Digital Commons Network^™

Capturing Peers', Teachers', And Parents' Joint Contributions To Students' Engagement: An Exploration Of Models, Justin William Vollet

Dissertations and Theses

Building on research that has focused on understanding how peers contribute to students' engagement, this dissertation explores the extent to which peer group influences on students' engagement may add to and be contextualized by qualities of the relationships they maintain with their teachers and their parents. To focus on how each of these adult contexts work in concert with peer groups to jointly contribute to changes in students' engagement, the two studies used data on 366 sixth graders which were collected at two time points during their first year of middle school: Peer groups were identified using socio-cognitive mapping; students …

Impacts Of Bus Rapid Transit (Brt) On Surrounding Residential Property Values, Victoria Perk, Martin Catalá, Maximillian Mantius, Katrina Corcoran

TREC Final Reports

As bus rapid transit (BRT) grows in popularity in the United States, a better understanding of the mode’s impacts on land uses and property values is needed. Economic theory suggests, and literature has shown, that people are willing to pay higher housing costs to lower their costs of transportation to areas of economic activity. Does high-quality BRT service reliably provide such access and, thereby, increase residential property values? The hypothesis is that property values are higher closer to BRT stations, reflecting a premium for the access provided by the BRT service to various goods, services, employment, education, and recreation. There …

Effectiveness Of Indoor Plants For Passive Removal Of Indoor Ozone, Omed A. Abbass, David J. Sailor, Elliott T. Gall

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Indoor vegetation is often proposed as a passive approach for improving indoor air quality. While studies of outdoor environments indicate that vegetation can be an important sink of outdoor ozone, there is scant data in the literature concerning the dynamics of ozone uptake by indoor plants. This study determined ozone deposition velocities (v_d) for five common indoor plants (Peace Lily, Ficus, Calathia, Dieffenbachia, Golden Pothos). The transient v_d was calculated, using measured leaf areas for each plant, for exposures mimicking three diurnal cycles where ozone concentrations in chamber tests were elevated for 8 h followed by …

Spatial-Semantic Image Search By Visual Feature Synthesis, Mai Long, Hailin Jin, Chen Fang, Feng Liu

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The performance of image retrieval has been improved tremendously in recent years through the use of deep feature representations. Most existing methods, however, aim to retrieve images that are visually similar or semantically relevant to the query, irrespective of spatial configuration. In this paper, we develop a spatial-semantic image search technology that enables users to search for images with both semantic and spatial constraints by manipulating concept text-boxes on a 2D query canvas. We train a convolutional neural network to synthesize appropriate visual features that captures the spatial-semantic constraints from the user canvas query. We directly optimize the retrieval performance …

Considering Health In Us Metropolitan Long-Range Transportation Plans: A Review Of Guidance Statements And Performance Measures, Patrick A. Singleton, Kelly J. Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Transportation influences health primarily and most directly through traffic safety, air quality, physical activity, and accessibility. Despite the importance of all four components, only safety and air quality are typically considered during institutionalized transportation planning processes. This paper assesses how health impacts are considered in transportation planning by focusing on the long-range transportation plans that US metropolitan planning organizations develop. We analyzed the content of current plans from 25 large regions, reviewing how policy guidance statements and supporting performance measures addressed health. Goals and objectives exhibited an incomplete perspective of transportation's effects on health, focusing on safety, accessibility, and air …

Bending The Carbon Curve: Fire Management For Carbon Resilience Under Climate Change, E. Louise Loudermilk, Robert M. Scheller, Peter J. Weisberg, Alec M. Kretchun

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Context: Forest landscapes are increasingly managed for fire resilience, particularly in the western US which has recently experienced drought and widespread, high-severity wildfires. Fuel reduction treatments have been effective where fires coincide with treated areas. Fuel treatments also have the potential to reduce drought-mortality if tree density is uncharacteristically high, and to increase long-term carbon storage by reducing high-severity fire probability.

Objective: Assess whether fuel treatments reduce fire intensity and spread and increase carbon storage under climate change.

