Digital Commons Network^™

Genotypic Variation Of Adaptive And Yield Component Traits Of Introduced Grain Oats (Avena Sativa L.) Grown In Bangladesh, Md Nashir Uddin, Md Ali Babar, Stephen A. Harrison, Ummea Khairun Fatema, S. M.Mostafa Kamal Khan

Faculty Publications

Oat (Avena sativa L.) is considered a nutritious cereal. Its demand has surged across the globe steadily for half a decade, including in Bangladesh. Because there is no local variety, the current supply in Bangladesh solely relies on imports. This study aimed to introduce grain oats from the United States of America (U.S.A.) to Bangladesh and determine the extent of their adaptability and yield in this new environment. One hundred oat accessions were introduced in collaboration between North South University, Bangladesh and the University of Florida, U.S.A. They were evaluated in field conditions from November 2019 to April 2020 in …

Leaky Gut And The Ingredients That Help Treat It: A Review, Ricardo Santos Aleman, Marvin Moncada, Kayanush J. Aryana

Faculty Publications

The human body is in daily contact with potentially toxic and infectious substances in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). The GIT has the most significant load of antigens. The GIT can protect the intestinal integrity by allowing the passage of beneficial agents and blocking the path of harmful substances. Under normal conditions, a healthy intestinal barrier prevents toxic elements from entering the blood stream. However, factors such as stress, an unhealthy diet, excessive alcohol, antibiotics, and drug consumption can compromise the composition of the intestinal microbiota and the homeostasis of the intestinal barrier function of the intestine, leading to increased intestinal …

Key Parameters Linking Cyber-Physical Trust Anchors With Embedded Internet Of Things Systems, Michele Maasberg, Leslie G. Butler, Ian Taylor

Faculty Publications

Integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the automotive industry has brought benefits as well as security challenges. Significant benefits include enhanced passenger safety and more comprehensive vehicle performance diagnostics. However, current onboard and remote vehicle diagnostics do not include the ability to detect counterfeit parts. A method is needed to verify authentic parts along the automotive supply chain from manufacture through installation and to coordinate part authentication with a secure database. In this study, we develop an architecture for anti-counterfeiting in automotive supply chains. The core of the architecture consists of a cyber-physical trust anchor and authentication mechanisms …

Sodium Propionate Or Sodium Butyrate Promotes Fatty Acid Oxidation In Hepg2 Cells Under Oxidative Stress, Kristina J. Cook, Ann Coulter, Michael Keenan, Frank Greenway, Jack N. Losso

Faculty Publications

The beneficial effects of sodium butyrate (NaB) and sodium propionate (NaP) on fatty acid oxidation (FAO) genes and production of proinflammatory cytokines related to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) were evaluated using HepG2 human liver hepatocellular carcinoma cells exposed to palmitate/oleate or lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) as a model. The results showed that NaP or NaB was able to promote FAO, regulate lipolysis, and reduce reactive oxygen species production by significantly increasing the mRNA expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1 alpha (PGC-1α), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα), adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL), carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 alpha (CPT1α), fibroblast growth factor 21 …

Louisiana Survey 2023, Lsu Reilly Center For Media & Public Affairs

Reilly Center Louisiana Surveys

The 2023 Louisiana Survey is the twenty-first in an annual series of statewide surveys beginning in 2003 and sponsored by the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication.

Reflecting the continuing evolution of survey research, we used two approaches for this year’s survey. First, we used our traditional probability-sampling approach to draw landline and cell phone numbers for a live-interview telephone survey. Second, in partnership with the research firm YouGov, we administered an online survey to a nonprobability sample of Louisiana residents who participate in the YouGov panel. We use statistical …

Part I — Introduction: Social Physics And The Vespace Project, Jeffrey M. Leichman, Ben Samuel

Faculty Publications

This article introduces the VESPACE project, an international, multi-disciplinary digital humanities initiative to build a computer-mediated playable simulation—a video game—of the eighteenth-century Paris Fair theatre. As part of this project, a weeklong postgraduate workshop was convened by the authors in May 2020 to develop protocols and procedures for coding literary and historical data for the Ensemble social physics engine that will govern behaviour of non-player characters (NPCs) in the interactive model. This article lays out the history and theory of social physics, the potential impacts of this project on historiographic practice, and the methodology and outcomes of the workshop week. …

