Digital Commons Network^™

Morphology Of Migration: Associations Between Wing Shape, Bill Morphology And Migration In Kingbirds (Tyrannus), Maggie P. Macpherson, Alex E. Jahn, Nicholas A. Mason

Faculty Publications

Morphology is closely linked to locomotion and diet in animals. In animals that undertake long-distance migrations, limb morphology is under selection to maximize mobility and minimize energy expenditure. Migratory behaviours also interact with diet, such that migratory animals tend to be dietary generalists, whereas sedentary taxa tend to be dietary specialists. Despite a hypothesized link between migration status and morphology, phylogenetic comparative studies have yielded conflicting findings. We tested for evolutionary associations between migratory status and limb and bill morphology across kingbirds, a pan-American genus of birds with migratory, partially migratory and sedentary taxa. Migratory kingbirds had longer wings, in …

Adapting Ripple Effect Mapping To A Virtual Survey Format, Matthew D. Greene, Jessica Stroope, Denise Holston

Faculty Publications

Community development projects continue despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Participatory evaluation of these projects is crucial. Ripple effect mapping (REM) is a participatory approach to evaluation that captures coalition and community member perspectives on program outcomes and impacts. In response to COVID-19, the Louisiana State University AgCenter Healthy Communities Initiative adapted REM for online delivery. The REM evaluation was found to be an effective way for community coalitions to reflect on outcomes and impacts and to motivate continued engagement

Louisiana Survey 2022, Lsu Reilly Center For Media & Public Affairs

Reilly Center Louisiana Surveys

No abstract provided.

Moral Emotions And Unnamed Wrongs: Revisiting Epistemic Injustice, Usha Nathan

Faculty Publications

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. By moral emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, …

Calcium-Rich Dravite From The Arignac Gypsum Mine, France: Implications For Tourmaline Development In A Sulfate-Rich, Highly Magnesian Meta-Evaporite, Barbara Dutrow, Darrell Henry

Faculty Publications

Tourmaline occurs in a wide range of compositional environments, but its occurrence in meta-evaporites is less commonly investigated. Highly magnesian (XMg = 0.90–0.98), poikiloblastic tourmaline occurs in a sulfate-rich, anhydrite– gypsum-bearing meta-evaporite in the Arignac Gypsum Mine, France and preserves a petrologic record of this unusual geochemical environment. Originally a Triassic evaporite deposit, the sample is interpreted to have undergone high-tem-perature–low-pressure (HT–LP) metamorphism and subsequently experienced low-grade, highly deformed overprints. Poikiloblastic tourmaline preserves relicts of the HT–LP mineral assemblage, as inclusions of anhydrite, phlogopite, dolomite, tremolite, Cl-rich scapolite (71–85 % marialite component), rutile, zircon, and fluor-apatite. The low-grade deformational overprints …

Hybrid Quantum-Classical Unit Commitment, Reza Mahroo, Amin Kargarian

Faculty Publications

This paper proposes a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm to solve a fundamental power system problem called unit commitment (UC). The UC problem is decomposed into a quadratic subproblem, a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) subproblem, and an unconstrained quadratic subproblem. A classical optimization solver solves the first and third subproblems, while the QUBO subproblem is solved by a quantum algorithm called quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). The three subproblems are then coordinated iteratively using a three-block alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm. Using Qiskit on the IBM Q system as the simulation environment, simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed …

A Deep Learning Approach To Optimal Sampling Problems, Xinxin Wang, Xiangyu Meng, Fangfei Li

Faculty Publications

Time-triggered and event-triggered sampling methods have been widely adopted in control systems. Optimal sampling problems of the two mechanisms have also received great attentions. However, for high-dimensional systems, analytical methods have some limitations. In this study, we propose a model-free method, called soft greedy policy for neural network fitting, to calculate the optimal sampling period of the time-triggered impulse control and the optimal threshold of the event-triggered impulse control. A neural network is used to approximate the objective function and then is trained. This approach is more widely applicable than the analytical method. At the same time, compared with different …

Uncertainty-Autoencoder-Based Privacy And Utility Preserving Data Type Conscious Transformation, Bishwas Mandal, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