Methods: We used a simulation modeling approach that couples a landscape model of forest disturbance and succession with an ecosystem model of …

Book Review Of, Fur Trade Gamble: North West Company On The Pacific Slope, 1800-1820 By Lloyd Keith And John C. Jackson, William L. Lang

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Mobile Augmented Reality: Hyper Contextualization And Situated Language Usage Events, Steven L. Thorne, John Hellermann

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Language use, second-language development, and technology mediated human activity are complex processes situated in, and in some cases demonstrably interwoven with, specific material and social contexts. Our presentation describes a project that focuses on the contextually embedded nature of communicative action. Building upon recent research on ethnomethodological analyses of talk-in-interaction while walking (Haddington et al., 2013), analyses of how communicative activity mediates our understanding of objects and environments (Nevile et al., 2014; Latour, 2005), principles of extended and embodied cognition (Atkinson, 2010), and existing research on the use of mobile place-based augmented reality (AR) techniques for language learning (Holden & …

Sulfolobus Spindle-Shaped Virus 1 Growth Kinetics, Setarah Mohammad Nader

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Geothermal and hypersaline environments are rich in viral particles, among which spindle-shaped morphologies predominate. Currently, viruses with spindle- or lemon-shaped virions are unique to Archaea and belong to two distinct viral families. The larger of the two families, the Fuselloviridae, encompasses spindle-shaped viruses with very short tails, which infect Sulfolobus solfataricus and close relatives. Sulfolobus spindle-shaped virus 1 (SSV1) is the best-known member of the family and was one of the first hyperthermophilic archaeal viruses to be isolated. However, our knowledge of fuselloviral life cycles and the relationships between these viruses and their hosts is still limited. As a …

Chemical Modulation Of Cancer Cells To Enhance Tumor Immunity, Florisela Herrejon Chavez

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Breakthroughs in immunotherapy have led to cancer therapeutics that activate the immune system by blocking inhibitory mechanisms. This class of therapeutics has resulted in longer survival rates for cancer patients, some living over 10 years after being diagnosed as terminally ill. However, only a small fraction of patients who receive immunotherapy drugs respond favorably.Recent studies suggest that certain anticancer agents (both cytotoxic chemotherapeutics and targeted drugs) stimulate immune recognition of cancers. Identification of such immunomodulatory anticancer agents would make ideal partners for current immunotherapy treatments, thus increasing the proportion of the treated patients who benefit from immunotherapy. This study aimed …

Wings Outstretched: New Contributions In Undergraduate Research

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

No abstract provided.

Toward A Critical Philosophy For Children, James Funston

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

I explore the role of Philosophy for Children (P4C) and critical pedagogy in pre-college education--what is the purpose of engaging with children on philosophical questions and how ought teachers ask such questions? This paper examines the current and past approaches of P4C through the work Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and attempts to situate P4C within the framework of critical pedagogy, resulting in a synthesis I call "critical P4C." Implementing critical P4C has the capacity to create communities of inquiry around questions of agency and freedom that are central to critical pedagogy. Critical P4C offers strategies for engaging students in discussions …

The Portland State University Task Force On Asian-American, Asian, And Pacific Islander Student Success, Betty Izumi, Toeutu Faaleava

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

During spring 2016, Portland State University (PSU) President Wim Wiewel created the Task Force on Asian-American, Asian, and Pacific Islander Student Success to assess the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for PSU in continuing to serve the broad range and diversity of Asian-American/Asian/Pacific Islander students. The Task Force was charged to make recommendations to the President and university on how PSU can best serve the higher education needs and aspirations of students from these communities.

The Task Force met twice during spring 2016 and monthly from September 2016 through June 2017. The co-chairs and research assistants met weekly to discuss progress …

The Efficacy Of Virtual Protest: Linking Digital Tactics To Outcomes In Activist Campaigns, Rina Lynne James

Dissertations and Theses

Activists are increasingly relying on online tactics and digital tools to address social issues. This shift towards reliance on the Internet has been shown to have salient implications for social movement formation processes; however, the effectiveness of such actions for achieving specific goals remains largely unaddressed. This study explores how the types of Internet activism and digital tools used by activism campaigns relate to success in meeting stated goals. To address these questions, the study builds on an existing framework that distinguishes between four distinct types of Internet activism: brochure-ware, which is oriented towards information distribution; e-mobilizations, which treats digital …

Identity And Community In Rural Higher Education: Creating New Pathways To Women's Leadership In Oaxaca, Mexico, Amanda Marie Elder

Dissertations and Theses

The emergence of higher education opportunities in rural areas of Mexico such as throughout the state of Oaxaca has opened new opportunities for young women's professional development and new individual and community identities. I explore tensions between the collective imaginary of rural Mexico and rural women's emerging sense of independence and self-determination in light of higher education's expanding opportunities. Educational opportunities lead to community formation around commonality of experience in addition to ascribed community relationships and roles. I situate this analysis within the context of the Universidad Tecnológica de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca (UT), a small university in San …

