Digital Commons Network^™

The Portrayal Of Science In Children's Television, Tristi Bercegeay Charpentier

LSU Master's Theses

Scholars argue that a scientifically literate public is a requirement for a democracy. Children are watching television more today than ever before, and studies have shown that children learn academically educational content from television. The Children's Television Act of 1990 requires broadcasters to provide educational and informational content for children. This study qualitatively evaluated a sample of 38 children's television programs to obtain a description of the scientific content contained in children's television. The study yielded a large quantity of scientific content, yet the quality of the content left much to be desired. Based on the findings of this study, …

Spatial Analysis Of The Preserved Wooden Architectural Remains Of Eight Late Classic Maya Salt Works In Punta Ycacos Lagoon, Toledo District, Belize, Bretton Michael Somers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examined the remains of wooden architecture at eight Late Classic Maya sites found beneath the surface of Punta Ycacos Lagoon in southern Belize. The presence of briquetage on the surface and embedded among the clusters of wooden architectural features implies association with salt production activity. This research is significant in that the preservation of wooden structures at the salt works has not previously been reported for the ancient Maya. This dissertation includes a detailed discussion of documented evidence of salt production throughout Mesoamerica from archaeological, historical and modern examples. The discussion also addressed the evidence of Maya wooden …

The Agriculturalists Of The Poole-Rose Ossuary: A Study Of The Femora And Tibiae, Melissa L. Moreno

LSU Master's Theses

Dr. Heather McKillop of Louisiana State University was asked by the Alderville First Nation of Ontario in 1990 to excavate the Poole-Rose ossuary in 1990. This mass burial consisted of hundreds of mixed disarticulated and de-fleshed individuals as well as three articulated individuals laid in flexed positions. No artifacts were discovered with the bodies. Due to the absence of stratified soil layers from different periods, McKillop estimated the ossuary occurred during one burial event- “The Feast of the Dead.” Radiocarbon dating found the ossuary to be from A.D. 1550 ± 50 years (McKillop and Jackson 1991). I estimated sex according …

Environmental Equity In Southeast Louisiana: Oil, People, Policy, And The Geography Of Industrial Hazards, Scott Allan Hemmerling

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores issues and concepts underlying the creation of Louisiana’s rural-industrial petrochemical complex as they relate to environmental equity and industrial development’s deleterious consequences. Cumulative hazards models examine the distribution of technological hazards associated with petroleum extraction and processing and explores how this varies among different socioeconomic groups in three coastal Louisiana parishes. Considerable onshore oil extraction occurs in Jefferson Parish. Lafourche Parish is the primary land-based supply center for the majority of the offshore oil activity in the Gulf of Mexico. The refineries of Saint Bernard Parish represent the endpoint of the flow of raw product and the …

Land-Cover And Land-Use Study Using Genetic Algorithms, Petri Nets, And Cellular Automata, Fei Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Recent research techniques, such as genetic algorithm (GA), Petri net (PN), and cellular automata (CA) have been applied in a number of studies. However, their capability and performance in land-cover land-use (LCLU) classification, change detection, and predictive modeling have not been well understood. This study seeks to address the following questions: 1) How do genetic parameters impact the accuracy of GA-based LCLU classification; 2) How do image parameters impact the accuracy of GA-based LCLU classification; 3) Is GA-based LCLU classification more accurate than the maximum likelihood classifier (MLC), iterative self-organizing data analysis technique (ISODATA), and the hybrid approach; 4) How …

A Material/Conceptual Landscape Analysis Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe Pilgrimage Site In Mexico City, Mexico, Ramin David Zamanian

LSU Master's Theses

As geographers continue to research the interactions between physical landscapes and conceived or represented landscapes, the Virgin of Guadalupe pilgrimage site, a prominent site for Latin American Catholicism, provided an opportunity for further study in this area. Mexico City’s rapid expansion drastically changed the material landscape from rural to densely urban, especially since the early 1900s. With indigenous spirituality closely tied to the physical aspects of the landscape, especially those more related to the natural and rural elements, the onset of urbanity can potentially lead to alienation and consequently a decrease in pilgrimages and participation in worship at the site. …