We propose an adversarial learning framework that deals with the privacy-utility tradeoff problem under two types of conditions: data-type ignorant, and data-type aware. Under data-type aware conditions, the privacy mechanism provides a one-hot encoding of categorical features, representing exactly one class, while under data-type ignorant conditions the categorical variables are represented by a collection of scores, one for each class. We use a neural network architecture consisting of a generator and a discriminator, where the generator consists of an encoder-decoder pair, and the discriminator consists of an adversary and a utility provider. Unlike previous research considering this kind of architecture, …

Event-Triggered Control For Discrete-Time Systems Using A Positive Systems Approach, Frederic Mazenc, Michael Malisoff, Corina Barbalata, Zhong Ping Jiang

Faculty Publications

We provide an output feedback event-triggered controller for discrete-time linear systems. We make novel use of positive systems, interval observers, an event-triggered state estimator, and triggering times that are computed from estimator values. This provides a discrete-time analog of our recent positive systems approach for continuous-time systems. A key novel ingredient in our discrete-time event triggers is their use of vectors of absolute values, instead of the usual Euclidean norm. We illustrate the benefits of our method using a model for event-triggered BlueROV2 underwater vehicles.

Event-Triggered Prediction-Based Delay Compensation Approach, Frederic Mazenc, Michael Malisoff, Corina Barbalata

Faculty Publications

We provide a new event-triggered delay compensation approach for linear systems with arbitrarily long constant input delays. Our prediction map is expressible as a solution of a discrete time system. Our method ensures input-to-state stability. We also provide an analog under measurement delays, where the prediction map is expressible as a solution of a continuous-discrete system. Significant novel features are our combined use of matrices of absolute values and our prediction based event triggers, instead of Euclidean norms, and the fact that the predictor dynamics always has the same dimension as that of the original system. Our marine robotic example …

Event-Triggered Control For Continuous-Time Linear Systems With A Delay In The Input, Frederic Mazenc, Michael Malisoff, Corina Barbalata

Faculty Publications

We provide an event-triggered control technique for a family of linear time-varying continuous-time systems with a constant known pointwise delay in the input. We adopt a subpredictor based prediction technique, and we provide sufficient conditions that ensure that Zeno behavior does not occur. At each time, only delayed measurements are needed to implement the control. Also, the delay can be an arbitrarily large constant. We prove an input-to-state stability property for the closed-loop system, using the theory of cooperative systems. We apply our method to a gyroscopic control problem for a curve tracking dynamics arising in marine robotics.

Analyzing Tweeting Patterns And Public Engagement On Twitter During The Recognition Period Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study Of Two U.S. States, Misbah Ul Hoque, Kisung Lee, Jessica L. Beyer, Sara R. Curran, Katie S. Gonser, Nina S.N. Lam, Volodymyr V. Mihunov, Kejin Wang

Faculty Publications

The abundance of available information on social media can provide invaluable insights into people's responses to health information and public health guidance concerning COVID-19. This study examines tweeting patterns and public engagement on Twitter, as forms of social media, related to public health messaging in two U.S. states (Washington and Louisiana) during the early stage of the pandemic. We analyze more than 7M tweets and 571K COVID-19-related tweets posted by users in the two states over the first 25 days of the pandemic in the U.S. (Feb. 23, 2020, to Mar. 18, 2020). We also qualitatively code and examine 460 …

Accuracy Of A Sacral Drilling With A Custom 3d Printed Drilling Guide Or Free-Hand Technique In Canine Experimental Sacroiliac Luxation, Daniel Mccarthy

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to improve the accuracy of drilling during the repair of sacroiliac luxation with a 3D-printed patient-specific drill guide (3D-GDT) compared to free-hand drilling technique (FHDT). A blinded, randomized, prospective study was performed including sixteen canine cadavers (20-25 kg) euthanized for reasons not related to the study. Dorsal, bilateral, sacroiliac luxations (SILs) were created experimentally. A pelvic CT was performed pre- and post-drilling. The FHDT was drilled followed by 3D-GDT for each sacrum. CT and 3D measurements of craniocaudal and dorsoventral angles were compared between FHDT and 3D-GDT, as well as deviations of entry …

