Digital Commons Network^™

A Pedagogical Approach To The Waltzes And Tangos For Piano By Francisca Gonzaga, Ana Paula Machado Simoes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Francisca (Chiquinha) Gonzaga (1847–1935) was an important composer in the development of Brazilian music. She was also a remarkable female personality and broke paradigms in a society dominated by men. In spite of that, her works are not widely performed and studied yet. The goal of this dissertation is to provide a pedagogical approach to her works. This research explores her waltzes and tangos for piano, analyzes their musical, reading and technical difficulties, and provides a graded level for half of them to stimulate their use as repertoire for piano students and performers.

Chiquinha composed 37 waltzes and 30 tangos …

An Analysis Of Alu Elements In Baboons, Cody James Steely

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Transposable elements compose a large portion of mammalian genomes and are estimated to make up anywhere from ~45% - ~70% of the human genome. Alu elements are primate-specific retrotransposons that are found in high copy number (> 1 million copies) and are spread throughout the genome. These elements are the most commonly repeated sequence in the human genome and have contributed to a number of disease states in humans. Alu elements are useful markers for population genetics and phylogenetics and have proven valuable in understanding difficult to determine relationships between species and within populations.

Baboons (genus Papio) are spread throughout …

A Study Of The Lived Experience Of African American Males Who Transition From Out-Of-Home Care To Postsecondary Education, Marvin Cain Alexander

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While the literature is replete with studies of the factors contributing to the failure and social deviance of African American males, few qualitative studies have been conducted to determine the factors that support the success of African American males, and virtually none have focused on the transition of African American males from out-of-home care to postsecondary educational institutions. Despite the challenges faced preceding and during out-of-home care, African American males can transition to postsecondary educational institutions. There is a need to understand why some African American males who experience out-of-home care can accomplish this while others cannot. It is imperative …

Evolution Of Alu Elements In The Saimiri And Papio Lineages Of Primates, Jasmine Nicole Brown Baker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Alu elements are approximately 300 base pair (bp) primate specific non- autonomous retrotransposons. Alu elements, a short interspersed element (SINE), account for high copy numbers in all primate genomes. Numerous Alu element subfamilies have undergone varying degrees of activity and amplification within primates. Identification of these subfamilies has proved to be very informative in elucidating phylogenies and as phylogenomic markers. Squirrel monkeys, genus Saimiri, are one of the most well-known neotropical primates and the second most commonly used laboratory monkey. Squirrel monkey species diverged approximately 1.5 million years ago and are native to South America. Despite being well-known, there …

Numerical Experiment Of Sediment Dynamics Over A Dredged Pit On The Louisiana Shelf, Nazanin Chaichitehrani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sediment transport over Sandy Point dredge pit in the northern Gulf of Mexico was examined using field measurements and a finely resolved numerical model. Delft3D model with well-vetted computational grid and input parameters was used. Numerical experiments were performed to examine the effect of wind-generated waves, wind-driven currents and their interaction on sediment dynamics in our study area during a cold front in November 2014 and fair-weather conditions between July and August of 2015. Sediment dispersal from the lower Mississippi River, sediment resuspension, transport and deposition with high spatial and temporal resolution were simulated. A reliable satellite-derived near-surface suspended particulate …

A Phenomenological Investigation Into The Impact Of The College Student Union On Student Engagement At A Historically Black University, Nathalie Nicole Godfrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Known as the proverbial “living room of campus,” college student union facilities date back to the late 1800s. Unions were a place for congregation and fellowship, a place where student engagement was crucial. Today’s college union varies from campus to campus, with some focused on student development, some with a keen focus on generating revenue through providing services, and some that attempt to strike a balance between the two.

The concept of student engagement and the research surrounding engagement rarely has shed light on the role of the college student union facility in the engagement process. Entities traditionally found within …

5-Lipoxygenase (5-Lox)-5-Lipoxygenase Activating Protein (Flap)-Nanodisc Complex: A Model For The 5-Lox-Flap Interaction, Erin Elizabeth Schexnaydre

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Leukotrienes (LT) are lipid mediators of the inflammatory response that play important roles in diseases such as asthma and atherosclerosis. Leukotriene A4 (LTA₄) is synthesized from arachidonic acid (AA) by 5-lipoxygenase (5-LOX) with the help of 5-lipoxygenase activating protein (FLAP), a trimeric nuclear transmembrane protein. Exactly how 5-LOX and FLAP interact is not well understood, however FLAP is essential for the production of leukotrienes in vivo. I used nanodiscs (NDs), engineered membrane systems, as a tool to study the 5-LOX-FLAP interaction. FLAP was incorporated into NDs with a phospholipid composition to mimic of the nuclear membrane. Structural features …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Covalent Adaptable Networks Comprised Of Dynamic Imine And Aminal Covalent Bonds, Albert Chao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation is about the design, synthesis and characterization of materials comprised of covalent adaptable networks (CANs). There are three chapters within this dissertation.

