Digital Commons Network^™

"Math In A Can": Teaching Mathematics And Engineering Design, Ronald B. Narode

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using an apparently simple problem, "Design a cylindrical can that will hold a liter of milk," this paper demonstrates how engineering design may facilitate the teaching of the following ideas to secondary students: linear and non-linear relationships; basic geometry of circles, rectangles, and cylinders; unit measures of area and volume; solving systems of equations with at least two variables; minimization of area to control materials costs and to prevent heat exchange; packing geometry to minimize space for transportation and storage and for controlling for heat exchange; golden ratio as a design aesthetic; ergonomic factors in design including considerations of comfort …

Real Options Methodology In Sportswear Retail Investment Valuation, Hairong Karen Gui

Dissertations and Theses

The net present value (NPV) approach has been widely accepted by corporate practitioners and academics as the principle tool for evaluating the feasibility of corporate financial investment opportunities. It conceptually provides an estimate in present value terms of a proposed investment's incremental contribution to the firm, enabling the company to pursue its goal of value maximization with more assurance. NPV uses a discount rate that in theory captures market risks. In the stable growth or mature industries, NPV works well. However, in high investment/high risk-return (HI/HRR) industries, where the investment environment is often profiled as highly uncertain with high returns, …

Changing Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions Of Literacy In Content Classes: The Role Of Expert-Novice Dialogues, Peter Thacker, Sally Hood

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This manuscript details an exploratory study of an assignment in a literacy across the curriculum course that assisted teacher candidates to recognize the distance between expert and novice readers in their content specific teaching. The study explores how teacher candidates discovered strategies necessary to build comprehension of disciplinebased texts, particularly for novice readers. Data collection included multiple entries from thirty teacher candidate journals that were generated during partnered dialogues. Journals were analyzed for clues as to how teachers can better approach helping students to read varied disciplines’ texts with greater comprehension. Findings suggest that by placing teacher candidates in the …

Exploring Teacher Candidates’ Motivations To Teach, Maureen Siera, Steve Siera

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This qualitative study explored teacher candidates’ motivations to become teachers. As part of the application process, students are required to complete an onsite essay about why they want to become a teacher. The authors examined application essays of 53 candidates to identify motivations for becoming a teacher. From the data, we identified tentative categories and themes that explained students’ motivations for pursuing a program in teacher education. Upon refinement, these categories seem to group into three, not always mutually exclusive, themes: Altruism (Developing the student and Making a difference), Personal Fulfillment (Making a difference, Sharing knowledge and experience, Dispositional motivators, …

Volcanism And Astrobiology: Life On Earth And Beyond, Charles S. Cockell, Sherry L. Cady, Nicola Mcloughlin

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Editorial Introduction to the 2011 Special Issue of Astrobiology.

A Matrix Formulation For The Moment Distribution Method Applied To Continuous Beams, Arlindo Pires Lopes, Adriana Santos, Rogério Coelho Lopes

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Moment Distribution Method is a quite powerful hand method of structural analysis, in which the solution is obtained iteratively without even formulating the equations for the unknowns. It was formulated by Professor Cross in an era where computer facilities were not available to solve frame problems that normally require the solution of simultaneous algebraic equations. Its relevance today, in the era of personal computers, is in its insight on how a structure reacts to applied loads by rotating its nodes and thus distributing the loads in the form of member-end moments. Such an insight is the foundation of the …

Using Exploratory Interviews To Re-Frame Planned Research On Classroom Issues, Julia Ellis, Vera Janjic-Watrich, Vicki Macris, Richelle Marynowski

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

In this paper we describe and illustrate the use of an exploratory first interview to refine research questions or interviewing ideas prior to finalizing plans for a study about classroom issues or practices. Three researchers give accounts of their exploratory interviews concerning student “aliteracy,” the school experience of immigrant students, and mathematics teachers’ experience of assessment and grading. The researchers endeavored to acquire an holistic understanding of their participants’ experiences by: using open-ended questions about both the topic and the participants’ lives in general; asking participants to complete pre-interview activities such as drawings or diagrams about either the topic or …