Shouts Of The Khori-Challwa: Andean Mythological And Cosmological Reconsiderations Of The American Identity In Gamaliel Churata’S El Pez De Oro, Stephen Delaney Mcnabb

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the possible creation of a new categorization of American Literature as presented in the Andean novel El pez de oro: Retablos del Laykhakuy (1957) by Gamaliel Churata. In El pez de oro, Gamaliel Churata presents a strategy for the recuperation of native Andean cultural agency that enables the Andean subject to reclaim traces of their ancestral past under more verisimilar and verifiable terms. Churata argues that through a recuperation of native language and its infusion into the body of the major colonial language, Spanish, the Andean subject is equipped with a new culture producing tool that …

2017 Commencement Program (Morning Ceremony), Nancy L. Zimpher

Commencement Archives 2010-19

The program for the Portland State University 2017 Commencement morning ceremony (Professional Schools), held at the Moda Center, Portland, Oregon.

Nancy L. Zimpher, Chancellor of the State University of New York, received an honorary doctorate and delivered the commencement address.

2017 Commencement Program (Afternoon Ceremony), Earl Blumenauer

Commencement Archives 2010-19

The program for the Portland State University 2017 Commencement (Afternoon Ceremony: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences).

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer received an honorary doctorate and delivered the commencement address.

Misconceptions Of "Stupendous Antiquities" : Native American Mounds, Euro-Americans, And Racial Ideas, Lily Isabelle Hart

University Honors Theses

Across North America, remnants exist of the ancient works of Indigenous peoples. Prime examples are the long-abandoned city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, Illinois, which was once a bustling city larger than London in 1200 AD. In Cahokia, there are mounds that are as high as one hundred feet and a "Woodhenge" that functions as a calendar. Despite these impressive displays of engineering, urban planning, and understanding of astronomy, Cahokia was not protected as a National Historic Landmark until 1964--this late protection was the case for many of the mounds across America. Many mounds were plowed over and pueblos …

Drivers' Attitudes And Behaviors Toward Bicyclists: Intermodal Interactions And Implications For Road Safety, Tara Beth Goddard

Dissertations and Theses

Road safety concerns are a legitimate concern when promoting increased bicycle use. Currently, the share of bicyclist traffic fatalities and injuries is not proportional to its mode share, and presents both a public health concern and a disincentive to people taking up or continuing to bicycle for transportation. Bicycling is not an inherently dangerous activity; automobile drivers pose the most risk of harm in crashes with bicyclists. Despite that, drivers' attitudes and behaviors toward bicyclists have not enjoyed much systematic study, particularly in the United States. This research explored the dimensions of drivers' attitudes toward bicyclists, including implicit bias and …

Investigation In To The Stabilizing Effects Of The Modified Base Archaeosine In Trna And The Identification Of The Fluorescent Product Of Base Treatment Of Nad(P)+ Cofactors, Ben Turner

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation covers two projects linked by their involvement in the modification of tRNA bases.

The first project focused on an investigation of a role for the modified base Archaeosine, the ubiquitous modification in tRNA in the archaeal domain. Initial work was performed on a set of in vitro prepared tRNA modified to feature either the canonical guanine base at position 15, preQ₀ (TGT product) or Archaeosine (ArcS product). There was very little difference in the thermal stability of tRNAs containing these modifications in the halophilic H. volcanii tRNA^Ser or E. coli tRNA^Gln. In tRNA^{Gln …}

An Analysis Of Oregon Youth Authority Populations: Who Receives Treatment And What Factors Influence Allocation Of Treatment Resources?, Rebecca Arredondo Yazzie

Dissertations and Theses

Service provision in both adult and juvenile correctional settings is an understudied phenomenon. Research has evaluated the use of evidence-based practices (EBP) in the treatment of mental health and substance abuse among adults and juveniles. Young, Farrell, Henderson and Taxman (2009) highlight the role of organizational factors including climate and culture, opportunities for staff training, resources, administrator attitudes and interagency collaboration in the application of EBP in correctional settings. The Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) aims to provide services to youth under the guise of EBP. Literature in the field of juvenile justice is limited in scope in areas of organizational …

Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses: Tensions Between Public Perception, Legislative Barriers, And Research Findings, Jesse Turner

