Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Breastfeeding Knowledge, Attitudes And Intention Among Adult Female Undergraduate And Graduate Students, Kritee Niroula

LSU Master's Theses

This study measured the breastfeeding knowledge, attitude and intention of adult female students of Louisiana State University. Participants (n=1039; mean age 20.12 ± 3.122 years) were recruited to complete the questionnaire. Racial/ethnic representation was White (76.1%), African American (14.3%), Asian (5.5%), American Indian/ Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander (0.8%) and Multi-racial (3.3%). The questionnaire was used to deliver a set of knowledge, attitude and intention items. Participants were evaluated based on their scores in each section. The questionnaire was pilot tested among five students for comprehensibility and understandability and necessary changes were made according to their suggestions. The …

Investigating Leadership Styles Of Childcare Directors, Michelle P. Grantham-Caston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this study was to contribute to the literature on childcare director’s leadership styles and director’s self-perception. For leaders in childcare to be effective they must possess skills, characteristics, and traits of effective leadership which have been identified in the seminal literature of Bass (1995) and Burns (1979). This quantitative study examined early childhood leaders self-identification with the leadership styles in The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1995) as well as other demographic variables which could contribute to early childhood leaders’ self-perception of leadership styles. This study was to break apart the three overarching leadership styles …

Data-Driven And Model-Based Methods With Physics-Guided Machine Learning For Damage Identification, Zhiming Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has been widely used for structural damage diagnosis and prognosis of a wide range of civil, mechanical, and aerospace structures. SHM methods are generally divided into two categories: (1) model-based methods; (2) data-driven methods. Compared with data-driven SHM, model-based methods provide an updated physics-based numerical model that can be used for damage prognosis when long-term data is available. However, the performance of model-based methods is susceptible to modeling error in establishing the numerical model, which is usually unavoidable due to model simplification and omission. The major challenge of data-driven SHM methods lies in data insufficiency, e.g., …

Predictions For The Cosmic Microwave Background From An Anisotropic Quantum Bounce, Ivan Agullo, Javier Olmedo, V. Sreenath

Faculty Publications

We introduce an extension of the standard inflationary paradigm on which the big bang singularity is replaced by an anisotropic bounce. Unlike in the big bang model, cosmological perturbations find an adiabatic regime in the past. We show that this scenario accounts for the observed quadrupolar modulation in the temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background, and we make predictions for the polarization angular correlation functions E-E, B-B, and E-B, together with temperature-polarization correlations T-B and T-E, that can be used to test our ideas. We base our calculations on the bounce predicted by loop quantum cosmology, but our techniques …

Search For Nova Presolar Grains: Γ -Ray Spectroscopy Of Ar 34 And Its Relevance For The Astrophysical Cl 33 (P,Γ) Reaction, A. R.L. Kennington, G. Lotay, D. T. Doherty, D. Seweryniak, C. Andreoiu, K. Auranen, M. P. Carpenter, W. N. Catford, C. M. Deibel, K. Hadyńska-Klȩk, S. Hallam, D. E.M. Hoff, T. Huang, R. V.F. Janssens, S. Jazrawi, J. José, F. G. Kondev, T. Lauritsen, J. Li, A. M. Rogers, J. Saiz, G. Savard, S. Stolze, G. L. Wilson, S. Zhu

Faculty Publications

The discovery of presolar grains in primitive meteorites has initiated a new era of research in the study of stellar nucleosynthesis. However, the accurate classification of presolar grains as being of specific stellar origins is particularly challenging. Recently, it has been suggested that sulfur isotopic abundances may hold the key to definitively identifying presolar grains with being of nova origins and, in this regard, the astrophysical Cl33(p,γ)Ar34 reaction is expected to play a decisive role. As such, we have performed a detailed γ-ray spectroscopy study of Ar34. Excitation energies have been measured with high precision and spin-parity assignments for resonant …

The Role Of An Educational Intervention In Addressing Parent Spectator Behaviors In Louisiana Youth Sports, Jerry F. Reynolds Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary youth sports environments present significant psychosocial challenges to the family system. Among the greatest challenges to address are spectator behaviors of parents, which in the public eye has deteriorated and is out of control. Spectator behaviors and their impact upon the sports environment and family system is the topic of investigation in this study. Within the state of Louisiana, the advent of Act 355 extends the consequences of parent behavior and presents challenges to families, referees, and sports organizations. To better understand how legislation impacts parent perceptions of their spectator behaviors, the author examined spectator behaviors parents are observing, …

