Digital Commons Network^™

Vehicle Sensing And Communications Using Led Headlights To Enhance The Performance Of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Proof Of Concept, Implementation, And Applications, Sabit Ekin, Samir Ahmed

Publications

This project investigates the use of vehicle light-emitting diode (LED) headlamp devices for improving the accuracy and reliability of traffic (sensing and communication) data measurements required for developing effective intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies and solutions. Vehicular communication and sensing technologies are mainly based on conventional radio frequency (RF) or laser technologies. These systems suffer from several issues such as RF interference and poor performance in scenarios where the incidence angle between the speed detector and the vehicle is rapidly varying. Introducing a new sensing technology will add diversity to these systems and enhance the reliability of the real-time data. …

Use Of Rice Husk Ash (Rha) In Flowable Fill Concrete Mix Material, Zahid Hossain, Kazi Tamzidul Islam

Publications

In the way of finding sustainable development, the flowable fill is a relatively new construction technology. Flowable fill is a self-compacting material, which has been developed in recent years. Flowable fill has been used for different applications such as backfilling walls, sewer trenches, bridge abutments, conduit trenches, pile excavations, and retaining walls. This study examines the potential uses of Rice Husk Ash (RHA) as a sustainable cementitious material (SCM) in the preparation of flowable fill concrete. (RHA is an agricultural by-product of the rice milling process. This study has evaluated the usage of RHA in producing low strength and self-consolidating …

Decision-Making Tool For Road Preventive Maintenance Using Vehicle Vibration Data, Changbum Ahn, Chao Wang, Jing Du

Publications

Automated and timely road pavement damage inspection is critical to the preventive maintenance and the long-term sustainability and resilience of roads in Region 6. Current road inspection practices rely heavily on a manual process. Sensor-based methods (e.g., LiDAR scanning) are promising but can be too expensive for a wider adoption. This study employs a crowdsourcing approach of using the vibration patterns of regular vehicles in inferring specific types of road damages. A cloud-based smart phone app and system was developed to collect real-time vehicle vibrations, location data, and road damage images for training the detection model. However, there is a …

Assessing The Impacts Of Super Storm Flooding In The Transportation Infrastructure – Case Study: San Antonio, Texas, Marcio Giacomoni, Francisco Olivera, Cesar Do Lago

Publications

Flooding are likely to increase worldwide due to climate change. Large storms, referred here as superstorms, defined as events with return period equal or larger than 100 years, can lead to an increase of property damages and loss of life. The ability to predict and plan for the impacts of superstorms on transportation infrastructure is key to mitigate future damages and losses. This study analyzed 51 combinations of future projections for representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, which were used to calculate future 1st and 3rd quartiles, median, minimum and maximum intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF). A HEC-HMS and GSSHA …

Developing Implementable Climatic Input Data And Moisture Boundary Conditions For Pavement Analysis And Design, Rifat Bulut, Amir Hossein Javid

Publications

The main objective of this study is to develop a practical and implementable numerical model for predicting the moisture (suction) regime within the pavement subgrade system. The research quality and uniformly-dispersed climate data over short distances from Oklahoma Mesonet and the Mitchell based moisture (suction) prediction methods establish the main background of the research study. The study involved numerical modeling and statistical analysis of climatic weather data. The proposed moisture variation model predicts the suction distribution throughout the soil subgrade by solving the diffusion equation and incorporates the measured suction from the Oklahoma Mesonet to estimate the diffusion coefficient. The …

Performance Study Of Link Slab Continuity In Prestressed Concrete Bridges, Marco Tulio Canales Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Link slabs in bridges can be a cost-effective solution to increase the service life of bridge structures. The partial continuity condition in link slab bridges, however can be challenging to quantify. In this work link slab performance is studied by means of a parametric study, a long-term Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) System, and a detailed finite-element model.

