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Physical Layer Secrecy Channel Coding, Bandali K. Akkawi Jan 2008

Physical Layer Secrecy Channel Coding, Bandali K. Akkawi

LSU Master's Theses

Wireless communications is expanding and becoming an indispensable part of our daily life. However, due to its channel open nature, it is more vulnerable to attacks, such as eavesdropping and jamming which jeopardize the confidentiality of wireless data, compared to its counter-part, wireline communications. Security in wireless communication is thus a very important factor that should be perfected to accommodate the rapid growth of wireless communication today. Motivated by information theoretic secrecy definitions, we adopt a simple way to define the secrecy of a system by looking at its Bit-Error-Rate (BER) curves, the correlation of error vectors and Log Likelihood …


Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus Pileatus) And Saproxylic Beetles In Partial Cut And Uncut Bottomland Hardwood Forests, Patricia Jean Newell Jan 2008

Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus Pileatus) And Saproxylic Beetles In Partial Cut And Uncut Bottomland Hardwood Forests, Patricia Jean Newell

LSU Master's Theses

Relative abundance and species richness of saproxylic beetles and nesting, roosting, and foraging ecology of pileated woodpeckers were studied in recent partial cuts and uncut forest during the summers of 2006 and 2007. Relative abundance of saproxylic beetles was greater in one-year old cuts than uncut forest during 2006 but was not consistent during 2007. The number of dead trees, period of capture, and trapping year also influenced beetle abundance. Species richness was similar in partial cuts and uncut forest. Characteristics of habitat used by pileated woodpeckers for nesting and roosting in one-year-old and two-year-old partial cuts and uncut forest …


"Shui Diao Ge Tou" From Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, Wennan Wang Jan 2008

"Shui Diao Ge Tou" From Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, Wennan Wang

LSU Master's Theses

“Shui Diao Ge Tou” from Poems of the Sung Dynasty is a piece for full orchestra. It was suggested by two poems of Su Dong Po. One is “Shui Diao Ge Tou”. The other one is “Jiang Chen Zi”. No movement of this piece has a fixed form, but the whole piece takes on the arch structure. The musical development is analogous to the texts of the poems, and the whole piece is controlled by two principal themes. They can first be found at measures 6 and 15. The materials of this work are drawn from the old traditional Chinese …


Databasing The Disappeared And Deceased: A Review Of The Resources Available In Missing And Unidentified Persons Cases, Erin Mcmenamin Jan 2008

Databasing The Disappeared And Deceased: A Review Of The Resources Available In Missing And Unidentified Persons Cases, Erin Mcmenamin

LSU Master's Theses

When an individual goes missing or an unidentified body is found, many resources are available to assist in resolving the case. These resources are operated and contributed to by a wide variety of entities including state, county, and local law enforcement agencies, coroners, medical examiners, forensic anthropologists and odontologists, military personnel, nonprofit organizations, volunteers, and concerned citizens among others. Currently, our nation does not have a single, fully operational, centralized database that is solely dedicated to finding missing persons and identifying the bodies of Jane and John Does. The existing resources for missing and unidentified persons cases are almost innumerable …


The Madden-Julian Oscillation And Tropical Cyclone Frequency Variability, Stephen Caparotta Jan 2008

The Madden-Julian Oscillation And Tropical Cyclone Frequency Variability, Stephen Caparotta

LSU Master's Theses

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in monetary losses from hurricanes along the U.S. coastline. The vast majority of the damage resulted from major hurricanes (Category 3-5), with 2005’s Katrina, Rita, and Wilma producing an estimated $60 billion in insured losses alone (Insurance Information Institute, 2008). In light of these record damages, it is crucial to have a better understanding of the atmospheric and oceanic conditions that produce the most powerful hurricanes. Prior research has focused on interseasonal variability in tropical cyclones, but much less attention has been devoted to intraseasonal variability. Maloney and Hartmann (2000a) showed that hurricanes …


Drift, Emily Jane Cook Jan 2008

Drift, Emily Jane Cook

LSU Master's Theses

Drift is a movement by, or as if by, a current of air or water . It can mean the depositing of debris by such a current. It can also connote a veering off from a projected path. What interests me about the word is that it suggests a slight loss of control, but not a devastating one. Most importantly, for this body of work, it implies a passive movement, a transition in which one is not able to control every part. We can perhaps choose the river we get into but not the direction of its flow. Using properties …


Freezing Processes In Cell Suspensions Evaluated Using Cryomicroscopy, Tathagata Acharya Jan 2008

Freezing Processes In Cell Suspensions Evaluated Using Cryomicroscopy, Tathagata Acharya

