Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 78

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

The Effects Of Chronic And Acute Exercise Modalities On Substrate Utilization And Plasma Adiponectin Concentration, Greggory Ryan Davis Jan 2013

The Effects Of Chronic And Acute Exercise Modalities On Substrate Utilization And Plasma Adiponectin Concentration, Greggory Ryan Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Impaired lipid metabolism at rest has been linked to the development of insulin resistance and an attenuation of plasma concentration of the hormone adiponectin. However, it has been suggested that increasing fatty acid oxidation at rest, via exercise or otherwise, may augment plasma adiponectin. The current literature addressing changes substrate utilization and possible direct effects on adiponectin during and following exercise is not well established. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation was to examine concomitant changes in adiponectin and substrate utilization both at rest and during various exercise modalities, as this may provide implications for improving metabolic responses and in …


Exploratory And Confirmatory Factor Analyses Of The Symptom Structure For Autism Spectrum Disorders Using The Baby And The Infant Screen For Children With Autism Traits, Megan Sipes Jan 2013

Exploratory And Confirmatory Factor Analyses Of The Symptom Structure For Autism Spectrum Disorders Using The Baby And The Infant Screen For Children With Autism Traits, Megan Sipes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were first identified, the diagnostic criteria and conceptualization of symptom structure have undergone many revisions. Currently, under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition-Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2000), ASD is defined by three symptom categories: impairments in socialization, deficits in communication, and repetitive/restricted behaviors. With the publication of the DSM-5 (APA, 2011), however, ASD will be defined by a two symptom cluster structure in which the main impairments are in the areas of social communication and restricted/repetitive behaviors. With these changes, many assessment measures will need to be re-examined to …


A Preliminary Investigation Of The Demographic, Systematic Risk, And Systematic Promotive Factors That Influence Higher Educational Attainment Among Foster Care Youths And Young Adults Who Age Out Of The Foster Care System, Dana R. Hunter Jan 2013

A Preliminary Investigation Of The Demographic, Systematic Risk, And Systematic Promotive Factors That Influence Higher Educational Attainment Among Foster Care Youths And Young Adults Who Age Out Of The Foster Care System, Dana R. Hunter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this explanatory-descriptive study was to investigate the demographic, systematic risk, and systematic promotive factors that best predicted higher educational attainment among foster care youths and young adults who exit the foster care system. The researcher conducted a secondary data analysis on National Youth in Transition Data (NYTD) and child welfare administrative data collected by a child welfare agency in the southern region of the United States. The survey participants in this study consisted of a sample of 1,266 current foster care youths and 157 young adults who aged out of care between the ages of 14 and …


Burn, Boil & Eat : An Intersection Analysis Of Stereotypes In The Most Influential Films Of All Time, Roslyn M. Satchel Jan 2013

Burn, Boil & Eat : An Intersection Analysis Of Stereotypes In The Most Influential Films Of All Time, Roslyn M. Satchel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research builds upon the work of Entman & Rojecki (2001) in examining the ways the most influential movies use racial stereotypes in media frames. The results of this study contribute to the rather limited mass media research and body of knowledge regarding the media content that attracts the largest and most enduring audiences in the new media landscape. As ten of the films that have generated the most revenue, the movies in this sample constitute a genre of movies that are also a prime feature of on-going publishing, cable, internet, digital gaming, DVD, and movie sequel franchises. If, as …


Un Cadjin Qui Dzit Bon Dieu! : Assibilation And Affrication In Three Generations Of Cajun Male Speakers, Aaron Emmitte Jan 2013

Un Cadjin Qui Dzit Bon Dieu! : Assibilation And Affrication In Three Generations Of Cajun Male Speakers, Aaron Emmitte

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

More often than not, the linguistic research of Cajun French rests primarily at the morphological and syntactic level or focuses on aspects of culture and identity. It was thus my goal here to examine Cajun French at the phonological level. More specifically, I examined two phonological phenomena in Cajun French: assibilation and affrication. Both of these features may result when the dental consonants /t/ and /d/ precede either of the high vowels /i/ and /y/. Under these constraints, therefore, words such as petit (“small”) and dire (“to say”) are pronounced as [pitsi] and [dzir] when assibilated and [pitʃi] and [dʒir] …


Use And Access Of Emerging Technology Impact: A Study Of Startup Women Entrepreneurs In The United States, Erastus Ndinguri Jan 2013

Use And Access Of Emerging Technology Impact: A Study Of Startup Women Entrepreneurs In The United States, Erastus Ndinguri