See You In The Funny Pages: Forms And Aesthetics Of Newspaper Comic Strips In Bill Watterson's Calvin And Hobbes, Jack Mallard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project looks at how Bill Watterson’s aesthetics and his employment of the comics apparatus, as well as his advocacy for learning the history of the formal development (and decline) of the newspaper comic strip, influence Calvin and Hobbes’ approach to art, family, education, and other cultural topics. By adapting Thierry Groensteen’s theory of spatio-topia, a term describing comics’ ability to provoke meaning from how graphic, verbal, and structural elements inhabit space and relate to one another within space, I demonstrate how Bill Watterson’s quality as a comics artist comes as much from his ability to activate spatio-topic potentials …

A Global Ocean Oxygen Database And Atlas For Assessing And Predicting Deoxygenation And Ocean Health In The Open And Coastal Ocean, Marilaure Grégoire, Véronique Garçon, Hernan Garcia, Denise Breitburg, Kirsten Isensee, Andreas Oschlies, Maciej Telszewski, Alexander Barth, Henry C. Bittig, Jacob Carstensen, Thierry Carval, Fei Chai, Francisco Chavez, Daniel Conley, Laurent Coppola, Sean Crowe, Kim Currie, Minhan Dai, Bruno Deflandre, Boris Dewitte, Robert Diaz, Emilio Garcia-Robledo, Denis Gilbert, Alessandra Giorgetti, Ronnie Glud, Dimitri Gutierrez, Shigeki Hosoda, Masao Ishii, Gil Jacinto, Chris Langdon, Siv K. Lauvset, Lisa A. Levin, Karin E. Limburg

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we outline the need for a coordinated international effort toward the building of an open-access Global Ocean Oxygen Database and ATlas (GO2DAT) complying with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). GO2DAT will combine data from the coastal and open ocean, as measured by the chemical Winkler titration method or by sensors (e.g., optodes, electrodes) from Eulerian and Lagrangian platforms (e.g., ships, moorings, profiling floats, gliders, ships of opportunities, marine mammals, cabled observatories). GO2DAT will further adopt a community-agreed, fully documented metadata format and a consistent quality control (QC) procedure and quality flagging (QF) system. GO2DAT …

Developing A Plan For A More Diverse, Inclusive, And Equitable Library At A Research 1 Land-Grant University, Jonathan S. Briganti, Brittany Dodson, Inga Haugen, Gail Mcmillan, Ronald Mecham, Andrea L. Ogier, Shannon Phillips, Anthony Wright De Hernandez

Library Diversity and Residency Studies

Using the Virginia Tech strategic plan as a guide, a team of its University Libraries faculty and staff designed a strategic planning approach for the library that directly engaged with University goals and explored two areas: 1) contributing to the equity-, diversity-, and inclusion-related (EDI) goals laid out in the University strategic plan, and 2) expanding upon efforts to broaden diversity and representation in the library. The team identified four major themes: accessibility, climate, employment and professional development, outreach, and advocacy, and used these themes to develop specific recommendations. The process served to shine the light on these topics within …

Ethnic Diversity And Preferred Leadership Attributes: A Quantitative Analysis With Secondary Use Of Qualitative Data, Maha Kumaran, Keith Walker, Samson Wakibi

Library Diversity and Residency Studies

The broad diversity and leadership landscape in the Canadian academic librarianship was assessed using a survey. The survey was designed using REDCap. It was piloted, translated into French, tested again, and electronically distributed via REDCap to English and French-speaking librarians across Canadian academic institutions. This paper represents a secondary analysis of collected data to determine whether the ethnic backgrounds of librarians have any influence on what they view as the most or least essential attributes in a leader. Secondary use of data means using data for a different purpose (from what it was collected for), sometimes by the same researcher …

Evaluation Of Residual Herbicides Across Multiple Rice Production Systems, Lucas Connor Webster

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A field study was conducted in 2019, 2020, and 2021 at the LSU Agricultural Center H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Station (RRS) near Crowley, LA. to evaluate the crop safety and potential weed control of very long chain fatty acid (VLCFA) inhibiting herbicides in Louisiana rice production. The study evaluated the use of acetochlor, dimethenamid, s-metolachlor, and pyroxasulfone applied preemergence (PRE), delayed PRE (DPRE), and the two- to three- leaf, early postemergence (EPOST) rice growth stage. In general, rice injury decreased as application timing was delayed with the least amount of rice injury occurring when the VLCFA inhibiting herbicides were …

