Digital Commons Network^™

Source Reduction Behavior As An Independent Measurement Of The Impact Of A Public Health Education Campaign In An Integrated Vector Management Program For The Asian Tiger Mosquito, Kristen Bartlett-Healy, George Hamilton, Sean Healy, Taryn Crepeau, Isik Unlu, Ary Farajollahi, Dina Fonseca, Randy Gaugler, Gary G. Clark, Daniel Strickman

Faculty Publications

The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a public health educational campaign to reduce backyard mosquito-larval habitats. Three communities each, within two New Jersey counties, were randomly selected to receive: (1) both education and mosquito control, (2) education only, and (3) no education or mosquito control. Four separate educational events included a 5-day elementary school curriculum in the spring, and three door to door distributions of educational brochures. Before and after each educational event, the numbers of mosquito-larval container habitats were counted in 50 randomly selected homes per study area. Container surveys allowed us to measure …

On The Origin Of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, And Fiction, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Grant Ramsey, Daniel John Sportiello, Michelle M. Wirth

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“Describing Our Whole Experience”: The Statistical Philosophies Of W.F.R. Weldon And Karl Pearson, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

There are two motivations commonly ascribed to historical actors for taking up statistics: to reduce complicated data to a mean value (e.g., Quetelet), and to take account of diversity (e.g., Galton). Different motivations will, it is assumed, lead to different methodological decisions in the practice of the statistical sciences. Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon are generally seen as following directly in Galton’s footsteps. I argue for two related theses in light of this standard interpretation, based on a reading of several sources in which Weldon, independently of Pearson, reflects on his own motivations. First, while Pearson does approach …

Nietzsche’S Aesthetic Critique Of Darwin, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

Despite his position as one of the first philosophers to write in the “post- Darwinian” world, the critique of Darwin by Friedrich Nietzsche is often ignored for a host of unsatisfactory reasons. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of Darwin is important to the study of both Nietzsche’s and Darwin’s impact on philosophy. Further, I show that the central claims of Nietzsche’s critique have been broadly misunderstood. I then present a new reading of Nietzsche’s core criticism of Darwin. An important part of Nietzsche’s response can best be understood as an aesthetic critique of Darwin, reacting to what he saw as …

Smooth Bruck Loops, Symmetric Spaces, And Nonassociative Vector Spaces, Sejong Kim, Jimmie Lawson

Faculty Publications

Our purposes in this work include the following: (1) Extend and expand earlier work on symmetric spaces, particularly that done from a nonassociative algebra point of view, from the finite-dimensional setting to the Banach space setting. (2) Take a careful look at the equivalence of the categories of smooth pointed reflection quasigroups (a special class of symmetric spaces) and uniquely 2-divisible Bruck loops (= K-loops = gyrocommutative gyrogroups). (3) Propose a loop-theoretic analog of topological vector spaces. (4) Derive algebraic consequences and equivalences of smoothness notions, particularly the notion of parallel transport. (5) Illustrate the effective interaction of the algebraic …

Front Matter

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"An Answer From Horace" Ambiguity And Paradox In Pope's Imitation Of Satire 2.1, Laura Thomason Wood

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Paradise Lost As Incomplete Argument, Ryan J. Stark

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Eliza Haywood At The Sign Of Fame, Patrick Spedding

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"Attended By A Whole Nation" The Americas In The Female American, Julia Kark Callander

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Not The History Of Ideas Laughter, Music, And Metaphor In Pope's Definition Of Criticism, Philip Smallwood

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"All Ardour, All Intrepidity" William Beckford At The Strawberry Hill Sale, Stephen Clarke

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

A Performer's Interpretation Of David Del Tredici's Chana's Story: A Cycle Of Six Songs On Texts Of Chana Bloch, Shelly Lenn Buchanan-Garlotte

LSU Major Papers

The purpose of this document is to reveal a performer’s perspective on David Del Tredici’s Chana’s Story. This six-song cycle for mezzo-soprano chronicles the marriage of poet and translator, Chana Bloch, and is based on her translations and poetry. The first chapter of this document provides biographical data about David Del Tredici, which presents a view of his compositional development, and includes events and individuals of influence in the composer’s life, such as teachers and poets. The second chapter includes biographical data about the poet, Chana Bloch, which is provided to enhance the interpretation of the poetry and to facilitate …

Placing The Modern Chinese Vernacular In Transnational Literature, Gang Zhou

Faculty Publications

This is the first book to concentrate not only on the triumph of the vernacular in modern China but also on the critical role of the rise of the vernacular in world literature, invoking parallel cases from countries throughout Europe and Asia.