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the extent of use and access of emerging technology in business and different characteristics that motivate entrepreneurial women in the United States to generate business ideas and/or foam businesses. Based on a literature review, Use and Access of emerging technology was conceptualized as repeated or perceived behavior emanating from using emerging technology as well as knowledge of the technology. A new instrument Emerging Technology Entrepreneur Survey was developed and administered online to 283 entrepreneurial women who had provided usable emails in the Women in Business Program seminar event. The …


International Adoption Discourse Analysis : Interdisciplinary Approaches To Media Discourse, Youngae Lee Jan 2013

International Adoption Discourse Analysis : Interdisciplinary Approaches To Media Discourse, Youngae Lee

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research is focused on media discourse analysis with interdisciplinary perspectives in language, culture, and gender studies. The purpose of this study is to analyze the media discourse of live interpreter-mediated events with distinctive perspectives involving socio-cultural, structural, and linguistic approaches. The discourse used as data is collected from a live Korean TV program called “I Miss That Person” (IMTP). From IMTP, I titled the first clip “Han, Youngwoong’s Discourse” as Data 1 and the second clip “Lee, ChunShik’s Discourse” as Data 2. Two clips of each data can be seen at www.youtube.com. The analysis of the media discourse is …


Resolving Pronominal Anaphora Using Commonsense Knowledge, Seyedeh Leili Javadpour Jan 2013

Resolving Pronominal Anaphora Using Commonsense Knowledge, Seyedeh Leili Javadpour

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Coreference resolution is the task of resolving all expressions in a text that refer to the same entity. Such expressions are often used in writing and speech as shortcuts to avoid repetition. The most frequent form of coreference is the anaphor. To resolve anaphora not only grammatical and syntactical strategies are required, but also semantic approaches should be taken into consideration. This dissertation presents a framework for automatically resolving pronominal anaphora by integrating recent findings from the field of linguistics with new semantic features. Commonsense knowledge is the routine knowledge people have of the everyday world. Because such knowledge is …


The Influence Of Selected Perceptual And Demographic Characteristics On The Attitude Toward Mental Health Of Students Among Faculty A Public Universities In The Southeastern United States, Shannon Kuehne Walsdorf Jan 2013

The Influence Of Selected Perceptual And Demographic Characteristics On The Attitude Toward Mental Health Of Students Among Faculty A Public Universities In The Southeastern United States, Shannon Kuehne Walsdorf

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of selected personal and professional demographic characteristics on the attitudes toward and perceptions of selected mental health issues among currently employed faculty of four year public universities. Faculty members at two universities in Southeastern Louisiana were invited to participate in an online survey designed by the researcher to assess attitude toward mental health, willingness to help students with mental health issues, ability to identify students with mental health issues, ability to help students with mental health issues, along with a variety of personal and professional demographic characteristics. A total …


The Rhetorical Strategies Of Don Quixote And Sancho Panza, David T. Tarvin Jan 2013

The Rhetorical Strategies Of Don Quixote And Sancho Panza, David T. Tarvin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the rhetorical components of the famous novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes’ novel continues to be celebrated around the world four hundred years later. His two main protagonists epitomize opposite virtues, but their love for one another, and the promise of an ínsula, creates a bond that overcomes their differences. Don Quixote, the mad knight, values lofty ideas idealized in chivalric romance. Conversely, Sancho, the simple squire, values tangible materials he can see and touch in his own life. While the two characters first appear to be contrary in nature, by the journey’s end, as …


Consumer's Preferences For Goat Meat In The United States : An Application Of Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis, Jessica Irene Hill Jan 2013

Consumer's Preferences For Goat Meat In The United States : An Application Of Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis, Jessica Irene Hill

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The meat goat industry is one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors in the United States. However, there has been limited research on consumers’ preferences for goat meat; therefore, a choice experiment was used to assess consumer preferences for goat meat and/or live goats. A national online survey was conducted from April 27, 2012 to May 4, 2012. Respondents were asked to complete either the goat meat choice experiment, live goat choice experiment or both. In addition to the choice experiment, respondents answered a set of questions about goat meat consumption and purchasing behavior as well as demographics. The attributes …


Friends Of Bill F. : Alcohol, Recovery, And Social Progress In Southern Fiction, Conor Adam Picken Jan 2013

Friends Of Bill F. : Alcohol, Recovery, And Social Progress In Southern Fiction, Conor Adam Picken