Photoelectron Emission Control With Polarized Light In Plasmonic Metal Random Structures, Robert Campbell Word, Joseph Fitzgerald, Rolf Kӧnenkamp

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The authors report on the possibility of switching the emission rate of photoelectrons by polarization changes in the plasmon excitation light. Photoelectron emission is strongly enhanced in the near-field of localized surface plasmons and occurs from areas with typical diameters of 20-70 nm. The underlying physical process involves excitation of a localized surface plasmon polariton with a femtosecond laser pulse, and a subsequent multi-photon photoemission process. The non-linearity of this process leads to a sharp polarization dependence that allows efficient switching of the emission. We demonstrate that a 90° polarization change can result in on/off ratios of ∼100 for electron …

Toward An Integrated History To Guide The Future, Sander Van Der Leeuw, Robert Costanza, Steve Aulenbach, Simon Brewer, Michael Burek, Sarah Cornell, Carole L. Crumley, J. A. Dearing, Catherine Downy, Lisa J. Graumlich, Scott Heckbert, Michelle Hegmon, Kathy A. Hibbard, Stephen T. Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Paul Sinclair, Sverker Sörlin, W. L. Steffen

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

Many contemporary societal challenges manifest themselves in the domain of human?environment interactions. There is a growing recognition that responses to these challenges formulated within current disciplinary boundaries, in isolation from their wider contexts, cannot adequately address them. Here, we outline the need for an integrated, transdisciplinary synthesis that allows for a holistic approach, and, above all, a much longer time perspective. We outline both the need for and the fundamental characteristics of what we call ?integrated history.? This approach promises to yield new understandings of the relationship between the past, present, and possible futures of our integrated human?environment system. We …

Prioritizing Zebra And Quagga Mussel Monitoring In The Columbia River Basin, Steve W. Wells, Timothy D. Counihan, Amy Puls, Mark Sytsma, Brian Adair

Center for Lakes and Reservoirs Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this report is to provide a framework for the prioritization of water bodies in the Columbia River Basin and the Greater Northwest region (surrounding areas in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming) for early detection monitoring for dreissenid mussels. Our ability to assess the relative risk of establishment and introduction of dreissenid mussels was confounded by significant gaps in the data necessary to rigorously predict where dreissenid mussels will become introduced and subsequently established. Consequently, local jurisdictions should evaluate the prioritized lists provided critically and make adjustments where local knowledge and additional information dictates. Further, …

Evolving Nano-Scale Associative Memories With Memristors, Arpita Sinha

Dissertations and Theses

Associative Memories (AMs) are essential building blocks for brain-like intelligent computing with applications in artificial vision, speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Computations for such applications typically rely on spatial and temporal associations in the input patterns and need to be robust against noise and incomplete patterns. The conventional method for implementing AMs is through Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Improving the density of ANN based on conventional circuit elements poses a challenge as devices reach their physical scalability limits. Furthermore, stored information in AMs is vulnerable to destructive input signals. Novel nano-scale components, such as memristors, represent one solution to …

Numerical And Experimental Analysis Of Composite Sandwich Links For The Lcf System, Max Taylor Stephens

Dissertations and Theses

Shear links are used as fuse elements in lateral load resisting systems to provide ductility and dissipate seismic energy. These links have traditionally been employed in eccentrically braced frames, but have more recently been suggested for use in the innovative linked column frame system (LCF). Current design specifications for shear links require intermediate web stiffeners to provide out-of-plane web stability so ductility requirements can be achieved. This research focused on moving from discrete transverse web stiffening to continuously stiffened webs in built up shear links. Built up links were designed to yield in shear when subjected to severe cyclic loading, …

Relativistic Red-Black Trees, Philip William Howard, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Operating system performance and scalability on sharedmemory many-core systems depends critically on efficient access to shared data structures. Scalability has proven difficult to achieve for many data structures. In this paper we present a novel and highly scalable concurrent red-black tree. Red-black trees are widely used in operating systems, but typically exhibit poor scalability. Our red-black tree has linear read scalability, uncontended read performance that is at least 25% faster than other known approaches, and deterministic lookup times for a given tree size, making it suitable for realtime applications.

