Tailoring Ipm Plans To Fight A Cloaked Pest: Helping Smallholder Farmers Combat The Sweetpotato Weevil In Sub-Saharan Africa, Chad A. Keyser, Frederick S. Walters, Haley Turner, Elka Armstrong, Jeff Davis, Brooke Bissinger, Brant Johnson, Agnes Alajo, Paul Musana, Joseph Odongo, Benard Yada, Milton A. Otema

Faculty Publications

Africa accounts for a significant portion of the world’s sweetpotato production where it is widely grown as a staple crop. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), sweetpotato serves as an important year-round source of calories and nutrition, a form of income for smallholder and pre-commercial farmers, and is increasingly used as silage for animal feed. However, yield per hectare is considerably lower in SSA than from other regions primarily due to sweetpotato weevils (SPW, Cylas spp., Coleoptera: Brentidae). Weevil feeding causes physical damage to the root and can induce chemical responses that give the storage root a bitter taste, both of which …

Dieback And Dredge Soils Of Phragmites Australis In The Mississippi River Delta Negatively Impact Plant Biomass, Herie Lee, Rodrigo Diaz, James T. Cronin

Faculty Publications

Phragmites australis is exhibiting extensive dieback in the Lower Mississippi River Delta (MRD). We explored the potential for restoration of these marshes by (1) characterizing the chemical profiles of soils collected from healthy and dieback stands of P. australis and from sites recently created from dredge-disposal soils that were expected to be colonized by P. australis and (2) experimentally testing the effects of these soil types on the growth of three common P. australis lineages, Delta, Gulf and European. Soil chemical properties included Al, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, P, S, Zn, % organic matter, % carbon, % …

Lethal And Sublethal Heat-Exposure Of Bed Bugs (Cimex Lectularius L.) Causes Alarm Pheromone Emission And Elicits A Movement Response In Nearby Recipients, Aaron R. Ashbrook, Jeffrey L. Feder, Gary W. Bennett, Matthew D. Ginzel, Ameya D. Gondhalekar

Faculty Publications

Many gregarious insect species use aggregation and alarm pheromones. The bed bug, Cimex lectularius L., emits an alarm pheromone (AP), a 70/30 blend of (E)-2-hexenal and (E)-2-octenal, when threatened. Bed bugs avoid temperatures above 43 °C, which are lethal to bugs and used commercially as spatial heat treatments to manage infestations. However, the interaction of bed bug AP in heat avoidance has not been investigated. The goal of this research was to: 1) determine if bed bugs emit AP as an alarm response to heat exposure, and 2) quantify the behavioral responses of conspecifics to AP emitted by heat-exposed bed …

Vegetation Dieback In The Mississippi River Delta Triggered By Acute Drought And Chronic Relative Sea-Level Rise, Tracy Elsey-Quirk, Austin Lynn, Michael Derek Jacobs, Rodrigo Diaz, James T. Cronin, Lixia Wang, Haosheng Huang, Dubravko Justic

Faculty Publications

Coastal wetlands are vulnerable to sea-level rise. Here, the authors use 16 years of data to correlate vegetation dieback in the Mississippi River Delta to drought-induced salt water intrusion in the summer of 2012.

Errata: The Product Of Distributions And Stochastic Differential Equations Arising From Powers Of Infinite Dimensional Brownian Motions, Un Cig Ji, Hui-Hsiung Kuo, Hara-Yuko Mimachi, Kimiaki Saito

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Proximal Sensor Characterization Of Haitian Agricultural Soils: A Case Study In The Central Plateau, Reginald Cean, Marcelo Mancini, Sérgio Henrique Godinho Silva, Noura Bakr, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Bin Li, Autumn Acree, Lúcia Helena Cunha Dos Anjos, Nilton Curi, David C. Weindorf

Faculty Publications

Optimized agronomic production is vital to life and livelihood in Haiti. As such, rapid, low-cost soil characterization may inform specific decision making for improved crop production. Ahead of a larger soil characterization campaign (120,000 points) in Eastern Haiti, this study evaluated the use of two proximal sensors (portable X-ray fluorescence – pXRF; NixPro color sensor) at farms of Association Zanmi Agrikol (AZA) for soil characterization and evaluation of spatial variability of soil properties. Analysis of 166 surface soil samples (0–5 cm) collected in three different areas revealed that similar inter-elemental associations reported in other countries remain applicable in Haiti; weak, …

Creating A Wholistic Manufacturing Score To Highlight The Effects Of Hidden Inefficiencies In Automated Manufacturing Caused By Soft Dedication And Preventative Maintenance Failures, Oded Tal

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The semiconductor industry is one of the most advanced manufacturing sectors, operating at an unparalleled scale and complexity. A new manufacturing facility costs between $500 million and $15 billion, and the industry's investment in automation is unmatched. However, the intricate and cyclical nature of semiconductor manufacturing creates very complex manufacturing facilities where the boundaries between planning and real-time operations often blur.

