Building Program Quality In Youth Development Staff Training: Critical Components As Perceived By Currently Employed Youth Development Professionals In The United States, Jeantyl Norze

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Program quality is the program characteristics, indicators, and implementation practices that stakeholders mutually agreed upon. These program quality components are interlinked. Therefore, it is critical to help youth practitioners think through the logical connection among the components of program quality. This can be partly achieved through professional development, which equips practitioners with competencies necessary to perform their tasks. As a result, a staff training model was designed to corroborate the work that has been done in the positive youth development field with the aim of achieving program quality using a systematic review method. This staff training model comprises four components: …

Examining The Sex Ratio In Autism Spectrum Disorder, Maya N. Matheis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The higher prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among males compared to females is well documented but poorly understood. The ASD sex ratio may provide valuable insight into the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the disorder. A review of studies examining the prevalence in ASD published in the last 5 years was conducted, revealing a mean male/female (M/F) ratio of 4. Literature examining the ASD sex ratio in relation to risk factors and associated features of ASD was also summarized. The study aimed to examine the ASD sex ratio and its association to various risk factors among an early intervention sample. …

Essays On The Impact Of Parents' Investment And School Curriculum On Educational Outcomes In China, Han Yu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays studying how students’ educational outcomes are affected by parents’ investment and school curriculum, which are two of the most important determinants of students’ educational performance, respectively. Specifically, in chapter 2, I investigate whether Chinese children born in the auspicious years of Dragon perform better than their comparable peers in school. Using three recently collected datasets from China, I find that students born in the years of the Dragon indeed outperformed their peers in study. I furtherly test the possible mechanisms for the better performance of the “Dragons” in school. The results suggest that parents’ …

Concerto For Violin And Percussion Orchestra By Lou Harrison: A Study Guide, Deborah Sophia Carneiro Ribeiro

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lou Harrison is an American composer whose importance has been somehow overlooked. Amidst the modernist composers of the early 1940’s he was one of the most individualistic, which in turn, made him one of the most unique composers to come out of that era. Harrison’s name is mainly associated with percussion and the gamelan. However, he wrote for much more than just that. The purpose of this dissertation is to facilitate an understanding of Lou Harrison and his Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra, in the hopes of making his music accessible to the more conservative musician.

My research starts …

The Potential Iatrogenic Effects Of Formal Vs. Informal Juvenile Justice System Processing: The Moderating Influence Of Callous-Unemotional Traits, Emily Lynne Robertson

LSU Master's Theses

Previous research has indicated that adolescents who are formally processed by the juvenile justice system are at a higher risk of worse outcomes, most notably increased risk for subsequent offending and arrests. However, it is unclear whether this effect is due to the processing decision and subsequent involvement with the justice system or whether it is due to characteristics of the adolescents who are formally processed. Further, it is unclear whether formal processing increases the risk for future offending in all adolescents or whether its effects are more pronounced for certain adolescents. In the current study, we tested the predictions …

Altar To Uncertainty, Kelly Stombaugh

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

I have always been in awe of great storytellers. Like an alchemist, the masterful storyteller can take the most mundane of tales and transmute it into an enrapturing experience. The best of these, however, are the stories which seem very otherworldly but, in the end, can reveal deep and relatable truths to the listener.

For this exhibition, “Altar to Uncertainty,” I have undertaken the creation of a single book and story which surrounds and visually extends itself through printed etchings upon the walls to tell a transformative tale of redemption through trauma, hopelessness and loss.

My intention with this …

Tectonic Topography Changes In Cenozoic East Asia: A Landscape Erosion-Sediment Archive In The South China Sea, Yi Yan, Deng Yao, Zhi Xian Tian, Chi Yue Huang, Yildirim Dilek, Peter D. Clift, Zi An Li

Faculty Publications

© 2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. The mode and tempo of Cenozoic fluvial input into the South China Sea by Asian rivers were strongly controlled by tectonically induced topographic changes and landscape development that resulted in repeated river captures and reversals. New Nd isotope and U-Pb detrital zircon data from clastic sedimentary sequences in the northern South China Sea display secular variations reflecting significant changes in the compositions of fluvial sediment as well as changes in source rocks. The oldest, Eocene-Oligocene (before ∼25 Ma) clastic rocks of the South China Sea contain sediments with ɛNd values of −5 …

A Performer’S Guide To Poema De Sete Faces, Song Cycle By Jeffrey Perry, Paulo Henrique Campos Silva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The American composer Jeffrey Perry composed the song cycle Poema de sete faces (Poem of seven faces), for tenor or soprano and piano, based on the poem of the same name by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, one of the greatest Brazilian modernist poets of the 20th century. Both Drummond’s poem and Perry’s music were written to be open to multiple interpretations. Together, the possibilities for their interpretation are even broader. This dissertation discusses the art that emerges at the intersection of the poem and the music from the perspective of the singer. I present a biography and an overview of …