The Ordering Requirements Of Relativistic And Reader-Writer Locking Approaches To Shared Data Access, Philip William Howard, Josh Triplett, Jonathan Walpole, Paul E. Mckenney

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The semantics of reader-writer locks allow read-side concurrency. Unfortunately, the locking primitives serialize access to the lock variable to an extent that little or no concurrency is realized in practice for small critical sections. Relativistic programming is a methodology that also allows read- side concurrency. Relativistic programming uses dfferent ordering constraints than reader-writer locking. The different ordering constraints allow relativistic readers to proceed without synchronization so relativistic readers scale even for very short critical sections. In this paper we explore the diferences between the ordering constraints for reader-writer locking and relativistic programs. We show how and why the dfferent ordering …

Haskell For The Cloud, Andrew P. Black

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present Cloud Haskell, a domain specific language for developing programs for a distributed-memory computing environment. Implemented as a shallow embedding in Haskell, it provides a message-passing communication model, inspired by Erlang, without introducing incompatibility with Haskell's established sharedmemory concurrency. A key contribution is a method for serializing function closures for transmission across the network. Cloud Haskell has been implemented; we present example code and some preliminary performance measurements.

Finding Haystacks With Needles: Ranked Search For Data Using Geospatial And Temporal Characteristics, Veronika Margaret Megler, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The past decade has seen an explosion in the number and types of environmental sensors deployed, many of which provide a continuous stream of observations. Each individual observation consists of one or more sensor measurements, a geographic location, and a time. With billions of historical observations stored in diverse databases and in thousands of datasets, scientists have difficulty finding relevant observations. We present an approach that creates consistent geospatial-temporal metadata from large repositories of diverse data by blending curated and automated extracts. We describe a novel query method over this metadata that returns ranked search results to a query with …

Can Transportation Researchers Reuse Project Datasets And Programs?, Tyler Hayes, Lois Delcambre, Leonard Shapiro

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Data users involved in research and analysis typically invest a lot of eort cleaning and manipu- lating their data as they work. Based on this observation, we have investigated two hypotheses: 1) reuse of datasets and procedures is difficult, and 2) the inability to reuse datasets and procedures is primarily due to a lack of documentation. To test these hypotheses we conducted structured interviews with data users asking questions regarding the struggles in their work pertaining to data, their documentation habits, and the importance of documentation. The interviews revealed that the data users rarely reused data or procedures, frequently encountered …

The Integrated Wrf/Urban Modeling System: Development, Evaluation, And Applications To Urban Environmental Problems, Fei Chen, Hiroyuki Kusaka, Robert Bornstein, Jason Ching, C.S.B. Grimmond, Susanne Grossman-Clarke, Thomas Loridan, Kevin W. Manning, Alberto Martilli, Shiguang Miao, David J. Sailor, Francisco P. Salamanca, Haider Taha, Mukul Tewari, Xuemei Wang, Andrzej A. Wyszogrodzki, Chaolin Zhang

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

To bridge the gaps between traditional mesoscale modeling and microscale modeling, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in collaboration with other agencies and research groups, has developed an integrated urban modeling system coupled to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model as a community tool to address urban environmental issues. The core of this WRF/urban modeling system consists of: 1) three methods with different degrees of freedom to parameterize urban surface processes, ranging from a simple bulk parameterization to a sophisticated multi-layer urban canopy model with an indoor outdoor exchange sub-model that directly interacts with the atmospheric boundary layer, …

Quasi-Steady Capillarity-Driven Flows In Slender Containers With Interior Edges, Mark M. Weislogel, J. Alex Baker, Ryan M. Jenson