Transcriptomic Analysis Of Extracellular Rna Governed By The Endocytic Adaptor Protein Cin1 Of Cryptococcus Deneoformans, Muxing Liu, Zhengguang Zhang, Chen Ding, Tuo Wang, Ben Kelly, Ping Wang

Faculty Publications

© Copyright © 2020 Liu, Zhang, Ding, Wang, Kelly and Wang. Membrane vesicles are considered virulence cargoes as they carry capsular and melanin components whose secretory transport is critical for the virulence of the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus species. However, other components of the vesicles and their function in the growth and virulence of the fungus remain unclear. We have previously found that the cryptococcal intersectin protein Cin1 governs a unique Cin1-Wsp1-Cdc42 endocytic pathway required for intracellular transport and virulence. Using RNA sequencing, we compared the profiles of extracellular RNA (exRNA), including microRNA (miRNA), small interference RNA (siRNA), long noncoding …

Mitochondrial Utilization Of Competing Fuels Is Altered In Insulin Resistant Skeletal Muscle Of Non-Obese Rats (Goto-Kakizaki), Nicola Lai, Ciarán E. Fealy, Chinna M. Kummitha, Silvia Cabras, John P. Kirwan, Charles L. Hoppel

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

Aim: Insulin-resistant skeletal muscle is characterized by metabolic inflexibility with associated alterations in substrate selection, mediated by peroxisome-proliferator activated receptor δ (PPARδ). Although it is established that PPARδ contributes to the alteration of energy metabolism, it is not clear whether it plays a role in mitochondrial fuel competition. While nutrient overload may impair metabolic flexibility by fuel congestion within mitochondria, in absence of obesity defects at a mitochondrial level have not yet been excluded. We sought to determine whether reduced PPARδ content in insulin-resistant rat skeletal muscle of a non-obese rat model of T2DM (Goto-Kakizaki, GK) ameliorate the inhibitory effect …

Current Practices And Infrastructure For Open Data Based Research On Occupant-Centric Design And Operation Of Buildings, Mikkel B. Kjærgaard, Omid Ardakanian, Salvatore Carlucci, Bing Dong, Steven K. Firth, Nan Gao, Gesche Margarethe Huebner, Ardeshir Mahdavi, Mohammad Saiedur Rahaman, Flora D. Salim, Fisayo Caleb Sangogboye, Jens Hjort Schwee, Dawid Wolosiuk, Yimin Zhu

Faculty Publications

Many new tools for improving the design and operation of buildings try to realize the potential of big data. In particular, data is an important element for occupant-centric design and operation as occupants’ presence and actions are affected by a high degree of uncertainty and, hence, are hard to model in general. For such research, data handling is an important challenge, and following an open science paradigm based on open data can increase efficiency and transparency of scientific work. This article reviews current practices and infrastructure for open data-driven research on occupant-centric design and operation of buildings. In particular, it …

Hamiltonian Theory Of Classical And Quantum Gauge Invariant Perturbations In Bianchi I Spacetimes, Ivan Agullo, Javier Olmedo, V. Sreenath

Faculty Publications

We derive a Hamiltonian formulation of the theory of gauge invariant, linear perturbations in anisotropic Bianchi I spacetimes, and describe how to quantize this system. The matter content is assumed to be a minimally coupled scalar field with potential V(φ). We show that a Bianchi I spacetime generically induces both anisotropies and quantum entanglement on cosmological perturbations, and provide the tools to compute the details of these features. We then apply this formalism to a scenario in which the inflationary era is preceded by an anisotropic Bianchi I phase, and discuss the potential imprints in observable quantities. The formalism developed …

Taylor Expansions And Castell Estimates For Solutions Of Stochastic Differential Equations Driven By Rough Paths, Qi Feng, Xuejing Zhang

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Cultural Heritage And User Interface Design, Narges Tavakoli