Spatial Confidentiality And Gis: Re-Engineering Mortality Locations From Published Maps About Hurricane Katrina, Andrew J. Curtis, Jacqueline W. Mills, Michael Leitner

Faculty Publications

Background: Geographic Information System (GIS) can provide valuable insight into patterns of human activity. Online spatial display applications, such as Google Earth, can democratise this information by disseminating it to the general public. Although this is a generally positive advance for society, there is a legitimate concern involving the disclosure of confidential information through spatial display. Although guidelines exist for aggregated data, little has been written concerning the display of point level information. The concern is that a map containing points representing cases of cancer or an infectious disease, could be re-engineered back to identify an actual residence. This is …

Keeping An Eye On Privacy Issues With Geospatial Data [4], Andrew Curtis, Jacqueline W. Mills, Michael Leitner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Comparative Phylogeography In A Genus Of Coral Reef Fishes: Biogeographic And Genetic Concordance In The Caribbean, Michael S. Taylor, Michael E. Hellberg

Faculty Publications

Geographic barriers that limit the movement of individuals between populations may create or maintain phylogenetically discrete lineages. Such barriers are often inferred from geographic surveys of a single mitochondrial marker to identify phylogenetic splits. Mitochondrial DNA, however, has an effective population size one-fourth that of nuclear DNA, which can facilitate the rapid evolution of monophyletic mtDNA lineages in the absence of geographic barriers. The identification of geographic barriers will thus be more robust if barriers are proposed a priori, and tested with multiple independent genetic markers in multiple species. Here, we tested two proposed marine biogeographic breaks located at the …

Vale Of Tears: New Essays On Religion And Reconstruction, Valarie H. Ziegler

Civil War Book Review

A Neglected Study

Religion and the Civil War Era

Early Maize (Zea Mays L.) Cultivation In Mexico: Dating Sedimentary Pollen Records And Its Implications, Andrew Sluyter, Gabriela Dominguez

Faculty Publications

A sedimentary pollen sequence from the coastal plain of Veracruz, Mexico, demonstrates maize cultivation by 5,000 years ago, refining understanding of the geography of early maize cultivation. Methodological issues related to bioturbation involved in dating that record combine with its similarity to a pollen sequence from the coastal plain of Tabasco, Mexico, to suggest that the inception of maize cultivation in that record occurred as much as 1,000–2,000 years more recently than the previously accepted 7,000 years ago. Our analysis thereby has substantive, theoretical, and methodological implications for understanding the complex process of maize domestication. Substantively, it demonstrates that the …

Humboldt In The Americas, Andrew Sluyter, Kent Mathewson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Recent Intellectual Structure Of Geography, Andrew Sluyter, Andrew D. Augustine, Michael C. Bitton, Thomas J. Sullivan, Fei Wang

Faculty Publications

An active learning project in an introductory graduate course used multidimensional scaling of the name index in Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century, by Gary Gaile and Cort Willmott, to reveal some features of the discipline's recent intellectual structure relevant to the relationship between human and physical geography. Previous analyses, dating to the 1980s, used citation indices or Association of American Geographers spe- cialty-group rosters to conclude that either the regional or the methods and environmental subdisciplines bridge human and physical geography. The name index has advantages over those databases, and its analysis reveals that the …

Humboldt's Mexican Texts And Landscapes, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

While in New Spain from 1803 to 1804, Alexander von Humboldt interacted with some of its landscapes and the texts that represented them. Analysis of those interactions regarding the Basin of Mexico and the Gulf lowlands demonstrates what purely text-based studies of the production of places cannot: The contrasting landscape elements and patterns that had emerged over millennia during precolonial times in those two places, their relative degrees of depopulation during the colonial era, and the relative degrees of rigor Humboldt applied to interacting with the resulting landscapes and the texts that represented them greatly affected his representations of those …