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the absence of significant body forces the passive manipulation of fluid interfacial flows is naturally achieved by control of the specific geometry and wetting properties of the system. Numerous 'microfluidic' systems on Earth and 'macrofluidic' systems aboard spacecraft routinely exploit such methods and the term ‘capillary fluidics’ is used to describe both length-scale limits. In this work a collection of analytic solutions is offered for passive and weakly forced flows where a bulk capillary liquid is slowly drained or supplied by a faster capillary flow along at least one interior edge of the container. The solutions are enabled by …

The Work Of Promising And The Creation Of Meaning, Evan Conrad Buswell

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is an exploration into the mechanism of Marxist materialism. It is an attempt, in the face of materialism, to regain a grasp on our intellectual lives. The promise, I will argue, is a nexus between the material and ideal realms; it largely determines the configurations of our thoughts along three poles: privacy/recognition, sovereignty/subjection, and individual/society. In this thesis, I will explore the history of the promise during the sixteenth-century development of the negotiable instrument- a form of the promise that could be bought and sold. This development, I will argue, led to a general transformation of language during …

Factoring Semiprimes Using Pg2n Prime Graph Multiagent Search, Keith Eirik Wilson

Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis a heuristic method for factoring semiprimes by multiagent depth-limited search of PG^2_N graphs is presented. An analysis of PG^2_Nn graph connectivity is used to generate heuristics for multiagent search. Further analysis is presented including the requirements on choosing prime numbers to generate 'hard' semiprimes; the lack of connectivity in PG^1_N graphs; the counts of spanning trees in PG^2_N graphs; the upper bound of a PG^2_N graph diameter and a conjecture on the frequency distribution of prime numbers on Hamming distance. We further demonstrated the feasibility of …

Model-Based Information Extraction From Synthetic Aperture Radar Signals, Shari Matzner

Dissertations and Theses

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a remote sensing technology for imaging areas of the earth's surface. SAR has been successfully used for monitoring characteristics of the natural environment such as land cover type and tree density. With the advent of higher resolution sensors, it is now theoretically possible to extract information about individual structures such as buildings from SAR imagery. This information could be used for disaster response and security-related intelligence. SAR has an advantage over other remote sensing technologies for these applications because SAR data can be collected during the night and in rainy or cloudy conditions. This research …

Designing And Using Virtual Field Environments To Enhance And Extend Field Experience In Professional Development Programs In Geology For K-12 Teachers, Frank Douglas Granshaw

Dissertations and Theses

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used to acquaint geoscience novices with some of the observation, data gathering, and problem solving done in actual field situations by geoscientists. VR environments in a variety of forms are used to prepare students for doing geologic fieldwork, as well as to provide proxies for such experience when venturing into the field is not possible. However, despite increased use of VR for these purposes, there is little research on how students learn using these environments, how using them impacts student field experience, or what constitutes effective design in light of emerging theories of geocognition.

To …

Landslide Inventory Mapping And Dating Using Lidar-Based Imagery And Statistical Comparison Techniques In Milo Mciver State Park, Clackamas County, Oregon, Serin Duplantis

Dissertations and Theses

A landslide inventory was conducted for the Redland and Estacada Quadrangles of western Oregon using LiDAR DEMs. Many of these landslides were field verified. In total, 957 landslides were mapped using LiDAR whereas previously, only 228 landslides were believed to exist in the study area based on SLIDO information. In Milo McIver State Park, 41 landslides were mapped using LiDAR. SLIDO indicated only three landslides present within the park. A sequence of seven terraces of the Clackamas River is mapped in Milo McIver State Park. Landslides in the park predominantly occur between these terraces. Soils studied from representative areas within …

Investigating Future Variation Of Extreme Precipitation Events Over The Willamette River Basin Using Dynamically Downscaled Climate Scenarios, Andrew Jason Halmstad

Dissertations and Theses

One important aspect related to the management of water resources under future climate variation is the occurrence of extreme precipitation events. In order to prepare for extreme events, namely floods and droughts, it is important to understand how future climate variability will influence the occurrence of such events. Recent advancements in regional climate modeling efforts provide additional resources for investigating the occurrence of extreme events at scales that are appropriate for regional hydrologic modeling. This study utilizes data from three Regional Climate Models (RCMs), each driven by the same General Circulation Model (GCM) as well as a reanalysis dataset, all …