Biomolecular Processing Platform And Uses Thereof, Francis Barany, George Grills, Robin L. Mccarley, Collin J. Mckinney, Dorel Moldovan, Michael C. Murphy, Dimitris E. Nikitopoulos, Sunggook Park, Elizabeth J. Podlaha-Murphy, Steven A. Soper

College of Science Patents

The present invention relates to a device comprising a biomolecular processor. Each biomolecular processor has one or more bioreactor chambers defined by a solid substrate; a support structure within each bioreactor; a cleaving enzyme immobilized to the support structure and operatively positioned within the bioreactor chamber to cleave monomer or multimer units of a biopolymer molecule operatively engaged by the cleaving enzyme; and one or more time-of-flight channels formed in the solid substrate and fluidically coupled to said one or more bioreactor chambers. Each of the time-of-flight channels have two or more sensors including at least (i) a first sensor …

Factors Affecting The Choice, Intensity, And Allocation Of Irrigation Technologies By U.S. Cotton Farmers, Bijay K. Pokhrel, Krishna P. Paudel, Eduardo Segarra

Faculty Publications

© 2018 by the authors. We use the 2013 cotton precision farming survey data to study the adoption of irrigation technologies by cotton farmers in 14 states of the United States. We find that farmers with a higher irrigated yield, and who are from the Southern Plains (Texas and Oklahoma), adopt water-efficient irrigation technologies, such as sub-surface drip and trickle irrigation technologies. There are 10 irrigation technologies that farmers can adopt for cotton production in these 14 cotton-growing states. The intensity of the irrigation technologies, as measured by the number of irrigation technologies adopted in cotton production, is affected by …

Bending Gender In French Literature, Jacey Flatte

LSU Master's Theses

This paper looks at French literature that defies binary and heteronormative gender roles and identities. The literature spans from the seventeenth- to the nineteenth-century. My goal is not only to bring these pieces of literature to light, proving that non-binary genders have existed long before the recent liberal LGBTQIA+ movement, but also to help modernize these identities from the past. In doing this, I aim to explain that contemporary gender identities are not new, but timeless. The experiences seen in this literature are strikingly similar to how people experience gender today. As a result, I hope that readers will be …

The Body In Pain / The Body In Ecstasy, Shannon Kenny

LSU Master's Theses

The Body in Pain / The Body in Ecstasy is a series of short lyric essays/extended poems which catalogue major discriminatory movements against disabled people in the 20th and 21st century, specifically in the United States. My work contains duel storylines, using these movements/categories of violence as frames for my own personal narrative, and connecting individual experience to larger historical structures. I do this to disrupt the notion that history is disconnected from the present, and showcase how humans are built by context, where personal and political are inexorably intertwined, and social development is tied to both the body and …

Generating Audio Using Recurrent Neural Networks, Andrew Pfalz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Long Short Term Memory cells are a type of recurrent neural network that perform well when predicting sequence data. This works presents four approaches to modeling audio data. The models are trained to predict either raw audio samples or magnitude spectrum windows based on prior input audio. In a process called sampling, the models can then be employed to generate new audio using what they learned about the data they were trained on.

Four methods for sampling are presented. The first has the model predict a vector for each vector in the input. The second has the model predict one …

Risk, Responsibility, And Ethics In Professional And Technical Communication, Charley Grant Silvio

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I present a novel and alternative approach for considering ethics in professional and technical communication, namely the ethics of responsibility theorized primarily by phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas. To apply this new approach, I investigate a contemporary example in the rhetoric of investment bank Goldman Sachs before and during the 2008 U.S. Financial Crisis. In the early chapters, I review conventional ethical approaches—traditional and postmodern—in technical and professional communication (TPC) and consider their application to the Goldman Sachs example. This analysis reveals that these approaches, while useful in understanding the report’s general ethical framework, don’t fully describe the ethical …

Effects Of Irradiation Dose On Sperm Production, Insemination, And Male Mating Possible Period In The Sweetpotato Weevil (Coleoptera: Brentidae), Satoshi Hiroyoshi, Takayuki Mistunaga, Tsuguo Kohama, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

The sterile insect technique (SIT) has been used for the control or eradication of target insect pests. To successfully apply SIT, it is very important to clarify the effect of irradiation on male reproduction in the target pest, because their mating and spermiogenesis abilities affect the success of eradication program. The sweetpotato weevil, Cylas formicarius (Fabricius) (Coleoptera: Brentidae) is a notorious and worldwide pest of sweet potato. We investigated the effect of irradiation at five doses ranging from 0 (control) to 150 Gy on 9-d-old males. Survival rate of the control (no treatment) remained high from day 10 to 20 …

Designing A World: A Foray Into Scenography And Settling, Nathan David Ynacay

LSU Master's Theses

This work examines the design process as taught and what was practiced during Louisiana State University’s production of LMNOP the Muzical.