Black Students In Higher Education: An Identification Of Factors Predicting Academic Success, Franklin A. Soares

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The quantitative study was an ex-post-facto study design to explore specific factors and their magnitude that predicts the successful matriculation toward and achievement of a bachelor’s degree by Black students enrolled at a PWI in the deep South. The researcher pursued to explore the direction and magnitude that fall into the following three categories on several measures the matriculation progress toward and deficit of a bachelor’s degree: student demographics characteristics, socio-economic background and economic status, and pre-and post-admission academic readiness and performance. The study was established on Tinto’s (1993) Model of Institutional Departure. Moreover, the study used binomial logistic regression, …

Variedades. Second Edition. Intermediate/ Advanced Spanish Conversation, Carmela V. Mattza

Faculty Publications

VARIEDADES. Second Edition. Intermediate/ Advanced Spanish Conversation is a textbook for the student at the intermediate / advanced intermediate level. Through audiovisual activities, the student is expected to put their previous knowledge into practice and improve their ability to understand, write, listen, and speak in Spanish. VARIEDADES offers communicative activities that can be easily adapted into courses of different levels. In addition, it offers an appendix of activities with films and a Spanish grammar section that by subject directs the student to electronic databases that are freely accessible or are part of the Open Access platform.

Mutations In A Barley Cytochrome P450 Gene Enhances Pathogen Induced Programmed Cell Death And Cutin Layer Instability, Gazala Ameen, Shyam Solanki, Lauren Sager-Bittara, Jonathan Richards, Prabin Tamang, Timothy L. Friesen, Robert S. Brueggeman

Faculty Publications

Disease lesion mimic mutants (DLMMs) are characterized by the spontaneous development of necrotic spots with various phenotypes designated as necrotic (nec) mutants in barley. The nec mutants were traditionally considered to have aberrant regulation of programmed cell death (PCD) pathways, which have roles in plant immunity and development. Most barley nec3 mutants express cream to orange necrotic lesions contrasting them from typical spontaneous DLMMs that develop dark pigmented lesions indicative of serotonin/phenolics deposition. Barley nec3 mutants grown under sterile conditions did not exhibit necrotic phenotypes until inoculated with adapted pathogens, suggesting that they are not typical DLMMs. The F2 progeny …

Limits On Parameter Estimation Of Quantum Channels, Vishal Katariya

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to develop a theoretical framework to study parameter estimation of quantum channels. We begin by describing the classical task of parameter estimation that we build upon. In its most basic form, parameter estimation is the task of obtaining an estimate of an unknown parameter from some experimental data. This experimental data can be seen as a number of samples of a parameterized probability distribution. In general, the goal of such a task is to obtain an estimate of the unknown parameter while minimizing its error.

We study the task of estimating unknown parameters which …

An Intrinsic Proof Of An Extension Of Itô’S Isometry For Anticipating Stochastic Integrals, Hui-Hsiung Kuo, Pujan Shrestha, Sudip Sinha

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Door Opening On Air-Mixing In A Positively Pressurized Room: Implications For Operating Room Air Management During The Covid Outbreak, Arup Bhattacharya, Ali Ghahramani, Ehsan Mousavi

Faculty Publications

The effect of the built environment on the predominant indoor airflow patterns is significant. To protect the healthcare workers at the front line from the outbreak of COVID − 19, it is necessary to understand the transmission dynamics of the virus, which has been shown to depend on indoor airflow patterns. In hospital operating rooms (ORs), design requirements pose a unique challenge as the positive pressure in the OR can facilitate virus spread into adjacent spaces, shall a COVID-positive patient require a surgical procedure. Moreover, the turbulent vortexes from door motions could independently increase the probability of virus escape from …

Modeling And Simulation Of Energy-Related Human-Building Interaction: A Systematic Review, Seddigheh Norouziasl, Amirhosein Jafari, Yimin Zhu

Faculty Publications

Building energy use is highly sensitive to its occupants' energy-related behavior, including their presence and interaction with different building systems. The modeling and simulation of energy-related human-building interaction play an essential role in predicting the actual energy use of a building's operation. The present study provides a systematic review of the existing literature focusing on energy-related human-building interaction modeling and simulation tools and techniques to determine the significant findings, current limitations, and future research directions in this area. The main contribution of this study is to provide a state-of-art framework of the inputs and outputs used for modeling and simulation …