The parametric study was conducted using mathematical and a two-dimensional (2D) finite element model. The study considers bridge design factors such as number of spans, span length, span length ratio, girder separation, and temperature settings, in conjunction with the corresponding girder and support …

Extendibility Of Bosonic Gaussian States, Ludovico Lami, Sumeet Khatri, Gerardo Adesso, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

Extendibility of bosonic Gaussian states is a key issue in continuous-variable quantum information. We show that a bosonic Gaussian state is k-extendible if and only if it has a Gaussian k-extension, and we derive a simple semidefinite program, whose size scales linearly with the number of local modes, to efficiently decide k-extendibility of any given bosonic Gaussian state. When the system to be extended comprises one mode only, we provide a closed-form solution. Implications of these results for the steerability of quantum states and for the extendibility of bosonic Gaussian channels are discussed. We then derive upper bounds on the …

Incarcerated Workers And Inmate All-Hazard Firefighters In Emergency Response And Disasters: A Captive Labor Force, Jordan Carlee Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As disasters continue to increase both in frequency and in capacity for damage, the impacts of such events on incarcerated populations in the U.S. is becoming more apparent. The dependence of various states on the labor of prisoners to respond to major disasters such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, oil spills, and wildfires has become a focal point of discussions centering on mass incarceration, the rights of prisoners, and the future of criminal justice reform. The institutions and structures which make incarcerated workers vulnerable to disasters within the prison setting, also make them vulnerable as workers. They face life altering repercussions …

Small-Scale Production And Meaningful Work: Toward A Community Of Gift And Craft, Stephen Michael Wolfe

LSU Master's Theses

Productive labor is often treated as a means for various ends—for money, leisure, play, etc. This essay argues that work, depending its scale and its relation to community, can be worth doing for its own sake—as an end in itself. Meaningful work is meaning-investing activity. In small-scale production, which involves an intimate relation with the material and an application of practical skill, the producers can invest products with higher-order meaning, imbuing upon them their personhood by which they manifest themselves in public for recognition as persons qua workers and for the judgment of others concerning the goodness of the product. …

Current And Future Deposition Of Nitrogen And Sulfur In Louisiana, Jessica Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

Nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) are essential nutrients, however excess quantities can stress ecosystems. Atmospheric nitrogen and sulfur deposition lead to changes in water and soil chemistry, consequently resulting in ensuing detriment to multiple ecosystems such as acidification of water bodies. This affects a multitude of plants and animals such as trees, insects, and fish. Louisiana has copious natural water resources. Therefore, it is essential to safeguard its valuable resources from excess atmospheric N and S deposition. However, knowledge of N and S deposition and its unfavorable effects in the Southeast U.S., particularly Louisiana, is limited.

In this research, a …

Structure Of Mg 28 And Influence Of The Neutron Pf Shell, J. Williams, G. C. Ball, A. Chester, T. Domingo, A. B. Garnsworthy, G. Hackman, J. Henderson, R. Henderson, R. Krücken, Anil Kumar, K. D. Launey, J. Measures, O. Paetkau, J. Park, G. H. Sargsyan, J. Smallcombe, P. C. Srivastava, K. Starosta, C. E. Svensson, K. Whitmore, M. Williams

Faculty Publications

Gamma-ray spectroscopy and lifetime measurements using the Doppler shift attenuation method (DSAM) were performed on the nucleus Mg28 near the N=20 "island of inversion," which was populated using a C12(O18,2p)Mg28 fusion-evaporation reaction to investigate the impact of shell evolution on its high-lying structure. Three new levels were identified at 7203(3), 7747(2), and 7929.3(12) keV along with several new gamma rays. A newly extracted B(E2;41+→21+) of 42(7) e2fm4 indicates reduced collectivity in the yrast band at high spin, consistent with ab initio symmetry adapted no-core shell model (SA-NCSM) calculations. At high excitation energy, evidence for the population of intruder orbitals was …

Lsu Computational System Biology Gateway For Education, Eroma Abeysinghe, Michal Brylinski, Marcus Christie, Suresh Marru, Marlon Pierce

Faculty Publications

Science gateways are a mechanism for delivering scientific software as a service, especially when the software requires high performance computing (HPC) resources to run effectively. The existence of a science gateway eliminates the user’s need to learn to work with HPC systems and to manage software installations and updates. With well-designed user interfaces, users can more quickly become effective users of scientific applications and can manage information needed for replicating, modifying, and sharing results. All of these efficiency gains enable users to focus more on their research. In addition, science gateways are being identified as an effective educational tool, a …