LSU Master's Theses

This study centers around localizing the user interface and experience design of digital products considering the culture of the audience and their visual heritage. Even though it seems the internet has made the distance between developing and advanced countries less than before, there are still fundamental differences between people’s beliefs and expectations. As a graphic designer who is based in The United States and is from Iran, I noticed the digital products (web, mobile applications) produced in Iran disregard the Iranian’s specific needs and emulate western patterns. So, I researched the dissimilarities between the two countries by using Greet Hofstede’s …

Estimating The Onset And Extent Of Dieback Of Phragmites Australis Using The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index And Remotely Sensed Land Cover Classifications, Aimee M. Beaudette

LSU Master's Theses

Phragmites australis is cosmopolitan plant species with an invasive variety present throughout most of North America. In the Balize Delta, Louisiana, USA, P. australis plays an important role in combatting subsidence, maintaining navigation channels, and protecting interior fish and wildlife habitat from waves and storm surge. In 2016 a dieback of P. australis was reported by wetland managers, coinciding with the appearance of an invasive Asian scale insect (Nipponaclerda biwakoensis), though the specific cause is still unknown. Two previous efforts attempted to identify the onset of dieback conditions met with limited success. Using Landsat images from 1985 to …

Coastal Taxodium Distichum Growth Responses To Marine Influences And Stand Density, Stephanie Moothart

LSU Master's Theses

Ecological processes controlling transition areas of coastal wetlands between marshes (not forested) and swamps (forested) are poorly understood, despite important ecosystem services provided and strong interest in managing for ecosystem structure and function. The objective of this work was to identify how soil chemistry and stand density control individual-tree growth of the important coastal species baldcypress (Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich.) and pondcypress (Taxodium distichum var. imbricarium (Nutt.) Croom) along a coastal salinity gradient. Tree cores, soil samples, and stand density measurements were collected for sixty cypress trees at the coastal Joyce Wildlife Management Area, Louisiana, which is a …

A Comprehensive Examination Of Clinical Cutoff Scores For The Inventory Of Callous-Unemotional Traits (Icu), Emily C. Kemp

LSU Master's Theses

Youth with elevated callous-unemotional (CU) traits represent a clinically important subgroup of youth who display particularly severe conduct problems and antisocial behavior and thusly impose great costs to themselves, other individuals, and society. The recent addition of the specifier for CU traits, “with Limited Prosocial Emotions (LPE),” to major classification systems has prompted the need for comprehensive and valid assessment tools that aid in the identification of these traits. One such tool is a multi-informant questionnaire, the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU). However, a major limitation of this measure is a lack of well-validated cutoff scores. With this, the present …

Design, Synthesis And Characterization Of New Superconductors, Xin Gui

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Design and synthesis of new materials are a long-standing goal for chemistry, physics and material science, especially those with intriguing properties such as magnetism and superconductivity. With consideration and incorporation of the highlights in some existing design rules, we successfully designed and discovered the superconductivity in BaPt₂Bi₂, SrSnP and Yb_xPt₅P.

With the help of valence electron counting method, we synthesized a new intermetallic compound, BaIr₂Ge₂, which was then found to be non-superconducting above 1.8 K. Thus, we considered both valence electron counting and chemical pressure adjustment to reach …

Characterization Of Bacterial And Fungal Assemblages From Historically Contaminated Metalliferous Soils Using Metagenomics Coupled With Diffusion Chambers And Microbial Traps, Ashish Pathak, Rajneesh Jaswal, Xiaoyu Xu, John R. White, Bobby Edwards, Jaden Hunt, Scott Brooks, Rajesh Singh Rathore, Meenakshi Agarwal, Ashvini Chauhan

Faculty Publications

The majority of environmental microbiomes are not amenable to cultivation under standard laboratory growth conditions and hence remain uncharacterized. For environmental applications, such as bioremediation, it is necessary to isolate microbes performing the desired function, which may not necessarily be the fast growing or the copiotroph microbiota. Toward this end, cultivation and isolation of microbial strains using diffusion chambers (DC) and/or microbial traps (MT) have both been recently demonstrated to be effective strategies because microbial enrichment is facilitated by soil nutrients and not by synthetically defined media, thus simulating their native habitat. In this study, DC/MT chambers were established using …

