by seemingly attributing Shakespeare as author to plays that, according to scholars and critics, do not bear his literary mark. The aim of this paper is to examine how the Shakespeare attributions (‘William Shakespeare,’‘W. Shakespeare,’ and ‘W.S.’) on title pages of published apocryphal plays Thomas Lord Cromwell, The London Prodigal, and A Yorkshire Tragedy operate and function to lend authority to inferior texts …

“Let Me Have My Untrammeled Growth” Gender, Education, And The Colonized Intellectual In Nervous Conditions, Dustin C. Rozier

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

This article utilizes Frantz Fanon's ideas of the "colonized intellectual" from his text The Wretched of the Earth to examine the state of education in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Condition. By applying the various states of the "colonized intellectual" to the novel's main characters, an understanding of the benefits and trials of education in the former colonized state of Rhodesia is discussed in relation to ideas of gender, patriarchal cultural roles, and the modern colonial state. Examples from the novel are utilized as evidence in this literary analysis alongside the theoretical ideas of Fanon and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Other-Initiated Other-Repair: Repair Organization While Playing A Place-Based Augmented-Reality Game, Adam C. Okoye

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Building on research on repair (Schegloff et. al. 1977) and repair among groups with varying levels of language proficiency (Brower et. al., 2004; Hosoda 2000, 2001, 2006; Kuhilla 2005; Theodórsdóttir 2018), this paper investigates how small groups organize other-initiated other-repair while playing an augmented reality (AR) game. Typical other-initiated other-repair organization follows a six-step trajectory which includes pauses to allow for self-initiation and self-repair (Schegloff et. al. 1977). The ability for participants to have the opportunity to perform self-initiated self-repair or other-initiated self-repair is important, because other-initiated other-repair is inherently face threatening (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Svennevig, 2008). My data …

Abstract Pronominal Anaphora In Three Registers Of English, Dominique H. O'Donnell

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Identifying the expressions in a text that refer to the same entity, or coreference resolution, is an important problem in natural language processing. Abstract anaphora are distinct from other types of reference because they refer to abstract entities in discourse such as events, facts, and propositions, and their antecedents can have non-nominal phrase structure. Non-nominal antecedents are an interesting challenge in coreference resolution because the pronoun provides little information about the syntactic structure or semantics of the antecedent. A great deal of work in corpus annotation for coreference and coreference resolution has focused on newspaper text, and the goal …

Inside Out, Christy Chan

Inside Out

The INSIDE OUT Project collected autobiographical phrases from Richmond, CA residents and turned them into six story tall, night-time video projections on the outside walls of Richmond City Hall. The project was censored by the city for including Spanish language phrases critical of President Trump's immigration policies. Richmond, CA is one of the most racially and socioeconomically diverse cities in California, with 1/3 of its residents foreign born. 1,000 phrases were submitted in multiple languages through free, in-person community workshops and the project's online website.

Videos of this project in the Archive collection can be found here and here

Barriers To Learning, Part L, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

This blog post is the first in a two-part series that focuses on barriers to learner participation and persistence in employersupported educational opportunities. In this framing of past research and reports, the 21 CLEO Research team draws on Margaret Patterson's categories of learning and persistence barriers as an analytic lens to situate literature reviewed in our landscape scan.

Does X Mark The Applicant? Assessing Reactions To Gender Non-Binary Job Seekers, Kelly Mason Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses

The number of individuals who identify as a non-binary gender has almost tripled over the last 10 years. This growing population, and the legal protection against sex discrimination afforded to them under Title VII, puts a responsibility on employers to better understand their experiences in the workplace. The purpose of the current study was to examine how disclosing a non-binary gender identity when applying for jobs influenced hiring outcomes. Specifically, my study assessed (a) hiring managers' beliefs about non-binary gender identities, (b) how those beliefs impacted hiring managers' perceived ability to provide social support to prospective applicants, and (c) how …

Evaluation Of Low And High Frequency Dynamic Response For Condition Assessment Of Reinforced Concrete Structures, Ali Hafiz

