PDXScholar (Portland State University)

Hypertension remains one of the leading health issues; however, the awareness and control remain limited, with approximately 1.4 billion people affected by hypertension, yet only one in five has the condition effectively controlled. Despite the availability of effective treatments, knowledge and awareness remain limited. Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) are widely used antihypertensive med…

Housing and financial insecurity among college students continues to be a growing crisis, yet their lived experiences are often overlooked. This thesis utilizes qualitative research to investigate the emotional, social, and academic experiences of students navigating housing and financial instability. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six current/former college studen…

This paper summarizes and describes the development of a set of learning materials that were created to educate students and professionals from other fields in statistical modeling techniques. These materials are primarily aimed at biology students, but are still intended to be useful for anyone who is interested in incorporating decision trees and random forest models into their personal researc…

Salmon are important to the culture, ecosystem and economy of the Pacific Northwest. However, populations have declined significantly since European colonization. Salmon require specific conditions for each life stage and are highly sensitive to environmental stressors. Excess fine sediment is a leading form of pollution as it degrades salmon spawning habitat and the benthos upon which their main…

This capstone project involved the design and development of a mid-size plastic shredder, created to process strong, ductile PVC sheets up to ½” thick. This application falls between the capabilities of consumer grade plastic shredders and heavy-duty industrial machines. Over 400 million tons of plastic produced annually and less than 10% of it is recycled; there is an ever-growing need for plast…

Black huckleberries are a significant cultural, ecological, and economic species in the Pacific Northwest. Historically, black huckleberries were tended with cultural fire by Indigenous peoples, and now also hold importance as a resource in the non-timber forest product economy. Research has begun on the impacts of climate change on suitable black huckleberry habitat and on changing fire regimes,…

The rapid adoption of generative AI tools allows software teams to quickly code applications, but it comes at a cost: high scope volatility, technical debt, and unrealistic expectations, which break traditional Agile frameworks. This thesis introduces JALZAP, a lightweight, hybrid Agile framework designed to serve small, high-agility teams facing compressed timelines and unpredictable schedules. …

Through a literature review supported by reflexive vignettes, this thesis explores women’s experiences in undergraduate CS programs and how physical and discursive spaces may affect their sense of belonging and shape whether they enter, remain in, or leave CS programs. I provide historical and cultural context for undergraduate CS, including the history of women in education and the continued und…

Urban impacts on aquatic ecosystems are heterogeneous, and the drivers of these impacts vary across space and time. One area that remains poorly understood is how urbanization impacts the bioavailability of dissolved organic carbon (BDOC), a measure of how readily heterotrophic microorganisms utilize organic carbon. BDOC depends on the size and molecular composition of the dissolved organic carbo…

Apurinic/Apyrimidinic (AP) sites are one of the most prevalent forms of DNA damage. These lesions arise spontaneously or during base excision repair of modified DNA bases and are potentially mutagenic in both mammalian and bacterial cells. 5-hydroxymethylcytosine binding, ES cell specific (HMCES), a protein found in eukaryotic cells, has been shown to form a stable DNA-protein crosslink with AP s…

William Butler Yeats was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Renaissance. Two of his plays, The Countess Kathleen (1892) and Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902) portrayed themes of nationalism and revivalism in strikingly different ways. Each play uses figures from folklore and mythology to establish a sense of national identity: the tale of the Countess Kathleen O’Shea inspired The Countess…

This meta-analysis evaluated whether cognitive enrichment and targeted learning interventions result in greater structural and cognitive recovery than standard care among adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study examined both neuroimaging and behavioral outcomes, with particular emphasis on recovery beyond six months post-injury and the involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex…

This thesis analyzes the strategic diffusion of anti-transgender policy in the United States following the passage of Idaho House Bills 500 and 509 in 2020. It argues that conservative lawmakers and advocacy organizations employed a coordinated "two-track" policy strategy in which transgender sports bans served as highly visible and politically popular mode legislation while identity-document res…

This paper examines Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy and how fire behaves as a multifaceted element that constructs, exposes and transforms power. Through tracing the development of the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, this research explores how fire evolves from a weapon into a symbol for revolution. This analysis uses the framework of other dystopian novels, and previous character analys…

Estuary is a braided collection of poetry and personal essay that uses re-established fragments from a range of the author's own works and the motif of water as primary forms of exploring social performance and relationality. The collection represents a journey that takes the reader from the mouth of a river where brackish water swims inward to the pith, or center, of the being. Initially concept…

This thesis discusses the relationship between creative ambition and the paralyzing effects of perfectionism within the writing process. By analyzing this relationship via a lens on philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and personal experience, it argues that the obligation and pressure to produce "good" work can often prevent sincerity and creative momentum. Divided into several sections, it also d…

This thesis argues that hardware-integrated capstone projects develop software engineering skills that traditional coursework cannot replicate. A team of eight developers built a GPS tracking system on a Raspberry Pi 4 over two academic terms, integrating real-time position streaming, the APRS amateur radio protocol for network-independent location sharing, and PostGIS spatial queries for "new ro…

Pitching Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an area of sabermetrics capable of being used to predict regular season success in Major League Baseball. Fangraphs WAR (fWAR) and Baseball Reference WAR (bWAR) were used to construct regression models to predict regular season winning percentage, to build logistic models to establish a relationship between pitching WAR and the probability to win an indivi…

Bog bodies are some of the most well known archaeological finds in the world, and are preserved human remains found in wetlands. Researchers use the information stored in the bones of bog skeletons and mummies to learn about cultural lifestyles, travels, diet, and diseases throughout time in Northern Europe and the British Isles. Through multiple cultural changes and migration, the "bog body phen…

The semiconductor industry’s continued growth, driven in large part by demand for artificial intelligence hardware, has highlighted the need for greater workforce development in regions adjacent to major fabrication centers like Oregon’s Silicon Forest. This capstone project lays the groundwork for a small scale and student led semiconductor fabrication lab at Portland State University by demonst…