Chapter 1 contains a short overview of conventional thermosets and thermoplastics. A new strategy of combining advantages from thermosets and thermoplastics is utilizing dynamic covalent chemistry (DCC) for material design. Dynamic covalent bonds are able to undergo dynamic exchange which allow the material to adapt to a new state when under stimuli such as stress or strain. Material comprised of such reversible networks is called covalent adaptable networks (CANs). These types of reversible covalent bonds followed …

Sediment And Plant Dynamics In A Degrading Coastal Louisiana Landscape, Glenn Michael. Suir

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Alterations to Louisiana’s river systems and local hydrology have resulted in reduced freshwater, sediment, and nutrient inputs into wetland landscapes, causing significant negative impacts on marsh productivity and stability. To combat these losses many restoration projects have been constructed or planned throughout coastal Louisiana. Typical goals of wetland restoration efforts are to conserve, create, or enhance wetland form, and to achieve wetland function that approaches natural conditions. Failure to adequately maintain wetland elevation and hydrology can have serious implications on sedimentation and vegetation processes, which significantly reduces the likelihood of reaching structural and functional targets. Measures of wetland condition have …

The Influence Of River Discharge On Fishes And Invertebrates Associated With Small Oil And Gas Platforms In Nearshore Louisiana, David Bradley Reeves

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The nearshore region off Louisiana’s coast is one of the most productive areas in the United States. Nutrient-rich discharge from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers forms the base of this productivity, but it also contributes to the annual formation of a large hypoxic zone (DO < 2.0 mg l^-1). This region contains >900 oil and gas platforms (platforms) that are de facto artificial reefs and support fish and invertebrate communities. In this dissertation, I examined how select platform-associated fishes and invertebrates responded to river-driven productivity and hypoxia. Settlement plates were used to compare barnacle production at depths of 2 and 7-m along …

The Determinants Of Nucleosome Patterns And The Impact Of Phosphate Starvation On Nucleosome Patterns And Gene Expression In Rice, Qi Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In eukaryotic cells, DNA is a large molecule that must be greatly condensed to fit within the nucleus. DNA is wrapped around histone proteins to form nucleosomes, which facilitate DNA condensation, but on the other hand, may limit DNA processes. Organisms must respond to environmental stress in order to survive, and one strategy is by remodeling nucleosomes to promote changes in DNA accessibility to alter gene expression. Studies have demonstrated a clear correlation between nucleosome dynamics and transcriptional change in some eukaryotes, however factors that affect nucleosome positioning in plants are largely unknown, and the correlation between nucleosome dynamics and …

Personalized Normative Feedback For College Student Condom Use, Sonia Mahesh Shah

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Personalized normative feedback (PNF) interventions provide corrective normative feedback and have been found to successfully elicit behavior change (e.g., related to alcohol consumption, gambling). There are no known PNF interventions that explicitly target risky sexual behavior (RSB). PNF interventions have demonstrated significant reductions on drinking outcomes and normative perceptions, highlighting the potential utility of a PNF intervention specifically for RSB. The current study tested the utility of a web-based PNF intervention to correct normative perceptions regarding condom use as well as to increase condom use among college students. A sample of 189 undergraduate students (80.6% female, 62.2% non-Hispanic Caucasian) who …

The Status Of Safety Culture At Louisiana State University, Jerry Edward Steward

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work accesses the nature of and level of safety culture in the academic research community at Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College (LSU). After serious chemical related accidents in academic research laboratories the National Academies of Science has made recommendations to improve safety within academic research by encouraging researchers to go beyond simple compliance with regulations and work toward fostering a strong, positive safety culture. The term, “safety culture” is used to describe workplace safety in various efforts to improve it. Researchers have studied these concepts from technical, social, and psychological viewpoints leading to the general consensus …