Dissertations and Theses

Concrete is widely used for civil infrastructure structures and they experience deterioration and degradation due to aging, increases in the traffic loads, harsher environmental conditions, use of deicing chemicals, etc. Therefore, evaluating the integrity of reinforced concrete structures has become of increasing interest for infrastructure owners and managers. A number of non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) methods have been developed in recent decades to aid in evaluating structures and provide input for asset management. One family of these methods uses the dynamic response of a structural member: stress waves (high frequency) and structural vibrations (low frequency). Both …

How Does Wasta Bolster Regimes? The Case Of Tunisia, Issrar Chamekh

Dissertations and Theses

This paper aims to highlight the impact of democratization on wasta by examining the everyday performance of wasta, or the use of connections and informal networks to acquire services. Despite its widespread use, I find that it is understudied as an explanatory variable in the literature on democratization and authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa, with Tunisia as a case study. In this paper, I argue that wasta can potentially have a consolidating effect on regimes. I examine the ways that wasta is encoded in everyday language. Using literature from Pragmatics, specifically Goffman's dramaturgical model, I find that …

Reproduciendo Otros Mundos: Indigenous Women's Struggles Against Neo-Extractivism And The Bolivian State, Gisela Victoria Rodriguez Fernandez

Dissertations and Theses

Latin America is in a political crisis, yet Bolivia is still widely recognized as a beacon of hope for progressive change. The radical movements at the beginning of the 21st century against neoliberalism that paved the road for the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, beckoned a change from colonial rule towards a more just society. Paradoxically, in pursuing progress through economic growth, the Bolivian state led by President Morales has replicated the colonial division of labor through a development model known as neo-extractivism. Deeply rooted tensions have also emerged between indigenous communities and the Bolivian state due …

Tragic Ways Of Killing A Lesbian: A Synchronic Analysis, Taylor D. Watt

University Honors Theses

Following an increase in queer characters over the last few decades, representation of the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, etc.) community on television has become a particularly rich field of inquiry for interdisciplinary scholars. One area of interest, the death of contemporary lesbian characters, remains fairly underdeveloped. This thesis attempts to identify structural patterns in the deaths of lesbian characters by subjecting their narrative arcs to structural analysis, specifically a method of linguistic analysis developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. I identify structural patterns in the deaths of 6 lesbian characters which took place between the years …

Leaders Of Global Virtual Teams: Implications For The Identification And Training Of Successful E-Leaders, Janae R. Rainbolt

University Honors Theses

The business environment is an ever-evolving enterprise, and as technology advances so do their operations, allowing for more businesses to become global. This increase in globalization has led to the problem of how to manage these activities around the world. Virtual teams have become one solution, but they present their own challenges in regards to how to effectively manage a team that is culturally diverse and lives in various times zones. Through the analysis of 91 research articles and texts on the topic of e-leadership, this research identifies the most prevalent indicators of the management practices of leaders of efficacious …

Bleeding Into Space: Environmental Violence, Serialized Trauma, And Extradiegetic Space In Brian Wood’S Comic The Massive, Dustin C. Rozier

University Honors Theses

In Brian Wood's The Massive, a comic detailing a world suffering from ecological destruction due to the actions of the Anthropocene, Environmental and Trauma Studies are uniquely positioned to find a new medium of representation in the hybrid word and image form of comics. This series, which consists of serialized issues with both an individual and collective narrative structure, must work to both maintain the overall narrative while telling smaller stories within each issue. In The Massive, each issue works to situate the reader within the framework of the story through flashbacks of individual characters and the climate …

Fostering Racial And Ethnic Identity For Transracial Adoptees: The Importance Of Culturally Competent Transracial Adoption Training Programs For White Adoptive Parents, Emily J. Moxon

