Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Household Drinking Water Needs: Reaching Many One Water Filter At A Time In Los Robles, Nicaragua, Erinkate E. Springer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water quality and water scarcity have dominated international health and environmental management initiatives for decades because of the devastating impacts poor water quality has on child mortality and general public well-being, particularly in developing countries. Non-profit organizations, private utilities, and government agencies have invested significant financial resources and time to increase access to improved water sources in low-income countries. However, the sustainability of water improvement project benefits have been disappointing due to a lack of community and household capacity to operate and maintain introduced water systems. This paper evaluates a community/household based water improvement project introduced by a small non-governmental …

An Elemental Community: Contemplations Of Place, Theresa A. Duncan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

An Elemental Community: Contemplations of Place is a series of four meditations and stand-alone essays examining the history of the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana, and my personal history in that place, through the lens of the four Buddhist elements of air, fire, water, and earth. These essays explore my journey to understanding of my place in the Valley and the Pacific Northwest.

Prescribing The American Dream: Psychoanalysts, Mass Media, And The Construction Of Social And Political Norms In The 1950'S, Daniel P. Kamienski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper surveys how and why psychoanalysis during the 1950s—its “Golden Age” in the United States—emerged as a highly respected professional discipline with great public currency. The prevalence and popularity of psychoanalysts in public culture is substantiated by an extensive survey of primary print sources featuring psychoanalysts opining on many of the major social and political issues of the decade. Combining these opinions with those expressed in professional journals and publications, this paper reveals how psychoanalysts used their growing public currency to shape debates about which social identities and behaviors, cultural values, and political ideals were appropriate and legitimate for …

The Dynamics Of Vector-Borne Relapsing Diseases, Cody Palmer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

We begin this dissertation with a review of the relevant history and theory behind disease modeling, investigating important motivating examples. The concept of the fundamental reproductive ratio of a disease, $R_0$, is introduced through these examples. The compartmental theory of disease spread and its results are introduced, particularly the next-generation method of computing $R_0$. We review center manifold theory, as it is critical to the reduction of the dimension of our problems. We review diseases that have a relapsing character and focus in on relapsing diseases that are spread by vectors in a host population. The primary example of such …

A Comparison Of The Utility Of Craniometric And Dental Morphological Data For Assessing Biodistance And Sex-Differential Migration In The Pacific Islands, Brittney A. Eubank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Genetic analysis of maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA and the paternally-inherited Y-chromosome yield contrasting pictures of movement of peoples into the Pacific Islands. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a matrilocal residency pattern practiced by early Pacific settlers, in which Melanesian men were brought into settler communities to intermarry with local women, yielding a higher intrapopulation variance and lower interpopulation variance exhibited in males compared to females. This research investigates the possibility of sex-differential migration in the Oceanic populations of Easter Island, Fiji, Guam, Mokapu, and New Britain through analysis of biodistance based on dental morphological trait frequencies and craniometric measures …

Dogs Are Expensive: Cost-Benefit Perspectives On Canid Ownership At Housepit 54, Bridge River, British Columbia, Ben B. Chiewphasa

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The presence of dogs in the Housepit 54 (HP 54) faunal assemblage of the Bridge River site (EeRl4) raises questions regarding their roles within Canadian Plateau prehistory, specifically their contributions to networked household economies. Ethnohistoric sources often cite dogs as “jacks of all trades,” household entities that can act as beasts of burden, hunters, prized companions, or as a husbanded food resource. The 2012-2014 field seasons yielded variation in dog frequencies throughout 10 superimposed floors (IIj-IIa); these fluctuations occurred alongside changing densities of ungulates and salmon remains. The thesis incorporates multivariate analyses to determine how dogs could have allowed HP …

Cultivating Wildness, Christopher Reed

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The thesis discusses wildness within the context of agriculture. Wildness can be characterized as autonomous, innate and Other. As autonomous, wildness can never be fully controlled. Because it is innate, wildness is inborn in human beings and inherent in the Other-than-human world. As Other, wildness cannot be fully understood. Because wildness is Other, our only avenue to knowledge is experience of the Other-than-human world through which wildness is present.