The Rise Of Native Lordships At Pashash, A.D. 200–600, North Highlands Of Ancash, Peru, George F. Lau, Milton Luján Dávila, Jacob L. Bongers, David Chicoine

Faculty Publications

This article examines the rise of native, segmentary lordships in the highlands of north-central Peru. It reports on new excavations and mapping at the seat of a prehispanic polity, Pashash (Recuay culture), a large hilltop center that developed after the collapse of Chavín civilization. Fieldwork revealed monumental constructions and two special activity contexts radiocarbon-dated to ca. a.d. 200–400: an offering area in a large palatial compound and a room-complex with chambers closed off and sealed with feasting refuse. Multiple lines of evidence help reconstruct a regional picture for the establishment of wealthy local elites. Cultural innovations explicitly link new leaders …

Disparities In Spatial Accessibility Of Primary Care In Louisiana: From Physical To Virtual Accessibility, Fahui Wang, Yutian Zeng, Lingbo Liu, Tracy Onega

Faculty Publications

Telehealth has been widely employed and has transformed how healthcare is delivered in the United States as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. While telehealth is utilized and encouraged to reduce the cost and travel burden for access to healthcare, there are debates on whether telehealth can promote equity in healthcare services by narrowing the gap among diverse groups. Using the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) and Two-Step Virtual Catchment Area (2SVCA) methods, this study compares the disparities of physical and virtual access to primary care physicians (PCPs) in Louisiana. Both physical and virtual access to PCPs exhibit similar spatial patterns …

Reconsidering The Good Of Improving Accountability, Roy L. Heidelberg

Faculty Publications

Among the rhetorical pleas that follow most instances of public dissatisfaction is the call for more or better accountability. Accountability is a lauded notion, a “golden concept” that is considered widely as critical to the success of democratic government. Such pleas, I will argue, are misplaced. Rather than starting from the premise of accountability as an idea that no one can be against, I consider the possibility that accountability undermines the very notion it ostensibly promotes: self-government. The concept of accountability in modern political theory is tied more closely to the emergence of an impersonal administrative state than it is …

Between Black Mothers And Daughters: A Critical Intergenerational Duoethnography On The Silence Of Health Disparities And Hope Of Loud Healing, Asha S. Winfield, Hope Hickerson, Deshara C. Doub, Ann R. Winfield, Brigitte Mcphatter

Faculty Publications

Introduction: Black American women's health outcomes have been altered by a number of factors. Those factors include social determinants of health, lack of culturally competent healthcare providers, and generations of medical racism leading to prolonged pain, delayed care, and sometimes, untimely deaths. Methods: This original research article centers Southern Black women's lived experiences through family storytelling. We explored generations of health narratives in regard to age, region, and at times, their own acts of silence. Building from theorizing on loud healing, two Black daughters turned the mic on for their mothers by engaging in a critical intergenerational double duoethnography to …

Prep On Tiktok: Benefits, Barriers, And Possibilities, Joseph Schwartz, Josh Grimm, Cameron Jamison

Faculty Publications

HIV remains a serious problem in the U.S. particularly for men who have sex with men. PrEP is an intervention that can dramatically decrease the risk of HIV infection. Because rates of PrEP adoption have been lower than anticipated, researchers have called for new tactics for promoting PrEP. For this reason, we analyzed PrEP messaging on TikTok. In an analysis guided by the Health Belief Model, we found that discussions of PrEP benefits and barriers were most common on TikTok. Severity and susceptibility were least common. We distilled these findings into suggestions for promoting PrEP adoption.