Chemotherapeutic Applications Of Rhodamine Based Nanogumbos, Nimisha Bhattarai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The work presented in this dissertation employs nanomaterials derived from a group of uniform materials based on organic salts (GUMBOS) for selective chemotherapeutic applications. GUMBOS, similar to ionic liquids, are organic salts consisting of a bulky cationic and anionic moiety. In contrast to ionic liquids, these materials have melting points ranging from 25–250 °C, making them solid phase at room temperature. Similar to ionic liquids, GUMBOS display tunable properties, such as hydrophobicity and solubility, through counter ion variation. These tunable properties provide a variety of applications for these GUMBOS, including selective chemotherapeutics applications. The …

The Tensile Root Strength Of Emergent Coastal Macrophytes, Lauris Olivia Hollis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Spartina patens is a dominant emergent macrophyte in fresh, intermediate, and brackish marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of United States where its biomechanical properties are a key component of wetland health and resilience. Its root biomass and tensile root strength are essential for anchorage, erosion protection, and are important determinants of soil strength. Nutrients and the herbicide atrazine are suspected of negatively impacting this wetland plant and others. The objectives of this study were to: 1) ascertain the tensile root strength of five emergent coastal macrophytes in coastal estuaries, and 2) test the effects of nutrient addition, atrazine …

Microfluidic Technology And Application In Urinal Analysis, Jiwen Xiang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Microfluidic technology offers numerous advantages in minimizing and integrating the traditional assays. However, the lack of efficient control components of the microfluidic systems has been hindering the widely commercialization of the technology. The research work in this dissertation focused on the development of effective control components for microfluidic applications.

A linear peristaltic pump was firstly designed, fabricated, and tested for conventional microfluidics by synchronously compressing the microfluidic channel with a miniature cam-follower system in Chapter 2. The miniature cam-follower system and microfluidic chip was prototyped using three-dimensional (3D) printing technology and soft lithography technology. Results from experimental test showed that …

Innovative Monte Carlo Methods For Sampling Molecular Conformations, Aliasghar Sepehri

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sampling molecular conformations is an important step in evaluating physical, mechanical, hydrodynamic, and optical properties of flexible molecules especially polymers. One powerful method for this purpose is configurational-bias Monte Carlo in which one random segment of a molecule is chosen, all segments toward one random end are removed, and then regrown segment by segment to produce a new geometry to be accepted/rejected according to probability laws. The advantage of this method is the ability to generate acceptable conformations that are favorable for intra- and intermolecular energies to save computational costs. However, when there are several interdependent energetic terms, trial generation …

Extended Techniques For Intermediate Violin Students, Mariana Krewer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As we reach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the performance of contemporary music is not a novelty in any concert hall. American orchestras frequently include contemporary works in their programs, and music schools offer specialized classes, ensembles, and even full degrees dedicated to contemporary music. However, for the violin, there are very few resources explaining extended techniques and other recent aesthetic innovations in a didactic manner. Most of the available material is directed at the advanced student or professional player. On the other hand, traditional instructional material often barely glosses over the 20th century repertoire, …

Klezmer Elements In Paul Schoenfield’S Trio For Clarinet, Violin, And Piano: A Violinist’S Perspective, Hannah Phyllis Urdea Marcus

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Paul Schoenfield’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano draws extensively on the traditional Klezmer music of the Ashkenazi Jewish people of Eastern Europe. The blending of three very different instruments, as well as the Klezmer elements, unusual for the classically trained musicians, creat difficulties, as well as opportunities, for the composer and for the performers alike.

Music is often considered a language. As with any language, in order to be fluent, one must understand the cultural aspects that shape that language and the people who speak it. The way the performers present a piece greatly influences the way it is …

An Optimizing Java Translation Framework For Automated Checkpointing And Strong Mobility, Arvind Kumar Saini

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Long-running programs, e.g., in high-performance computing, need to

write periodic checkpoints of their execution state to disk to allow

them to recover from node failure. Manually adding checkpointing code

to an application, however, is very tedious. The mechanisms needed

for writing the execution state of a program to disk and restoring it

are similar to those needed for migrating a running thread or a mobile

object. We have extended a source-to-source translation scheme that

allows the migration of mobile Java objects with running threads to

make it more general and allow it to be used for automated

checkpointing. Our translation …

A Case Study: The Attitudes Of A Teaching Assistant Of French Toward Instructional Technology, Farida Emelia Ngandu Tshiebue

