Digital Commons Network^™

A Letter Writing Assignment For Leadership Development: Creating Stakeholder Connection For Policy Advocacy, Candace Bloomquist, Carly Speranza, Daneen Bergland, Kerry K. Fierke

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this article is to share with leadership educators a writing exercise designed to provide doctoral students enrolled in an Administrative and Policy Leadership course an opportunity to gain experience with building collective will for policy advocacy on a social justice issue. This article describes the use of a letter writing assignment including the background and justification for using letter writing rather than other forms of writing across the curriculum, instructions for students to complete the assignment, and examples and ideas for grading and providing constructive and instructive feedback to leadership students. The article concludes with recommendations and …

Regional Water Providers Consortium: Population, Housing Unit, And Household Estimates 2020 And 2021, Charles Rynerson, Christina Wei, Ethan Sharygin

Publications, Reports and Presentations

Water providers have an ongoing need for estimates and forecasts of the total population and the number of housing units and households within their service areas. The Portland State University (PSU) Population Research Center (PRC) has prepared annual population, housing unit, and household estimates each year since 2014 for the water service areas of the municipalities and water districts in the Regional Water Providers Consortium (RWPC), as well as the wholesale customers of the Portland Water Bureau (PWB) that are not Consortium members. Previous estimates used the 2010 Census as a baseline, with boundaries collected in 2013 and updated in …

Snerf: Stylized Neural Implicit Representations For 3d Scenes, Thu Nguyen-Phuoc, Feng Liu, Lei Xiao

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents a stylized novel view synthesis method. Applying state-of-the-art stylization methods to novel views frame by frame often causes jittering artifacts due to the lack of cross-view consistency. Therefore, this paper investigates 3D scene stylization that provides a strong inductive bias for consistent novel view synthesis. Specifically, we adopt the emerging neural radiance fields (NeRF) as our choice of 3D scene representation for their capability to render high-quality novel views for a variety of scenes. However, as rendering a novel view from a NeRF requires a large number of samples, training a stylized NeRF requires a large amount …

Technology Roadmap For Standards Of Healthcare Data Cyber Security: Influence Of Public Policy On Consumer Healthcare Cyber Security Protections, Alison Nalven, Courtney Wright, Jennifer Lynn Zeitouni, Nolan Thompson, Sara Ferdousi, Saumya Saxena

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

From the dot com boom to now the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning era, the evolving digital world that people live in has brought new challenges for protecting personal data and information. IoT devices, smart phones, numerous apps, and more, constantly collect personal health data with many positive intentions. However, the recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the United States Supreme Court has generated concerns in particular on who and how personal health data can be used by both governments and private companies with unintended consequences for users. Cyber security and regulations for protecting personal health data …

Ssita: Seal Serving Institutional Transformation Assessment: Excelencia In Education & Portland State University, Cynthia Carmina Gómez, Oscar Fernandez, Cristina Herrera, Emanuel Magaña, Allyson Meyers, Perla Pinedo, Rebecca Rodas, Tanya Sanchez

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

In the Spring of 2022, Portland State University was invited to participate in Excelencia in Education’s pilot Seal Serving Institutional Transformation Assessment or SSITA. This SSITA report is a preliminary institutional assessment of Portland State University’s (PSU) efforts to intentionally serve Latiné students and advance degree completion. Between now and June 2023, a committee of faculty, staff, and students will lead the effort to complete a Seal of Excelencia application. We will reach out to all parts of the institution to gather additional information, data, and stories about how units serve our growing Latiné student population. The next round of …

Convening On The Future Of Black Thriving & Joy, Office Of The President, Portland State University, Justice Oregon For Black Lives

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

This co-creation event aims to be an asset-based intergenerational, inter-ideological, and intercultural opportunity for listening, shared learning, and recognition of points of synergy and opportunity across the rich complexity of the black community in our area -- resulting in a shared agenda and momentum for action.

