A Comparison Of Machine Learning Techniques For Taxonomic Classification Of Teeth From The Family Bovidae, Gregory J. Matthews, Juliet K. Brophy, Maxwell Luetkemeier, Hongie Gu, George K. Thiruvathukal

Faculty Publications

This study explores the performance of machine learning algorithms on the classification of fossil teeth in the Family Bovidae. Isolated bovid teeth are typically the most common fossils found in southern Africa and they often constitute the basis for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Taxonomic identification of fossil bovid teeth, however, is often imprecise and subjective. Using modern teeth with known taxons, machine learning algorithms can be trained to classify fossils. Previous work by Brophy et al. [Quantitative morphological analysis of bovid teeth and implications for paleoenvironmental reconstruction of plovers lake, Gauteng Province, South Africa, J. Archaeol. Sci. 41 (2014), pp. 376–388] uses …

The Urban Archaeological Supersite Paradigm: Integrating Archaeology And Hgis Into Heritage Management, Andrea P. White

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The archaeological heritages of many of the world’s historic cities are at risk. If these urban archaeological resources are destroyed before excavation and documentation using sound archaeological techniques, the material histories of these cities are erased. The Urban Archaeological Supersite Paradigm is presented as means to address some of the threats facing urban archaeological sites.

The urban archaeological supersite paradigm is both an applied and a scholarly research framework useful for examining and interpreting the urban past and for helping to address urban archaeological heritage at risk. It conceptualizes the historic city as a supersite made up of numerous archaeological …

Creating Coping Mechanism: An Anatomy Of A Gallery-Based Installation And Performance Work, Jamie M. Kutner

LSU Master's Theses

The project described in this paper is an exhibition of gallery-based durational performance art, and resulting three-dimensional artifacts, that was created through a tangled process of relapse and recovery from mental illness. The first section of this paper peers into the parameters of ephemeral artistic practice. I discuss the process of merging my recovery and creative practice through performance art, and then parse the discussion of the work into the categories of performer, audience, site, and time. Section II details various aspects of spectator experience through a second-person narrative tracing the crowd flow of the exhibition. I conclude with an …

Parallel Tracks: Three Case Studies Of The Relationship Between Street Art And U.S. Museums In The Twenty-First Century, Erin Rolfs

LSU Master's Theses

An examination of three case studies involving U.S. museum exhibitions of street and graffiti art in the twenty-first century. This thesis covers the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s “Graffiti” show in 2006, Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Art in the Streets” in 2011, and the 2012-2015 activities of the Baton Rouge Museum of Public Art. These events offer a chronological and geographical range to provide a broad scope of investigation into the pitfalls and opportunities of museum’s exhibiting graffiti and street art. The heart of this research is not to prolong the debate about whether museums endanger their authority when …

Return To The Repressive: Re-Thinking Nature- Culture In Contemporary Feminist Theory, Deborah Goldgaber

Faculty Publications

In "History of Sexuality"(Vol I.) Foucault argued that repression is the wrong model of power, understanding it in exclusively negative terms, as external to the body it constrains and inhibits. Power may also be positive, productive, and constitutive of the body and its possibilities. Thus, an adequate account of the relation between cultural forces and the body, Foucault argues, must challenge the "repressive hypothesis"(RH). Contemporary feminist accounts of the body are structured by this same oppositional view of power Foucault assumed: to call on Rosi Braidotti's distinction, discursive (cultural) forces are either negative or repressive (potestas) or positive and empowering …

Purposeful Planning And Intentional Practice In Literacy Leadership: The Making Of An Urban Principal, Nakia Claudette Jackson Perkins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Audubon Elementary is an urban elementary school that is the setting for this proposed study. It is a high-achieving, high-performing school where achievement goals are always centered on literacy learning, especially within the context of accountability wherein faculty and school leadership acknowledge the importance that the school district has placed on standardized testing. Pre-K through fifth grades are housed at the school. In 2018, there are approximately 554 students who are guided by 65 faculty and staff members.