This will examine the design process as typically taught to undergraduate theatre students in all aspects of the discipline. The collaborative nature of the design process as taught to cast members, directors, and production team will be examined. After this examination, the design process for Louisiana State University’s production of LMNOP the Muzical will be used to compare and contrast the actual process with the theory of a collaborative design process. After, there will be an evaluation of …

The Interval Dissonance Rate In Chopin’S Études Op. 10, Nos. 1-4: Dissecting Arpeggiation, Chromaticism, And Linear Progressions, Nikita Mamedov

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Chopin’s twenty-seven piano études display the composer’s poetic musical language, uniting keyboard techniques, virtuosity, and artistic imagery, while preserving Romantic lyricism and songfulness. Each of these studies is unique in its set of pianistic challenges, compositional processes, and difficulty level. Schenkerian analysis provides an interpretation of relationships between the notes that constitute the harmony and the melody. This type of analysis allows one to understand the theoretical aspects that are necessary to play Chopin’s études. The Schenkerian theories can be used to amalgamate pianism and performance with harmony and analysis. Furthermore, the Schenkerian understanding of these études provides an analytical …

Jane Austen's Hidden Bodies: Adaptation As Critical Commentary, Elizabeth Gilliland

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Much of adaptation theory calls for a shift away from fidelity discourse, arguing that an adaptation does not need to be a faithful translation of the original, but should rather be viewed as literature in its own right. As such, adaptations are often studied separately from their source texts; yet even so, an unofficial hierarchy sometimes remains in deeming some types of adaptations more ripe for study than others. Further, in separating the adaptation from the original, some of the more radical alterations can be routinely dismissed as an “added” element to the text, rather than exploring what commentary these …

At The Edge Of Humanity: American Indian Legal Identity And The Development Of American Citizenship, Zachary Charles Isenhower

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Civic standing in the formative era of the United States was defined by land ownership. Landless white Americans demanded access to western lands, while the American government regulated settler pressure on the borderlands in order to preserve peace, and maintain its authority over citizens. Simultaneously, the U.S. depended upon western lands for revenue and on settlers for expanding its domain. As acquisition of property by white Americans depended in very real terms on dispossessing Indians of their lands, justifying that dispossession became one of the most fraught intellectual processes in American thought.

This project explores how civic identity was not …

A Preliminary Examination Of The Time And Organization Preparation System-College (Tops-C) With Undergraduate Students, Ashley Elizabeth Bordelon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Many factors contribute to the educational success of undergraduate students, including personal beliefs, effort, and the ability to self-manage. Many students are not prepared for the rigors of post-secondary education. This need is particularly striking given the limited availability of manualized evidenced based interventions available to support college students with academic task demand management. This study sought to determine the efficacy of the Time and Organization Preparation System-College (TOPS-C), a program aimed to increase study skills, organization, self-regulated learning, and time management through direct instruction, group contingency, and performance feedback. To determine changes in skill level, students completed the Learning …

Craft Production And Sociocultural Context: A Case Study Of Nasa Werregue Coiled Basketry In Colombia, Cindy Cordoba Arroyo

LSU Master's Theses

According to the Alliance of Artisan Enterprise from the Aspen Institute, the existence of the artisan enterprise is valuable for native communities since it creates jobs and preserves ancient techniques (Aspen Institute, 2012). The design and development of the Werregue (Astrocaryum Standleyanum) coiled basket is a source of income for indigenous communities in Colombia. This research uses a case study method which employed semi-structured interviews with fifteen skilled Nasa Werregue coiled basketmakers, to analyze the sociocultural characteristics, design, production, and market in Werregue coiled basketry in the Pacific region of Colombia within two research settings, Cali and the …

"Swallowing A World": Globalization And The Maximalist Novel, Benjamin S. Bergholtz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the maximalist novel is an aesthetic response to globalization and a global phenomenon in its own right. To support this claim, I analyze the ways in which four maximalist novels—William Gaddis’s J R (1975), David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), and Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know (2014)—both map and formally mimic different elements of globalization. Each of these novels, I argue, is organized around a significant feature or, to put it simply, “effect” of globalization. This organization is so extensive that not only the vast majority …

