Digital Commons Network^™

Pause For Reflection: Musings From The Editorial Team, Rajashi Ghosh, Stefanos Nachmias, David Mcguire, Ague Mae Manongsong, Alene Montgomery

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Advancing Health Equity: The Role Of A Community–Academic–Public Health–Practice (Capp) Partnership In Addressing Covid-19 Disparities In Louisiana, John Mcclure, Lee Mendoza, Theresa Sokol, Davondra Brown, Thomas Laveist, Sandra Brown, Erin Peacock, La Keisha Williams, David Mushatt, Peter Katzmarzyk, Daniel Sarpong, Marie Krousel-Wood

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

We assessed the impact of an innovative Louisiana community–academic–public health–practice (CAPP) partnership in addressing COVID-19–associated Black–White vaccination disparities over 19 months. Initially (April 2021), the cumulative vaccinations for Black versus White Louisianans were 54 542 per 100 000 versus 62 435 per 100 000, respectively. By October 2022, cumulative vaccinations for Black versus White Louisianans were 142 437 per 100 000 versus 132 488 per 100 000, respectively. The vaccination equity score increased from 908 out of 1000 in April 2021 to 942 out of 1000 in October 2022. CAPP partnership efforts contributed to addressing initial Black–White COVID-19 vaccination disparities. …

Reproducible Brain Pet Data Analysis: Easier Said Than Done, Maryam Naseri, Sreekrishna Ramakrishnapillai, Owen T. Carmichael

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

While a great deal of recent effort has focused on addressing a perceived reproducibility crisis within brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional MRI research communities, this article argues that brain positron emission tomography (PET) research stands on even more fragile ground, lagging behind efforts to address MRI reproducibility. We begin by examining the current landscape of factors that contribute to reproducible neuroimaging data analysis, including scientific standards, analytic plan pre-registration, data and code sharing, containerized workflows, and standardized processing pipelines. We then focus on disparities in the current status of these factors between brain MRI and brain PET. …

2023 Ecei Annual Report, Lsu Early Childhood Education Institute

Early Childhood Education Institute Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Mapping Literature In The Age Of Ai, Virginia Ramos

Comparative Woman

"Mapping literature in the age of AI" discusses the concept of "mapping", from its historical meaning to its technological meaning in the field of literature and AI tools developed in recent years and designed to "map literature". The article addresses ethics, biases, and the issue of human capacities vis a vis machine capacities, in support of the critical and crucial value of the humanities and their unavoidable relationship with GenAI.

Challenges And Opportunities In Sustainability Reporting: A Focus On Small And Medium Enterprises (Smes), Santi Setyaningsih, Rosita Widjojo, Peter Kelle

Faculty Publications

The purpose of the study was to observe how Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) struggle to develop the sustainability reports that are today important and required by consumers. The rationale is that the sustainability report is influenced by governance practices, social responsibility, and environmental impact. The research successfully summarizes the barriers from 37 influential sustainability report papers by employing a thorough systematic literature review. It was based on 6 well-known databases with the limitation of exclusion criteria such as 11 years of research (2012–2023), used English, and more than 4 pages articles. According to the findings of this literature review …

Algebraic And Geometric Properties Of A Family Of Rational Curves, J. William Hoffman, Haohao Wang

Faculty Publications

This paper consists of two components - an application part and a theoretical part, where the former targets the applications of computer aided geometric designs in generating parametric curves, and the latter focuses on the algebraic analysis of rational space curves. At the application level, we construct a family of rational space curves via quaternion products of two generating curves. At the theoretical level, we use algebraic methods to extract a µ-basis for this family of curves, and describe a basis for a special submodule of the syzygy module in terms of a µ-basis for the syzygy module of this …

Promoting Equity And Addressing Concerns In Teaching And Learning With Artificial Intelligence, Jennifer Garcia Ramos, Zakiya Wilson-Kennedy

Faculty Publications

This perspective article focuses on the exploration and advocacy of approaches to be considered in designing equitable learning experiences for students’ use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technology through the Universal Design for Learning Framework (UDL) exemplifying chemistry examples that can be applied to any course in STEM. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are causing disruptions within learning in higher education and is also casting a spotlight on systemic inequities particularly affecting minoritized groups broadly and in STEM fields. Particularly, the emergence of AI has focused on inequities toward minoritized students in academic and professional …

Efficacious Qubit Mappings For Quantum Simulations Of The 12c Rotational Band, Darin C. Mumma, Zhonghao Sun, Alexis Mercenne, Kristina D. Launey, Soorya Rethinasamy, James A. Sauls

