Digital Commons Network^™

Clues From The Paint A Picture Of Earth’S Water Cycle, Kristine L. Delong, Alyssa Atwood, Andrea Moore, Sara Sanchez

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Explanation Needed: Understanding The Low Graduation Rates Of Spanish-Speaking English Learners In Southeastern Louisiana, Alice I. Garcia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative research study used the case study method of one-on-one interviews to collect and examine the experiences of former English learners (ELs) who were unable to finish high school in southeastern Louisiana. This study aimed to identify specific factors that, using Everett Lee’s theory, pushed or pulled these ELs from school and affected their ability to graduate. The push factors that were identified included language, inadequate support, academic performance, discrimination, and lack of connection with school and culture. Pull factors that were identified included lack of prior education, immigration, poverty, pregnancy, being far from family, financially supporting family, and …

Understanding Meteorological Changes Following Severe Defoliation During A Strong Hurricane Landfall: Insights From Hurricane Michael (2018), Shannon A. Nelson, Paul W. Miller

Faculty Publications

Despite prompting persistent meteorological changes, severe defoliation following a tropical cyclone (TC) landfall has received relatively little attention and is largely overlooked within hurricane preparedness and recovery plan-ning. Changes to near-track vegetation can modify evapotranspiration for months after tropical cyclone passage, thereby altering boundary layer moisture and energy fluxes that drive the local water cycle. This study seeks to understand poten-tial spatial and temporal changes in defoliation-driven meteorological conditions using Hurricane Michael (2018) as a testbed. In this sensitivity study, two Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulations, a normal-landscape and a post-TC scenario, are compared to determine how a …

Floodsafehome: Evaluating Financial Benefits And Savings Of Freeboard For Improved Decision-Making In Flood Risk Mitigation, Carol J. Friedland, Yong Cheol Lee, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz, Jiyoung Lee, Shifat P. Mithila, Robert V. Rohli, Md Adilur Rahim, Ehab Gnan, Monica Teets Farris

Faculty Publications

Freeboard—elevation of a structure above the base flood elevation (BFE)—is a critical component in mitigating or avoiding flood losses. However, the unrevealed benefits and savings of freeboard installation have prevented communities from adopting this approach. To improve decision-making for residents, prospective residents, and other stakeholders in flood-vulnerable communities and enhance flood risk mitigation strategies, this study presents the methodology underlying a new webtool, FloodSafeHome, that estimates comprehensively the economic benefits and savings of freeboard installation for new construction of residential buildings. Specifically, the proposed evaluation framework has been designed to calculate monthly savings for individual buildings by assessing freeboard cost, …

A Community-Engaged Oral History Study As A Tool For Understanding Environmental Justice Aspects Of Human Exposures To Hazardous Waste Thermal Treatment Emissions In Colfax, La, Matilda Odera, Blair Kelley, Louie Rivers, Alyanna Wilson, Jessica Tran, Khushi Patel, Brenda Vallee, Wilma Subra, Jennifer A. Cramer, Jennifer K. Irving, Margaret Reams, Jennifer Richmond-Bryant

Faculty Publications

This study investigates environmental justice (EJ) themes related to siting a hazardous waste thermal treatment facility near a low-income community of color. We investigated effects of living near a hazardous waste thermal treatment facility through three EJ aspects: recognitional, procedural, and distributive justice. The study involved the collection of oral history interviews from residents of Colfax, a town in Grant Parish, Louisiana, that hosts an open burn/open detonation hazardous waste thermal treatment facility. The facility processes materials such as munitions, theme park waste, and contaminated soils from Superfund sites, and it increased its volume drastically in 2014. Residents reported adverse …

Impact Report, 2022-2023, Lsu Libraries

Libraries Impact Reports

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On The Civil War Era, K. Howell Keiser Jr.