This affinity/identity based/closed event focuses on the black community and is part of a series of conversations with the different BIPOC communities as stated in the Time to Act plan created as a result of the October 2020 Time to Act summit. As a result of these conversations, Portland State University is seeking to …

Gis Training In Transportation And Environmental Justice For Promoting Student Success In Steam Education, Joowon Im, Alan Klein, Amruta Sakalker

TREC Final Reports

Transportation land uses have a significant impact on vulnerable ecologies, especially in a rapidly urbanizing region like Dallas-Fort Worth. To study this relationship, the research team will develop a pilot ArcGIS lab course to expose high school students to critical regional tools and technology. This course will demonstrate the connections between transportation planning and design and environmental justice. The College of Architecture Planning and Public Affairs at UT Arlington will partner with CityLab high school in the Dallas Independent School District to develop a four-week lab course curriculum in ArcGIS and other emerging regional mapping technologies.

High school students will …

Estimating The Economic Impacts Of Transportation-Related Supply Chain Disruptions In The Post-Earthquake Environment, Divya Chandrasekhar, Sua Kim, John Downen, Joshua Spolsdoff

TREC Final Reports

Transportation systems play a critical role in maintaining supply chains for effective post-disaster recovery. Modeling the potential economic impact of transportation-related disruptions, therefore, is an important step to promoting pre-event community wide recovery and resilience planning. But existing supply chain and economic impact models are cost prohibitive and overly sophisticated for use by public sector entities with limited resources. There is also limited understanding of how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) adjust to post-disaster transportation disruption and how this experience influences their future preparedness for similar events. This project had two objectives: (1) to analyze the economic impact due to …

Mobility For The People: Evaluating Equity Requirements In Shared Micromobility Programs, Anne Brown, Amanda Howell, Hana Creger

TREC Final Reports

Technology-enabled shared micromobility services have expanded mobility for some travelers, but significant barriers to use limit their uptake among certain groups. To address these barriers, cities and professional transportation organizations have undertaken two distinct efforts to operationalize equity in shared micromobility services: 1) drafted equity frameworks in an attempt to clearly define equity within the transportation context and to provide guidelines for what cities should consider when designing equity-based mobility programs; and 2) some cities have attempted to ameliorate access disparities by establishing new requirements for shared micromobility programs. Both equity frameworks and program requirements mark important steps to operationalizing …

An Introduction To Gis For Dallas, Texas High Schoolers, Joowon Im, Alan Klein, Amruta Sakalker

TREC Project Briefs

A summary of TREC research project NITC-RR-1468,GIS Training in Transportation And Environmental Justice for Promoting Student Success in STEAM Education.

Parent Attitudes Towards Childhood Vaccines After The Onset Of Sars-Cov-2 In The United States, Douglas J. Opel, Anna Furniss, Chuan Zhou, John D. Rice, Heather Spielvogle, Christine Spina, Cathryn Perreira, Jessica Giang, Jeffrey D. Robinson, Multiple Additional Authors

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective: To understand the influence of a novel infectious disease epidemic on parent general attitudes about childhood vaccines.

Methods: We conducted a natural experiment utilizing cross-sectional survey data from parents of infants in Washington and Colorado participating in a larger trial that began on September 27, 2019. At enrollment, parents completed the short version of the Parental Attitudes about Childhood Vaccines (PACV-SF), a validated survey scored from 0-4, with higher scores representing more negative attitudes. The exposure variable was onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the US, with the before-period defined as September 27, 2019 –– February 28, …

Reimagine Fire Science For The Anthropocene, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Jennifer K. Balch, Rebecca T. Barnes, Philip E. Higuera, Andres Holz, Multiple Additional Authors

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Increasing fire danger is a vexing problem that requires deep transdisciplinary, trans-sector, and inclusive partnerships to address. Here, we outline barriers and opportunities in the next …

Comparing Oral Health Behaviours Of Men And Women In The United States, Sharon Su, Martin S. Lipsky, Frank W. Licari, Man Hung

Institute on Aging Publications

Objective

This study used a national database to update and examine current differences in men's and women's oral health and oral health behaviours in the United States.