Faculty Publications

Solving atomic nuclei from first principles places enormous demands on computational resources, which grow exponentially with increasing number of particles and the size of the space they occupy. We present first quantum simulations based on the variational quantum eigensolver for the low-lying structure of the ¹²C nucleus that provide acceptable bound-state energies even in the presence of noise. We achieve this by taking advantage of two critical developments. First, we utilize an almost perfect symmetry of atomic nuclei that, in a complete symmetry-adapted basis, drastically reduces the size of the model space. Second, we use the efficacious Gray encoding, …

The Beta-Decay Paul Trap Mk Iv: Design And Commissioning, L. Varriano, G. Savard, J. A. Clark, D. P. Burdette, M. T. Burkey, A. T. Gallant, T. Y. Hirsh, B. Longfellow, N. D. Scielzo, R. Segel, E. J. Boron, M. Brodeur, N. Callahan, A. Cannon, K. Kolos, B. Liu, S. Lopez-Caceres, M. Gott, B. Maaß, S. T. Marley, C. Mohs, G. E. Morgan, P. Mueller, M. Oberling, P. D. O'Malley, W. S. Porter, Z. Purcell, D. Ray, F. Rivero, A. A. Valverde, G. L. Wilson, R. Zite

Faculty Publications

The Beta-decay Paul Trap is an open-geometry, linear trap used to measure the decays of ⁸Li and ⁸B to search for a tensor contribution to the weak interaction. In the latest ⁸Li measurement of Burkey et al. (2022), β scattering was the dominant experimental systematic uncertainty. The Beta-decay Paul Trap Mk IV reduces the prevalence of β scattering by a factor of 4 through a redesigned electrode geometry and the use of glassy carbon and graphite as electrode materials. The trap has been constructed and successfully commissioned with ⁸Li in a new data campaign that collected …

The African Light Source: History, Context And Future, Simon H. Connell, Kathleen Dollman, Gihan Kamel, Sameen A. Khan, Edward Mitchell, Sekazi K. Mtingwa, Marcus C. Newton, Prosper Ngabonziza, Emmanuel Nji, Lawrence Norris, Michele Zema

Faculty Publications

The African Light Source (AfLS) project is now almost eight years old. This article assesses the history, current context and future of the project. There is by now considerable momentum in building the user community, including deep training, facilitating access to current facilities, growing the scientific output, scientific networks and growing the local laboratory-scale research infrastructure. The Conceptual Design Report for the AfLS is in its final editing stages. This document specifies the socio-economic and scientific rationales and the technical aspects amongst others. The AfLS is supported by many national and Pan-African scientific professional bodies and voluntary associates across many …

A Nonlinear Least-Squares Convexity Enforcing C0 Interior Penalty Method For The Monge–Ampère Equation On Strictly Convex Smooth Planar Domains, Susanne C. Brenner, Li Yeng Sung, Zhiyu Tan, Hongchao Zhang

Faculty Publications

We construct a nonlinear least-squares finite element method for com­puting the smooth convex solutions of the Dirichlet boundary value problem of the Monge-Ampère equation on strictly convex smooth domains in R². It is based on an isoparametric C⁰ finite element space with exotic degrees of freedom that can enforce the convexity of the approximate solutions. A priori and a posteriori error estimates together with corroborating numerical results are presented.

Lsu Fall Facts, 2024, Lsu Office Of Data & Strategic Analytics

Fall Facts

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Holistic Mentoring Ecosystems In Mitigating Covid-19 Pandemic Impacts On The Persistence Of Low-Income Stem Students, Raeshan D. Davis, Zakiya S. Wilson-Kennedy

Faculty Publications

Holistic mentoring ecosystems are a comprehensive approach to addressing the diverse needs of students through interconnected support networks. While mentoring has been well-documented in existing literature, more research is needed to determine the effectiveness of mentoring ecosystems in mitigating the impact of critical junctures for vulnerable, high-attrition student populations. Guided by Tinto’s model of retention, this qualitative case study investigated the role of holistic mentoring ecosystems in mitigating the impacts of the two combined critical junctures—the COVID-19 pandemic and the first year of college—on low-income STEM undergraduates. Our findings suggest that holistic mentoring ecosystems were essential in helping students adjust …

Lsu General Catalog 2024-2025, 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.