Traveling/Writing The Unworld With Alexander Von Humboldt., Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Parenting And Peer-Group Behavior In Cultural Context, David A. Nelson, Larry J. Nelson, Craig H. Hart, Chongming Yang, Shenghua Jin

Faculty Publications

© Cambridge University Press 2006 and Cambridge University Press, 2009. Whether specific patterns of parenting are similarly associated with child peer group behavior in diverse cultural contexts has been a fascinating topic of inquiry. From classic anthropological studies dating back to the early twentieth century to the current interest in cross-cultural studies, knowledge concerning the question of universality and cultural variation in parenting linkages to childhood adjustment has expanded at an unprecedented rate (e.g., Harkness & Super, 2002). As the general field of parenting research has uncovered distinctions in parenting styles and practices (e.g., Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Hart, Newell, …

Thinking Outside The Box The Non-English Speaking World In The First Decade Of 1650-1850, Theodore E. D. Braun

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

James Thomson And Landscape Iconography "Instrumental In Diffusing A General Taste", Jan Widmayer

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

From The Top Down And The Bottom Up: The Contemporary Practice And Choice Of Midwifery In Louisiana, Michelle M. Wydra

LSU Master's Theses

This research examines the contemporary practice of midwifery in Louisiana, a state that very early on had progressive legislation, yet remains a tough place for a midwife to practice. What, then, are the social forces that affect the ability to practice midwifery in Louisiana? I try to answer that question by examining the narratives of midwives and their clients, and evaluating the options these women have access to in this state. The narratives provide opportunities to observe the authoritarian knowledge of biomedicine in our society, and apply Foucault’s theory of power/knowledge. I describe that although Louisiana’s regulation of the practice …

Are Enzymes Accurate Indicators Of Postmortem Interval?: A Biochemical Analysis, Karly Laine Buras

LSU Master's Theses

There are numerous ways to estimate postmortem interval (PMI), or time since death, including body temperature, rigor mortis, insect activity, and decomposition. Individually, many of these indicators are prone to inaccuracy due to the influence of the external environment upon them. This study proposed that in addition to or in conjunction with these and other indicators, certain enzymes could be used to accurately determine PMI, namely aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), creatine kinase (CK), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). In this project, 18 rats were studied postmortem to determine how ethanol consumption and different environments affect decomposition and enzyme activity. …

Whaddya Want? It's Coney Island!: Tourism, Play And Memory In The Illegible City, Elizabeth Healy Matassa

LSU Master's Theses

In the post-industrial American city, the question of what urban space means seems far less important then how it is lived through the dynamic struggles of city dwellers to claim these spaces as their own. These struggles to define urban space are not always overtly political and thus must be examined through the more everyday, sometimes unconscious practices of city dwellers. This thesis attempts to valorize the emotional work of cities through an ethnographic study of Coney Island, Brooklyn. Coney Island is examined first as an urban space which allows tourists to move beyond traditional practices of visual consumption, then …

Considering Blackness In George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead: An Historical Exploration, Jennifer Whitney Dotson

LSU Master's Theses

When George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968, the independent black and white zombie film stunned American moviegoers. Having assaulted the audience with a new level of violence-laden gore, Night of the Living Dead received much attention from both popular and critical audiences, with the former rushing to theaters to see the film over and over and the latter almost universally panning the film for its poor taste and gratuitous violence. Since its release, however, Night of the Living Dead has become one of the most written about horror films in American history, with critics …

Binding Femininity: An Examination Of The Effects On Tightlacing On The Female Pelvis, Katherine Marie Klingerman

LSU Master's Theses

The corset in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe was not merely an article of clothing. The corset was a complex and often contradictory social and cultural symbol. It symbolized both the sensual female body and the chaste virgin; the female control over male desires, and the male’s control over the female body. The ubiquity of the corset in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe is an important commentary on historical European society. Reports of women (and men) who have died as a result of the tightness of their corsets abound in the literature. Case studies from medical professionals provide information …

