Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Recovery From Work In Work Stress-Related Drinking, Brittnie Renae Shepherd

Dissertations and Theses

Alcohol consumption has been linked to numerous adverse health and well-being outcomes; therefore determining what motivates individuals to drink is of utmost importance. One reason individuals may drink is to cope with work demands and their associated strain. This may be especially relevant for correctional officers (COs) as this occupation has been associated with high levels of job stressors and strain and heavy drinking. Drawing primarily on the job demands-resources and ego depletion models, this study examined how emotional job demands contribute to CO exhaustion and alcohol use. Additionally, interactions between common recovery from work experiences and exhaustion were tested …

Effects Of Antibiotic Mixtures Across Marine Intertidal Trophic Levels: Examining Environmentally-Relevant Contaminant Concentrations, Jaclyn Rebecca Teixeira

Dissertations and Theses

Approximately 48% of Americans use prescription drugs within each 30-day period, and there are signs this trend is increasing. Although many studies track pharmaceuticals’ fates in contaminating waterways, only fairly recent efforts have examined the potential impacts of these drugs on non-target organisms. The antibiotics sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim, often prescribed together to treat bacterial infections, have been detected worldwide in marine and estuarine environments at concentrations up to 700-800 ng/L each. Toxic effects of these drugs have been identified in freshwater organisms, with synergistic effects observed in short-term studies of mixtures of the two; however, little research has examined possible …

A Measurement System For Science And Engineering Research Center Performance Evaluation, Elizabeth Carole Gibson

Dissertations and Theses

This research provides performance metrics for cooperative research centers that enhance translational research formed by the partnership of government, industry and academia. Centers are part of complex ecosystems that vary greatly in the type of science conducted, organizational structures and expected outcomes. The ability to realize their objectives depends on transparent measurement systems to assist in decision making in research translation.

A generalizable, hierarchical decision model that uses both quantitative and qualitative metrics is developed based upon program goals. Mission-oriented metrics are used to compare the effectiveness of the cooperative research centers through case studies.

The US National Science Foundation …

Image Stitching: Handling Parallax, Stereopsis, And Video, Fan Zhang

Dissertations and Theses

Panorama stitching increases the field of view in an image by assembling multiple views together. Traditional stitching techniques are proven to be effective only when dealing with parallax-free monocular images. Many challenges that remain unsolved in the stitching research area include how to stitch monocular images with large parallax, how to stitch stereoscopic images to maintain their stereoscopic consistency and original disparity distribution, and how to create panoramic videos with temporally coherent content. To provide more powerful stitching techniques with more universality, we first develop a parallax-tolerant image stitching technique. With the help of it, we then effectively extend the …

A Community Engaged Approach To Address Intimate Partner Violence Among Sexual Minority Women, Rachel Marie Smith

Dissertations and Theses

In response to a dearth of empirical literature concerning the mechanisms underlying female same-sex intimate partner violence (FSSIPV) perpetration, the purpose of this research is to inform intimate partner violence intervention and prevention strategies specific to sexual minority women. The research responds in particular, this research aims to inform a working intersectional model predicting FSSIPV perpetration, and to evaluate the face validity and construct coverage of existing survey measures related to gender, minority stress, and violence. Fourteen lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer women recruited from the greater Portland, Oregon area participated in a series of in-depth, semi-structured, open-ended one-on-one …

The Application Of Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy To Immediately Diagnose The Protective Quality Of Coatings On Artistic And Architectural Metalwork, Kathryn Nicole Hosbein

Dissertations and Theses

Corrosion is a spontaneous process that causes irreversible damage to nearly all metals, which has world-wide implications for architectural and artistic metalwork, such as bridges, buildings, airplanes and sculptures. Protective coatings such as wax, paint, or polymeric clear coatings are used to prolong the lifetime of metals such as steel and bronze. Unfortunately, these coatings fail over time due to oxidative damage by UV rays and by failure to exclude water that can carry salts and pollutants that cause corrosion of the underlying substrate. The current method of coating assessment is visual inspection but when coating failure is detected at …

