Digital Commons Network^™

Facies Reconstruction And Stratigraphy Of A Late Pleistocene Bald Cypress Forest Discovered On The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Continental Shelf, Suyapa Gonzalez

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Geographical Analysis Of Community Resilience To Seismic Hazard In Southwest China, Xiaolu Li, Lei Wang, Shan Liu

Faculty Publications

This article presents an explorative analysis of community resilience to seismic hazard in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake area of Southwest China. We used a regression model to analyze the impact of 13 key socioeconomic and demographic variables on community resilience in 105 counties, based on data derived from population census and provincial statistical yearbooks of China. In this research, we argue that community resilience should be measured by the change of population growth rate (Δdp) instead of population growth rate (dp) when using socioeconomic data from a fast-growing country such as China. Using Δdp as the dependent variable resulted in …

Morphological Characteristics Of The Ice Margins Of Antarctic Ice Shelf And Outlet Glacier Extracted From Icesat Laser Altimetry Along-Track Profiles, Jieun Kim, Jaehyung Yu, Lei Wang, Hongxing Liu, Haein Shin

Faculty Publications

The Antarctic ice sheet topography including elevation and slope is a key parameter for understanding ice sheet dynamics because the surface slope is a major controller of the ice flow gravitational driving stress magnitude. This study used Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser altimetry data to analyze the ice margin morphological parameters for 20 ice shelves and 12 outlet glaciers distributed over Antarctica. The bottom-up segmentation algorithm application effectively extracted the morphological parameters from the laser altimetry profiles. The ice shelves had an average boundary elevation of 29.5 m and a slope of 7.8°, with a decreasing surface …

High-Resolution Spatial Distribution And Estimation Of Access To Improved Sanitation In Kenya, Peng Jia, John D. Anderson, Michael Leitner, Richard Rheingans

Faculty Publications

Background: Access to sanitation facilities is imperative in reducing the risk of multiple adverse health outcomes. A distinct disparity in sanitation exists among different wealth levels in many low-income countries, which may hinder the progress across each of the Millennium Development Goals. Methods: The surveyed households in 397 clusters from 2008-2009 Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys were divided into five wealth quintiles based on their national asset scores. A series of spatial analysis methods including excess risk, local spatial autocorrelation, and spatial interpolation were applied to observe disparities in coverage of improved sanitation among different wealth categories. The total number …

Analysis Of Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla) Specific Alu Repeats, Thomas Beckstrom

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Math Circles: A Tool For Promoting Engagement Among Middle School Minority Males, Eugene Kennedy, Lawrence Smolinsky

Faculty Publications

This article presents results of a case study of a math circle designed for low income, minority students from an inner city middle school. The students were 6th, 7th and 8th grade African American and Hispanic males enrolled in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics focused charter school. The study focused on the impact of participation in the math circle on students and the design features of the experience that were most effective at promoting engagement and positive reactions from students. Participating students reported increases in their interests in mathematics, their confidence in their ability to tackle mathematics problems, and …

Faunal Analysis Of Fauna In Feature 1, Byrd Hammock South Site, Wakulla County, Fl, Jacob Mendoza

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Pelvic Sexual Dimorphism Among Species Monomorphic In Body Size: Relationship To Relative Newborn Body Mass, Robert G. Tague

Faculty Publications

Females have larger pelves than males among eutherians to mitigate obstetrical difficulty. This study addresses 3 issues concerning pelvic sexual dimorphism using 8 species that are sexually monomorphic in nonpelvic size: Aotus azarae, Castor canadensis, Dasypus novemcinctus, Hylobates lar, Saguinus geoffroyi, Sciurus carolinensis, Sylvilagus floridanus, and Urocyon cinereoargenteus. Using published data to compute the index of relative newborn body mass (RNBM = [newborn body mass/adult female body mass]100%) for 266 eutherian species, A. azarae, H. lar, and S. geoffroyi are characterized as giving birth to relatively large newborns and the other 5 species as giving birth to relatively small newborns. …

Measuring Community Resilience To Coastal Hazards Along The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Nina S.N. Lam, Margaret Reams, Kenan Li, Chi Li, Lillian P. Mata