Our ultimate concern is the wildness inherent in humans. By experiencing manifestations of wildness, we provide ourselves with opportunities for co-creation. Co-creation requires humans to be receptive to the Other-than-human world …

Class Iii Archaeological Survey Report: Madison Buffalo Jump State Park, Gallatin County, Montana, Brandon J. Bachman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Through a cooperative agreement between the University of Montana (UM) Department of Anthropology and Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, the University of Montana, between 17 May and 1 June 2014, conducted an archaeological inventory of the 640-acre Madison Buffalo Jump State Park. Douglas Macdonald, Ph.D. and Sara Scott, Ph.D. managed the project for each institution, respectively. Copious amounts of artifacts and features alike were recorded at Madison Buffalo Jump during the survey, including: 1) 3-4 drive lines used in the funneling of bison to jump locations; 2) bison bone concentrations below the kill/nick point on the face of the jump; …

Utilizing Craniometrics To Examine The Morphological Changes To Homo With The Advent Of Processing Food By Cooking, Julia Schorr

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the extent to which the development of cooking by early humans contributed to morphological changes in the human skull, hypothesizing that the cooking of food by early humans had a direct effect on human evolution, leading to smaller face shape, larger body size, and larger brain development, which can be measured in the skull using craniometrics. Beginning with Homo erectus around 1 million years ago, early humans began cooking food. By beginning the process of physical and chemical breakdown of food prior to consumption, humans were able to better access calories and nutrients already found in their …

Adapting Near-Ultraviolet Colorimetry For Long-Term In Situ Monitoring Of Hexavalent Chromium In Groundwater Aquifers, Janine Carter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper briefly describes sources of hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)] and the risk it poses to human health and the environment; current methods used to regulate, monitor, and measure Cr(VI); the basic design of a submersible, direct-reading sensor in development for long-term monitoring of Cr(VI) concentration in natural waters; and the means developed to correct sensor readings for two common analytical interferences, turbidity and pH, that could lead to an incorrect measurement of Cr(VI). The principal purposes of this study are to analyze the current methods used to compensate for sample turbidity, to develop methods to compensate for sample pH, and …

Why Saving Hawaii's Taro Means Losing Hawaiian Taro, Breana Milldrum

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Bridge River Dogs: Interpreting Adna And Stable Isotope Analysis Collected From Dog Remains, Emilia Tifental

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Excavations at the Bridge River site have been on-going since 2003, increasing our understanding of the communities that inhabited the Middle Fraser Canyon, British Columbia over 1,000 years ago. The most recent excavation at Housepit 54 in the summer of 2014 supplied further data regarding relationships between people and their dogs. Dogs are well documented in the Middle Fraser Canyon through both archaeological excavations and traditional knowledge. A household's possession of a dog has been linked to other prestigious materials, and therefore been interpreted as an indicator of wealth and status. The present study was aimed at further investigation of …

The Bitterroot Socio-Natural Model: Applying Bunkhouse Creek Archaeological Project Data To Test Resilience, Kailin Hatlestad

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Case For Untrammeledness As The Foundational Goal Of Wilderness Management, Robert A. Mcglothlin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis addresses the quandary faced by wilderness managers in a time of heightening anthropogenic change, who are tasked with the conflicting goals of leaving wilderness untrammeled from management control, while simultaneously maintaining natural conditions free from human influence. I explain how this debate between conflicting management goals reflects a deeper rift between two competing philosophical paradigms of wilderness stewardship, which I term the Naturalness- paradigm and the Untrammeledness-paradigm. The Naturalness-paradigm embraces a techno-centric view of wilderness stewardship that exalts the role of managers in shaping wilderness ecosystems, whose persistence it considers to be dependent upon human provisioning. The Untrammeledness-paradigm …

The Way Around: Walking Into Revolution, Nicholas T. Triolo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Way Around: Walking into Revolution

Chairperson: Phil Condon

The Way Around investigates revolution through personal accounts of pilgrimage, ecopsychology, and activism. For ten years (2006-2016), I engaged in various forms of circular travel across the world to understand the true shape of revolution—its etymology, its use throughout history, and if revolution might be some universal inertia that drives us all forward.