Hydrogeochemical Evaluation Of The Uinta Formation And Green River Formation, Piceance Creek Basin, Northwestern Colorado, Usa, Megan E. Masterson

Dissertations and Theses

The Piceance Creek Basin in northwestern Colorado contains extensive oil shale deposits that produce natural gas and which could potentially yield ~1.5 trillion barrels of shale oil. However, much of the oil shale lies at depths too great for traditional mining practices and various innovative approaches for in situ conversion of kerogen to oil have been proposed. A firm understanding of the existing hydrogeochemistry is needed as resulting mineralogical changes or rock-fluid reactions may affect rock porosity and permeability. Using an existing database complied by the USGS, the water chemistry of 267 surface and groundwater samples in the Piceance Creek …

Conceptualizing The Mindful Teacher: Examining Evidence For Mindfulness Skills In Teachers' Classroom Speech And Behavior, Cynthia Lynn Taylor

Dissertations and Theses

Mindfulness-based interventions can improve teachers' capacities for attention and emotion regulation, as well as their prosocial dispositions like compassion and forgiveness. The purpose of this set of research studies (including three case studies and a larger non-randomized treatment -- control group quasi-experimental study) was to examine whether or not capacities like these, learned through participation in a mindfulness training (MT) program for teachers, become embodied and show through as changes in teachers' mindful behavior in the classroom -- specifically, their ability to be calm, clear-minded and kind-hearted in their speech and behavior with students in the classroom. These studies used …

Systems Thinking In The Forest Service: A Framework To Guide Practical Application For Social-Ecological Management In The Enterprise Program, Megan Kathleen Kmon

Dissertations and Theses

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Enterprise Program (EP), which provides fee-for-service consulting services to the USFS, is interested in integrating systems thinking into its service offerings. Despite there being several excellent sources on the range and diversity of systems thinking, no single framework exists that thoroughly yet concisely outlines what systems thinking is along with its deep history, theoretical tenets, and soft and hard approaches. This thesis is an attempt to create such a framework, aimed specifically at practical application in a land management agency, through literature synthesis injected with original analysis. The usefulness of the framework is then tested …

To Disappear, Rachel Chenven Powers

Dissertations and Theses

This is a selection of linked lyric essays, covering explorations of memory, experience, nature, transcendence, insignificance, orientation, boredom, privilege, vocation, and more.

Narratives Of Native American Women And Tribal Courts: The Framing Of The Violence Against Women Act Of 2013 In Mainstream, Native American, And Tribal Press Coverage, Alesha Marie Sangster

Dissertations and Theses

The Violence Against Women Act is a legislation created to expand more legal rights and services to survivors of domestic violence or intimate partner violence. Frame analysis was used to examine the coverage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013 in three genres of press media: mainstream press, Native American press, and tribal press. Based on the media frames produced in the three media genres, the legislation was presented as more of a conflicting or controversial issue in mainstream press through the use of the conflict frame and the "Indian as other" frame. But all news coverage also presented …

The Village Market: New Columbia Goes Shopping For Food Justice, Jane Therese Waddell

Dissertations and Theses

The Village Market is a nonprofit Healthy Corner Store that has been open since May of 2011 in the mixed-use, mixed-income New Columbia housing development in Portland, Oregon's Portsmouth neighborhood. The venture began as a "community-led" effort in partnership with Janus Youth Programs and Home Forward. The project was conceived after a private enterprise in the small grocery space designed into the development failed, leaving the neighborhood without easy access to healthy foods. This dissertation is a case study of the development process, the operation of the market, and the degree to which it addresses food justice and health equity …

Configuring The Urban Smart Grid: Transitions, Experimentation, And Governance, Anthony Michael Levenda