Sediment Transport And Geomorphological Evolution In The Transgressive Ship Shoal, Louisiana: Insights From Geophysical Observation, Modeling, And Machine Learning Studies, Haoran Liu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Ship Shoal has been a high-priority target sand resource for dredging activities to restore the eroding barrier islands in Louisiana, USA. Many studies have been performed in Ship Shoal in recent decades, but our knowledge of temporal and spatial variations of sediment transport and post-dredge morphology is still limited. The objectives of this dissertation are to explore the sediment infilling process, the spatial and temporal evolution of the morphology of dredge pits near and on Ship Shoal by using multiple methods. Scientific methods used in this study include (a) geophysical observation using bathymetry, side-scan and subbottom technique, (b) sediment transport …

A Component Analysis Of Implementation Planning: Examining Mechanisms That Underlie A Teacher Implementation Support Strategy, James Jaran Upright

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

To maximize instructional time, teachers must be able to effectively manage student behavior. However, surveys consistently reveal that a significant portion of teachers feel underprepared to address challenging classroom behavior. One of the most effective ways to reduce problem behaviors in school is with systematic classroom management strategies, such as the good behavior game. However, teachers often struggle to effectively implement such procedures. Promising evidence has emerged for implementation planning as an effective support strategy to improve teachers’ intervention implementation. Implementation planning is a one-time consultation process for intervention procedure planning (action planning) and identification and resolution of implementation barriers …

Small Revelations, Christopher Burns

LSU Master's Theses

Small Revelations is a photographic project that recontextualizes images of historic churches found in areas of the United States that have a colonial history. The images in this series subvert and critique the symbolic importance of these structures by interrupting the inherent power found in their architecture. They achieve this subversion through the careful use of color, composition and photographic imperfection. This project builds its argument with visual decisions inspired and validated by work within the art historical canon. Small Revelations is a thesis project produced as the final requirement of Louisiana State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio …

Characterizing Middle School Students’ Physical Literacy: A Sequential Mixed Methods Study, Yang Liu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation study was (a) to characterize middle school students’ levels of physical literacy (PL) and PL domains by gender, grade, socioeconomic status (SES), weight status, race, and ethnicity; and (b) to capture PL trajectory change as a result of receiving a theory-informed pedagogical workshop. Participants (N = 350) in sixth and seventh grades were recruited from a public middle school located in a southeastern U.S. state. These students completed the second version of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL-2). A subsample (n = 49) received a pedagogical workshop (four sessions over eight weeks), …

Data-Driven Modeling And Prediction For Reservoir Characterization And Simulation Using Seismic And Petrophysical Data Analyses, Xu Zhou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the application of data-driven modeling and prediction in reservoir characterization and simulation using seismic and petrophysical data analyses. Different aspects of the application of data-driven modeling methods are studied, which include rock facies classification, seismic attribute analyses, petrophysical properties prediction, seismic facies segmentation, and reservoir dimension reduction.

The application of using petrophysical well logs to predict rock facies is explored using different data analytics methods including decision tree, random forest, support vector machine and neural network. Different models are trained from a set of well logs and pre-interpreted rock facies data. Among the compared methods, the random …

Probing Counterion Condensation Phenomena In Nanostructured Thin Film Block Copolymer And Random Copolymer Electrolytes, Qi Lei

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation describes advanced metrology and molecular dynamics simulations for quantifying counterion condensation in block copolymer electrolyte thin films. The fraction of condensed counterions (f_c) were quantified in nanostructured block copolymer electrolyte (BCE) and random copolymer electrolyte (RCE) thin films with new and established experimental techniques. The transition between the osmotic-controlled regime and condensation-controlled regime in BCEs and RCEs was identified using solution uptake measurements via a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and environmental grazing incidence small-angle x-ray scattering (GI-SAXS). The activity coefficients of ions in thin film were quantified experimentally and these values matched predictions from Manning’s Theory …

A Study On The Improvement Of Data Collection In Data Centers And Its Analysis On Deep Learning-Based Applications, Dipak Kumar Singh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Big data are usually stored in data center networks for processing and analysis through various cloud applications. Such applications are a collection of data-intensive jobs which often involve many parallel flows and are network bound in the distributed environment. The recent networking abstraction, coflow, for data parallel programming paradigm to express the communication requirements has opened new opportunities to network scheduling for such applications. Therefore, I propose coflow based network scheduling algorithm, Coflourish, to enhance the job completion time for such data-parallel applications, in the presence of the increased background traffic to mimic the cloud environment infrastructure. It outperforms …