Participants were purposely selected based on both convenience and criteria sampling (Collins, Onwuegbuzie, & Jiao, 2007). Initially, six participants, or classroom …

Natural Resources-Based Conflicts In Coastal Louisiana: A Multi-Faceted Social And Ecological Setting, Audrey Grismore

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Louisiana coastal zone supports numerous natural resource-based economies and due to overlapping demands on the same territory, conflicts among users and resource managers have emerged. When the state recognized serious depletion of oysters in the late nineteenth century, it intervened with a set of conservation polices to try to establish sustained yields that produced one set of conflicts. When the oil industry began operating in the coastal estuaries and wetlands in the 1930s, it produced additional conflicts with fishing folk. The zone of conflict gave rise to cyclic adaptations as each group struggled to sustain its environmentally based economic …

Landscapes Of Persistence And Ritual Architecture At The Cosma Complex, Upper Nepeña Valley, Peru., Kimberly Elizabeth Munro

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the Cosma Complex, a multi-component archaeological site located at the headwaters of the Nepeña River, on the western slopes of the Cordillera Negra in the modern Department of Ancash, Peru. The overarching goal of this study is to understand not only Cosma’s influence as a religious center within the Nepeña Valley and the surrounding region, but its recurring occupation over a 5000-year time span and its role in religious networks within the valley through its function as a cultural landscape resource or persistent place.

The Cosma complex extends over 250 hectares and includes two multi-storied temple …

Three-Dimensional Flow, Morphologic Change, And Sediment Deposition And Distribution Of Actively Evolving Neck Cutoffs Located On The White River, Arkansas, Derek Allen Richards

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Neck cutoffs are important and prominent features of alluvial rivers yet detailed field-based research of neck cutoffs has been insufficient to fully characterize three-dimensional flow, morphologic change, and sediment deposition and distribution. The main objectives of this research are to examine the formation and evolution of neck cutoffs by characterizing the flow field, morphology, and sediment distribution through neck cutoffs with complex planform configurations located on the White River, Arkansas. Results led to the production of two conceptual models. The flow model has main hydrodynamic characteristics of (1) tight bend flow resulting from flow redirection of nearly 180° through the …

Project Narrative: Examining The Interplay Of Experiences Of Participants In An After-School Writing Club, Courtney A. Brown

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Writing is a vital part of literacy development. It affords the opportunity for the expression and analysis of comprehensive thought, while simultaneously being a modality for unique and creative communication. In order for productive dialogue about the study of writing to be engaged, the contemplation of its many dynamic parts occurring across a diversity of contexts must be considered in such a way that one writing strategy, process, product or environment is not privileged above another. Each constituent part of writing construction contributes meaningfully to the existing body of research for this field, and when carefully disaggregated can offer specific …

The Underdevelopment Of Foucauldian Subjectivity And Freedom, Matthew Koshak

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Measurement And Modeling Of The Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Beach Surface Moisture Content, Phillip P. Schmutz, Steven L. Namikas

Faculty Publications

The spatiotemporal dynamics of surface moisture exert a significant influence on the operation of aeolian transport systems at many beaches. However, we currently lack the detailed understanding of variability in surface moisture required to incorporate it into aeolian models. This problem is addressed here through direct measurements and simulation modeling of beach surface moisture over a twelve-day period, and through quantification of the relative contributions of evaporation, condensation and groundwater inputs to surface moisture. It was found that the beach surface can be characterized spatially in terms of three moisture zones: a consistently dry zone (40%). The relative influence of …

The Spaces In Between: Foreign Language Education As Critical And Intercultural Education, Paola Giorgis

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

No abstract provided.

Don Draper,Teacher-As-Artist: A Diffractive Reading Of Mad Men, Gabriel Huddleston, Sam Rocha

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

No abstract provided.

On Working From Within: Understanding Self And Story, Bruce Parker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Curriculum theory explores teaching and learning both in and out of schools. This research continues to engage with teachers and students as complex individuals whose identities and experiences influence their education and their approaches to teaching and learning. This research examines questions of self and story using autobiographical and autoethnographic methods. The project begins with an overview of some of the challenges public education and teachers have met with in the past two decades. One outcome of those challenges is control of the curriculum and classroom time has increasingly been taken away from students and teachers and given to administrators …

Witnessing The Event Of Deconstruction: Cultural Encounter Between Louisiana And Japan And Its Implications For Education, Kaori Shimizu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cultural diversity is widely understood as needed, and the importance of learning about other cultures has been emphasized. However, if other cultures are located and explained within the framework where the culture of the Self invisibly maintains the fixed normative status, it would result in “a creation of cultural diversity and a containment of cultural difference” (Bhabha, 1990c, p. 208).