The Development Of Global Awareness In Elementary Students Through Participation In An Online Cross-Cultural Project, Allen C. Grant

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study provided insights about how to develop online cross-cultural projects designed to foster global awareness in upper elementary-age students. Three schools, located in the southern United States, Mexico and Turkey, implemented a cross-cultural model as part of a comparative case study. The primary goal of this research was to gain an understanding of how these populations develop global awareness in an online environment. A second goal was to determine the necessary implications for practice when conducting online, cross-cultural projects in upper elementary classrooms. During eight weeks of implementation, students participated in cross-cultural groups as members of an online community. …

Rediscovering The Delta A Reassessment Of The Linkages Between Poverty, Economic Growth And Public Policy Using Geographically Weighted Regression Analysis, Dominique Duval-Diop

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The nineties have witnessed broad economic growth and prosperity throughout the nation, with improvements in all major indicators of economic well-being. Yet, many rural and urban regions continued to experience economic distress during this period. At the same time, investments in infrastructure, human capital and poverty relief continue to be targeted to these failing areas. This work examines trends in demographic indicators, economic growth and federal funding experienced between 1990 and 2000 in the federally designated Mississippi Delta region in order to answer the following questions. What impact does federal funding have on poverty in the Mississippi Delta region overall? …

Escape To Utopia: Mental Illness, Veterans, And Gowanda State Hospital (1946-1952), Ursula Irene Anna Goldsmith

LSU Master's Theses

This study will cover the history from 1946 to 1952 of a state hospital located in Helmuth, New York, known as Gowanda State Homeopathic Hospital (GSH). It describes the community, physical campus and the surrounding area where it is located. The experience of treating military personnel suffering from combat-related mental illness during the 1940s led many psychiatrists to emphasize the social dimensions of mental disorder and to hypothesize that mentally ill civilians and veterans may best be treated outside of traditional mental institutions in their hometowns. This theory was implemented with the discovery of psychotropic drugs in the mid 1950s. …

Detecting The Socioeconomic Conditions Of Urban Neighborhoods Through Wavelet Analysis Of Remotely Sensed Imagery, Guiyun Zhou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Wavelet analysis is an efficient approach to studying textural patterns at different scales. Artificial neural networks can learn very complex patterns in the data and could be an efficient classifier. However, whether wavelet analysis, in combination with artificial neural networks or other classifiers, can be used to detect the social-economic conditions of urban neighborhood is a key research question that needs further study. The hypotheses of this study were: 1) neural networks yielded higher classification accuracy than linear discriminant analysis and the minimum-distance classifier based on wavelet measures of urban land covers; 2) wavelet textural measures could be used to …

Investigation Of The Effects Of Detached Breakwaters At Holly Beach And Grand Isle, Louisiana, Brandon Edwards

LSU Master's Theses

Two detached breakwater projects in Louisiana were investigated. At Grand Isle, Louisiana, breakwaters do not seem to have caused any sediment deposition. Airphoto analysis indicated that the breakwater field has caused changes in morphology, though. At Holly Beach, Louisiana, breakwaters have caused sediment deposition, specifically low tide tombolos. Analysis of survey data and tracer data indicated that the beach/breakwater system is in a state of dynamic equilibrium at high tide, and static equilibrium at low tide. In addition, wave heights measurements were made in the vicinity of one breakwater segment and compared to incident wave height. Examination of the data …

The Discursive Practices Of Chemical Discipline, Roger L. Pippin

LSU Master's Theses

This project examines the history of science and its relationship to the popular, or lay, audience, a problem of rhetorical inquiry since Aristotle. This project also explores the implications of the emerging trend in lay literature on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to transform the causal mechanism underlying ADHD so that it is isomorphic in structure and parallel in content to the most contemporary and fetishized sciences of the human body. In other words, how ADHD was once a problem of brain chemistry, and is now a problem of genetics is not simply a matter of scientific practice on the …