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An Analysis Of Spelling Patterns Produced By Elementary School-Aged Speakers Of African American English, Lindsay Meyer Turner Jan 2015

An Analysis Of Spelling Patterns Produced By Elementary School-Aged Speakers Of African American English, Lindsay Meyer Turner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the years, less attention is given to students’ spelling skills compared to other areas of literacy achievement like word reading and passage comprehension in relationship to nonmainstream dialect usage. Considering that English spelling is based on the phonological and morphological structures of Mainstream American English (MAE), it is likely that children who speak a nonmainstream dialect such as African American English (AAE) will demonstrate differences in their spelling abilities. The purposes of this study were to explore the relationship between degree of AAE dialect use and spelling for a group of first to third grade children, and to describe …


Use Of Copula And Auxiliary Be By African American Children With Gullah/Geechee Heritage, Jessica Richardson Berry Jan 2015

Use Of Copula And Auxiliary Be By African American Children With Gullah/Geechee Heritage, Jessica Richardson Berry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to document the auxiliary and copula BE system of African American (AA) children with Gullah/Geechee (GG) heritage and to compare the findings to those from African American English (AAE)-speaking children without this heritage and to what has been documented in previous studies of Gullah and AAE. The data came from 38 children, aged five to six years. Nineteen were from rural South Carolina and classified as GG, and 19 were from rural Louisiana and classified as AAE. All were developing language typically, and the groups were matched on a number of socio-demographic variables and …


Comparative Genomic Studies Of Catfish And Zebrafish Strains Of Edwardsiella Ictaluri, Rui Wang Jan 2015

Comparative Genomic Studies Of Catfish And Zebrafish Strains Of Edwardsiella Ictaluri, Rui Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Edwardsiella ictaluri is a gram negative bacterium that is the causative agent of enteric septicemia of catfish. In 2011, this bacterium was identified as the causative agent of massive death in zebrafish populations in U.S. In this project, we found that isolates of E. ictaluri from zebrafish comprise a unique strain that differs from the type strain of E. ictaluri phenotypically as well as genetically. Also, strains of E. ictaluri from zebrafish are non-infectious in channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus by immersion. Here we sequenced the zebrafish strains of E. ictaluri LADL11-100 and LADL11-194 and compared the potential virulence genes in …


Va-Et-Vient, The Goin' And Comin' Of Infinitival 'To': A Study Of Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment In Cajun English, Andrew Mandell Riviere Jan 2015

Va-Et-Vient, The Goin' And Comin' Of Infinitival 'To': A Study Of Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment In Cajun English, Andrew Mandell Riviere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine Cajun English (CE)-speaking children’s marking of infinitival TO. To do this, CE-speaking children’s marking of infinitival TO was compared to the marking of infinitival TO by Southern White English (SWE)- and African American English (AAE)-speaking children. Marking of infinitival TO also was examined as a function of the children’s clinical status (i.e., Specific Language Impairment, SLI, or typically developing, TD) and by the verb contexts that preceded the infinitival TO forms.

The data came from 180 kindergarteners who lived in four rural towns in Assumption Parish, Louisiana. The children’s dialect classifications were …


Mechanisms Controlling Stem Cell Differentiation, Tran Doan Ngoc Tran Jan 2015

Mechanisms Controlling Stem Cell Differentiation, Tran Doan Ngoc Tran

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mesenchymal stem cells are multipotent cells that can differentiate into many cell types. However, the molecular mechanism controlling this process remains unclear. We utilized rat dental follicle stem cells (rDFSCs) and human adipose derived stem cells (hASCs) to study the mechanisms controlling osteogenesis and adipogenesis. Elevations in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration are a phenomenon commonly observed during stem cell differentiation but cease after the process is complete. The Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin 4 (TRPM4) is an ion channel that controls Ca2+ signals in excitable and non-excitable cells. However, there are no studies on TRPM4 in stem cells. In another study, …


Effects Of Encoding Practice On Alphabet, Phonemic Awareness, And Spelling Skills Of Students With Developmental Delays, Laura Nicole Delrose Jan 2015

Effects Of Encoding Practice On Alphabet, Phonemic Awareness, And Spelling Skills Of Students With Developmental Delays, Laura Nicole Delrose

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Reading instruction has historically been deemphasized for students in special education, and the limited research on this topic reveals that sight word vocabulary is most commonly taught in special education classrooms (Browder, Wakeman, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Algozzine, 2006). However, successful reading instruction must target the five essential components: vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, phonics, and phonemic awareness (National Reading Panel, 2000). The extremely small body of research attempting to teach phonics and phonemic awareness to students with mild to severe disabilities approaches instruction from a decoding framework with mixed success (Browder et al., 2006). Alternatively, this study aims to teach from an encoding …


Treatment Efficacy Of Manual Therapy On Speech Outcomes In Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A Single-Subject Experimental Design, Chantelle B. Varnado Jan 2015

Treatment Efficacy Of Manual Therapy On Speech Outcomes In Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A Single-Subject Experimental Design, Chantelle B. Varnado

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Objective – The present study aimed to determine if a treatment effect is present on speech outcomes in children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) given 5 sessions of a manual therapy treatment protocol. Methods – A single-subject experimental design (ABAB) study was devised to establish the treatment efficacy of a manual therapy protocol on speech outcomes in children with spastic CP. The protocol was administered to 5 participants, 4-6 years old. It included five intercostal stretches administered in 15-minute sessions for five sessions. During the withdrawal phase, a sham treatment was administered that included an equal dosage of treatment. …