For the industry to keep improving, there is a need to create a new method that allows comparison among different manufacturing environments to uncover hidden losses that may be obscured by automation.

To better understand these hidden losses, the …

A Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Study Of Gas Hydrate Formation And Dissociation, Meisam Adibifard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The study of gas hydrates has increased significantly over the last two decades because of their potential application in energy storage, production and transportation, water desalination, refrigeration, gas separation, etc. There is a significant interest in commercially developing natural gas hydrates because the energy content of methane hydrate reservoirs (MHRs) is at least twice that of all conventional fossil fuels combined. Additionally, due to the higher storage capacity of hydrates, it is proposed to sequester CO₂ in the form of CO₂ hydrate, thereby reducing the amount of greenhouse gases. Hence, hydrates offer a dual solution to two of …

Engineering Electronic Properties Of Random Alloys For Catalytic Applications, Andrew N. Okafor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Engineering catalytic materials is a key endeavor in the catalysis science to improve the catalytic activity of existing catalysts for specific applications and reduce the dependence on rare metals and minerals. While alloying, or mixing of metals, has been extensively studied, the focus has conventionally been placed on intermetallic phases or nanostructures such as core-shell particles, which are conceptually described by simple lattice models. This research focuses on understanding the catalytic properties of structurally ordered but compositionally disordered (or random) alloys, which have remained under-explored due to complexity at the atomic scale. Existing research focuses on synthesizing multicomponent alloys and …

A Comparison Of Diploid And Triploid Eastern Oysters For Aquaculture Production Under Extreme Temperatures And Salinities, Joshua H. Kim

LSU Master's Theses

Off-bottom aquaculture of Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) is a nascent industry that is increasingly supported by the use of triploid oysters, which grow faster than diploids. Despite their growth advantage, elevated triploid mortality compared to diploids under high temperature, low salinity, or a combination of these conditions challenge consistent triploid production. Identifying the environmental thresholds at which differential triploid mortality occurs and predicting its economic impact are important to informing decision-making in oyster aquaculture. The goal of this thesis was to compare the biological and economic performance of diploid and triploid oysters under high temperature and low salinity conditions. …

Bernoulli Convolution Of The Depth Of Nodes In Recursive Trees With General Affinities, Toshio Nakata, Hosam Mahmoud

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Soybean Yield Prediction Using Machine Learning Algorithms Under A Cover Crop Management System, Letícia Bernabé Santos, Donna Gentry, Alex Tryforos, Lisa Fultz, Jeffrey Beasley, Thanos Gentimis

Faculty Publications

This research explores the predictive capabilities of random forests algorithm on datasets coming from standard experiments on crop management systems in soybeans. This is a secondary analysis of a dataset from a project evaluating the relationship of cover crop systems to soybean yield prediction. The purpose of this paper is to compare a random forest algorithm to standard statistical techniques such as linear regression on a clean information rich agronomic experiment. The main findings include an estimate of the hyperparameters for optimal predictions using random forests, a threshold for data for optimal results and a general description of comparison methodologies …

Prediction Of Compost Organic Matter Via Color Sensor, Geila Santos Carvalho, David C. Weindorf, Mona Liza C. Sirbescu, Bruno Teixeira Ribeiro, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Bin Li, Walker C. Weindorf, Autumn Acree, Luiz Roberto G. Guilherme

Faculty Publications

Composted materials serve as an effective soil nutrient amendment. Organic matter in compost plays an important role in quantifying composted materials overall quality and nutrient content. Measuring organic matter content traditionally takes considerable time, resources, and various laboratory equipment (e.g., oven, muffle furnace, crucibles, precision balance). Much like the quantitative color indices (e.g., sRGB R, sRGB G, sRGB B, CIEL*a* b*) derived from the low-cost NixPro2 color sensor have proven adept at predicting soil organic matter in-situ, the NixPro2 color sensor has the potential to be effective for predicting organic matter in composted materials without the need for traditional laboratory …

Development Of Cyclic Scb Test For Evaluating Fatigue Cracking Resistance Of Asphalt Mixture At Intermediate Temperature, Ye Ma

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Asphalt pavements are subjected to premature cracking due to traffic loading and environmental effects. The Semi-Circular Bending (SCB) test has been traditionally conducted in a monotonic, displacement-controlled mode at intermediate temperature to assess the fatigue crack resistance of asphalt mixtures. However, fatigue damage is essentially deterioration in material integrity as a result of repeated loading. This study aims to develop a cyclic SCB test to characterize the fatigue cracking properties of asphalt mixture utilizing Paris’ Law model. A secondary goal is to apply the Paris’ Law coefficients measured from the developed cyclic SCB test in predicting the fatigue life of …

Empirical Distribution Functions For Farmland Derivative Stocks, Shaharia Jaman Bhuiyan

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

This thesis investigates the statistical distribution functions fit for modeling the returns of farmland derivative stocks and financial market indexes. Farmland derivative stocks have garnered increased interest due to their potential use in portfolio diversification and risk management. Financial asset returns can be characterized by higher moment behavior in the underlying statistical distribution. This implies that in assessing the statistical distribution properties of risks, proper consideration must be given to the choice of functional form. The Generalized Lambda Distribution (GLD) is used due to its flexibility in model various distribution functions.