Methods

Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for the 2017–2018 cycle were used to explore the relationship between males and females and their oral health. Multivariate analyses assessed for gender differences in oral health behaviors between genders after controlling for sample demographic characteristics.

Results

The final sample consisted of 4,741 participants. Males tended to have fewer dental visits, worse perception of their gum and tooth health, poorer flossing habits, and …

Efficacy Of The Project Futures Self-Determination Coaching Model For College Students With Foster Care Backgrounds And Mental Health Challenges, Jennifer Blakeslee, Rebecca A. Miller, Mathew C. Uretsky

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Post-secondary students transitioning from foster care face a range of unique challenges to academic engagement and success, and the typical mental health stressors experienced by college-age young adults are exacerbated by experiences of trauma common to those with foster care experience. Many campuses have introduced specialized support programs for these students, but few have been rigorously tested. This study is the first identified randomized experiment to evaluate a post-secondary support program for enrolled college students with foster care backgrounds and mental health challenges. We report findings from a pilot intervention study testing the Project Futures model, which includes one-on-one coaching …

The Efficacy Of Research-Based "Mathematics For All" Professional, Kathleen Melhuish, Eva P. Thanheiser, Alexander White, Brenda Rosencrans, J. Michael Shaughnessy, Linda Foreman, Andrew Riffel, Layla Guyot

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article contributes to the larger narrative around what makes a mathematics professional development (PD) successful and in what ways. We share a research-based PD model that was implemented in elementary schools in an urban school district for 3 years. The model uses a pseudo lesson study approach and emphasizes standards-based instruction. We found that teachers made gains in knowledge and instruction quality. However, whereas some students saw gains on standardized assessments, this was the case only for students who were not members of historically minoritized groups (Black/Latino), countering our assumptions that the PD would lead to equitable achievement results. …

The Case For Mandatory Reporting As An Ethical Dilemma For Social Workers, Sam Harrell, Stéphanie Wahab

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mandatory reporting of child abuse is a part of the civil legal system that can activate a policy cascade disproportionately criminalizing racialized and marginalized communities. While social work scholarship has explored ways to increase provider compliance with mandatory reporting laws, there is a dearth of research focused on how social work education guides future providers towards the praxis of mandatory reporting discourses. This article presents findings from a content analysis of social work textbook excerpts focused on mandatory reporting of child abuse in the U.S. We found that textbooks affirm social work’s loyalty to the State by approaching mandatory reporting …

Learning Nonparametric Ordinary Differential Equations: Application To Sparse And Noisy Data, Kamel Lahouel, Michael Wells, David Lovitz, Victor Rielly, Ethan Lew, Bruno Jedynak

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Learning nonparametric systems of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) x˙=f(t,x) from noisy and sparse data is an emerging machine learning topic. We use the well-developed theory of Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS) to define candidates for f for which the solution of the ODE exists and is unique. Learning f consists of solving a constrained optimization problem in an RKHS. We propose a penalty method that iteratively uses the Representer theorem and Euler approximations to provide a numerical solution. We prove a generalization bound for the L2 distance between x and its estimator. Experiments are provided for the FitzHugh Nagumo oscillator …

An Essential Role For Tungsten In The Ecology And Evolution Of A Previously Uncultivated Lineage Of Anaerobic, Thermophilic Archaea, Steffen Buessecker, Marike Palmer, Dengxun Lai, Joshua Dimapilis, Xavier Mayali, Damon Mosier, Jian-Yu Jiao, Daniel R. Colman, Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Multiple Additional Authors

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Trace metals have been an important ingredient for life throughout Earth’s history. Here, we describe the genome-guided cultivation of a member of the elusive archaeal lineage Caldarchaeales (syn. Aigarchaeota), Wolframiiraptor gerlachensis, and its growth dependence on tungsten. A metagenome-assembled genome (MAG) of W. gerlachensis encodes putative tungsten membrane transport systems, as well as pathways for anaerobic oxidation of sugars probably mediated by tungsten-dependent ferredoxin oxidoreductases that are expressed during growth. Catalyzed reporter deposition-fluorescence in-situ hybridization (CARD-FISH) and nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (nanoSIMS) show that W. gerlachensis preferentially assimilates xylose. Phylogenetic analyses of 78 high-quality Wolframiiraptoraceae MAGs from …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of How Youth In Care Describe Social Support, Jared Israel Best