University Honors Theses

Transracial adoption, which is the adoption of a child of a race or ethnicity different from the race or ethnicity of the adoptive parents, is a relatively new practice with the first reported case in the U.S. in 1948 (The Adoption History Project, n.d.). As such, there is a limited amount of academic research that is currently available studying the effects of this practice on the Transracial Adoptee (TRA) in their cultural, ethnic, and racial socialization processes and on how well they adjust to a racialized society outside of their adoptive family unit. Since the 1940s, an estimated one million …

Can We Bring Notions Of Groups Back Into Research On Children’S Peer Groups? Differentiating Peer Groups At School According To Their Functions For Academic Development, Anamika J. Vaughan

University Honors Theses

Strategies to examine children’s peer relationships at school can be broadly distinguished into studies of Sociometric Acceptance (Social Status), studies of Social Crowds, studies of Friendship Groups, and studies or Social Networks of frequent interaction partners. Sociometric groups and social crowds are defined as social categories, that is, groups containing students with similar characteristics or lifestyles who often do not share close relationships. In contrast, friendship groups and groups of frequent interaction partners necessitate close and mutual connections between the members of each group.

This study focuses on interaction groups and the ways in which the labels that children assign …

High Rates Of Diabetes And Hypertension Amongst Non-Latinx African-American Women As Risk Factors For Low Birth Weight: Contributing Causes And Potential Solutions, Liliana Barber

University Honors Theses

This study sought to analyze the relationship between diabetes, hypertension, and low birth weight (LBW) amongst non-Latinx African American women. The Oregon Health Assessment Tool (OPHAT) served as a data base for the sample population. The sample population consisted of African American women between the ages of 25-39 that gave birth between 2013-2014. Relative risk ratios were calculated to determine the likelihood of delivering a LBW infant. The exposures for the risk ratios were: Prepregnancy diabetes (DM), gestational diabetes (GM), prepregnancy hypertension (HTN), and gestational hypertension (GHTN). An analysis of conditional factors that impact birth weight was also conducted. The …

Bret Assays To Determine Altered Function Of A D2dr Variant In G Protein-Independent And -Dependent Pathways, Alex R. Kunz

University Honors Theses

G protein-dependent and independent signaling pathways perform crucial roles in dopamine-related physiological and pathological processes. A pivotal role of dopamine in the CNS is the control of locomotion; disruption to dopaminergic systems, such as reduced striatal D2 receptor availability, contributes to the development of movement disorders. Affected members of a family with dystonia, a movement disorder, are heterozygous for a SNP in exon 4 of D2DR (c.634A>T p.I212F), a missense variant located within the third intracellular loop; specifically, the variation is in the middle of a short stretch of residues that have been found to be critical for binding …

Effect Of Heterogeneity Of Variance On The Performance Of Anova F-Test And Its Alternatives: Simulation Based Study, Jay Lopez

University Honors Theses

Studies have shown that ANOVA F-test has a lower performance against heterogeneity of variances. It is important to provide more information on its alternatives and other methods that can prove useful. As a general guideline, Welch’s ANOVA is a perfect alternative with low type 1 error in all cases of different population variances. An addition to Welch’s ANOVA, Marascuilo’s alternative to this test gives a less accurate result but provides simpler calculation methods. Similar to Moder K. (2010) , Kruskal Wallis test and Hotelling’s T² test were taken into consideration. Kruskal Wallis test had higher type 1 errors similar …

Self-Disclosure And Physiological Responses Among Adults Who Stutter, Sulema Rodriguez

University Honors Theses

Purposes: (1) To explore self-disclosure, physiological and affective responses in easy and difficult speaking situations, (2) to investigate physiological and affective responses in self-disclosure and no self-disclosure speaking contexts, (3) to examine types of self-disclosure statements used along with physiological responses, (4) and to gain an understanding of reasons why and how adults who stutter choose to self-disclose or not self-disclose about their stuttering.

Method: Four adults who stutter were randomly assigned to self-disclosure and non self-disclosure speaking contexts. Heart rate, skin conductance, and affective responses were measured during the following focus areas: 1) start baseline, 2) anticipation of the …