Digital Commons Network^™

Maize Yield In Smallholder Agriculture System-An Approach Integrating Socioeconomic And Crop Management Factors, Sudarshan Dutta, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Rupak Goswami, Hirak Banerjee, Kaushik Majumdar, Bin Li, M. L. Jat

Faculty Publications

Yield gaps of maize (Zea mays L.) in the smallholder farms of eastern India are outcomes of a complex interplay of climatic variations, soil fertility gradients, socio-economic factors, and differential management intensities. Several machine learning approaches were used in this study to investigate the relative influences of multiple biophysical, socio-economic, and crop management features in determining maize yield variability using several machine learning approaches. Soil fertility status was assessed in 180 farms and paired with the surveyed data on maize yield, socio-economic conditions, and agronomic management. The C&RT relative variable importance plot identified farm size, total labor, soil factors, seed …

Rubusoside-Assisted Solubilization Of Poorly Soluble C6-Ceramide For A Pilot Pharmacokinetic Study, Jianzhong Chen, Sachin K. Khiste, Xiaomei Fu, Kartik R. Roy, Yixuan Dong, Jian Zhang, Mei Liu, Yong Yu Liu, Zhijun Liu

Faculty Publications

Although C6-Ceramide has attracted much attention as a possible tumor suppressor, the delivery of C6-Ceramide is still challenging due to its inherent hydrophobicity and insolubility. In this study we explored the use of a natural compound rubusoside (RUB) as a solubilizer to enhance the solubility of a fluorescence-labeled C6-Ceramide (NBD C6-Ceramide) and to characterize its pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution in an animal model. RUB significantly enhanced the solubility of NBD C6-Ceramide by forming nanomicelles, and efficiently delivered NBD C6-Ceramide in rats by oral and intravenous administration. RUB loaded 1.96 % of NBD C6-Ceramide in the nanomicelles and solubilized it to …

Trans-Disciplinary Responses To Climate Change: Lessons From Rice-Based Systems In Asia, Jon Hellin, Jean Balié, Eleanor Fisher, Ajay Kohli, Melanie Connor, Sudhir Yadav, Virender Kumar, Timothy J. Krupnik, Bjoern Ole Sander, Joshua Cobb, Katherine Nelson, Tri Setiyono, Ranjitha Puskur, Pauline Chivenge, Martin Gummert

Faculty Publications

Climate change will continue to have a largely detrimental impact on the agricultural sector worldwide because of predicted rising temperatures, variable rainfall, and an increase in extreme weather events. Reduced crop yields will lead to higher food prices and increased hardship for low income populations, especially in urban areas. Action on climate change is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13) and is linked to the Paris Climate Agreement. The research challenge posed by climate change is so complex that a trans-disciplinary response is required, one that brings together researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in networks where the lines between …

Prevalence And Correlates Of Objectively Measured Weight Status Among Urban And Rural Mozambican Primary Schoolchildren: A Cross-Sectional Study, Taru Manyanga, Joel D. Barnes, Jean Philippe Chaput, Lise Dubois, Peter T. Katzmarzyk, Emily F. Mire, Antonio Prista, Mark S. Tremblay

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Background The coexistence of undernutrition (thinness) and overnutrition (overweight/obesity) among children and adolescents is a public health concern in low-middle-income countries. Accurate prevalence estimates of thinness and overweight/obesity among children and adolescents are unavailable in many low-middle-income countries due to lack of data. Here we describe the prevalences and examine correlates of objectively measured weight status among urban and rural schoolchildren in Mozambique. Methods A cross-sectional study design was applied to recruit 9-11-year-old schoolchildren (n = 683) from 17 urban and rural primary schools in Mozambique. Body mass index (BMI) was computed from objectively measured height and weight and participants’ …

Plumage Patterns: Ecological Functions, Evolutionary Origins, And Advances In Quantification, Nicholas A. Mason, Rauri C.K. Bowie