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis aims at evaluating the freezing response of three different cell types, Pacific Oyster embryos, Jurkats and Helas, using the technique of cryomicroscopy. The choice of cells was primarily based on supporting ongoing research work at the Bioengineering Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. On a secondary basis, the cells were chosen based on their contrasting nature. While Pacific Oyster being a favorite food in USA calls for successful techniques of cryopreservation of their embryos in order to keep up with the growing demand, Jurkat and HeLa are undesired malignant human cells that …


Reservation For Two, Brian Patrick Dieterle Jan 2008

Reservation For Two, Brian Patrick Dieterle

LSU Master's Theses

Reservation for Two is an investigation of the ceramic dinner set and search to unlock its simplistic mystery. Most dinnerware settings available on the market satisfy and facilitate the action of eating, but they do not provide an experience to remember or a chance to fully taste the meal in all of its complexity. To challenge the participant and to produce a memorable experience, I have begun altering specific fundamental decisions within the traditional place setting attempting to create stimulation beyond physical gratification. Each of my experiments question specific design criteria that format the majority of dinner sets on the …


Nature Vs. Nurture, Renee' Noel Smith Jan 2008

Nature Vs. Nurture, Renee' Noel Smith

LSU Master's Theses

My work utilizes the metaphor of the family garden gone wild to represent growing up in a difficult family environment. The plants struggle in an environment that turns the typical, quiet backyard garden into a chaotic jungle. This body of work illustrates a variety of printmaking techniques such as mezzotint, silkscreen, drawing, and etching. The vibration and saturation of intense colors create imaginary plants that are highly illusionistic. The troubled environment is represented by the nocturnal background.


In-Situ And Nondestructive Test Methods Applied To The Design And Construction Of Pile Foundation Projects In Coastal Louisiana, Jesse Gerard Rauser Jan 2008

In-Situ And Nondestructive Test Methods Applied To The Design And Construction Of Pile Foundation Projects In Coastal Louisiana, Jesse Gerard Rauser

LSU Master's Theses

Construction projects in coastal Louisiana often require pile foundations as a result of the soft soils present, which complicate cast‐in‐place foundation construction and provide minimal support to shallow foundations. During a driven pile project, the engineering phase will require soil characterization and pile capacity determination, while construction will require quality assurance. These three elements, soil characterization, capacity determination, and quality assurance, are commonly accomplished using in‐situ and nondestructive testing. In this thesis, the application of some of these in‐situ and nondestructive methodologies to a project in Coastal Louisiana are examined. The Louisiana Transportation Research Center (LTRC) has released computer software …


Getting Warm(Er) An Investigation Into Linguistic Relativity And Its Significance In The Translation Of The English Lexical Term "Warm" Into French, Elizabeth Neuerburg Addison Jan 2008

Getting Warm(Er) An Investigation Into Linguistic Relativity And Its Significance In The Translation Of The English Lexical Term "Warm" Into French, Elizabeth Neuerburg Addison

LSU Master's Theses

Students of foreign languages are well aware that every language has its own vocabulary and word-for-word translations are rarely valid. It is therefore unsurprising that identifying literal translations in French for the English lexical term “warm” is problematic. This study demonstrates that not only is there a variety of French lexical terms that can be used to convey the meaning that the English lexical term “warm” conveys, but that certain French lexical terms are more likely to be used only in certain situations. Furthermore, an examination of this phenomenon through the lens of linguistic relativity has revealed differing conceptualizations of …


Model-Driven Search-Based Loop Fusion Optimization For Handwritten Code, Pamela Bhattacharya Jan 2008

Model-Driven Search-Based Loop Fusion Optimization For Handwritten Code, Pamela Bhattacharya

LSU Master's Theses

The Tensor Contraction Engine (TCE) is a compiler that translates high-level, mathematical tensor contraction expressions into efficient, parallel Fortran code. A pair of optimizations in the TCE, the fusion and tiling optimizations, have proven successful for minimizing disk-to-memory traffic for dense tensor computations. While other optimizations are specific to tensor contraction expressions, these two model-driven search-based optimization algorithms could also be useful for optimizing handwritten dense array computations to minimize disk to memory traffic. In this thesis, we show how to apply the loop fusion algorithm to handwritten code in a procedural language. While in the TCE the loop fusion …


The Effectiveness Of Contextualization On Second Language Acquisition Using The Situational Discourse Semantic Model, Alice Marie Johnson Jan 2008

The Effectiveness Of Contextualization On Second Language Acquisition Using The Situational Discourse Semantic Model, Alice Marie Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

In traditional classrooms a second language is taught via thematic word sets, grammatical explanations, and patterned syntactic practice. This study compared the traditional teaching approach to a scaffolded teaching approach, consisting of words taught within a narrative context. Five fifth-grade students were taught Spanish as a second language during a ten-week intervention. Vocabulary learning and sentence generation were measured following each session, as well as a pre-posttest measure. Results showed that print was an important support used by participants in the traditional condition. However across time, vocabulary learning and sentence length increased significantly more in the scaffolded condition.