Addressing this issue, this dissertation study considers the curriculum that appreciates cultural differences in recognizing the alterity of the culture of the other, emerged from the engagement in the tension existing between two cultures, of the Self and of the …

An Evaluation Of The Utility Of A Mass-Weighted Frequency Distribution Of Sediment For Modeling Aeolian Transport Rates, Raihan Jamil

LSU Master's Theses

Predictions made by aeolian transport models often do not match well with measured data. The poor predictive capability of these models remains a fundamental problem in aeolian geomorphology. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the recently proposed mass-weighted frequency distribution (Edwards and Namikas 2015) and the apparent von Kármán parameter proposed by Li et al. (2010) to improve transport rate predictions. The evaluation consists of comparisons of predicted transport rates versus a large dataset of measured field and lab transport rates collected from the literature. The transport rate predictions are made both with and without recalibration of model empirical coefficients. …

Computational Analysis Of Papionini Evolution Using Alu Insertions, Vallmer Edward Jordan Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Alu elements are primate specific retrotransposons that have remained active throughout the course of primate evolution. As a result of this sustained mobilization. Alu elements are present in greater copy number in primate genomes than any other transposable element. An average of over one million Alu elements has been identified in every sequenced haplorrhine genome to date. These characteristics qualify Alu elements as ideal characters for studying evolutionary relationship among primates.

The increasing availability of whole genome sequencing data presents novel challenges and opportunities for comparative genomic analyses. Genomic data is now publicly available for most primate species. Such an …

Madden-Julian Oscillation Relationships With Cool Season Cyclogenesis, Daily Precipitation, And Cool Season Severe Weather Frequencies In The Gulf Of Mexico Region, Stephen Paul Caparotta

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Tropical cyclone variability in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) has been the focus of a considerable amount of research. Variability on both interannual scales, related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and on subseasonal scales, related to the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), is well documented. By contrast, very little research exists on the relationships between the MJO and cool season, non-tropical cyclones in the GoM.

The MJO influence on cool season (October-March) cyclogenesis in the GoM variability is explored here. Additionally, daily precipitation variability and cool season severe weather variability is examined for areas near and just inland of the GoM. …

A Narrative And Performative Methodology For Understanding Adolescent Cancer Stories, Patrick Mcelearney

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The field of health communication places considerable attention on coping with cancer, typically using social scientific approaches to investigate uncertainty, information, and/or social networks. Social scientific models of coping with adolescent cancer often measure how behaviors seek to manage cancer’s uncontrollability and/or uncertainty; however, how adolescents cope with cancer has been unclear. Short-term studies show adolescents typically and atypically cope. Long-term studies show a significant portion of survivors exhibit post-traumatic stress. The narrative and performative turns expose the role narratives and performatives play in shaping human subjects as meaning makers rather than merely information sharers. A narrative subject reframes cancer’s …

Building Program Quality In Youth Development Staff Training: Critical Components As Perceived By Currently Employed Youth Development Professionals In The United States, Jeantyl Norze

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Program quality is the program characteristics, indicators, and implementation practices that stakeholders mutually agreed upon. These program quality components are interlinked. Therefore, it is critical to help youth practitioners think through the logical connection among the components of program quality. This can be partly achieved through professional development, which equips practitioners with competencies necessary to perform their tasks. As a result, a staff training model was designed to corroborate the work that has been done in the positive youth development field with the aim of achieving program quality using a systematic review method. This staff training model comprises four components: …

"If You Stand On This Corner, People Know What You're About": Powerful Geographies Of Airline & Goodwood In #Justiceforalton, Shannon Kathleen Groll

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the multiple geographies of Airline & Goodwood, a site of protest occupied nightly during a part of summer 2016 in response to the police shooting of Alton Sterling. Through a methodology of observant-participation, interviews, and oral histories, I make the case that the politics of this site differed from other contemporaneous protest sites in the city through specific place-making activity which highlighted the site’s powerful contemporary and historical geographies. I connect protest at this site to the precarity of Black life and death in Baton Rouge through interviews and oral histories which discuss the historical …

Advancing Dendrochronological Studies Of Fire In The United States, Grant L. Harley, Christopher H. Baisan, Peter M. Brown, Donald A. Falk, William T. Flatley, Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Amy Hessl, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Margot W. Kaye, Charles W. Lafon, Ellis Q. Margolis, R. Stockton Maxwell, Adam T. Naito, William J. Platt, Monica T. Rother, Thomas Saladyga, Rosemary L. Sherriff, Lauren A. Stachowiak, Michael C. Stambaugh, Elaine Kennedy Sutherland, Alan H. Taylor