Dissertations and Theses

In the face of challenges of energy security, decarbonization, resilience, and the replacement of aging infrastructure systems, federal, state, and local actors are facilitating the development of smart electricity networks to transition towards a more sustainable electricity system. In the United States, development of "smart grids" is being pursued as a national policy mandate and goal, promising that the deployment of smart grid technologies -- referring in general to digital information and communication technologies that sense, monitor, control and manage the electric grid -- will make electricity systems more environmentally sustainable and reliable, and at the same time, provide opportunities …

Community Schools: A Public Health Opportunity, Catherine Diamond

Dissertations and Theses

Community schools link students, families, and communities to educate children and strengthen neighborhoods. They have become a popular model for education in many U.S. cities in part because they build on community assets and address multiple determinants of educational disadvantage. Since community schools seek to have an impact on populations, not just the students enrolled, they provide an opportunity to improve community health. It has been proposed that community schools influence the health and education of the area residents through three pathways: building trust, establishing norms, and linking people to networks and services. However, no research has been published exploring …

An Evaluation Of The Effect Of Abortion Laws On The Timing Of Abortion, Elizabeth Fuentes

Dissertations and Theses

A record number of restrictive abortion laws, particularly those known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP), have been passed in US states in the past half-decade. TRAP laws differ from abortion laws that target patients, such as parental involvement and waiting period policies, because they are often expensive, difficult, or impossible for providers to comply with, resulting in the reduction or elimination of abortion services. This can result in farther travel to and higher costs of abortion services for patients; however, there are no studies assessing whether one consequence of reduced geographic accessibility of abortion services is delays in …

Patient And Family Engagement In Addressing Hospital Patient Safety Concerns: Experiences, Attitudes And Patient Safety Engagement Comfort Levels Of Recently Hospitalized Patients, Catherine M. Besthoff

Dissertations and Theses

Introduction

Patient engagement involves the behaviors of patients, family members, and health professionals (i.e., doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff) in a collaborative partnership to improve health and healthcare. It also constitutes organizational structures policies and procedures designed to foster and promote the active inclusion of patients and family members in health services delivery. Patient engagement is associated with enriched patient experience, patient safety and clinical effectiveness. An evidence base is essential for its translation from a conceptual framework to tangible programs that can be pragmatically implemented in healthcare delivery systems. However, little is known about how individual level factors, …

National Security, Mass Surveillance, And Citizen Rights Under Conditions Of Protracted Warfare, Krystal Lynn Conniry

Dissertations and Theses

This paper explores the complex relationship between securing the rights of citizens to privacy and national security priorities under conditions of government mass surveillance. The inquiry examines the conflict between those who support and those who stand in opposition of government surveillance, and is framed around the question of whether changes in technology and the concept of nationalism help inform our understanding of the increase in surveillance post-9/11. From a peace and conflict studies perspective, the work analyzes how the rise of nationalism in the post-9/11 era and the protracted wars against terrorism, in combination with the growth of technological …

Modeling Of Historic Columbia River Flood Impacts Based On Delft 3d Simulations, Lumas Terence Helaire

Dissertations and Theses

Natural and anthropogenic processes over the past 150 years have altered the bathymetry of the Lower Columbia River (LCR) and have changed the long wave propagation of tides and floods. Possible causes for the increase in tidal amplitudes (+7% in tidal range in Astoria) are decreases in river discharge, lengthening of the river channel due to the construction of jetties at the mouth, dredging and deepening of the shipping channel, and reduction of the tidal prism due to the filling and diking of tidal wetlands. In this study, changes in the characteristics of long waves are elucidated by developing two …

Insulin-Like Growth Factor Pathway Described In Austrofundulus Limnaeus Diapause And Escape Embryos, Steven Cody Woll

Dissertations and Theses

Development in the annual killifish Austrofundulus limnaeus can follow two distinct developmental trajectories. Typical development includes the entrance of embryos into a state of metabolic and developmental arrest termed diapause. Alternately, embryos can escape diapause and develop directly without pause. These two trajectories are characterized by differences in the rate and timing of developmental, morphological, and physiological traits. Insulin and Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling (IIS) is known to regulate entrance into diapause in a variety of invertebrates. In this thesis I explore the possible role of IGFs in the regulation of development and diapause in embryos of A. limnaeus …