Molecular And Cellular Programs Underlying The Development Of Bovine Pre-Implantation Embryos, Zongliang Jiang

Faculty Publications

Early embryonic mortality is a major cause of infertility in cattle, yet the underlying molecular causes remain a mystery. Over the past half century, assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation and somatic cell nuclear transfer have been used to improve cattle reproductive efficiency; however, reduced embryo developmental potential is seen compared to their in vivo counterparts. Recent years have seen exciting progress across bovine embryo research, including genomic profiling of embryogenesis, new methods for improving embryo competence, and experimenting on building bovine embryos from stem cell cultures. These advances are beginning to define bovine embryo molecular and cellular …

Louisiana Survey 2024, Lsu Reilly Center For Media & Public Affairs

Reilly Center Louisiana Surveys

The 2024 Louisiana Survey is the latest in an annual series of statewide surveys from 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 weights in the analysis …

Motor Problems In Autism: Co-Occurrence Or Feature?, Haylie L. Miller, Melissa K. Licari, Anjana Bhat, Lisa S. Aziz-Zadeh, Tine Van Damme, Nicholas E. Fears, Sharon A. Cermak, Priscila M. Tamplain

Faculty Publications

Motor features of autism have long been acknowledged by clinicians, researchers, and community stakeholders. Current DSM-5 and ICD-11 guidelines allow clinicians to assign a co-occurring diagnosis of developmental [motor] coordination disorder (DCD) for autistic individuals with significant motor problems. DCD is characterized by poor motor proficiency with an onset of symptoms in early development. Studies have shown considerable overlap in the behavioral motor features observed in autism and DCD. However, others indicate that motor problems in autism and DCD may stem from different underlying sensorimotor mechanisms. Regardless of whether autism has a unique motor phenotype or an overlap with DCD, …

Editorial: Digital Technology In The Management And Prevention Of Diabetes, Yun Shen, Xiantong Zou, Gang Hu

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Aftermath Of The 2019 Pulwama Terror Attack–Religion, Nationalism And Exclusion In Online News Comment Sections, Nihar Sreepada, Ioana Coman

Faculty Publications

This study analyses the Indian and Pakistani publics reactions of the extensive coverage of the Pulwama terror attack, through an analysis of the online comments appearing at the end of the news stories covering the attack from the two leading English newspapers: Times of India (TOI) (India), and Dawn (D) (Pakistan). A qualitative content analysis is performed to compare and examine this dialogue emerging in the news comments sections. Findings are explored and discussed through conceptualizations of religion, nationalism, and a social psychological perspective towards exclusion of out-groups.

De Francisco Sales A Ilan Stavans: Apuntes Sobre Mediación Y Cultura En La Adaptación Y Traducción De Don Quijote En Los Estados Unidos De América, Carmela V. Mattza

Faculty Publications

This communication examines the translation and adaptation of Don Quixote in the United States, focusing on editions in Spanish, English, and Spanglish. It highlights Ilan Stavans’ two graphic novels (2018), analyzing them in relation to the annotated edition by Francisco Sales (1836), a professor at Harvard College at the time, recognized as the first Spanish edition of Don Quixote published in the United States.

Accelerating L-Shaped Two-Stage Stochastic Scuc With Learning Integrated Benders Decomposition, Fouad Hasan, Amin Kargarian

Faculty Publications

Benders decomposition is widely used to solve large mixed-integer problems. This article takes advantage of machine learning and proposes a variant of Benders decomposition to tackle two-stage stochastic security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC). The problem is decomposed into a master problem (MP) and subproblems (SPs) corresponding to individual load scenarios. The primary objective is to mitigate computational expenses and memory consumption associated with Benders decomposition by generating tighter cuts and reducing the MP's dimensions. A regressor reads load profile scenarios and predicts objective function proxy values for the SPs, enabling the creation of tighter cuts for the MP. The numerical difference …

Optimizing Privacy And Utility Tradeoffs For Group Interests Through Harmonization, Bishwas Mandal, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

We propose a novel problem formulation to address the privacy-utility tradeoff, specifically when dealing with two distinct user groups characterized by unique sets of private and utility attributes. Unlike previous studies that primarily focus on scenarios where all users share identical private and utility attributes and often rely on auxiliary datasets or manual annotations, we introduce a collaborative data-sharing mechanism between two user groups through a trusted third party. This third party uses adversarial privacy techniques with our proposed data-sharing mechanism to internally sanitize data for both groups and eliminates the need for manual annotation or auxiliary datasets. Our methodology …

Communication-Efficient Admm Using Quantization-Aware Gaussian Process Regression, Aldo Duarte, Truong X. Nghiem, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

In networks consisting of agents communicating with a central coordinator and working together to solve a global optimization problem in a distributed manner, the agents are often required to solve private proximal minimization subproblems. Such a setting often requires a decomposition method to solve the global distributed problem, resulting in extensive communication overhead. In networks where communication is expensive, it is crucial to reduce the communication overhead of the distributed optimization scheme. Gaussian processes (GPs) are effective at learning the agents' local proximal operators, thereby reducing the communication between the agents and the coordinator. We propose combining this learning method …