Faculty Publications

© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010 [1], Amoroso et al., 2017 [2]). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application of dendroecology, linking fire history to population dynamics and climate effects on tree growth and survivorship. Since the early 20th century when dendrochronologists recognized that tree rings retained fire scars (e.g., Figure 1), and hence a record of past fires, they have conducted studies worldwide to reconstruct [2] the historical range …

Construction Of A Tropical Cyclone Size Dataset Using Retroactive Analysis Data With A Damage Application, Derek Trent Thompson

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis introduces a new tropical cyclone (TC) size dataset. Using the radius of the outermost closed isobar (ROCI) as the size metric of focus, a comprehensive record of TC size at landfall was constructed for tropical storms and hurricanes that made landfall in the United States along the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The ROCI information was derived from mean sea level pressure maps generated using the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis I dataset over a 69-year period (1948 – 2016). Construction of the dataset involved using two methodologies, one based on hourly interpolated HURDAT2 best tracks and the …

The Body In Pain / The Body In Ecstasy, Shannon Kenny

LSU Master's Theses

The Body in Pain / The Body in Ecstasy is a series of short lyric essays/extended poems which catalogue major discriminatory movements against disabled people in the 20th and 21st century, specifically in the United States. My work contains duel storylines, using these movements/categories of violence as frames for my own personal narrative, and connecting individual experience to larger historical structures. I do this to disrupt the notion that history is disconnected from the present, and showcase how humans are built by context, where personal and political are inexorably intertwined, and social development is tied to both the body and …

Understanding “Southern” Identities And Confederate Iconography: Internal Orientalism, (Mis)Representation, And Social Media, Robert W. Perham

LSU Master's Theses

In light of recent debates surrounding Confederate iconography (flags, statues and symbols), this thesis has three foci. First, the continued construction of the American “South” as an internal “Other.” Second, the reactive perspectives taken by self-identifying “Southerners” who both support and denounce Confederate iconography. Third, the role that social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) have as sites that both disseminate hegemonic discourse and facilitate resistance. Drawing on a Foucauldian discourse analysis of content (news articles, posts, videos, images, memes) published and discussed on social media, I explore whether "the South" continues to be portrayed as a lesser "Other" nationally, …

A Novel Multiproxy Approach To Reconstructing Sea Surface Temperature In The Southwestern Gulf Of Mexico, Marissa Anne Vara

LSU Master's Theses

Coral Sr/Ca is a widely-used proxy for sea surface temperature (SST); however, discrepancies in the coral Sr/Ca-SST relationship among colonies of the same species makes uncertainty in absolute temperature reconstructions larger than the climate signal yet climate variability studies are possible. Furthermore, the riverine input of terrestrial carbonate weathering products to the coastal waters can disrupt the coral Sr/Ca-SST signal by changing local seawater chemistry. This study evaluates the fidelity and reproducibly of coral SST proxies (Sr/Ca, Li/Ca, Mg/Li, Sr-U, Mg/Ca, and U/Ca) and a riverine-upwelling proxy (Ba/Ca) in four Orbicella faveolata colonies in two reefs offshore from Veracruz, Mexico …

Micropaleontological Record Of A Preserved, Late Pleistocene Bald Cypress Forest On The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Inner Shelf, Jonathan Thien Truong

LSU Master's Theses

A cluster of previously buried Taxodium distichum stumps are exposed and preserved in growth position at the bottom of a trough on the inner Gulf of Mexico (GOM) continental shelf in 18 m water depth and 13 km offshore Orange Beach, AL. Radiocarbon ages from wood and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of sediments suggest a Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 age, or older. This study builds on the previous work of Gonzalez (2018) and Obeclz (2017). Five biofacies were identified in vibracore collected in 2015 and 2016: 1) the Holocene Mississippi-Alabama-Florida (MAFLA) sand sheet, 2) a Holocene interbedded sand …

A Climatology Of Precipitation Days Throughout The Continguous United States, Rudy J. Bartels

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the last century, scientists have raised questions about climate change and one of the more important variables that may undergo change is precipitation. Precipitation can affect many sectors including agriculture, socio-economic activities and hazard management. This dissertation addresses the temporal aspect of precipitation using 167 first order stations in the contiguous United States from 1951-2015. The three objectives of this dissertation are to perform (1) an annual analysis of the frequency of rain days in the United States and changing magnitudes of daily rainfall, (2) seasonal rain day frequency in the United States, and (3) use an artificial neural …

Modeling Hydroclimatic Change In Southwest Louisiana Rivers, Robert Rohli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.