Dissertations and Theses

There are nearly 422,000 youth in foster care in the United States with 20,000 aging out each year. Youth who age out of care demonstrate worse outcomes in all areas (education, employment, homelessness, justice system involvement, and social support) compared to the general population. These outcomes represent an ideological production, or a production of knowledge regarding the discursive youth in care. Thus, dominant discourses of youth are informed and constitutive of these problematic outcomes. Similarly, youthhood is dominantly defined by risk and informed by peer groups and social relationships. This study presents findings from interviews with 22 youth preparing to …

Stumptown On Strike With Garrett Palmer, Garrett Palmer

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Garrett Palmer (History, '22) discusses the 1934 Portland Waterfront Strike. The strike has largely been portrayed as "static", where striking workers clashed with the establishment at the hiring halls and the docks of Portland. While that is correct, it is a bit simplistic; we can glean more from the event by considering how urban space, the relationship between metropole and hinterlands, and the role of unconventional groups played roles in the strike. That line of inquiry ultimately showcases that this event was anything but static, as groups like church parishes, the Communist Party, sex workers, …

Legislative Procedures And Perceptions Of Legitimacy, Megan Elizabeth Cox

Dissertations and Theses

While mechanisms of legitimacy development have been extensively studied in governments as a cohesive whole, procedural legitimation of the legislative branch has not been explored. Using a procedural justice framework to identify indicators of openness in legislative rules, this paper theorizes that the presence or absence of these indicators will be the key factor in public perceptions of legitimacy of the legislature. This paper hypothesizes that where more indicators are present, a legislature will be viewed as more legitimate by its citizens as compared to a legislature with fewer indicators.

Comparing Indonesia and the Philippines, two presidential democracies in Southeast …

Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors And Psychological Distress: A Secondary Analysis Across Four Occupational Populations, Philip G. Bouleh, Shalene Joyce Allen, Leslie Hammer

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study assessed the associations of employee’s perceptions of family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) and their psychological distress across four occupational populations (n = 3778): Information technology; healthcare; military-connected Veterans; and National Guard service members. Data were gathered and analyzed from four larger archival datasets to compare differences in these relationships. Results revealed significant negative relationships between employee reports of FSSB and their psychological distress within occupations, as expected. Furthermore, results revealed significant differences across occupational populations for employee reports of both FSSB and psychological distress. Hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the extent of these mean differences …

Reducing Opioid Use Disorder And Overdose Deaths In The United States: A Dynamic Modeling Analysis, Erin J. Stringfellow, Tse Yang Lim, Keith Humphreys, Catherine Digennero, Celia Stafford, Elizabeth Beaulieu, Jack Homer, Wayne Wakeland, Multiple Additional Authors

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Opioid overdose deaths remain a major public health crisis. We used a system dynamics simulation model of the U.S. opioid-using population age 12 and older to explore the impacts of 11 strategies on the prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) and fatal opioid overdoses from 2022 to 2032. These strategies spanned opioid misuse and OUD prevention, buprenorphine capacity, recovery support, and overdose harm reduction. By 2032, three strategies saved the most lives: (i) reducing the risk of opioid overdose involving fentanyl use, which may be achieved through fentanyl-focused harm reduction services; (ii) increasing naloxone distribution to people who use opioids; …

Oregon State Rank Assessment For Moose (Alces Alces), Eleanor P. Gaines

Institute for Natural Resources Publications

No abstract provided.