Faculty Publications

The abundant research examining aspects of social-ecological resilience, vulnerability, and hazards and risk assessment has yielded insights into these concepts and suggested the importance of quantifying them. Quantifying resilience is complicated by several factors including the varying definitions of the term applied in the research, difficulties involved in selecting and aggregating indicators of resilience, and the lack of empirical validation for the indices derived. This paper applies a new model, called the resilience inference measurement (RIM) model, to quantify resilience to climate-related hazards for 52 U.S. counties along the northern Gulf of Mexico. The RIM model uses three elements (exposure, …

Gumbo Yearbook, Class Of 2016, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

Gumbo Yearbook

The Gumbo yearbook chronicles the entire academic year at LSU. In words and especially photos, the Gumbo shows the people, places, and events that make each year unique. In addition to formal portraits of schools and departments, the book contains hundreds of snapshots of students with their friends and dozens of pages showcasing organizations.

African Fire Cultures, Cattle Ranching, And Colonial Landscape Transformations In The Neo-Tropics, Andrew Sluyter, Chris S. Duvall

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Guide For “Los Isleños” Field Trip, Conference Of Latin Americanist Geographers, New Orleans, 2017, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Program For The Conference Of Latin Americanist Geographers, New Orleans, January 3-5, 2017, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Abstract Book: Papers And Posters, Conference Of Latin Americanist Geographers, New Orleans, January 3-5, 2017, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Linking The Histories Of Slavery: North America And Its Borderlands, Sterling Evans

Civil War Book Review

Slavery in the North American Borderlands

The editors of Linking the Histories of Slavery state that the goal of their volume is that by introducing “unexpected scenes" and by “challeng[ing] assumptions about how slavery worked across North America," they want readers to “expand th....

Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History Of The Conquest Of California And Hawai'i, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Centering Animals In Latin American History, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise Of Ranching And Cattle Culture In Western Amazonia By Jeffrey Hoelle (Review), Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lsu General Catalog 2016-2017, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

LSU General Catalog

The LSU General Catalog describes all undergraduate and graduate departments and programs with degree requirements and courses offered for each one. The LSU General Catalog includes information on registration and financial aid as well as academic services offered to all students.

Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism To Human Prehistory In Museums, Boyd Cothran

Civil War Book Review

The Power of Remains: America’s Bone Rooms Impact on the Making and Unmaking of Scientific Racism

Museums throughout North American and Europe today contain a surprising number of human bones. U.S. museums house an estimated 500,000 Native American remains with another 116,000 sets of bone....

Stanley On Ideology, John Protevi

Faculty Publications

I explore Jason Stanley's notion of ideology. After preliminary remarks on ideology and coercion in social reproduction, I offer a restatement of Stanley's position on ideology, examining his notion of epistemic harm. I then examine the role of emotion in his thinking as that which binds beliefs to agents, and conclude with an argument for a notion I call "affective ideology" that enables us to connect ideology with the use of force in "coercive social reproduction".

Using Synthetic Tropical Cyclones To Characterize Extreme Hurricanes Affecting Charleston, South Carolina, Kelsey N. Ellis, Jill C. Trepanier, Robert E. Hodges

Faculty Publications

The characteristics and conditions favoring extreme hurricanes remain largely unknown because of their small number in the observational record. Synthetic tracks are capable of providing a large, representative sample of these events, which provides an opportunity to further understanding of extreme characteristics as compared with those of more common tropical cyclones. The authors compare 300 synthetic extreme (100-yr event, ≥ 48.9 m s-1) and 300 common (5-yr event, ≤ 33.6 m s-1) tropical cyclones for Charleston, South Carolina, for differences in spatial, temporal, and other characteristics. Results suggest that extreme hurricanes have a more-defined spatial and temporal behavior, generally forming …

Editorial, Thomas J. Lampoltshammer, Michael Leitner, Noella Edelmann

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mapping Rice Cropping Systems In Vietnam Using An Ndvi-Based Time-Series Similarity Measurement Based On Dtw Distance, Xudong Guan, Chong Huang, Gaohuan Liu, Xuelian Meng, Qingsheng Liu

Faculty Publications

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time-series data has been widely used in the fields of crop and rice classification. The cloudy and rainy weather characteristics of the monsoon season greatly reduce the likelihood of obtaining high-quality optical remote sensing images. In addition, the diverse crop-planting system in Vietnam also hinders the comparison of NDVI among different crop stages. To address these problems, we apply a Dynamic TimeWarping (DTW) distance-based similarity measure approach and use the entire yearly NDVI time series to reduce the inaccuracy of classification using a single image. We first de-noise …

Health Of The Seventh Cavalry: A Medical History, John S. Haller

Civil War Book Review

Careful Analysis of Medical Statistics Builds a Model of Army Life

For those who enjoy statistical research as essential validation of historical writing, this epidemiological and medical analysis of the iconic Seventh Cavalry, one of forty regiments operating at the height of the American....