The Global Lincoln, William D. Pederson

Civil War Book Review

Travelling the World with Lincoln

A series of international conferences on Abraham Lincoln’s legacy abroad were held in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and India during the commemoration of Lincoln’s bicentennial birth. So far two books have resulted from these conferenc....

Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, And The Rise Of Humanitarianism, Jeffrey Robert Young

Civil War Book Review

Exploring the Human Side of Slavery

Margaret Abruzzo’s first book explores the impact of humanitarian thought on attitudes towards American slavery during the colonial and antebellum eras. For some twenty years, this topic has received considerable attention from both historians of ant....

Inverted Indexes For Phrases And Strings, Manish Patil, Sharma V. Thankachan, Rahul Shah, Wing Kai Hon, Jeffrey Scott Vitter, Sabrina Chandrasekaran

Faculty Publications

Inverted indexes are the most fundamental and widely used data structures in information retrieval. For each unique word occurring in a document collection, the inverted index stores a list of the documents in which this word occurs. Compression techniques are often applied to further reduce the space requirement of these lists. However, the index has a shortcoming, in that only predefined pattern queries can be supported efficiently. In terms of string documents where word boundaries are undefined, if we have to index all the substrings of a given document, then the storage quickly becomes quadratic in the data size. Also, …

Priceless Portals: The Bronze Doors Of The Florentine Baptistery, Sarah P. Cambas

LSU Master's Theses

The Baptistery of San Giovanni represents a complex historical precedent for Italian Renaissance art. Located within the heart of Florence, across from the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in the Piazza del Duomo, the Baptistery holds three sets of gilded bronze doors spanning more than a century: the south set of doors by Andrea Pisano, and the north and east sets of doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. The stylistic qualities and compositional sources of each door have been the subject of much discussion since their completion, and these are re-examined in this paper. Special attention is also devoted to the …

"The Faults Of A Virginian": John Marshall And Republican Legal Culture, Nathan Thomas Hall

LSU Master's Theses

As chief justice of the United States for thirty-five years, John Marshall molded the Supreme Court into a co-equal branch of government. His efforts to fashion a powerful and independent federal court often ran counter to popular sentiment in his home state of Virginia. There, Marshall’s ideological and political opponent, Thomas Jefferson, dominated the political landscape. The adversarial narrative of Marshall and Jefferson’s national political battles is the subject of much scholarship. Rarely considered, however, is the common legal culture from which they both emerged. Understanding the personalities and the decisions that populated Virginia’s legal culture from the American Revolution …

Brazilian Music For Youth Choir By Funarte: Exploring Issues Of Pedagogy And Authenticity In Brazilian Choral Music, Diego Daflon Tavares Pinto

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to stimulate the dissemination of Brazilian choral repertoire, especially the pieces from the series Brazilian Music for Youth Choir by FUNARTE, and provide accurate interpretative information for authentic performance and effective teaching. Musical and pedagogical analyses of three of the pieces from the series by FUNARTE (2009) were done as means to the purpose of the study. In addition, ethnographic interview were held with the composers of each of those pieces, Paulo Malaguti, Leandro Maia, and Caio Senna, and the technical-pedagogical coordinator of the series, Eduardo Lakschevitz. Through the interviews with the composers it …

A Survey Of Selected Representations Of The Stroke And Aphasia Quality Of Life Scale-39 Items, Dara Lynn Elizabeth Deroche

LSU Master's Theses

This research was designed to gain information that could be used in the future to improve quality of life measures for people with aphasia. Aphasia is a language disorder resulting from stroke or traumatic brain injury. People with aphasia exhibit difficulty producing and understanding verbal and written language. Existing quality of life measures, while valid and reliable for those with mild to moderate aphasia, are often unable to be used for those with severe aphasia. The written text is too complex for them to comprehend. Other studies have been done supporting the idea that pictures aid in the comprehension of …

Performing Toilets: Putting Matter Into Place, Danielle Dick Mcgeough

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I place toilets and toilet practices center stage. Each chapter begins with and is compelled by a performance event in which a toilet plays a central role, such as the display of toilets in museum settings, a festival celebrating the building of public toilet blocks, and a Big Squat event, in which people gather en masse to squat collectively for one minute in recognition of the millions that lack access to toilets. By means of performance, the toilet is transferred from the backstage to center stage. Out of place, the toilet defamiliarizes and refunctions the body’s techniques, …