Investigating Consumer Values Of Secondhand Fashion Consumption In The Mass Market Vs. Luxury Market: A Text-Mining Approach, H. M.Rakib Ul Hasan, Chunmin Lang, Sibei Xia

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this research is to investigate consumer values of secondhand fashion (SHF) consumption from online platforms in both the mass market and luxury market. The luxury SHF business is closely related to the business of SHF mass market. A cross-market value analysis would provide better insights to understand consumers’ motivations to purchase secondhand fashion products. Three mass-market SHF companies and three luxury SHF companies were selected as sample companies based on their revenues in the U.S. market. Consumers’ comments and reviews from a third-party business review site, trustpilot.com, were collected using the web-scraping technique. Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) …

Creating Continents: Archean Cratons Tell The Story, Carol D. Frost, Paul A. Mueller, David W. Mogk, B. Ronald Frost, Darrell J. Henry

Faculty Publications

The record of the first two billion years of Earth’s history (the Archean) is notoriously incomplete, yet crust of this age is present on every continent. Here we examine the Archean record of the Wyoming craton in the northern Rocky Mountains, USA, which is both well-exposed and readily accessible. We identify three stages of Archean continental crust formation that are also recorded in other cratons. The youngest stage is characterized by a variety of Neoarchean rock assemblages that are indistinguishable from those produced by modern plate-tectonic processes. The middle stage is typified by the trondhjemite-tonalite-granodiorite (TTG) association, which involved partial …

Study On Soft Robotic Pinniped Locomotion, Dimuthu D.K. Arachchige, Tanmay Varshney, Umer Huzaifa, Iyad Kanj, Thrishantha Nanayakkara, Yue Chen, Hunter B. Gilbert, Isuru S. Godage

Faculty Publications

Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls, and navigate through tight spaces. These robots have the potential to be used for various applications, such as search and rescue, inspection, surveillance, and more. The state-of-the-art still faces many challenges, including limited degrees of freedom, a lack of diversity in gait trajectories, insufficient limb dexterity, and limited payload capabilities. To address these challenges, we develop a modular soft-limbed robot that can mimic the locomotion of pinnipeds. By …

Dynamic Modeling And Validation Of Soft Robotic Snake Locomotion, Dimuthu D.K. Arachchige, Sanjaya Mallikarachchi, Iyad Kanj, Dulanjana M. Perera, Yue Chen, Hunter B. Gilbert, Isuru S. Godage

Faculty Publications

Soft robotic snakes made of compliant materials can continuously deform their bodies and, therefore, mimic the biological snakes' flexible and agile locomotion gaits better than their rigid-bodied counterparts. Without wheel support, to date, soft robotic snakes are limited to emulating planar locomotion gaits, which are derived via kinematic modeling and tested on robotic prototypes. Given that the snake locomotion results from the reaction forces due to the distributed contact between their skin and the ground, it is essential to investigate the locomotion gaits through efficient dynamic models capable of accommodating distributed contact forces. We present a complete spatial dynamic model …

The Potential Benefit Of Pseudo High Thermal Conductivity For Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing, Huan Ding, Selami Emanet, Yehong Chen, Shengmin Guo

Faculty Publications

This study examined the impact of transient pseudo high thermal conductivity to the fabrication of crack-free parts with Laser Powder-Bed-Fusion (L-PBF) based additive manufacturing (AM) method. Thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity of L-PBF samples made by mixtures of IN939 alloy and Si powders were investigated. At temperatures above 800°C, the as-fabricated Si-doped IN939 was observed to exhibit an exceptionally high thermal conductivity, which can be attributed to the occurrence of endothermic reactions. This pseudo high thermal conductivity can effectively minimize the thermal stress and offers a potential solution to produce crack-free L-PBF parts for nonweldable alloys.

Show Us The Data: Global Covid-19 Wastewater Monitoring Efforts, Equity, And Gaps, Colleen C. Naughton, Fernando A. Roman, Ana Grace F. Alvarado, Arianna Q. Tariqi, Matthew A. Deeming, Krystin F. Kadonsky, Kyle Bibby, Aaron Bivins, Gertjan Medema, Warish Ahmed, Panagis Katsivelis, Vajra Allan, Ryan Sinclair, Joan B. Rose

Faculty Publications

A year since the declaration of the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there were over 110 million cases and 2.5 million deaths. Learning from methods to track community spread of other viruses such as poliovirus, environmental virologists and those in the wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) field quickly adapted their existing methods to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater. Unlike COVID-19 case and mortality data, there was not a global dashboard to track wastewater monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA worldwide. This study provides a 1-year review of the “COVIDPoops19” global dashboard of universities, sites, and countries monitoring SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater. Methods to …

Semi-Parametric Control Architecture For Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Subject To Time Delays, Ignacio Carlucho, Dylan Stephens, William Ard, Corina Barbalata