Exploring Thermal State In Mixed Immersive Virtual Environments, Sanaz Saeidi, Girish Rentala, Tracey Rizzuto, Tianzhen Hong, Neil Johannsen, Yimin Zhu

Faculty Publications

Combining immersive virtual environment (IVE) with a controlled environment is a potential solution for analyzing human thermal experience during building design. Existing studies in this field have not adequately analyzed scenarios involving stabilized comfortable and uncomfortable temperature conditions using both thermal state votes and physiological responses, or the influence of the seasons. By combining IVE with a climate chamber, called mixed IVE (MIVE) in this study, experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that participants' virtual experience did not significantly alter their thermal experience compared to their in-situ experience. Response variables were the control temperature distribution, the thermal state vote …

Twelve-Month Specific Igg Response To Sars-Cov-2 Receptor-Binding Domain Among Covid-19 Convalescent Plasma Donors In Wuhan, Cesheng Li, Ding Yu, Xiao Wu, Hong Liang, Zhijun Zhou, Yong Xie, Taojing Li, Junzheng Wu, Fengping Lu, Lu Feng, Min Mao, Lianzhen Lin, Huanhuan Guo, Shenglan Yue, Feifei Wang, Yan Peng, Yong Hu, Zejun Wang, Jianhong Yu, Yong Zhang, Jia Lu, Haoran Ning, Huichuan Yang, Daoxing Fu, Yanlin He, Dongbo Zhou, Tao Du, Kai Duan, Demei Dong, Kun Deng, Xia Zou, Ya Zhang, Rong Zhou, Yang Gao

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

To investigate the duration of humoral immune response in convalescent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, we conduct a 12-month longitudinal study through collecting a total of 1,782 plasma samples from 869 convalescent plasma donors in Wuhan, China and test specific antibody responses. The results show that positive rate of IgG antibody against receptor-binding domain of spike protein (RBD-IgG) to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the COVID-19 convalescent plasma donors exceeded 70% for 12 months post diagnosis. The level of RBD-IgG decreases with time, with the titer stabilizing at 64.3% of the initial level by the 9th month. …

Genomics And Transcriptomics Landscapes Associated To Changes In Insulin Sensitivity In Response To Endurance Exercise Training, Louise Y. Takeshita, Peter K. Davidsen, John M. Herbert, Philipp Antczak, Matthijs K.C. Hesselink, Patrick Schrauwen, S. John Weisnagel, Jeremy M. Robbins, Robert E. Gerszten, Sujoy Ghosh, Mark A. Sarzynski, Claude Bouchard, Francesco Falciani

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

Despite good adherence to supervised endurance exercise training (EET), some individuals experience no or little improvement in peripheral insulin sensitivity. The genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are currently not understood. By investigating genome-wide variants associated with baseline and exercise-induced changes (∆) in insulin sensitivity index (Si) in healthy volunteers, we have identified novel candidate genes whose mouse knockouts phenotypes were consistent with a causative effect on Si. An integrative analysis of functional genomic and transcriptomic profiles suggests genetic variants have an aggregate effect on baseline Si and ∆Si, focused around cholinergic signalling, including downstream calcium and chemokine signalling. …

An Argument For The Second Nuclear Era: Salvaging The Atomic Age In Response To Climate Change, Ian Sager

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Observation Of The Modification Of Quantum Statistics Of Plasmonic Systems, Chenglong You, Mingyuan Hong, Narayan Bhusal, Jinnan Chen, Mario A. Quiroz-Juárez, Joshua Fabre, Fatemeh Mostafavi, Junpeng Guo, Israel De Leon, Roberto De J. León-Montiel, Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza

Faculty Publications

For almost two decades, researchers have observed the preservation of the quantum statistical properties of bosons in a large variety of plasmonic systems. In addition, the possibility of preserving nonclassical correlations in light-matter interactions mediated by scattering among photons and plasmons stimulated the idea of the conservation of quantum statistics in plasmonic systems. It has also been assumed that similar dynamics underlie the conservation of the quantum fluctuations that define the nature of light sources. So far, plasmonic experiments have been performed in nanoscale systems in which complex multiparticle interactions are restrained. Here, we demonstrate that the quantum statistics of …