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In “Friends of Bill F.: Alcohol, Recovery, and Social Progress in Southern Fiction,” I argue that many southern writers use the trope of drunkenness to investigate the South’s often hesitant stance toward social change. The overwhelming presence of hard drinking in southern fiction is so ubiquitous that it becomes nearly invisible, and what distinguishes twentieth century southern literary representations of alcohol from their antecedents is how overconsumption reflects a dis-ease in both the individual drinker and the region as a whole. Emerging from the concept of diseased drinking is the idea of recovery, and by foregrounding recovery language alongside depictions …


Erotic Transgressions: Pornographic Uses Of The Victorian, Laura Helen Marks Jan 2013

Erotic Transgressions: Pornographic Uses Of The Victorian, Laura Helen Marks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that while pornographic film asserts itself as the rebellious cousin to the literary and cinematic canon, it nonetheless relies on a particular Victorianness, transgressing and drawing on its perceived repressions and perversions for pornography’s own ostensible subversiveness. Through an analysis of pornographic adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, this project shows that the rupture and rearticulation of social and corporeal propriety constitutes pornography’s persistent appeal. These predominantly American pornographic texts, spanning 1974—2012, appropriate canonical British …


Blame : Marriage, Folklore, And The Victorian Novel, Corrie Kiesel Jan 2013

Blame : Marriage, Folklore, And The Victorian Novel, Corrie Kiesel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Blame: Marriage, Folklore, and the Victorian Novel contends that the intersection of folk and legal discourses of responsibility and culpability shapes the way the Victorian novel imagines blame. Recent studies have drawn attention to the importance of official legal discourses such as trial testimony and standards of evidence to the development of narrative form during the nineteenth century. However, by attending to folk modes for establishing blameworthiness in Victorian novels, I show that folk and legal standards of culpability are mutually constitutive. The legal system is designed to identify the culpable in a fixed process – codified in slow-changing statutes …


Toward An Ideal Of Moral And Democratic Education: Afro-Creoles And Straight University In Reconstruction New Orleans, 1862-1896, Dana C. Hart Jan 2013

Toward An Ideal Of Moral And Democratic Education: Afro-Creoles And Straight University In Reconstruction New Orleans, 1862-1896, Dana C. Hart

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Straight University emerged as an integrated higher education institution in New Orleans in 1870 and promoted education and training for young men and women, irrespective of race, gender, or ethnicity. Named after its generous patron, Seymour Straight, the university emerged as a space for community and egalitarianism at a time when the assertion of emancipation and civil rights redefined how people lived together in reconstructing a “New South.” Education represented an archetype to shape the future direction of Southern society in a meaningful and tangible way, and Straight University represented this ideal at its founding. The university also became a …


Uncovering Nodes In The Transnational Social Networks Of Hispanic Workers, James Powell Chaney Jan 2013

Uncovering Nodes In The Transnational Social Networks Of Hispanic Workers, James Powell Chaney

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the little studied but socially salient processes through which Latino migrant laborers find work, travel, and obtain documentation using transnational social networks spanning between their places of origin and destinations in the United States. This project focuses on the creation and maintenance of these transnational linkages with a particular interest in their expansion into locations throughout American South, the region with the highest growth rates of Hispanic populations. The aim is to understand how such migrant-labor processes influence migratory patterns and result in place creation, both in these case studies and more generally. The case studies in …


"Feels Like Racial Battle Fatigue": Managing Divesity Crisis Moments In Higher Education, Chaunda Myretta Allen Jan 2013

"Feels Like Racial Battle Fatigue": Managing Divesity Crisis Moments In Higher Education, Chaunda Myretta Allen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Higher education was founded over three hundred years ago for a specific group, affluent, White men in mind. In the past five decades, however, the demographics of Higher Education Institutions have changed drastically from those early homogenous origins. The increased access of underrepresented populations attending Predominately White Institutions necessitated the need for offices that serve these groups. Offices of Multicultural Affairs or Multicultural Centers were created to address issues of diversity but they did not fully address issues of equity on college campuses. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to understand the ways in which mid-level diversity management …


The Effects Of Parent Factors On Children's Separation Anxiety, Anna Catherine May Jan 2013

The Effects Of Parent Factors On Children's Separation Anxiety, Anna Catherine May

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Parental anxiety is a well-known factor that contributes to the development of anxiety in children. However, little is known about how specific parental factors influence the development and trajectory of childhood anxiety. There is also a paucity of research on separation anxiety disorder specifically. Complicating matters, children who suffer from clinically significant separation anxiety tend to be younger and thus it is harder to obtain accurate information from this age group. The purpose of the present study was to determine the mechanism through which parental factors such as somatization, anxiety sensitivity, and separation anxious behaviors might influence the development of …


Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones Jan 2013

Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Minding the Gap: A Rhetorical History of the Achievement Gap arose as an inquiry into the rhetorical congestion around the phrase achievement gap in public discourse. Having been used in support of multiple, often competing, education agendas, the phrase seems versatile almost to the point of emptiness, and yet it seemingly retains its persuasive power. Examining the history of the phrase, I reveal that the notion of the achievement gap is rooted in the logic of segregation and the rhetoric of disability, and serves to construct students in ways that paradoxically undermine efforts to expand access to educational opportunity. Although …


Seeing The Forest And The Trees: Ancient Maya Wood Selection And Forest Exploitation At The Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize, Mark Edward Robinson Jan 2013

Seeing The Forest And The Trees: Ancient Maya Wood Selection And Forest Exploitation At The Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize, Mark Edward Robinson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The discovery of ancient wood, preserved below the seafloor in a shallow mangrove lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, provides the opportunity to study human-environment interaction for an aspect of society that can rarely be glimpsed. Taxonomic identification of construction wood and charcoal at Early Classic (A.D. 300-600) Chan B’i, and Late Classic (A.D. 600-900) Atz’aam Na, are reported and discussed to assess forest exploitation strategies and species selection over time. Principles of optimal foraging are applied to interpret the specific contexts of human behavior in wood selection. Insights from the Annales School of French Structural History and the …


The Relationship Between Faculty Salary Outlays And Student Retention In Public Four-Year Universities In The Sixteen States Of The Southern Regional Education Board, Belinda Powell Aaron Jan 2013

The Relationship Between Faculty Salary Outlays And Student Retention In Public Four-Year Universities In The Sixteen States Of The Southern Regional Education Board, Belinda Powell Aaron

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine if the allocation of faculty salary expenditures has an influence on first-time, full time freshmen retention rates. The population for this study was all public degree granting undergraduate four-year postsecondary institutions accredited by the Southern Region Education Board in the 16 member states with information reported to the U.S Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System database. An inverse relationship exists between first-time, full time student retention and average undergraduate student age. A model exists to predict student retention rates using the regional comparable wage index to suggest this variable can …


Rube Tube : Cbs, Rural Sitcoms, And The Image Of The South, 1957-1971, Sara K. Eskridge Jan 2013

Rube Tube : Cbs, Rural Sitcoms, And The Image Of The South, 1957-1971, Sara K. Eskridge

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the factors that led to the creation of the CBS rural comedy boom in the 1960s, as well as the reasons for its demise. For years, historians have dismissed the rural comedy craze as the networks catering to the growing number of southern viewers in the late 1950s. However, there were not enough to southern viewers to dictate a network’s entire programming schedule for the better part of a decade. Also, rural comedy was the domain of a single network, CBS. Had it really been a major thematic trend, all networks would have at least attempted to …


Parental Perceptions Of Supportive And Non-Supportive Influences On The Development Of Leadership, Debra Jo Gifford Hailey Jan 2013

Parental Perceptions Of Supportive And Non-Supportive Influences On The Development Of Leadership, Debra Jo Gifford Hailey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Research into young children’s leadership skills is sparse and focused on leadership in classroom contexts. Understanding of leadership development in young children can be expanded by studying parents’ perceptions of children’s leadership development as it is enacted in contexts outside of the school. The purpose of this qualitative study was to provide an examination of beliefs, practices, and contextual relationships of families with young children who were identified within their schools as having strong leadership skills. Student leaders were identified using the Leadership subscale of the Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students--Third Edition (SRBCSS-III; Renzulli et …


Using A Multi-Level Model To Examine The Fidelity Of Implementation Of School-Wide Positive Behavior Intervention Support And Its Relationship To Academic Achievement In Louisiana, Michelle Farnsworth Botos Jan 2013

Using A Multi-Level Model To Examine The Fidelity Of Implementation Of School-Wide Positive Behavior Intervention Support And Its Relationship To Academic Achievement In Louisiana, Michelle Farnsworth Botos

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study is to examine if implementation of the universal level of PBS is related to student achievement on the LEAP and iLEAP examinations administered as part of the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program. A second purpose is to examine whether identified student/ school characteristics contribute to any difference in academic performance. To address this question, it is necessary to take into consideration individual as well as school level factors that may act to facilitate or impede student achievement. Multilevel statistical models are ideally suited for research problems of this nature and will be the approach taken for this study. The …


Measuring Safety Climate As An Indicator Of Effective Safety And Health Programs In The Construction Industry, Charles Francis Pecquet Jan 2013

Measuring Safety Climate As An Indicator Of Effective Safety And Health Programs In The Construction Industry, Charles Francis Pecquet