The dataset comprises daily and monthly log returns …

Stochastic Solutions For Hyperbolic Pde, Abdol-Reza Mansouri, Zachary Selk

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

A Friendship Of Two Prima Donnas: The Letters Of Adelina Patti To Giulia Valda, Jacquelyn Ancelet

LSU Master's Theses

Of the many prima donnas of the nineteenth century, Adelina Patti (1843–1919) stands out as one of the most successful, with a fifty-year international concertizing career. Biographers across multiple languages have covered her career in great depth, but devote little attention to her close friendships. Herman Klein (in The Reign of Patti [1920]) and John Cone (in Adelina Patti: Queen of Hearts [1993]), for instance, claim that Patti was known by many, but understood by few. One who does seem to have understood her and developed a close relationship with her was Giulia Valda (1850–1925), herself a professional singer, if …

Development Of Satellite-Assisted Forecasting System For Vibrio Vulnificus Prevalence In Coastal Waters, Saber Aradpour

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Vibrio vulnificus is a halophilic gamma proteobacterium that is autochthonous to coastal waters and is responsible for 50% of seafood-related deaths in the United States. This study presents a series of nowcasting and forecasting models for predicting vibrio vulnificus abundance in oysters by identifying the long-range dependence of vibrio vulnificus abundance on antecedent environmental conditions and detecting the environmental conditions using satellite remote sensing technology. It was discovered that vibrio vulnificus abundance exhibits a long-range dependence on antecedent environmental conditions which can be characterized by seven independent environmental predictors (stressors) including sea surface temperature (SST), water level (WL), sea surface …

Synthesis Of Portions Of An Acinetobacter Baumannii Lipooligosaccharide (Los), Brandon Conrad

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Glycoconjugate vaccines have become an effective strategy for protection against an array of globally persistent diseases resulting from pathogenic bacteria such as Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Neisseria meningitidis, and Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi. Comprised of a carbohydrate (referred to as glycan) covalently inked to a carrier protein, these vaccines can initiate adaptive immunity by inducing B and T cell responses once in the lymphatic system. This is particularly relevant for infants two years of age and younger whose immune systems are not fully developed. A continuously emerging threat in clinical settings, Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative bacterium …

The Anatomy Of Inequality: Medicine, Mourning, And Socioeconomic Status In Victorian England, Molly G. Decker

LSU Master's Theses

"The Anatomy of Inequality: Medicine, Mourning, and Socioeconomic Status in Victorian England," examines the historic relationships between socioeconomic inequality, death, and medical practice during the Victorian period, with specific ttention on London and surrounding areas. I argue that the extreme socioeconomic disparities of the time were deeply intertwined with the practices surrounding death, mourning, and medical care. The first chapter, "The Price of Sorrow," explores the elaborate mourning rituals and displays of status among the wealthy and upper to middle-class Victorians, detailing how these practices were not only expressions of grief but also conspicuous displays of social status and wealth. …

Quantum Classical Algorithm For Solving The Hubbard Model Via Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, Anshumitra Baul

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Modeling many-body quantum systems is widely regarded as one of the most promising applications for near-term noisy quantum computers. However, in the near term, system size limitation will remain a severe barrier for applications in materials science or strongly correlated systems. A promising avenue of research is to combine many-body physics with machine learning for the classification of distinct phases. I present a workflow that synergizes quantum computing, many-body theory, and quantum machine learning (QML) for studying strongly correlated systems. In particular, it can capture a putative quantum phase transition of the stereotypical strongly correlated system, the Hubbard model. Following …

Diving Deeper Into Supercuspidal Representations, Prerna Agarwal

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In 2013, Reeder and Yu introduced certain low positive depth supercuspidal representations of $p$-adic groups called \textit{epipelagic} representations. These representations generalize the simple supercuspidal representations of Gross and Reeder, which have the lowest possible depth. Epipelagic representations also arise in recent work on the Langlands correspondence; for example, simple supercuspidals appear in the automorphic data corresponding to the Kloosterman $l$-adic sheaf. In this thesis, we take a first step towards the construction of ``\textit{mesopelagic} representation (of Iwahori type)'' which are the higher depth analogues of simple supercuspidal representations. We see that these constructions can be done in a similar way …

Harmony In Collaboration: Curating Sustainability In Post-Pandemic Arts, Natalie M. Stepaniak

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In an interconnected world, collaboration in the arts is rising, challenging the traditional notion of the solitary artist. Interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial for advancing performing and visual arts, especially amidst declining audience attendance. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating challenges for the arts sector, recent data suggests a gradual recovery, with collaborative efforts fostering resilience.