Integrating Time-Series Sar Data And Oryza Crop Growth Model In Rice Area Mapping And Yield Estimation For Crop Insurances, S. Pazhanivelan, K. P. Ragunath, N. S. Sudarmanian, R. Kumaraperumal, Tri Setiyono, E. D. Quicho

Faculty Publications

Lowland rice in tropical and subtropical regions can be detected precisely and its crop growth can be tracked effectively through Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery, especially where cloud cover restricts the use of optical imagery. Parameterised classification with multi-temporal features derived from regularly acquired, C-band, VV and VH polarized Sentinel-1A SAR imagery was used for mapping rice area. A fully automated processing chain in MAPscape-Rice software was used to convert the multi-temporal SAR data into terrain-JHRFRGHG ı YDOXHV which included strip mosaicking, co-registration of images acquired with the same observation geometry and mode, time-series speckle filtering, terrain geocoding, radiometric calibration …

Correction To: Siah2 Modulates Sexdependent Metabolic And Inflammatory Responses In Adipose Tissue To A High-Fat Diet Challenge (Biology Of Sex Differences (2019) 10: 19 Doi: 10.1186/S13293-019-0233-Y), Sujoy Ghosh, Jessica L. Taylor, Tamra M. Mendoza, Thanh Dang, David H. Burk, Yongmei Yu, Gail Kilroy, Z. Elizabeth Floyd

Faculty Publications

© 2019 The Author(s). Following publication of the original article [1], the authors reported that Additional file 1 was incorrect. The corrected Additional file 1 is given below. Additional file Additional file 1 Related to Gene Expression Analysis. (XLSX 13 kb) .

Precise Measures Of Orbital Period, Before And After Nova Eruption For Qz Aurigae, Bradley E. Schaefer, David Boyd, Geoffrey C. Clayton, Juhan Frank, Christopher Johnson, Jonathan Kemp, Ashley Pagnotta, Joseph O. Patterson, Miguel Rodríguez Marco, Limin Xiao

Faculty Publications

For the ordinary classical nova QZ Aurigae (which erupted in 1964), we report 1317 magnitudes from 1912-2016, including four eclipses detected on archival photographic plates from long before the eruption.We have accurate and robust measures of the orbital period both pre-eruption and post-eruption, and we find that the orbital period decreased, with a fractional change of -290.71 ± 0.28 parts-per-million across the eruption, with the orbit necessarily getting smaller. Further, we find that the light curve outside of eclipses and eruption is flat at near B = 17.14 from 1912-1981, whereupon the average light curve starts fading down to B …

Optical And X-Ray Correlations During The 2015 Outburst Of The Black Hole V404 Cyg, R. I. Hynes, E. L. Robinson, D. M. Terndrup, P. Gandhi, C. S. Froning, R. M. Wagner, S. Starrfield, V. S. Dhillon, T. R. Marsh

Faculty Publications

We present a serendipitous multiwavelength campaign of optical photometry simultaneous with Integral X-ray monitoring of the 2015 outburst of the black hole V404 Cyg. Largeamplitude optical variability is generally correlated with X-rays, with lags of order a minute or less compatible with binary light travel time-scales or jet ejections. Rapid optical flaring on time-scales of seconds or less is incompatible with binary light-travel time-scales and has instead been associated with synchrotron emission from a jet. Both this rapid jet response and the lagged and smeared one can be present simultaneously. The optical brightness is not uniquely determined by the X-ray …

Implications Of Poultry Litter Usage For Electricity Production, Qiuzhou Ma, Krishna P. Paudel, Doleswar Bhandari, Chandra Theegala, Molly Cisneros

Faculty Publications

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Poultry litter has the potential to cause water quality problems if it is not applied properly to the land as a crop nutrient. Based on the data available from a survey of Louisiana poultry producers, we find that it is not cost effective to transport poultry litter farther than 38.6 km from the production facilities for crop nutrient purposes. This limited breakeven distance restricts the movement of poultry litter and points to a need to identify an alternative disposal method. We review common methods of producing electricity from poultry litter. We identify the minimum cost solution …

A Bayesian Adaptive Marker-Stratified Design For Molecularly Targeted Agents With Customized Hierarchical Modeling, Yong Zang, Beibei Guo, Yan Han, Sha Cao, Chi Zhang