Decreased Risk Of Low Back Pain During Pregnancy Associated With The Use Of Orthopedic Manual Therapy: A Nested Case-Control Study, Wei-Chiao Chang, Hanoch Livneh, Chieh-Tsung Yen, Min-Chih Hsieh, Ming-Chi Lu, Wei-Jen Chen, Tzung-Yi Tsai

Counselor Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Recent evidence suggests that the use of orthopedic manual therapy (OMT) may lessen the subsequent risk of low back pain (LBP), but this association has not been examined among pregnant women who are at higher risk of LBP. This study aims to determine whether the addition of OMT to conventional LBP treatment before pregnancy could decrease the subsequent risk of LBP during pregnancy.

Methods: From Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database, we identified 68,960 women, 20–55 years of age, with first pregnancy between 2001 and 2012. We then performed a nested case-control study in which 3,846 women with newly …

The Iroquois Indians In Ohio, 1600–1763, Woody Crow

Dissertations and Theses

The Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy hold a noted position of the history of Native Americans in North America especially the northeastern woodlands. My thesis states that the Iroquois people were the dominant Native Americans in the Ohio during colonial period. In stating this, I would also relate that the Iroquois people were more than just the Five Nations and their related Nations controlled a broad swath of land from Lake Superior to Chesapeake Bay.

Due to limitations of space, this thesis will span the period of pre-discovery to the end of the Seven Years War in 1763. However, …

Citizens' Preferences On Green Infrastructure Practices And Their Enhancement In Portland, Oregon, Katsuya Tanaka, Hal T. Nelson, Nicholas Mccullar, Nishant Parulekar

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

Green infrastructure (GI) has been gaining increasing attention due to its efficiency in controlling and purifying urban stormwater runoff, creating environmental amenities, and biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, the existing knowledge of people's preferences for GI is not yet sufficient for evidence-based policymaking for enhancing GI. This study analyzes citizens' perceptions of the relative importance of six GI practices and estimates their willingness to pay (WTP) to enhance them. To this end, the study applies two types of stated preference methods (best-worst scaling and contingent valuation) to citizen survey data collected in Portland, Oregon. We found that GI practices that are more …

Silos In Higher Education Institutions: Shifting From Organizational Phenomena To A Practical Framework For Equitable Decision-Making, Mandi Sue Mizuta

Dissertations and Theses

As higher education has evolved, administrative and support functions have become more stratified and specialized, creating institutions with complex and compartmentalized organizational structures known as silos. These silos have a detrimental impact on institutions, employees, and ultimately the student stakeholders that they serve. Silos within higher education administration support services are readily acknowledged anecdotally; however, robust research to describe this phenomenon and actionable resources to address it are lacking. This multi-paper dissertation explores the theoretical implications and practical applications for using collaborative, intentional approaches to address what is argued to be at its core is a matter of equity. The …

Thermophysical Properties Of Inorganic Phase-Change Materials Based On Mncl2·4h2o, Kyung-Eun Min, Jae-Won Jang, Jun-Ki Kim, Chien Wern, Sung Yi

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Manganese (II) chloride tetrahydrate, classified as an inorganic phase-change material (PCM), can be used as a thermal energy storage material, saving and releasing thermal energy during its phase transitions. In this study, thermophysical properties, such as phase change temperatures, latent heat, and thermal conductivities, of four types of MnCl₂·4H₂O PCMs were investigated under single and dual phases (liquid-, solid-, and dual-phase PCMs) using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and a heat flow meter. PCMs with a liquid or dual phases exhibited superheating issues, and their melting temperatures were 7 to 10 °C higher than the reference melting …

The Role Of The Gut-Brain Axis In Alzheimer's Disease: A Narrative Review, Leila Karout

University Honors Theses

The importance of the gut microbiome in health has become increasingly recognized as more research points to the strong association between an imbalanced gut microbial composition and a diseased state. Alzheimer's Disease burdens millions, and the rate of growth is expected to increase. However, current treatment methods are less than ideal and do not offer a substantial benefit to patients' quality of life. Additionally, there are gaps in the current understanding of Alzheimer's Disease pathogenesis. Research on the relationship between gut microbiota and neurodegeneration provides a different perspective on the pathogenesis and treatment methods for dementia, such as Alzheimer's Disease. …