This dissertation investigates the transformative potential of interdisciplinary collaboration from the perspective of musicians and their organizations. Through three case studies—collaborations between the Rapides Symphony Orchestra and Play On Theater Company, The Next Festival for Emerging Artists, and violist-composer Leilehua Lanzilotti and her collaborative relationship with …

An Exploration Of The Drivers Of Intraspecific Variation In Arthropod Phenotypes, Jamie Phelps

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Herein we explore the various forces that drive phenotypic variation in arthropods focusing on spatial and temporal differences as well as sexual dimorphism. We use both marine, Tigriopus californicus, and terrestrial, Melitaeini, organisms to investigate these forces.

Tigriopus californicus and Heat Hardening: The study explores how Tigriopus californicus, a copepod, adapts to thermal variation along the North American Pacific Coast. Researchers investigated intraspecific variation in heat hardening, measuring differences in upper lethal limits (ULLs) and potential fecundity costs across five populations. We found a cost of heat hardening: the size of the first brood produced after heat shock …

Limit Theorems For Increments Of Branching Particle Systems With Linear Rates And Poisson Initial Condition, Alexander Kreinin, Vladimir V. Vinogradov

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Asymptotic Formula For Scattering Problems Related To Thin Metasurfaces, Zachary Jermain

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this work is to develop an asymptotic formula for the behavior of a scattered electromagnetic field in the presence of a thin metamaterial known as a metasurface. By using a carefully chosen Green’s function and the single and double layer potentials we analyze the perturbed scattering problem in the presence of the metamaterial and a background scattering problem. By using Lippman-Schwinger type representation formulas for the two fields we develop the asymptotic formula for the perturbed field. From here we prove the asymptotic formula holds up to a specific error term based on the size of the …

Topics In Photonic Quantum Technology: Polarization Entanglement Dynamics In Optical Fibers And Low-Light Imaging., Pratik J. Barge

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Recent advances in quantum photonics promise transformative impacts on computing, communication, sensing, and imaging. This thesis explores two areas in photonic quantum technology: polarization entanglement dynamics in optical fibers and low-light imaging. Optical fibers are the most suitable medium for photonic qubits and long-distance entanglement distribution is a critical requirement to realize quantum technologies. We study the decay of polarization-entanglement of the Bell state photons propagating through imperfect optical fibers with spatially fluctuating refractive index. Furthermore, to extend the distribution distance, we propose the use of dynamical decoupling in the optical fiber using half waveplates and show that significant improvement …

Mental Practice: Practical Application In Violin And Viola Private Lessons, Natasha Sieczkowska

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aimed to better understand how violin and viola private instructors teach Mental Practice in their studios, investigating different approaches on how to apply and teach auditory, motor, and visual imagery, score study, and auditory modeling, as well as its benefits. This research was divided into two different stages. In the first stage, the researcher conducted interviews (n = 19) and collected questionnaire responses (n = 14) from 33 upper-string instructors teaching at the pre-college and collegiate levels in the US. This research stage was based on the grounded theory approach since there was not much research …

Riesz Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods, Xiongming Dai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are simulations that explore complex statistical distributions, while bypassing the cumbersome requirement of a specific analytical expression for the target. This stochastic exploration of an uncertain parameter space comes at the expense of a large number of ``burn-in'' samples, and the computational complexity leads to the curse of dimensionality. Although at the exploration level, some methods have been proposed to accelerate the convergence of the algorithm, such as tempering, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, Rao-redwellization, and scalable methods for better performance, they cannot avoid the stochastic nature of this exploration. We develop algorithms for the energy …

Digital Agriculture Applications In Maize Nutrient Management And Soybean Crop Stands Assessment, Bhawana Acharya

LSU Master's Theses

High soil moisture from frequent excessive precipitation can reduce maize (Zea mays L.) yield and increase nitrogen (N) loss. Early-stage soybeans (Glycine max) are also susceptible to damage under these conditions. Traditional methods for assessing N status in maize and plant stands in soybean are labor-intensive and time-consuming. In this study, UAV remote sensing was used to assess maize N status under different N rates and excessive soil moisture. For soybeans, we compared a blob detection method with the YOLOv8 model to estimate plant density using ground images from a handheld camera. Additionally, YOLOv8 performance was evaluated …