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a data-driven model-based control system for autonomous underwater vehicles (or AUVs) subject to input delays. This work is motivated by the input time delays that can arise in underwater robotics due to communication restrictions and sensor malfunctions. Such delays can highly degrade the performance of classical control structures resulting in unpredictable system behaviours. The proposed control architecture addresses such limitations. The approach incorporates a linear dynamic representation of the system obtained using the Koopman operator in an observer/state prediction formulation. The proposed control architecture is designed based on discrepancies between the data-driven estimation of the system's behaviour …

Event-Triggered Control Under Unknown Input And Unknown Measurement Delays Using Interval Observers, Michael Malisoff, Frederic Mazenc, Corina Barbalata

Faculty Publications

We provide a new input-to-state stabilizing event-triggered feedback design for linear systems with unknown input delays, unknown measurement delays, and unknown additive disturbances. Our trigger times are computed using only the matrices defining the system and time-lagged sampled state values. We use the theory of positive systems, interval observers, and a vector version of Halanay's inequality. We illustrate our method using a marine robotic model.

Personalized Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Trajectory Optimization For Multi-Uav Assisted Edge Computing, Zhengrong Song, Chuan Ma, Ming Ding, Howard H. Yang, Yuwen Qian, Xiangwei Zhou

Faculty Publications

In the era of 5G mobile communication, there has been a significant surge in research focused on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and mobile edge computing technology. UAVs can serve as intelligent servers in edge computing environments, optimizing their flight trajectories to maximize communication system throughput. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based trajectory optimization algorithms may suffer from poor training performance due to intricate terrain features and inadequate training data. To overcome this limitation, some studies have proposed leveraging federated learning (FL) to mitigate the data isolation problem and expedite convergence. Nevertheless, the efficacy of global FL models can be negatively impacted by …

Ransomware Detection Using Federated Learning With Imbalanced Datasets, A. Vehabovic, H. Zanddizari, N. Ghani, G. Javidi, S. Uluagac, M. Rahouti, E. Bou-Harb, M. Safaei Pour

Faculty Publications

Ransomware is a type of malware which encrypts user data and extorts payments in return for the decryption keys. This cyberthreat is one of the most serious challenges facing organizations today and has already caused immense financial damage. As a result, many researchers have been developing techniques to counter ransomware. Recently, the federated learning (FL) approach has also been applied for ransomware analysis, allowing corporations to achieve scalable, effective detection and attribution without having to share their private data. However, in reality there is much variation in the quantity and composition of ransomware data collected across multiple FL client sites/regions. …

Simulating Stellar Merger Using Hpx/Kokkos On A64fx On Supercomputer Fugaku, Patrick Diehl, Gregor Dais, Kevin Huck, Dominic Marcello, Sagiv Shiber, Hartmut Kaiser, Dirk Pfluger

Faculty Publications

The increasing availability of machines relying on non-GPU architectures, such as ARM A64FX in high-performance computing, provides a set of interesting challenges to application developers. In addition to requiring code portability across different parallelization schemes, programs targeting these architectures have to be highly adaptable in terms of compute kernel sizes to accommodate different execution characteristics for various heterogeneous workloads. In this paper, we demonstrate an approach to code and performance portability that is based entirely on established standards in the industry. In addition to applying Kokkos as an abstraction over the execution of compute kernels on different heterogeneous execution environments, …

Traveler: Navigating Task Parallel Traces For Performance Analysis, Sayef Azad Sakin, Alex Bigelow, R. Tohid, Connor Scully-Allison, Carlos Scheidegger, Steven R. Brandt, Christopher Taylor, Kevin A. Huck, Hartmut Kaiser, Katherine E. Isaacs

Faculty Publications

Understanding the behavior of software in execution is a key step in identifying and fixing performance issues. This is especially important in high performance computing contexts where even minor performance tweaks can translate into large savings in terms of computational resource use. To aid performance analysis, developers may collect an execution trace - a chronological log of program activity during execution. As traces represent the full history, developers can discover a wide array of possibly previously unknown performance issues, making them an important artifact for exploratory performance analysis. However, interactive trace visualization is difficult due to issues of data size …