Prestructuring Multilayer Perceptrons Based On Information-Theoretic Modeling Of A Partido-Alto-Based Grammar For Afro-Brazilian Music: Enhanced Generalization And Principles Of Parsimony, Including An Investigation Of Statistical Paradigms, Mehmet Vurkaç

Dissertations and Theses

The present study shows that prestructuring based on domain knowledge leads to statistically significant generalization-performance improvement in artificial neural networks (NNs) of the multilayer perceptron (MLP) type, specifically in the case of a noisy real-world problem with numerous interacting variables.

The prestructuring of MLPs based on knowledge of the structure of a problem domain has previously been shown to improve generalization performance. However, the problem domains for those demonstrations suffered from significant shortcomings: 1) They were purely logical problems, and 2) they contained small numbers of variables in comparison to most data-mining applications today. Two implications of the former were …

Physical And Electrical Characterization Of Triethanolamine Based Sensors For No₂ Detection And The Influence Of Humidity On Sensing Response, Zachariah Marcus Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

Triethanolamine (TEA) is a semiconducting polymer which exhibits a resistance change when exposed to various gases. The polymer also exhibits a number of reactions with nitrogen dioxide, with the reaction products being heavily dependent on the presence or absence of water vapor. Previous studies have attempted the incorporation of a TEA-carbon nanoparticle composite as the active sensing layer in a chemresistive sensor for detection of NO₂. The incorporation of carbon nanoparticles in the polymer nanocomposite was thought to amplify the sensor's response. There are a number of chemical reactions that can occur between TEA and NO₂, with the reaction products …

Potential For Speciation In Mammals Following Vast, Late Miocene Volcanic Interruptions In The Pacific Northwest, Ryan Thomas Mckenna

Dissertations and Theses

The impact of large-scale volcanic eruptions on landscapes can affect many processes ranging from interrupting or redirecting regional soil forming processes and hydrological systems to generating temporary changes in global climate. Though more studies exist every year, less is known of the direct impact of large-scale volcanic eruptions on ecosystems and extinction, while even less is known of their impact on speciation. In deposits throughout the Pacific Northwest a special combination and association of volcanic magnitude with palaeoecological yield frequently presents unique prospects for inquiry. In this study, particular attention is given to large, late Miocene ash-flow tuffs of central …

Interception In Open-Grown Douglas-Fir (Pseudotsuga Menziesii) Urban Canopy, Mitchell Bixby

Dissertations and Theses

I hypothesized that Douglas-fir trees (Pseudotsuga menziesii) standing apart from other trees ('open-grown') will intercept more rainfall than Douglas-fir trees standing near other trees ('closed-canopy'). Open-grown trees differ structurally and are more common in urban settings, yet have been infrequently studied. Existing literature, based primarily on closed-canopy trees, suggests Douglas-fir trees in Pacific Northwest forests intercept approximately 25% of rainfall annually. Because open-grown trees have more vertical leaf area than individual trees in closed-canopy forests, I expected to find higher interception by open-grown trees.

I collected throughfall under four open-grown Douglas-firs using six static collectors ('buckets') per tree, …

Traffic Congestion Mitigation As An Emissions Reduction Strategy, Alexander York Bigazzi

Dissertations and Theses

Policy-makers, transportation researchers, and activists often assume that traffic congestion mitigation results in reduced vehicle emissions without proper justification or quantification of the benefits. If congestion mitigation is going to be tied to air quality goals, a better understanding of the impacts of traffic congestion on motor vehicle emissions is needed. This research addresses that need by investigating under which circumstances the commonly held assumption linking congestion mitigation to emissions reductions is valid. We develop and apply a mathematical framework to study the trade-offs between vehicle efficiency and travel demand that accompany travel speed changes. While the exact relationships among …