The Use Of Geographic Information Systems And Ecological Niche Modeling To Map Transmission Risk For Visceral Leishmaniasis In Bahia, Brazil, Moara De Santana Martins Jan 2015

The Use Of Geographic Information Systems And Ecological Niche Modeling To Map Transmission Risk For Visceral Leishmaniasis In Bahia, Brazil, Moara De Santana Martins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Leishmaniasis is a public health problem in Brazil, and despite the control programs in place, Bahia remains one of the states with the highest incidence rates of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) and visceral leishmaniasis (VL). This study proposed to develop and evaluate the applicability of ecological niche models (ENM) for leishmaniasis, to determine the influence of environmental and socioeconomic factors on the incidence of these diseases at three geographic scales: national, statewide and community. Water availability, garbage collection, precipitation and temperature were the most important variables in predicting areas suitable for VL and CL in the country. The extensive geography of …


Toll-Like Receptor 4 (Tlr4) In Acute And Chronic Renal Diseases, Anand R. Nair Jan 2015

Toll-Like Receptor 4 (Tlr4) In Acute And Chronic Renal Diseases, Anand R. Nair

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite advances in its treatment, the incidence of renal diseases has been consistently increasing. Hence, there is a need to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms of the progression of kidney diseases. Recent research implicates inflammation as an important mediator of renal injury. We hypothesized that inhibiting Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), an upstream modulator of several inflammatory pathways, would prevent the progression of renal diseases. First, we determined the mechanism by which AngiotensinII (AngII)-induced inflammation is modulated by TLR4 using an in vitro model of rat tubulo-epithelial cells. We blocked TLR4 using gene silencing strategy in NRK52E cells. In TLR4-silenced cells, …


The Role Of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Glycoprotein K In Neuroinvasion And Immunopathogenesis Of Herpes Keratitis, Ahmad Saied Jan 2015

The Role Of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Glycoprotein K In Neuroinvasion And Immunopathogenesis Of Herpes Keratitis, Ahmad Saied

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Herpes simplex virus type 1 is a common neurotropic pathogen responsible for a multitude of human diseases ranging from mucocutaneous lesions, keratitis to life-threatening encephalitis. The hallmark of the HSV-1 life cycle is infection of sensory neurons, where the virus establishes a latent infection for the life of the host. Viral envelope glycoproteins play important roles in viral life cycle and virus-host interaction. Viral glycoproteins gK, gM, gE and the membrane protein UL11 have been shown to be important for virus assembly, egress and virus spread. To investigate the relative importance of each of gK, gM, gE and UL11 …


Development And Characterization Of A Live-Attenuated Vaccine To Combat Equine Herpesvirus Type-1 Infections, Shiliang Anthony Liu Jan 2015

Development And Characterization Of A Live-Attenuated Vaccine To Combat Equine Herpesvirus Type-1 Infections, Shiliang Anthony Liu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Equine Herpesvirus 1 (EHV-1) is an important ubiquitous enzootic equine pathogen and one of the most common pathogens of the horse, causing, respiratory disease, epidemic abortion, occasionally neurological disease in horses, which leads to significant economic losses to the horse industry. EHV-1 induces several clinical signs of disease ranging in severity, from mild respiratory disease to abortion in pregnant mares, neonatal foal death and neuropathogenic disorders. Natural EHV-1 infection stimulated short lived protective immunity and had both humoral and cellular immune responses. Currently vaccination remains the best option to prevent EHV-1 infection and different applications of vaccination have been investigated …


Evaluation Of Teacher Ratings To Improve Child Language Screenings In Speech-Language Pathology, Kyomi Dana Gregory Jan 2015

Evaluation Of Teacher Ratings To Improve Child Language Screenings In Speech-Language Pathology, Kyomi Dana Gregory

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of teacher ratings for screening children’s language skills. Teacher ratings were measured through the use of two tools, the Children’s Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2; Bishop, 2006) and the Teacher Rating of Oral Language and Literacy (TROLL; Dickinson, McCabe, & Sprague, 2001). The data for this study were from 77 kindergarteners who lived in rural Louisiana and spoke a non-mainstream dialect of English; 51 were classified as typically developing and 26 as presenting with Specific Language Impairment. Convergent validity was examined by comparing the two teacher rating tools to each other and …


Caregiver Perceptions Of Speech-Language Pathologist (Slp) Communication: Examining How Slps Talk With Caregivers About Child Language Disorders, Karmen L. Porter Jan 2015

Caregiver Perceptions Of Speech-Language Pathologist (Slp) Communication: Examining How Slps Talk With Caregivers About Child Language Disorders, Karmen L. Porter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify how SLP communication regarding language disorders was perceived by caregivers. Employing a qualitative methodology, the caregivers of 10 children, identified with a language-based reading impairment, participated in semi-structured interviews concerning their experiences communicating with SLPs. As a whole, the findings showed the value caregivers place on receiving clear, concrete, and timely diagnostic information, the variability and complexity associated with caregivers’ understanding of language disorders, and the reciprocal relationship between key SLP communication practices, caregiver knowledge, and effective collaboration. Some of the key themes emphasized in regard to SLP communication practices included: recognition …