Faculty Publications

Birds exhibit remarkable variation in plumage patterns, both within individual feathers and among plumage patches. Differences in the size, shape, and location of pigments and structural colors comprise important visual signals involved in mate choice, social signaling, camouflage, and many other functions. While ornithologists have studied plumage patterns for centuries, recent technological advances in digital image acquisition and processing have transformed pattern quantification methods, enabling comprehensive, detailed datasets of pattern phenotypes that were heretofore inaccessible. In this review, we synthesize recent and classic studies of plumage patterns at different evolutionary and organismal scales and discuss the various roles that plumage …

Fine Structure Of Viral Dsdna Encapsidation, Shawn Walker, Javier Arsuaga, Lindsey Hiltner, M. Carme Calderer, Mariel Vázquez

Faculty Publications

Unraveling the mechanisms of packing of DNA inside viral capsids is of fundamental importance to understanding the spread of viruses. It could also help develop new applications to targeted drug delivery devices for a large range of therapies. In this article, we present a robust, predictive mathematical model and its numerical implementation to aid the study and design of bacteriophage viruses for application purposes. Exploiting the analogies between the columnar hexagonal chromonic phases of encapsidated viral DNA and chromonic aggregates formed by plank-shaped molecular compounds, we develop a first-principles effective mechanical model of DNA packing in a viral capsid. The …

Experimental Determination Of The Role Of Increased Surface Area In Pool Boiling From Nanostructured Surfaces, Brendon Doran, Bin Zhang, Abigail Walker, Pratik Kc, W. J. Meng, Arden L. Moore

Faculty Publications

The use of nanostructured surfaces to enhance pool boiling heat transfer performance has previously been demonstrated for a variety of outwardly-projecting nanostructures such as nanowires and nanotubes. Such enhancement has been attributed to a variety of factors, including greater surface area, improved wickability, and superior nucleation site density as compared to unmodified surfaces. However, since these three phenomena are inherently interlinked with the presence of the nanostructures, isolating each one for independent study to truly understand its relative importance in enhancing pool boiling heat transfer has remained a challenge. In this work, nanoporous anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) films on metallic …

Hydromechanical Modelling To Evaluate Impact Of Fault Structure On Co2 Migration In Stacked Storage System, Muhammad Zulqarnain, Mehdi Zeidouni, Richard G. Hughes

Faculty Publications

Faulting processes produce a complex fault damage zone (FDZ) having permeability variations over several orders of magnitude within a very short distance. In this study we use an example normal fault system from a depleted oil field in southern Louisiana with multiple stacked sand beds along the fault structure. Geostatistical techniques are used to introduce heterogeneities of several orders of magnitude over very short distances that honor the across- and along-fault architecture of the system. A total of 15 cases are simulated to account for the impact of a fragmented core, an intact core and a naturally fractured core on …

Apparatuses For Increasing Off-Chip Bandwidth, Lu Peng, Srivastava Ashok, Shaoming Chen

College of Engineering Patents

Embodiments of the present invention include methods for increasing off-chip bandwidth. The method includes designing a circuit of switchable pins, replacing a portion of allocated pins of a processor with switchable pins, connecting the processor to a memory interface configured to switch the switchable pins between a power mode and a signal mode, providing a metric configured to identify which of the power mode and the signal mode is most beneficial during 1 millisecond intervals, and switching the switchable pins to signal mode during intervals where the signal mode provides more benefit than the power mode.

Entanglement And Secret-Key-Agreement Capacities Of Bipartite Quantum Interactions And Read-Only Memory Devices, Siddhartha Das, Stefan Bäuml, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

A bipartite quantum interaction corresponds to the most general quantum interaction that can occur between two quantum systems in the presence of a bath. In this work, we determine bounds on the capacities of bipartite interactions for entanglement generation and secret-key agreement between two quantum systems. Our upper bound on the entanglement generation capacity of a bipartite quantum interaction is given by a quantity called the bidirectional max-Rains information. Our upper bound on the secret-key-agreement capacity of a bipartite quantum interaction is given by a related quantity called the bidirectional max-relative entropy of entanglement. We also derive tighter upper bounds …

Examining Interaction Effects In 2d Fermi Gases Using Renormalization Group Theory, Sri Laalitya Uppalapati