Erratum: Synthesis Of Functionalized Tetrahydropyransviacascade Cycloaddition Involving Silyloxyallyl Cation Intermediates (Chem. Commun. (2020) 56 (5034–5037) Doi: 10.1039/D0cc01796e), Fatimat O. Badmus, Joshua A. Malone, Frank R. Fronczek, Rendy Kartika

Faculty Publications

© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020. The authors regret that the title of the original article was incorrect, with the word ‘‘tetrahydrobenzofurans’’ changed to ‘‘tetrahydropyrans’’ in error. The correct title is ‘‘Synthesis of functionalized tetrahydrobenzofurans via cascade cycloaddition involving silyloxyallyl cation intermediates’’. The Royal Society of Chemistry apologises for these errors and any consequent inconvenience to authors and readers.

Axisymmetric Gravity In Real Ashtekar Variables: The Quantum Theory, Rodolfo Gambini, Esteban Mato, Jorge Pullin

Faculty Publications

In a previous paper we formulated axisymmetric general relativity in terms of real Ashtekar-Barbero variables. Here we proceed to quantize the theory. We are able to implement Thiemann's version of the Hamiltonian constraint. This provides a 2 + 1 dimensional arena to test ideas for the dynamics of quantum gravity and opens the possibility of quantum studies of rotating black hole spacetimes.

Insights Into Desiccation Tolerance: Properties Of Late Embryogenesis Abundant Proteins From Embryos Of Artemia Franciscana, Blase Matthew Leblanc

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

LEA proteins are a family of intrinsically disordered proteins that are expressed in various life stages of anhydrobiotic organisms and have been strongly associated with survival during water stress. The brine shrimp Artemia franciscana is the only known anhydrobiotic animal that expresses LEA proteins from Groups 1, 3, and 6. Here, I report that AfrLEA6, a novel Group 6 LEA protein, is most highly expressed in embryos during diapause and decreases throughout pre-emergence development. Notably, there is an acute drop in expression upon termination of the diapause state and the titer of AfrLEA6 during diapause is 10-fold lower than values …

Bernard Palissy: Early Career - Securing Patronage And Mimicking Nature In A Moment Of Crisis, Karissa Bailey

LSU Master's Theses

Early in 1562, France was experiencing a state of high religious tension between Protestants and Catholics that would precipitate the outbreak of the Religious Wars on March 1. A week before, Bernard Palissy, a Huguenot potter, wrote a letter to his Catholic patron from prison inBordeaux where he was being held on charges associated with an iconoclastic incident in his home city of Saintes. This letter would later be published as a dedication letter for the pamphlet Architecture et Ordonnance, which featured the description of a grotto commissioned by Anne de Montmorency, Palissy’s patron, seven years earlier. This thesis analyzes …

The Road To The Presidency: A Case Study Of Hbcu Organizational Culture And Its Impact On The Career Progression Of Women Of Color, Akai Crystal Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The American workforce is currently experiencing an increased level of diversity in comparison to previous decades due to augmented representation of people of different races, socio-economic backgrounds and genders across sectors (Warner, 2014). However, there is one variable that has remained largely unchanged, the underrepresentation of African American women in executive positions in higher education institutions (Cook & Cordova (2007). Data suggests despite women’s advancement in areas of public life over the last thirty years, in higher education administration they still significantly lag behind their male counterparts. Researchers note that minority women face multiple barriers to their ability to obtain …

Analytical Setup Margin For Spinal Sbrt Based On Measured Errors, Audrey Copeland

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: No consensus currently exists in the radiotherapy community about the correct margin size to use for spinal SBRT. Margins have been proposed to account for various errors individually, but not with all errors combined to result in a single margin value. The purpose of this work was to determine a setup margin for spinal SBRT based on known and measurable errors during radiotherapy to achieve at least 90% coverage of the clinical target volume (CTV) with the prescription dose for at least 90% of patients and not exceed a 30 Gy point dose or 23 Gy to 10% of …