The journey begins in 2006, where I travel around the world for a year. I weave together discoveries of place and planet with a 500-year historical account of human circumnavigation. Returning to Portland, Oregon, I’m introduced to …

Subsurface, Elizabeth J. Huhtala

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Smoking Cessation For Patients In Multidisciplinary Pain Treatment Settings: A Preliminary Test Of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy, Anayansi Lombardero

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Smoking and chronic pain are significant public health concerns. Patients with chronic pain smoke at higher rates than the general population (Zvolensky, McMillan, Gonzalez, & Asmundson, 2009), and the pain-smoking relationship appears to be influenced by factors such as pain-related anxiety (Ditre, Zale, Zvolensky, & Kosiba, 2013) and depression (Goesling, Brummett, & Hassett, 2012). To address a gap in the knowledge base, the current study examined the effectiveness and feasibility of a 5-session, telephone-delivered ACT intervention for smoking cessation among 45 participants recruited from two multidisciplinary pain treatment centers. The ACT intervention was compared to an enhanced treatment-as-usual (TAU) control …

The Design And Synthesis Of Small Molecule Drugs To Inhibit Epigenetic Alterations Caused By Dna Methyltransferase 1, Patrick Anthony Barney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The acquisition of genomic alterations is a defining feature of human cancers. Many cancer chemotherapies rely upon an apoptotic pathway to eradicate cells containing those alterations. One such alteration is the epigenetic methylation of cytosine in DNA, which occurs at CpG sites in dense clusters of CpG dinucleotide repeats within the gene promoter region. The maintenance of appropriate methylation levels of DNA is necessary during normal DNA replication. Disruption of correct and appropriate methylation patterns leads to DNA associated with transcriptional silencing. Cytosine methylation is catalyzed by DNA methyltransferase enzymes (DNMTs), which transfer a methyl group from S-adenosylmethionine to the …

Analysis Of Envelope Glycoprotein Complex Of Arenaviruses, Sundaresh Shankar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Arenaviruses, the causative agents of severe hemorrhagic fevers, are endemic in rodent populations and can be transmitted to humans by contact. Without effective treatment or licensed vaccines, these viruses pose serious public health and biodefense concern. The sole treatment option is the off-label use of the nucleoside analog ribavirin, which is effective only when given at an early stage of infection and shows significant toxicity in humans. Hence, there exists a clear need for developing better therapies. Arenavirus entry into the cell is initiated by the virus envelope glycoprotein complex (GPC), primed to undergo conformational changes triggered by the acidic …

Protecting The Crown Of The Continent Ecosystem: A History Of Conservation In The Blackfoot And Swan Valleys, Montana, Verena Henners

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Conservation strategies are essential tools for protecting landscapes and ecosystems. The Blackfoot and Swan Valleys in Montana, which are analyzed in this study, are considered to be prime examples of conservation efforts. Key conservation agencies in the study area include the Blackfoot Challenge and Swan Valley Connections. This study analyzes the history of conservation in the Blackfoot and Swan Valleys, current conservation practices, and contributors to successful conservation. The study uses the theoretical background of game theory and contributes to conservation theory and aims to contribute to the field of mountain geography. The methodological approach of the study is qualitative …

Efficacy Of Three Backward Masking Signals, Robert David Sears

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Increased backward masking has been correlated with Auditory Processing Disorders (APD). An efficacious test of the backward masking function that is compatible with naïve listeners could have clinical utility in diagnosing APDs. In order to determine an appropriate probe for such a test, three 20-ms signal-types were compared for ease-of-task. Response times (RT) were taken as a proxy for ease-of-task. Seven participants used a method-of-adjustment to track threshold in the presence of a 50-ms broadband-Gausian-noise backward-masker. The signal-types yielded two comparisons: Linear rise-fall on a 1000Hz sine-wave versus a “chirp” (750 Hz-4000Hz); Linear rise-fall vs Blackman gating function on a …

Better Talking Heads: Concerning Fuller "Experience" In Environmental Philosophy, Christina Bovinette

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Through this project, I demonstrate how professional environmental ethics is constrained by, what I call, a rationalist bias and I offer a different approach to environmental questions in the face of this observation. Intellectual life depends on material conditions and our necessary physical ties to Earth. I suggest that an emphasis on our physical connections with the planet can benefit professional environmental ethics. I draw from some feminist understandings to discuss the advantages of a professional environmental ethics that respects and integrates experiences outside of rational deliberation. I attempt to bring my discussion of experience, environmental ethics, and some feminist …

Chillisource Game Engine Particle System Study, Angela Gross

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The majority of modern game engines utilize intricate objects called particle systems which are a collection of many particles that together represent an object without well-defined surfaces. This thesis discusses the results of studying and stressing particle systems within ChilliSource, an open-source game engine written in C++, with the goal of understanding a complex system and exploring possible optimizations that could be made to it. The studies performed were driven by metrics generated with custom profiling classes that kept track of things like the number of particles rendered, how long the engine spent rendering particles, or even how long a …