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to measure the safety climate, safe behaviors, and EMR, of construction companies in southeastern Louisiana, and to measure selected demographic variables of construction workers employed at these companies. Two hundred and eight workers from twenty nine construction companies agreed to participate in the study. The Safety Climate Survey (SCS) was utilized to measure the safety climate level and safe behaviors of participants and collect selected demographic variables. Additionally, companies were asked to provide their Experience Modification Rates and North American Industry Classification System codes. A six-item Likert-type scale was utilized to measure safety climate …


Stopping The Tenture Clock : University Support On Scorn?, Margaret Singer Ruebsamen Jan 2013

Stopping The Tenture Clock : University Support On Scorn?, Margaret Singer Ruebsamen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe university Academic Administrators, Tenured Faculty, and Tenure-track Faculty at “RU/VH: Research Universities (very high research activity)” universities as designated by the Carnegie Foundation in the southeastern region of the United States based on demographic characteristics, as well as determine the knowledge and the perceptions of the three aforementioned groups regarding Stopping the Tenure Clock. Researcher-designed surveys were used to collect data. There were 49 participants identified as Academic Administrators, defined as employees who have administrative decision making authority over an academic unit at the level of department chair, director, or dean. Additionally, …


Educating For Environmental Justice : Social/Environmental Marginality And The Significance Of Experiences For Environmental Activism And Proenvironmental Behavior, Donovon Keith Ceaser Jan 2013

Educating For Environmental Justice : Social/Environmental Marginality And The Significance Of Experiences For Environmental Activism And Proenvironmental Behavior, Donovon Keith Ceaser

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Encouraging environmental action and greater proenvironmental behavior has been a main focus of environmental education since its inception. However, many scholars feel that environmental education has largely been unsuccessful at achieving these goals. To invigorate the potential of environmental education, researchers have become more socially critical and started questioning old stances such as addressing the role of action within environmental education and embraced new techniques like examining the role of personal experiences in shaping people sense of identification with the environment. This dissertation is four separate studies that examine how a socially critical environmental education can help produces students who …


Utilizing Community Media To Facilitate Cross-Cultural Communication Between Lsu Agcenter Field And State Agents And Louisiana Agricultural Producers, Ava Denise Attaway Jan 2013

Utilizing Community Media To Facilitate Cross-Cultural Communication Between Lsu Agcenter Field And State Agents And Louisiana Agricultural Producers, Ava Denise Attaway

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to determine how Louisiana agricultural producers get information related to their crops. Specifically, this study examined how Louisiana agricultural producers used the Louisiana State University AgCenter’s website and other media sources so that it could be determined which form of community media could be used to facilitate cross-cultural communication between LSU AgCenter field and state agents and Louisiana agricultural producers. Data for this study were obtained from 187 usable surveys completed by Louisiana agricultural produceragricultural producers. The data were analyzed to determine if producers utilized the LSU AgCenter website, the frequency they utilized …


Causes And Consequences Of Conflict : Exploring The Influence Of Honor-Based Norms And Values On The Experience Of Intimate Partner Violence In The United States, Michelle Elaine Pence Jan 2013

Causes And Consequences Of Conflict : Exploring The Influence Of Honor-Based Norms And Values On The Experience Of Intimate Partner Violence In The United States, Michelle Elaine Pence

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The three studies in this dissertation were posed with the common goal of revealing possible explanations for variations in the causes and consequences of interpersonal violence across regional cultures of the United States. Study 1 posed and tested two hypotheses related to the distribution of male-perpetrated intimate partner homicide across regions of the United States. The South and West, two regions characterized in full (the South) or in part (the West) by honor cultures, emerged as the regions with the highest rates of argument- and conflict- related, male-on-female intimate partner homicides in single victim/single offender incidents. Explanations provided at the …


Socially Oriented Negative Self-Referent Cognition : The Development And Validation Of A Measure, Brittany Moree Rudy Jan 2013

Socially Oriented Negative Self-Referent Cognition : The Development And Validation Of A Measure, Brittany Moree Rudy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Social phobia, a debilitating disorder among children and adolescents, is thought to be made up of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological components. However, in children, the cognitive component of this disorder has been largely neglected by researchers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to create and validate a new instrument, the "Socially Oriented Negative Anxious Statement (SONAS) scale,” that assesses socially oriented negative self-referent cognition in a younger population. Measurement validation procedures including, reliability, validity, and factor analysis, were utilized to examine the proposed questionnaire. Results indicated that the SONAS scale demonstrated good psychometric properties, including a sound two-factor structure …