A Computer-Based Instructional Program To Teach Braille Reading To Sighted Individuals, Mindy Scheithauer

LSU Master's Theses

There is a need for efficient braille training methods for instructors of the visually impaired. This study evaluated the use of a computer-based program intended to train the relation of braille characters to English letters using a matching-to-sample procedure with 4 sighted college students. Each participant mastered matching visual depictions of the braille alphabet to their text counterparts. Further, each participant demonstrated the ability to read a braille passage following this exposure. These gains maintained at variable levels at a follow-up probe 2 to 4 weeks following training.

"We Live In A Used World": Cultural Geographies Of American Garage Sales, Gentry Powell Hanks

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the emotional geographies of American garage sales, which I argue are liminal. Through a methodology of narrative surveys (open-ended questionnaires), mental maps, participant-observation, and interviews, I make the case that garage sales, through absent and/or present items, narratives, and exchanged histories, can reveal much in terms of identity, values, and cultural practices. These archives on the margins hold stories, artifacts, and performances of a distant or near past, giving geographers an innovative lens through which to explore the intricacies of materiality, place, and representation. This thesis provides a range of theoretical and practical perspectives on …

The American Empire: A Content And Textual Analysis Of The Media Coverage Of The 2009 U.S. And Colombia Military Base Agreement, Britt Don Christensen

LSU Master's Theses

The United States maintains a worldwide network of military bases and spends more on military expenses than the rest of the world combined. This project seeks to analyze how the U.S. mainstream media cover and discuss the American Empire both broadly and specifically. I conducted a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative textual analysis of the Media coverage of the 2009 U.S. – Colombian military base agreement, which was protested by Latin American leaders. I analyzed the coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN.com, and The Miami Herald regarding the US military’s use of bases in Colombia in …

The Effects Of Reiki Treatment On Mental Health Professionals Who Are At Risk For Secondary Traumatic Stress, Martha P. Novoa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this cross-sectional experimental study was to examine the effects of Reiki on risk level for secondary traumatic stress (STS) among mental health professionals, such as, social workers and licensed professional counselor (LPCs). The sample (N=67) was mostly composed of master social work students (MSW) (61%) from the School of Social Work at Louisiana State University (LSU), professionals social workers (34%), and LPCs (5%). Study participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: Reiki, placebo or control group. Dependent variables measured at pretest and posttest were: risk level for STS, anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, anger and …

Contingent Constellations: Frederick Douglass And The Fact Freedom, Tomohiro Hori

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Reading the celebrated Narrative (1845) of Frederick Douglass (1817-95) as well as his second autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) alongside the theories of freedom including Immanuel Kant’s and G. W. F. Hegel’s among others, this dissertation examines the process through which the young American slave Douglass discovers the idea of freedom and turns it into the primary object of his pursuit to the point that he stakes his life in his famed battle with the overseer Edward Covey. The experience of hearing other slaves’ voices—such as Aunt Hester’s cries and slave songs—opens his eyes to the darkest reality …

An Examination Of Errors Of Coherence In Adolescent Sentence Combining, Ginger Gunter Collins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Young adolescents should be able to write organized multi-paragraph compositions that develop a central idea and unfold in logical and sequential order, unified through the use of transitional words and phrases. In other words, the compositions should not just consist of a string of related sentences, but represent a dynamic text that has coherence. It is important that speech-language pathologists develop quick and reliable methods for assessing coherence to aid in making data driven decisions and progress monitoring consistent with principles of Responsiveness to Intervention. Yet, the holistic quality of coherence makes it difficult to assess, both within a composition …

Student Problem Solving Communication Processes While Completing Multimedia Case Studies: A Look Into The Relationship Among Levels Of Collaboration, Problem Solving Processes, And Problem Solving Performance On Individual And Group Levels, Jan Elizabeth Broussard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In an effort to better prepare students to become productive members of the work force, educators must grant students the opportunities to become critical thinkers. Students need to be able to learn to inquire, create, and think critically in order to obtain meaningful information from the abundance of knowledge that is accessible to them through the Internet and the World Wide Web. This quasi-experimental study examined the effects of online collaborative problem solving processes during a multimedia case study. Sixty-one students in two undergraduate management information systems classes agreed to participate. The experimental class, section 01, was required to use …