Evaluation Of Social Preferences For Woody Biomass Energy In The Us Mountain West, Robert Marshall Campbell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

There are substantial opportunities for mechanized thinning treatments to reduce the likelihood of severe and damaging wildfires and improve forest health in the public forests of the Western US. These treatments could also produce woody biomass that can be used to generate renewable energy and displace fossil fuels. Although woody biomass energy is often not financially competitive with fossil fuels, financial analysis alone is an incomplete method of comparison because of the significant negative environmental externalities imposed by the burning of fossil fuels, and potential positive externalities associated with woody biomass energy generation. It is possible that when non-market costs …

Pavlovian To Instrumental Transfer In The Peak Procedure: Insights Into Time, Benjamin Robert Eisenreich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Responding in the peak procedure has long been utilized as a prototypical model of timing behavior in animals (Church, 2002). Part and parcel to this approach has been the assumption that peak intervals and peak rates are representative measures of two independent constructs, timing and motivation respectively. However, recent investigations into motivational influences and the biological underpinnings of timing behavior have resulted in converging models that indicate responding in the peak procedure may actually be a combination of motivational and timing factors (Kirkpatrick, 2014). In pursuit of this, the present study utilized two experimental manipulations to examine the impact of …

Mule Deer Population Dynamics In Space And Time: Ecological Modeling Tools For Managing Ungulates, Mark A. Hurley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ecologists aim to understand and predict the effect of management actions on population dynamics of animals, a difficult task in highly variable environments. Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) occupy such variable environments and display volatile population dynamics, providing a challenging management scenario. I first investigate the ecological drivers of overwinter juvenile survival, the most variable life stage in this ungulate. I tested for both direct and indirect effects of spring and fall phenology on winter survival of 2,315 mule deer fawns from 1998 – 2011 across a wide range of environmental conditions in Idaho, USA. I showed that early winter precipitation …

Development Of Replication-Competent Vsv-Based Vaccines For Protection Against Hantaviruses, Joshua Ovila Marceau

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study looks at the effects of the position and numbers of foreign immunogens in the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) genome on vector attenuation and vaccine efficacy. To generate the recombinant vaccine vectors, a VSV Indiana strain was modified by removing the native VSV glycoprotein and replacing it with one or two foreign glycoproteins; one derived from the filovirus Zaire ebolavirus (ZEBOVgp) and the other from the hantavirus Andes virus (ANDVgpc). Two monovalent (rVSVΔG-ANDVgpc and rVSVΔG-ZEBOVgp) and two bivalent (rVSVΔG-ANDVgpc-ZEBOVgp and rVSVΔG-ZEBOVgp-ANDVgpc recombinant vectors were compared. All vectors were attenuated in cell culture and in immunocompetent hamsters when compared to …

Oregon Tribal Historic Preservation Offices: The Problems And Challenges Of Starting And Maintaining A Thpo, Karly R. Law

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As of December 31, 2015, of the 567 federally recognized tribes, 167 have established a THPO (at the time of this writing) that is recognized by the National Park Service (NPS). To manage a federally recognized THPO, a tribe must officially enter into agreements with the National Park Service on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior. There are a total of nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon, of which six have a federally recognized THPO. Two of the Oregon THPO’s were interviewed: The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Indian Community and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of …

Modulating Male Aggression And Courtship: Detecting External Pheromonal And Nutritional Information, Jonathan C. Andrews

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Survival and reproduction in the natural world requires an organism to identify and react to the presence of environmental stimuli in a time and cue dependent manner. Such temporal specificity requires the development and use of specialized sensory organs that receive this external sensory information. Neurons within the specialized sensory organs respond to touch, taste, pheromones, chemicals, and light, and transduce this information to the central brain. In many systems, gustatory and olfactory chemosensation in particular, provides critical information regarding sex and species identification as well as the status of food resources. The output of neurons which receive chemical information …

Patient-Reported Variables Associated With The Success Of Behavioral Intervention For Patients With Chronic Cough, Bridget Loomis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Purpose: To determine if patient-related variables exist that can potentially discriminate patients with refractory chronic cough (RCC) that are reasonable candidates for behavioral cough therapy (BCT). This study is a small sub-set of a larger, ongoing study, which aims to create and validate a screening tool that primary care physicians can use in order to refer patients early and appropriately for medical or behavioral intervention.

Methods: In this prospective, exploratory study, 20 adult participants, aged 29-68 years of age, answered a bank of questions developed by an expert panel, and the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), before and after BCT. Questions …