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We use the Renormalization Group (RG) method within the perturbation theory framework to study properties of a balanced, two-dimensional Fermi gas with short-range, attractive interactions in non-superfluid (normal) phase. We find that the RG method allows for the evaluation of logarithmic corrections to Equations of State in various regimes of density and temperature. We present two calculations using RG with perturbation theory. The first being a simplified RG scheme with an interpolation of crossover between RG flow in different regimes. The second calculation features a rigorous derivation whereby the Green's function within a standard perturbation theory is renormalized to derive …

National Guard Familes: The Relationship Between Institutional Discourses And Lived Experiences, Kimberly Saunier Boudreaux

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

National Guard families live in two different worlds. On the one hand, they are civilians with civilian jobs. On the other hand, they are also part of the military that can be activated at any time. Living in these two worlds simultaneously affects these families differently than families who live either entirely in the civilian world or the military world. The purpose of this qualitative study was to take an ethnographic look at how National Guard families navigate and adapt to these conditions. This study utilized three methods of data collection: analysis of self-help books aimed at helping military spouses …

A Hop-By-Hop Relay Selection Strategy In Multi-Hop Cognitive Relay Networks, Hui Sun, Mort Naraghi-Pour, Weixing Sheng, Renli Zhang

Faculty Publications

In this paper, a hop-by-hop relay selection strategy for multi-hop underlay cognitive relay networks (CRNs) is proposed. In each stage, relays that successfully decode the message from previous hop form a decoding set. Taking both maximum transmit power and maximum interference constraints into consideration, the relay in the decoding set which has the largest number of channels with an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) level to the relays in the next stage is selected for retransmission. Therefore, relay selection in each stage only relies on channel state information (CSI) of the channels in that stage and does not require the CSI …

Professional Development And Supervision Of Live-In And Live-On Housing And Residence Life Professionals For Crisis Response And Management, Juterh Nmah

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-methods study is twofold: to examine the professional development and supervision of live-in and live-on housing and residence life professionals for crises response and management on colleges and universities. The literature review consisted of empirical research for crises, professional development and supervision. The study sample consisted of live-in and live-on housing and residence life professionals employed at colleges and universities across the United States. The researcher utilized a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design using a demographic survey, Synergistic Supervision Scale (SSS), for the first, quantitative phase, and a semi-structured interview format for the multiple case-study design for …

Noble-Transition Alloy Absorbers For Near-Infrared Hot-Carrier Optoelectronics, Sara Karoline Figueiredo Stofela

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Optoelectronics is the field of technology concerned with the study and application of electronic devices that source, detect and control light. Here we focus on the optical communications field which relies on optical fiber systems to carry signals to their destinations operating in the near-infrared range. To improve the performance of current optical fiber systems, one of the paths is to develop better near-infrared photodetectors.

The current group of materials used for near-infrared photodetection relies in the III-V semiconductor family. Although their spectral photosensitivity correlates well with the near-infrared, response time performance and electronic circuit integration remain limited for this …

Emerson's Idealist Poetics: Emerson, Rödl, And The Life Of Nature, Robert Darren Hutchinson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I articulate a hermeneutics for reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s seminal text Nature through drawing on the insights of the contemporary philosopher Sebastian Rödl. Particularly, the performative, literary characteristics of Rödl’s quite conceptual work resonate with the poetic strategies that Emerson employs in Nature. In the section on the work of Rödl, I make the performative aspects of his philosophy explicit through a close reading of the way self-consciousness happens in his texts through the language he employs. Rödl refers to his elucidation of self-consciousness as idealism. In the section on Emerson, I show how Emerson’s project …

Experimental And Computational Tools For Single Cell Analysis In Cancer Diagnostics, Manibarathi Vaithiyanathan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Substantial evidence shows that cellular heterogeneity commonly exists within an isogenic or clonal population. Whether in isolation or caused through a combination of the above events, cellular heterogeneity can dramatically influence cellular decision making and cell fate, however, this can be masked by the average response from a population. One approach to solve this issue is to analyze a population at the individual cell level. The goal of this work is to develop high-throughput experimental and computational platforms to screen and quantify single cancer cells for specific intracellular enzyme activities. An interdisciplinary approach was taken to 1) better understand the …

Impacts Of The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill On Reproduction And Ontogeny Of Gulf Killifish (Fundulus Grandis), Charles Alexander Brown