Homenajes: Finding Spanish Identity In Falla's Orchestral Suite, Leanny Munoz

LSU Master's Theses

Using biographical criticism, this thesis examines Manuel de Falla’s Homenajes (1939) as a reflection of the composer’s views of Spanish identity on regional, national, and international levels. Falla completed Homenajes—a four-movement orchestral suite dedicated to Enrique Fernández Arbós, Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Felipe Pedrell—in Argentina. He began the work in Spain in 1938, during a period of great personal and political disturbance. In 1939, Manuel de Falla left Spain following the end of the Spanish Civil War, which cemented the regime of Francisco Franco. The Francoist regime notoriously aimed to homogenize Spanishness within the country, in part by …

Challenging Local Realism With Human Choices, C. Abellán, A. Acín, A. Alarcón, O. Alibart, C. K. Andersen, F. Andreoli, A. Beckert, F. A. Beduini, A. Bendersky, M. Bentivegna, P. Bierhorst, D. Burchardt, A. Cabello, J. Cariñe, S. Carrasco, G. Carvacho, D. Cavalcanti, R. Chaves, J. Cortés-Vega, A. Cuevas, A. Delgado, H. De Riedmatten, C. Eichler, P. Farrera, J. Fuenzalida, M. García-Matos, R. Garthoff, S. Gasparinetti, T. Gerrits, F. Ghafari Jouneghani, S. Glancy, E. S. Gómez, P. González

Faculty Publications

A Bell test is a randomized trial that compares experimental observations against the philosophical worldview of local realism 1, in which the properties of the physical world are independent of our observation of them and no signal travels faster than light. A Bell test requires spatially distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection and unpredictable measurement settings 2,3 . Although technology can satisfy the first two of these requirements 4-7, the use of physical devices to choose settings in a Bell test involves making assumptions about the physics that one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness in using physical …

The Effect Of Community Violence Exposure On Self-Reported Anxiety Symptoms In Adolescents: The Role Of Social Support Versus Family Cohesion, Blair Burke Kreiger

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Exposure to community violence is a prevalent and problematic occurrence for many adolescents. Previous research associates direct (i.e., victimization) and indirect (i.e., witnessing or knowledge of incidences) community violence exposure with numerous adverse externalizing and internalizing psychological symptoms, including aggression, post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. The literature also has identified risk and protective factors in community violence exposure and its outcomes. This study examined the relationship between community violence exposure and self-reported anxiety symptoms in adolescents, while also evaluating the role of social support and family cohesion as moderating variables. Results did not indicate significant relationship between community violence exposure …

Relics, Replication, And Reputation King Arthur, Edward I, And The Conquest Of Wales, Danielle Maurer

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

A Black Girl’S Song Misogynoir, Love, And Beyoncé’S Lemonade, Zeffie Gaines

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

This article examines Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade in the context of black feminist theory, misogynoir, and issues of black self-love. After a brief overview of the initial response to Beyoncé’s album, this essay explores the deeper, metaphorical implication of Lemonade. This essay demonstrates that while Lemonade is ostensibly about marital infidelity, the trope of unfaithfulness is used to make a more profound commentary on the ontological crisis around blackness and black womanhood in American culture. Through close readings of several important scenes and tracks in Lemonade, this essay demonstrates that this album constitutes a masterwork by Beyoncé and should be …

How #Blackgirlmagic Cultivates Supreme Love To Heal And Save Souls That Can Heal And Save The World: An Introduction To Endarkened Feminist Epistemlogical And Ontological Evolutions Of Self Through A Critique Of Beyoncé’S Lemonade, Jeanine Staples

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

No abstract provided.

From Colorism To Conjurings: Tracing The Dust In Beyoncé'S Lemonade, Cienna Davis

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

Colorism creates relentless tension and pressure in the lives of Black women. Pop-star Beyoncé Gisele Knowles-Carter is an interesting case in the discussion of colorism because her career has expressed a rich intimacy to Southern Black culture and female empowerment while also playing into tropes of the mulatta “fancy girl,” whose relative proximity to whiteness adheres social value within mainstream culture. Finding aesthetic and thematic parallels between Beyoncé’s recent project Lemonade (2016) and Julie Dash’s cult-classic film Daughters of the Dust (1991) I draw a critical connection between Yellow Mary Peazant and Beyoncé, the prodigal child and the licentious “post-racial,” …

Requiem For Orchestra And Choir, Luciano Vaz Correa

LSU Master's Theses

Five Movements of a Requiem is a composition for orchestra, solo soprano, solo alto, solo tenor, solo bass and choir, and is approximately 20 minutes in length. To compose it, I’ve studied many different requiem masses from Renaissance polyphony to our days, works from Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Missa Pro Defunctis to Schnittke’s Requiem. In this study, I’ve tried to understand which techniques they used in their compositions, and how these techniques could be useful on helping me to express my own music. In Christian liturgy, Requiem masses are offered for the dead and the name is derived from the …