Improving Social Media Use For Disaster Resilience: Challenges And Strategies, Nina S.N. Lam, Michelle Meyer, Margaret Reams, Seungwon Yang, Kisung Lee, Lei Zou, Volodymyr Mihunov, Kejin Wang, Ryan Kirby, Heng Cai

Faculty Publications

This paper develops a social media-disaster resilience analysis framework by categorizing types of social media use and their challenges to better understand and assess its role in disaster resilience research and management. The framework is derived primarily from several case studies of Twitter use in three hurricane events in the United States–Hurricanes Isaac, Sandy, and Harvey. The paper first outlines four major contributions of social media data for disaster resilience research and management, which include serving as an effective communication platform, providing ground truth information for emergency response and rescue operations, providing information on people’s sentiments, and allowing predictive modeling. …

Achieving Online And Scalable Information Integrity By Harnessing Social Spam Correlations, Hailu Xu, Pinchao Liu, Boyuan Guan, Qingyang Wang, Dilma Da Silva, Liting Hu

Faculty Publications

Malicious web links, social rumors, fraudulent advertisements, faked comments, and biased propaganda are overwhelmingly influencing online social networks. Enabling information integrity is a hot topic in both academia and industry. Traditional social spam detection techniques rely on centralized processing, focusing only on one specific set of data sources, thereby ignoring the social spam correlations between distributed data sources. In this paper, we propose an online and scalable misinformation detection system, named Spiral, to uncover social spam by leveraging the correlations between different social data sources in geo-distributed sites. The key insight in our approach is to amplify the effectiveness of …

Analytical Advances In Homeowner Flood Risk Quantification Considering Insurance, Building Replacement Value, And Freeboard, Md Adilur Rahim, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz, Carol J. Friedland, Robert V. Rohli, Nazla Bushra

Faculty Publications

An accurate economic loss assessment for natural hazards is vital for planning, mitigation, and actuarial purposes. The widespread and costly nature of flood hazards, with the economically disadvantaged disproportionately victimized population, makes flood risk assessment particularly important. Here, flood risk is assessed as incurred by the homeowner vs. the flood insurer for insured U.S. properties through the derivation of average annual loss (AAL). AAL is estimated and partitioned using Monte Carlo simulation at the individual home scale, considering insurance coverage and deductible, and the first-floor height (i.e., height of the first floor above the ground), to determine the AAL proportion …

Freeboard Life-Cycle Benefit-Cost Analysis Of A Rental Single-Family Residence For Landlord, Tenant, And Insurer, Ehab Gnan, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz, Md Adilur Rahim, Carol J. Friedland, Robert V. Rohli, Arash Taghinezhad, Ayat Al Assi

Faculty Publications

Flood risk to single-family rental housing remains poorly understood, leaving a large and increasing population underinformed to protect themselves, including regarding insurance. This research introduces a life-cycle benefit-cost analysis for the landlord, tenant, and insurer [i.e., (U.S.) National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)] to optimize freeboard [i.e., additional first-floor height above the base flood elevation (BFE)] selection for a rental single-family home. Flood insurance premium; apportioned flood risk among the landlord, tenant, and NFIP by insurance coverage and deductible; rental loss; moving and displacement costs; freeboard construction cost; and rent increase upon freeboard implementation are considered in estimating net benefit (NB) …

Flood Damage And Shutdown Times For Industrial Process Facilities: A Vulnerability Assessment Process Framework, Carol J. Friedland, Fatemeh Orooji, Ayat Al Assi, Matthew L. Flynn, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz

Faculty Publications

Much of the U.S. petrochemical infrastructure is heavily concentrated along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico within the impact zone of major tropical cyclone events. Flood impacts of recent tropical disturbances have been exacerbated by an overall lack of recognition of the vulnerabilities to process systems from water intrusion, as well as insufficient disaster mitigation planning. Vulnerability assessment methods currently call for the aggregation of qualitative data to survey the susceptibility of industrial systems to floodwater damage. A means to quantify these consequences is less often employed, resulting in a poor translation of the threat of flood hazards …

Runge-Kutta Methods For Rough Differential Equations, Martin Redmann, Sebastian Riedel

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

A Jump-Diffusion Process For Asset Price With Non-Independent Jumps, Yihren Wu, Majnu John

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.