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill released an estimated 779 million liters of Macondo-252 crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the largest marine oil spill in history. Over a thousand kilometers of marshland that many species of fish use as a spawning grounds and nurseries was oiled, exposing breeding adult fish and their offspring to oil. My dissertation investigates the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and associated remediation efforts on the reproduction and ontogeny of a sentinel ecotoxicological species, the Gulf killifish (Fundulus grandis). Concerns were raised regarding use of …

Sodium Propionate And Sodium Butyrate Promote Fatty Acid Oxidation In Hepg2 Cells Under Oxidative Stress, Kristina Jazmin Cook

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a spectrum of disturbances that includes simple steatosis, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. NAFLD affects individuals that consume the typical Western diet consisting of high levels of fats and carbohydrates. The increase in circulating free fatty acids, palmitate and oleate, or lipopolysaccharides (LPS), induce oxidative stress and pro-inflammatory cytokine production in the liver, which all contribute to NAFLD progression. In this study, we are evaluating the mRNA expression of genes associated with fatty acid oxidation (FAO) and the protein expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines related to NAFLD using the HepG2 human liver …

Influence Of Neighboring Clonal-Colonies On Aflatoxin Production By Aspergillus Flavus, Rebecca R. Sweany, Kenneth E. Damann

Faculty Publications

Aspergillus flavus is an ascomycete fungus that infects and contaminates corn, peanuts, cottonseed, and treenuts with acutely toxic and carcinogenic aflatoxins. The ecological function of aflatoxin production is not well understood; though not phytotoxic, aflatoxin may be involved in resisting oxidative stress responses from infection or drought stress in plants. Observation of aflatoxin stimulation in 48-well plates in response to increasing inoculated wells sparked an investigation to determine if A. flavus volatiles influence aflatoxin production in neighboring colonies. Experiments controlling several culture conditions demonstrated a stimulation of aflatoxin production with increased well occupancy independent of pH buffer, moisture, or isolate. …

Spatial And Topological Analysis Of Urban Land Cover Structure In New Orleans Using Multispectral Aerial Image And Lidar Data, Shuxian Liu

LSU Master's Theses

Urban land use and land cover (LULC) mapping has been one of the major applications in remote sensing of the urban environment. Land cover refers to the biophysical materials at the surface of the earth (i.e. grass, trees, soils, concrete, water), while land use indicates the socio-economic function of the land (i.e., residential, industrial, commercial land uses). This study addresses the technical issue of how to computationally infer urban land use types based on the urban land cover structures from remote sensing data. In this research, a multispectral aerial image and high-resolution LiDAR topographic data have been integrated to investigate …

Interactions Among Amygdala Volume, Cortical Thickness, And Structural Connectivity In Youth: Relationship To Emotion Regulation, Peter James Castagna

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Emotion regulation includes adaptive (e.g., reappraisal) and non-adaptive behaviors (e.g., avoidance) designed to alter ones’ affective responses. The central hypothesis is that emotional consciousness – being self-aware that you are currently in a particular emotional state – and emotion regulation share the same underlying brain mechanisms/networks. In addition, it is argued that the more appropriate dichotomy, in regard to non-adaptive and adaptive emotion regulation strategies, is dependent on whether they are unconscious or conscious (respectively), positing a two-system framework of emotion regulation. Evidence for the proposed framework draws and builds off of recent theories of higher-order emotional consciousness (LeDoux & …

Communication - Electrocatalytic Coupling Of Methane At Platinum Oxide Electrodes In Superacids, Guangfang Li, Yuxin Fang, Christopher Arges, Craig Plaisance, John Flake

Faculty Publications

Electrochemical oxidation of methane in the absence of chemical oxidants offers the potential to directly synthesize high value hydrocarbons at low temperatures. Experimental results demonstrate methane oxidization at oxidized Pt electrodes in liquid superacid electrolytes. Ethane and ethylene are observed as products under chronoamperometric experiments at room temperature. Faradaic efficiencies for C2 products range from 5% to 25% at anodic potentials between 0.8 to 1.4 V vs RHE. A generalized Lewis-acid Pt2+ mechanism including methylidene coupling is proposed.