Faculty Publications

It is well known that the treatment effect of a molecularly targeted agent (MTA) may vary dramatically, depending on each patient's biomarker profile. Therefore, for a clinical trial evaluating MTA, it is more reasonable to evaluate its treatment effect within different marker subgroups rather than evaluating the average treatment effect for the overall population. The marker-stratified design (MSD) provides a useful tool to evaluate the subgroup treatment effects of MTAs. Under the Bayesian framework, the beta-binomial model is conventionally used under the MSD to estimate the response rate and test the hypothesis. However, this conventional model ignores the fact that …

Attention As A Mechanism For Object-Object Binding In Complex Scenes, Kacie Mennie

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The current study attempted to determine whether direct binding between objects in complex scenes occurs as a function of directed attention at encoding. In Experiment 1, participants viewed objects in one of these different types contexts: unique scenes, similar scenes, or arrays with no contextual information. Critically, only half of the objects were attended for each encoding trial. Participants then completed an associative recognition task on pairs of items created from the previously studied scenes. Test pairs consisted of two attended or unattended objects, and were associated with a unique scene, a similar scene, or an array. Evidence of binding …

A Novel Privacy Disclosure Risk Measure And Optimizing Privacy Preserving Data Publishing Techniques, Marmar Orooji

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A tremendous amount of individual-level data is generated each day, with a wide variety of uses. This data often contains sensitive information about individuals, which can be disclosed by “adversaries”. Even when direct identifiers such as social security numbers are masked, an adversary may be able to recognize an individual's identity for a data record by looking at the values of quasi-identifiers (QID), known as identity disclosure, or can uncover sensitive attributes (SA) about an individual through attribute disclosure. In data privacy field, multiple disclosure risk measures have been proposed. These share two drawbacks: they do not consider identity and …

Mathematics Experiences Of Students Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired, Michaela Patricia Stone

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Historically, researchers studying mathematics education for students with visual impairment (SVI) have faced several challenges. Quantitative researchers are limited by small sample sizes and the need to adapt traditional research instruments for accessibility by SVI. Qualitative research, most often conducted by sighted researchers and relying on the perspectives of sighted educators, suffers from the absence of the voices of the SVI being studied. Overwhelmingly, research on the mathematics education of SVI is explicitly grounded in deficit models of disability, falsely conflating the physical condition of impairment with the social act of disablement. Only in the past decade have critical disability …

Microfluidic Gasketless Interconnect Sealed By Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Xiaoxiao Zhao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lab-on-a-chip technologies are widely applied in the field of life sciences and potentially in clinical diagnostics. There is a high demand for standardized, efficient interconnects between components in modular microfluidic systems. Chip-to-chip contactless, microfluidic interconnects, that allow fluid flow between chips, were designed and evaluated. The interconnects are 'gasketless' without the need for O-ring’s or fillers. Specifically, two microfluidic chips are assembled face-to-face and the fluidic ports on each chip were accurately aligned to allow the passage of fluids, through liquid bridges spanning the gap. Formation of the liquid bridges was governed by superhydrophobic films coating the surface around the …

All-Sky Search For Continuous Gravitational Waves From Isolated Neutron Stars Using Advanced Ligo O2 Data, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, S. Abraham, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams, R. X. Adhikari, V. B. Adya, C. Affeldt, M. Agathos, K. Agatsuma, N. Aggarwal, O. D. Aguiar, L. Aiello, A. Ain, P. Ajith, G. Allen, A. Allocca, M. A. Aloy, P. A. Altin, A. Amato, A. Ananyeva, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, S. V. Angelova, S. Antier, S. Appert, K. Arai, M. C. Araya, J. S. Areeda, M. Arène, N. Arnaud

Faculty Publications

We present results of an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves (CWs), which can be produced by fast spinning neutron stars with an asymmetry around their rotation axis, using data from the second observing run of the Advanced LIGO detectors. Three different semicoherent methods are used to search in a gravitational-wave frequency band from 20 to 1922 Hz and a first frequency derivative from -1×10-8 to 2×10-9 Hz/s. None of these searches has found clear evidence for a CW signal, so upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude are calculated, which for this broad range in parameter space are the …

Electromagnetic Sum Rules And Response Functions From The Symmetry-Adapted No-Core Shell Model, Robert Byron Baker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Recent developments in ab initio nuclear structure have provided us with a variety of many-body methods capable of describing nuclei into the medium-mass region of the chart of nuclides. One of these, the symmetry-adapted no-core shell model (SA-NCSM), capitalizes on inherent symmetries of the nucleus and is uniquely suited to examine the underlying physics of dynamical quantities, such as the response function.