University Honors Theses

The juvenile justice system was founded on the beliefs that youth were inherently different from adults, both in the crimes they committed and how they were treated within society, and thus deserved to be punished differently. The court's job was to act as a sort of parent and always in the best interest of the child. Within this empathetic system, there has always been a fundamental misunderstanding of youth who commit sexual offenses and today those misunderstandings are incredibly detrimental to adjudicated youth and society at large. We believe that these youth are dangerous predators, that they will continue to …

Design And Application Of A 3d Photocatalyst Material For Water Purification, Simon Paul Fowler

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation presents a method for enhancement of the efficiency and scalability of photocatalytic water purification systems, along with an experimental validation of the concept. A 3-dimensional photocatalyst structure, made from a TiO₂-SiO₂ composite, has been designed and fabricated for use in a custom designed LED-source illumination chamber of rotational symmetry that corresponds with the symmetry of the photocatalyst material. The design of the photocatalyst material has two defining characteristics: geometrical form and material composition. The design of the material was developed through the creation of a theoretical model for consideration of the system's photonic efficiency. Fabrication …

Discrimination And Health: Sleep And Racism-Related Vigilance In Wave 5 Of Americans' Changing Lives Study, Jennifer Werekeitzen

University Honors Theses

The present study focuses on racial discrimination, sleep, and vigilance from Wave 5 of the Americans' Changing Lives study. From previous literature we know that stress and sleep are related; the more stress present, the more sleeping problems. It follows then that if anticipation of discrimination (vigilance) is the manifestation of stress related to racism, then vigilant individuals will have a harder time sleeping. Our hypothesis is that Black Americans’ vigilance levels will be negatively correlated with their sleep quality such that lower vigilance levels will indicate higher sleep quality. The results supported our hypothesis suggesting that Black Americans who …

Passive Bottom Reflection-Loss Estimation Using Ship Noise And A Vertical Line Array, Lanfranco Muzi, Martin Siderius, Christopher M. Verlinden

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

An existing technique for passive bottom-loss estimation from natural marine surface noise (generated by waves and wind) is adapted to use noise generated by ships. The original approach—based on beamforming of the noise field recorded by a vertical line array of hydrophones—is retained; however, additional processing is needed in order for the field generated by a passing ship to show features that are similar to those of the natural surface-noise field. A necessary requisite is that the ship position, relative to the array, varies over as wide a range of steering angles as possible, ideally passing directly over the array …

An American Librarian In Ethiopia, Joan Petit

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Librarian Joan Petit writes about her experiences serving as a Fulbright Scholar at Jimma University in Ethiopia.

Measuring The Impacts Of Social Media On Advancing Public Transit, Jenny H. Liu, Xuegang Ban, O. A. Elrahman

TREC Final Reports

This project is a collaboration between Portland State University (PSU) and the Center for Infrastructure Transportation & Environment (CITE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute seeking to develop performance measures for assessing the impacts of social media on promoting public transit. Revolutionary changes have occurred in the communication landscape, and there has been a rapid diffusion of social media use as a means of communicating transit information to the public. Significant resources are being directed to the use of social media in communication, yet little effort exists that measures the impacts of these popular vehicles of communication. Rarely studied is the role …

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights From Residents Of Traditionally Underserved Neighborhoods, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill, John Macarthur, Joseph Broach, Steven Howland

TREC Final Reports

Evidence has shown that higher income and white populations are overrepresented in both access to and use of bike share. Efforts to overcome underserved communities’ barriers to access and use of bike share have been initiated in a number of cities, including those working with the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) to launch and test potentially replicable approaches to improve the equity outcomes. This report describes findings from a survey of residents living near bike share stations placed in underserved communities of select BBSP cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, and Brooklyn. These were neighborhoods targeted for focused outreach related to BBSP programs, …

Abstinence-Only Sex Education In The United States: How Abstinence Curricula Have Harmed America, Moira N. Lynch

University Honors Theses

Abstinence-only sex education has been a prominent form of reproductive health information for adolescents in the United States. Abstinence-only sex education programs often provide data that is incorrect or factually misleading, even though they are funded with federal dollars. Because of the dated and biased information presented in abstinence-only classrooms, gender stereotypes are reinforced to base women’s worth on their sexuality, traditional marriage is touted as the paramount societal norm, and groups such as LGBQT are marginalized. Facets of abstinence-only programs such as virginity pledges do not demonstrate success in preventing premarital sexual intercourse, but may lead to adverse outcomes …