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Technology has shaped the personal experiences of Teaching Assistants (TAs) of French at the collegiate level in the United States (US), what they feel about the technology tools that are accessible in their work environment, and how they use these tools in their practice of teaching. Yet, there is limited research on the specific topic of the attitudes of TAs of French toward the instructional technologies that are available to them. This study sought to investigate the attitudes of a singular TA of French at a southern US university toward instructional technology (IT) by exploring the dynamics of IT use …

Image-Based Modeling Of Flow Through Porous Media: Development Of Multiscale Techniques For The Pore Level, Timothy Wayne Thibodeaux

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Increasingly, imaging technology allows porous media problems to be modeled at microscopic and sub-microscopic levels with finer resolution. However, the physical domain size required to be representative of the media prohibits comprehensive micro-scale simulation. A hybrid or multiscale approach is necessary to overcome this challenge. In this work, a technique was developed for determining the characteristic scales of porous materials, and a multiscale modeling methodology was developed to better understand the interaction/dependence of phenomena occurring at different microscopic scales. The multiscale method couples microscopic simulations at the pore and sub-pore scales. Network modeling is a common pore-scale technique which employs …

System Nonlinear Performance Of Low-Rise Buildings Under Database-Assisted Hurricane Loads, Jing He

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Light-frame wood buildings account for over 95% of all residential structures in the U.S, of which the majority are designed as low-rise buildings. These low-rise residential buildings in the U.S. have performed unsatisfactorily and are the largest source of the damage and fatality during the past extreme wind events. To deepen the understanding and reduce the vulnerability of the infrastructures, the accurate prediction of the hurricane loss has been an urgent need, and the hurricane catastrophe models are developed in response. However, the current hurricane catastrophe models are focused on the economy loss estimation rather than investigating the root causes …

Biomedical Applications Of Hydrogels And Gumbos, Kelsey Elizabeth Mcneel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sodium deoxycholate (NaDC) is a small bile salt that was used in this dissertation to produce gelation of tris(hydroxymethyl)amino-methane (TRIS) solutions above, below, and near the pKa of NaDC. These solutions respectively yielded a neutral gelator, a charged gelator, and a mixture of each. Impacts of ionic interactions on gel formation were studied in detail and showed that pH can be used to modify many hydrogel properties including sol-gel temperature, crystallinity, and mechanical strength. It was also observed that pH modification of the hydrogels affected nanoparticle formation. Nanoparticles derived from a Group of Uniform Materials Based on Organic Salts (nanoGUMBOS), …

Interaction Of Cocoa Powder With Intestinal Microbiota, Zuyin Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cocoa powder contains polyphenolic compounds, which can provide potential health benefits to humans. The human gastroinestinal tract hosts diverse microorganisms which are called the human gut microbiota. These microbes can utilize carbohydrates through fermentation resulting in the production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which cause a reduction of pH in gastroinestinal tract. The cocoa processing can change the composition of the carbohydrates, which can affect the fermentation patterns.

In this study we established an in vitro model system which simulated gastric digestion and colon fermentation. Five different processed cocoa samples (alkalized cocoa samples: D-11-B and D-11-S; non-alkalized cocoa samples: …

The Effects Of Tree Plantations And Land Use On Natural Regeneration Of Woody Plants In The Tropics: Diversity, Species Composition, Successional Dynamics, And Functional Traits, John Benjamin Longworth

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As anthropogenic forests become more common in the tropics, there is a greater need to understand the factors that impact forest succession. I used censuses of woody plants in successional forests to study the effects of prior land use and tree plantations on species composition and richness. First, I tested the hypothesis that communities originating from different land uses were converging in species composition over time. I compared species composition using the Chao-Jaccard similarity index. I observed shifts in the dominant species during the first 30 years of succession, but not convergence of species composition in sites with different land-use …

The Graphs And Matroids Whose Only Odd Circuits Are Small, Kristen Nicole Wetzler

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis is motivated by a graph-theoretical result of Maffray, which states that a 2-connected graph with no odd cycles exceeding length 3 is bipartite, is isomorphic to K_4, or is a collection of triangles glued together along a common edge. We first prove that a connected simple binary matroid M has no odd circuits other than triangles if and only if M is affine, M is M(K_4) or F_7, or M is the cycle matroid of a graph consisting of a collection of triangles glued together along a common edge. This result implies that a 2-connected loopless graph G …