Lightning Flash Rate In The Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela Related To Sea Surface Temperatures And Tropospheric Air Flow, Deirdre Smith

LSU Master's Theses

Northern Venezuela's Lower Maracaibo Basin (LMB) has the highest lightning flash rate (LFR) density in the world. The area receives approximately 200 flashes per km^2 annually. Local topography as well as local and global scale climate drivers have been shown to influence the frequency of the lightning storms, known as "Catatumbo Lightning". This research focuses on influences on LFR in the LMB by local and global sea surface temperatures and elements of local tropospheric air from 1996--2015. Sea surface temperature and tropospheric air data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are used in Spearman rank correlations to determine relationships …

Consecutive Connectors: A Study On Discourse Markers In Honduran Speech, Leeann Michelle Stover

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis addresses the question of discourse marker usage and function among a group of Honduran Spanish speakers who reside in Louisiana in an environment of English language contact. It seeks to descriptively outline the pragmatic functions of the consecutive connector markers entonces, así and pues, and to identify the meanings underlying these functions in informal conversation. As the first linguistic study of Hondurans in Baton Rouge, this thesis gives new insight to Spanish discourse marker usage in the United States. 19 Honduran speakers residing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were interviewed, and their spontaneous speech was transcribed and analyzed for …

Detecting The Spatial Patterns Of Blue-Green Algae In Harsha Lake Using Landsat 8 Imagery, Jing Huang

LSU Master's Theses

The incidence of harmful algal blooms (HABs) caused by blue-green algae has been increasing in coastal and freshwater ecosystems of the United States in recent years, and has had great influence on ecosystem, economic, and public health. This thesis aims at testing the feasibility of using machine learning methods in comparison to traditional regression models to detect and map the blue-green algae distribution in low-medium biomass waters (Chl-a < approx. 20 μg/L) from a Landsat 8 image with the support of some in situ Chl-a measurements in Harsha Lake, Ohio. Two algorithms were compared: one is the conventional empirical method – Stepwise Multiple Linear Regression – to see if there is a strong linear relationship between measured Chl-a concentrations and the Landsat 8 spectral data in the study area, and the other is one of the most popular machine learning methods–Random Forests. Major findings include: (1) both a conventional linear regression model and a Random Forests model worked well in mapping the extent and biomass of blue-green algae in Harsha Lake on September 21, 2015, but the Random Forests model outperformed the linear regression model; (2) the prediction surface from the Random Forests method illustrated that 89.30% of Harsha Lake’s area had Chl-a values less than 10 µg/L on the sampling date, while only 10.70% of the entire study area had Chl-a concentrations between 10 µg/L and 20 µg/L. Higher Chl-a values (especially for Chl-a larger than 10 µg/L) were mostly distributed in the mouths of rivers or streams, which might be caused by the influx of nutrients from agricultural or urban land use by rivers and streams. The results show the utility of the Random Forests approach based on Landsat 8 imagery in detecting and quantitatively mapping low biomass HABs, which is considered to be a challenging task.

Metric Variation In The Human Sacrum: Costal Process Length Among Black And White South Africans, Christy Rose Wayne

LSU Master's Theses

Considerable attention has been given to the measureable differences that exist between different human populations in the size and shape of the pelvis, with Africans having a narrower pelvis than Europeans. By collecting data on sacral breadth from a South African skeletal population, this study (1) tests the hypothesis that African blacks possess a narrower sacrum, and by inference pelvis, than whites and (2) considers whether the size variation between blacks and whites is due to nutritional, historical and social differences, to a genetic basis related to climatic adaptation, or to both. White South Africans were found to possess a …

A Crow And A Hanger, Kelsey Ann-Morgan Livingston

LSU Master's Theses

A Crow and A Hanger is a body of work that explores and illustrates the nature of life and death through the use of mixed-media drawing and printmaking techniques. My intention for this work, and this thesis paper, is to explain my thought process and how the imagery came to be. For me it is not at all important for every viewer to fully understand each image and the thoughts that went into the body as a whole. I let the images and their titles lead the viewer in a general direction and allow for their personal history and biases …