Unprepared To Be Culturally Responsive: An Examination Of Secondary Esl Educators In Rural Louisiana, Danielle Marie Butcher

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the problem of instructing English learners in a rural Louisiana district. The following questions guided this study: (1) How do the teachers perceive their pre-service and in-service training for English learners?, (2) How do the teachers perceive their ability to implement culturally responsive pedagogical practices for English learners?, (3) How do the teachers perceive the district’s approach to tangible, informational, and emotional supports for English learners?, and (4) What are the teachers’ perceptions, if any, of sociocultural inequities faced by English learners? And how, if any, do these sociocultural inequities affect the …

Liability Of The Structural Engineer: Establishing, Quantifying, And Managing Risks, Justin Thomas Ittmann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Liability is an important topic to all practicing professionals—including practicing engineers. However, the topic of liability does not receive the necessary attention required relative to other professions. Further, engineers that desire to learn more about liability in relation to their practice do not have many university options within an engineering curriculum or from outside materials available to a non-legally trained engineer. The goal of the study is to provide a comprehensive overview of liability directed towards an intelligent practicing engineer, while avoiding unnecessary over-simplification of the material. This study initially provides an in depth survey of the legal standard of …

Obesity Medications In Development, Candida J. Rebello, Frank L. Greenway

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Introduction: Obesity is compounded by a neurobiology that is resistant to weight loss. Therefore, the development of pharmacotherapies to address the pathology underlying the dysregulation of energy homeostasis is critical. Areas covered: This review examines selected clinical trial evidence for the pharmacologic treatment of obesity and provides an expert opinion on anti-obesity drug development. The article includes the outcomes of anti-obesity medications that have been evaluated in clinical trials but have not yet received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The mechanisms of action of glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists and co-agonists, diabetes medications being investigated for weight loss, and …

Role Of Delta-Front Erosion In Sustaining Salt Marshes Under Sea-Level Rise And Fluvial Sediment Decline, S.L. Yang, X. Luo, S. Temmerman, M. Kirwan, T. Bouma, K. Xu, S. Zhang, J. Fan, B. Shi

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Taxonomic Resolution Affects Host-Parasite Association Model Performance, Tad A. Dallas, Daniel J. Becker

Faculty Publications

© 2020 Georg Thieme Verlag. All rights reserved. Identifying the factors that structure host-parasite interactions is fundamental to understand the drivers of species distributions and to predict novel cross-species transmission events. More phylogenetically related host species tend to have more similar parasite associations, but parasite specificity may vary as a function of transmission mode, parasite taxonomy, or life history. Accordingly, analyses that attempt to infer host-parasite associations using combined data on different parasite groups may perform quite differently relative to analyses on each parasite subset. In essence, are more data always better when predicting host-parasite associations, or does parasite taxonomic …

The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, And The Fate Of The Confederacy, Chris Mackowski

Civil War Book Review

The cover of Christian Keller’s latest book, The Great Partnership, features a Mort Künstler painting titled Tactics and Strategy. A fatherly Robert E. Lee, seated on a crackerbox, rests a bare hand on the gloved forearm of Stonewall Jackson, crouching beside him and looking attentively at his commander. The 2002 painting captures a key moment in their partnership: the campfire-lit evening of May 1, 1863, at Chancellorsville. The painting’s title suggests their relationship: Jackson the tactician and Lee the strategist.

Sustainable Collaborative Innovation Between Research Institutions And Seed Enterprises In China, Xi Yu, Krishna P. Paudel, Dongmei Li, Xiaolei Xiong, Yanyu Gong

Faculty Publications

© 2020 by the authors. Public research institutions are encouraged to engage in industry sustainable collaboration in China. We develop an analytical framework based on the factor-process-outputs model and use a mechanism model by incorporating four elements (innovation climate, strategic partnership, collaborative mechanism, and the degree of participation) associated with the research institutions and industry collaboration. Using data collected from a face-to-face interview survey of 533 experts located at research institutions in seven Chinese provinces and one municipality who have collaborated with the seed industry, we use a structural equation model to identify important factors that affect innovation behavior. Results …