Initial Exploration Of Zero-Shot Privacy Utility Tradeoffs In Tabular Data Using Gpt-4, Bishwas Mandal, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

We investigate the application of large language models (LLMs), specifically GPT-4, to scenarios involving the tradeoff between privacy and utility in tabular data. Our approach entails prompting GPT-4 by transforming tabular data points into textual format, followed by the inclusion of precise sanitization instructions in a zero-shot manner. The primary objective is to sanitize the tabular data in such a way that it hinders existing machine learning models from accurately inferring private features while allowing models to accurately infer utility-related attributes. We explore various sanitization instructions. Notably, we discover that this relatively simple approach yields performance comparable to more complex …

The Economics Of Privacy And Utility: Investment Strategies, Chandra Sharma, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

The inevitable leakage of privacy as a result of unrestrained disclosure of personal information has motivated extensive research on robust privacy-preserving mechanisms. However, existing research is mostly limited to solving the problem in a static setting with disregard for the privacy leakage over time. Unfortunately, this treatment of privacy is insufficient in practical settings where users continuously disclose their personal information over time resulting in an accumulated leakage of the users' sensitive information. In this paper, we consider privacy leakage over a finite time horizon and investigate optimal strategies to maximize the utility of the disclosed data while limiting the …

Performance Optimization Of Software-Defined Industrial Internet-Of-Things (Sd-Iiot), Jehad Ali, Celestine Iwendi, Gaoyang Shan, Hsiao Chun Wu, Mohammed J.F. Alenazi, Zaid Bin Faheem, Cresantus N. Biamba

Faculty Publications

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) offers a centralized network management approach that can effectively address the complex and varied traffic demands characteristic of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environments by decoupling the control plane from the data plane. The centralized control architecture of SDN necessitates the performance optimization of controllers to manage diverse traffic efficiently within IIoT applications. This paper explores the criteria for selecting controllers in SDN-enabled IIoT (SD-IIoT) environments, utilizing the Less Complex Analytic Network Process (LC-ANP) to establish their prioritization. A ranking system for SD-IIoT controllers is formulated using LC-ANP, and experimental validation of this method underscores its effectiveness …

Conning The Crypto Conman: End-To-End Analysis Of Cryptocurrency-Based Technical Support Scams, Bhupendra Acharya, Muhammad Saad, Antonio Emanuele Cinà, Lea Schönherr, Hoang Dai Nguyen, Adam Oest, Phani Vadrevu, Thorsten Holz

Faculty Publications

The mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in wallet-related issues reported by ordinary users on social media platforms. In parallel, there is an increase in an emerging fraud trend called cryptocurrency-based technical support scam, in which fraudsters offer fake wallet recovery services and target users experiencing wallet-related issues.In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study of cryptocurrency-based technical support scams. We present an analysis apparatus called HoneyTweet to analyze this kind of scam. Through HoneyTweet, we lure over 9K scammers by posting 25K fake wallet support tweets (so-called honey tweets). We then deploy automated systems to interact …

Vehicle Classification Technologies For Toll Collection, Samir Ahmed

Publications

Toll facilities (roads, bridges, and tunnels) are intended for revenue generation to pay off the long-term debt issued to finance construction, capacity expansion, operations, and maintenance of these facilities. Tolls are one form of a broad concept known as road pricing. In addition to revenue generation, road pricing is used for other reasons including transportation demand management to reduce peak hour travel and the recurring traffic congestion on some corridors. The aim of this study is to provide the tolling industry with detailed analysis of the suitability of various non‐ pavement‐intrusive vehicle classification technologies (imaging using radar, Lidar, thermal profiling, …

Automated Vehicle Impacts On Underserved Populations, Kate Kyung Hyun, Stephen Mattingly, Katie Kam

Publications

This research report describes the scenario framework created to determine the potential role automated vehicles (AVs) have in benefiting and adversely impacting the following underserved populations: people with disabilities and impairments (visually, hearing, physically, intellectually) and with autism spectrum disorder, younger and older populations, immigrants, low income, indigenous, rural, female and LGBTQ+, vulnerable road users (cyclists, pedestrians, low speed riders and drivers), and minority races. After presenting a literature review, three chapters explain the 3 modules of the framework: (1) scenario construction, (2) scenario factors, and (3) GIS methodology for evaluating community level AV impacts. Module 1 describes the use …