Use Of Water Indices Derived From Landsat Oli Imagery And Gis To Estimate The Hydrologic Connectivity Of Wetlands In The Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Debra Sue Blackmore

Dissertations and Theses

This study compared two remote sensing water indices: the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and the Modified NDWI (MNDWI). Both indices were calculated using publically-available data from the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI). The research goal was to determine whether the indices are effective in locating open water and measuring surface soil moisture. To demonstrate the application of water indices, analysis was conducted for freshwater wetlands in the Tualatin River Basin in northwestern Oregon to estimate hydrologic connectivity and hydrological permanence between these wetlands and nearby water bodies. Remote sensing techniques have been used to study wetlands in recent …

The Effect Of Extended Instruction On Passive Voice, Reduced Relative Clauses, And Modal Would In The Academic Writing Of Advanced English Language Learners, Audrey Bailey

Dissertations and Theses

As more international students who are not expert users of English come to the United States to study at university, the field of teaching English for Academic Purposes grows. There are many important skills these international students must learn to become successful university students in America, but writing for academic purposes is of particular importance for these students to join the academic conversation in their respective disciplines. Corpus research has identified the grammatical features which are frequently found in different registers, and from this work it is known which structures are important in different types of academic writing. Grammatical structures …

Gender Bias And The Evaluation Of Players: Voice And Gender In Narrated Gameplay Videos, Robin April Crowell

Dissertations and Theses

This study evaluates perception differences of male and female narrators in video game tutorials. Video games have long been considered a masculine pursuit, and because of this, women have endured unpleasant surroundings and interactions in gaming and related communities. With the proliferation of technologies like Twitch and YouTube gaming, gaming is more communicative than ever, increasing potential for problematic interactions. Recent booms in these technologies emphasize the importance of understanding how varying demographics are perceived, as these perceptions influence interactions, potentially limiting the likelihood of women and others' involvement and interest.

Involvement in technology during youth is associated with interests …

A Landscape Approach To Determining And Predicting Juvenile Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus Kisutch) Movement Timing And Growth Patterns Prior To Ocean Entry, Amelia Lee Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) rely on unique habitats during the winter season, which may dictate how much individuals may grow and when migration from freshwater rearing habitat to the ocean occurs. Here I analyze movement timing and growth patterns for coho salmon through a field-based study and a literature review. For the field portion, I examined hatchery-stocked juvenile coho salmon across four stream basins in the Russian River watershed, California to determine the relative importance of climate, landscape, and fish size metrics in predicting movement and growth patterns over a winter rearing and spring smolt outmigration time period …

Watershed Response To Climate Change And Fire-Burns In The Upper Umatilla River Basin Using The Precipitation Runoff Modeling System, Kimberly Crystal Yazzie

Dissertations and Theses

This study provides an analysis of watershed response to climate change and forest fire impacts, to better understand the hydrologic budget and inform water management decisions for present and future needs. The study site is 2,365 km², located in the upper Umatilla River Basin (URB) in northeastern Oregon. The Precipitation Runoff Modeling System, a distributed-parameter, physical-process watershed model, was used in this study. Model calibration yielded a Nash Sutcliffe Model Efficiency of 0.73 for both calibration (1995-2010) and validation (2010-2014) of daily streamflow. Ten Global Climate Models using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 experiments with Representative Concentration …

More Than Meets The Eye: Latino Students In A Two-Way Immersion Program And Stereotype Threat, Edgar Ubaldino Solares Vega