We examine the applicability of the SA-NCSM to calculations of these quantities and assess the quality of its inputs by calculating electromagnetic sum rules and response functions with the Lanczos sum rule method and Lanczos response function method, …

Simulations Of Strong-Field Ionization In Molecules Using Tuned Range-Separated Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory, Adonay Sissay

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Strong-field ionization and the resulting electronic dynamics are important for a range of processes such as high harmonic generation, photodamage, charge resonance enhanced ionization, and ionization-triggered charge migration. Modeling ionization dynamics in molecular systems from first-principles can be challenging due the large spatial extent of the wavefunction which stresses the accuracy of basis sets, and the intense fields which require non-perturbative time-dependent electronic structure methods. In this dissertation, we develop a time dependent density functional theory approach which uses a Gaussian-type orbital (GTO) basis set to capture strong-field ionization rates and dynamics in atoms and small molecules. This involves propagating …

Wake With Me, Sarah Nansubuga

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis outlines my research, writing, and performance process, leading up to and reflecting on the final product of my MFA Solo Thesis project. The project is entitled Wake With Me, and its performance is a shamanistic portrayal of a folklore story from my native place of origin; Kampala, Uganda. It is an exploration of the metaphorical loss of cultural identity through the literal loss of a family member, and the journey through story telling as a method to reclaim or preserve what was lost. Throughout the piece, the performer plays the role of narrator, using voice, body and mind …

Reliability Of Corroding Reinforced Concrete Structures, Travis Honore

LSU Master's Theses

The enhanced performance due to the addition of steel within concrete elements has thrust reinforced concrete structures to be one of the most commonly used construction materials in the world. Reinforced concrete structures are exposed to a variety of deterioration mechanisms during their operational existence, each of which contributes to reducing their service life, durability, and load bearing capacity. The longevity of these reinforced concrete structures is strongly connected to degradation processes, whose origin is environmental and/or functional. Among these processes is the initiation and evolution of corrosion on the steel reinforcement. Steel reinforcement has direct effects on the durability, …

Infection Potential Of Rickettsia Felis Via Ingestion, Matthew M. Schexnayder

LSU Master's Theses

Rickettsia felis is the etiologic agent of flea-borne spotted fever (FBSF) in humans and a poorly described cause of fever in animals. It is transmitted by its primary arthropod vector and reservoir host, the cat flea Ctenocephalides felis. Known routes of Rickettsia felis transmission between Rickettsia felis-infected cat fleas and vertebrate hosts include cutaneous bites and contamination of cutaneous wounds with infective flea feces. The bulk of FBSF infections occur in young children in Africa, though infections of people at all ages all over the world have been confirmed. As mammals and young children frequently come into contact …

Verifying Modeling And Audiovisual Stimuli As Strategies For Mastering Guedes Peixoto's Maracatú, Rodrigo Clementino Diniz

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Literature has been saying that auditory Modeling can be a useful tool in order to develop or broaden musical interpretive ideas. In the same way, literature ventilates that audiovisual stimuli can be applied to musicians in order to raise emotions that some scholars consider as indispensable when it comes to deliver expressive musical communications. More specifically, research in the Music Performance field points out that Modeling and Audiovisual stimuli are useful strategies in the learning process of building up a musical interpretation, both, fostering expressive tools for aiming musical performance.

This research is intended to empirically verify the applicability …

High Performance Fuzz Testing Of Memory Forensics Frameworks, Arian Dokht Shahmirza

LSU Master's Theses

The analysis of the volatile memory (RAM) of a computer system, known as memory forensics, is a critical component of modern digital forensics investigations. Since the evidence provided by memory forensics is vital, it is necessary for there to be automated solutions that implement the analysis. Volatility is the most widely used memory forensics framework and also contains the most functionality of all tools publicly available. Volatility, as well as all other memory forensics frameworks, are extremely complex software systems as they must parse a substantial number of in-memory data structures and their associated values. Given the reliance on memory …