Dissertations and Theses

Figures from the 2010 Census indicate that there are 50.5 million Latinos (16% of the total population) living in the United States (US) today. From 2000 to 2010, the Latino population experienced a very rapid growth rate of 43%, which accounted for over half the total population growth. More and more Latino students are entering our public schools and face the reality that 62 years after the Brown V. Board of Education ruling to integrate schools and equalize educational opportunities, schools are more racially and economically segregated and more unequal than they were more than half a century ago. As …

Use Of Distance Weighted Metrics To Investigate Landscape-Stream Temperature Relationships Across Different Temporal Scales, Eric Craig Watson

Dissertations and Theses

Stream ecosystems have experienced significant negative impacts from land use, resource exploitation, and urban development. Statistical models allow researchers to explore the relationships between these landscape variables and stream conditions. Weighting the relevant landscape variables based on hydrologically defined distances offers a potential method of increasing the predictive capacity of statistical models. Using observations from three grouped watersheds in the Portland Metro Area (n=66), I have explored the use of three different weighting schemes against the standard method of taking an areal average. These four different model groups were applied to four stream temperature metrics: mean seven-day moving average maximum …

Orthomorphisms Of Boolean Groups, Nichole Louise Schimanski

Dissertations and Theses

An orthomorphism, π, of a group, (G, +), is a permutation of G with the property that the map x → -x + π(x) is also a permutation. In this paper, we consider orthomorphisms of the additive group of binary n-tuples, Zⁿ₂. We use known orthomorphism preserving functions to prove a uniformity in the cycle types of orthomorphisms that extend certain partial orthomorphisms, and prove that extensions of particular sizes of partial orthomorphisms exist. Further, in studying the action of conjugating orthomorphisms by automorphisms, we find several symmetries within the orbits and stabilizers of this action, and …

A Study Of The Intelligibility, Comprehensibility And Interpretability Of Standard Marine Communication Phrases As Perceived By Chinese Mariners, Lillian Christine Holland

Dissertations and Theses

Worldwide, mariners use a variety of English as an International Language known as Maritime English regardless of the first language spoken by the crew or port in which they enter. English knowledge and ability is therefore critical to a mariner's livelihood at sea and is also mandated by the International Maritime Organization. The ability to understand and be understood is paramount to safety at sea. This study investigated which accents of English a subset of Chinese mariners found easy or difficult to understand. The data from 39 Chinese mariners who listened to 8 Standard Marine Communications phrases was analyzed. The …

"On This, We Shall Build": The Struggle For Civil Rights In Portland, Oregon 1945-1953, Justin Legrand Vipperman

Dissertations and Theses

Generally, Oregon historians begin Portland Civil Rights history with the development of Vanport and move quickly through the passage of the state's public accommodations law before addressing the 1960s and 70s. Although these eras are ripe with sources and contentious experiences, 1945 to 1953 provide a complex struggle for civil rights in Portland, Oregon. This time period demonstrates the rise of local leaders, wartime racial tensions, and organizational efforts used to combat inequality. 1945 marked a watershed moment in Portland Civil Rights history exhibiting intergroup collaboration and interracial cooperation converging to eventually provide needed legislation. Although discrimination continued after 1953, …

Silicic Volcanism At The Northern And Western Extent Of The Columbia River Basalt Rhyolite Flare-Up: Rhyolites Of Buchanan Volcanic Complex And Dooley Mountain Volcanic Complex, Oregon, Adam M. Large

Dissertations and Theses

Two mid-Miocene (16.5-15 Ma) rhyolite volcanic centers in eastern Oregon, the Buchanan rhyolite complex and Dooley Mountain rhyolite complex, were investigated to characterize eruptive units through field and laboratory analysis. Results of petrographic and geochemical analysis add to field observations to differentiate and discriminate the eruptive units. Additionally, new geochemical data are used to correlate stratigraphically younger and older basalt and ash-flow tuff units with regional eruptive units to constrain the eruptive periods with modern Ar-Ar age dates.

Previous work at the Buchanan rhyolite complex was limited to regional mapping (Piper et al., 1939; Greene et al., 1972) and brief …