Civil War Book Review

The book reviews and feature essay in this fall 2023 issue of the Civil War Book Review highlight the Civil War Era from the perspectives of various individuals and groups – black sailors and surgeons, women, guerillas, cavalry soldiers, Cherokee warriors, and veterans. The sectional crisis and the war to come shaped the lives of countless individuals, and no one person experienced these years from the same perspective.

History, Annotated Gazetteer, And Bibliography Of Sarawak Ornithology, Frederick H. Sheldon, Dency F. Gawain, Daisy G. S. Kho, Rosalina Regai, Subir B. Shakya, Chin Aik Yeap

Occasional Papers of the Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University

Sarawak is Malaysia’s largest state, covering most of northern Borneo. It has a remarkable history of scientific bird study, starting in the 1840s and growing ever since. To set the stage for the gazetteer, which is the core of this paper, we start with a review of this history and discuss various forces that have influenced the direction of bird research in the state. Following this introduction comes the gazetteer, which is an annotated list of c. 865 sites in Sarawak where birds have been collected, studied, or regularly observed. The gazetteer provides the latitude, longitude, and elevation of each …

Profile Of Leisure-Time Physical Activity And Sedentary Behavior In Adults In Brazil: A Nationwide Survey, 2019, Arão Belitardo De Oliveira, Peter T. Katzmarzyk, Wagner Silva Dantas, Isabela Judith Martins Benseñor, Alessandra De Carvalho Goulart, Ulf Ekelund

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Objectives: to estimate the prevalence of leisure-time physical activity and sedentary behavior in adults in Brazil. Methods: this was a cross-sectional, population-based study carried out in a sample of 88,531 Brazilians, using data f rom the 2019 National Health Survey; leisure-time physical activity (overall and aerobic exercise) was measured according to the World Health Organization guidelines; the weighted prevalence and respective 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) of physical activity, physical inactivity and sedentary behavior were estimated. Results: according to the selected sample, 26.4% (95%CI 25.9;27.1) of Brazilian adults were physically active, 14.0% (95%CI 13.5;14.4) were insufficiently physically active and 59.5% (95%CI …

Midlife Neuropsychological Profiles And Associated Vascular Risk: The Bogalusa Heart Study, Ileana De Anda-Duran, Vijaya B. Kolachalama, Owen T. Carmichael, Phillip H. Hwang, Camilo Fernandez, Rhoda Au, Lydia A. Bazzano, David J. Libon

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Background: Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) often present with coexisting vascular pathology that is expressed to different degrees and can lead to clinical heterogeneity. Objective: To examine the utility of unsupervised statistical clustering approaches in identifying neuropsychological (NP) test performance subtypes that closely correlate with carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) in midlife. Methods: A hierarchical agglomerative and k-means clustering analysis based on NP scores (standardized for age, sex, and race) was conducted among 1,203 participants (age 48±5.3 years) from the Bogalusa Heart Study. Regression models assessed the association between cIMT ≥50th percentile and NP profiles, and global cognitive score (GCS) tertiles …

Evidence For The Efficacy Of Pre-Harvest Agricultural Practices In Mitigating Food-Safety Risks To Fresh Produce In North America, Naresh Devarajan, Daniel L. Weller, Matthew Jones, Aiko D. Adell, Achyut Adhikari, Ana Allende, Nicole L. Arnold, Patrick Baur, Sarah M. Beno, Donna Clements, Elissa M. Olimpi, Faith Critzer, Hyatt Green, Lisa Gorski, Angela Ferelli Gruber, Jasna Kovac, Jeffery Mcgarvey, Claire M. Murphy, Sarah I. Murphy, Nora Navarro-Gonzalez, Jeb P. Owen, Alda F.A. Pires, Nicole Richard, Sandipan Samaddar, Radomir Schmidt, Kate Scow, Nikki W. Shariat, Olivia M. Smith, Austin R. Spence, Don Stoeckel, Thao D.H. Tran, Gretchen Wall, Daniel S. Karp

Faculty Publications

Consumption of contaminated produce remains a leading cause of foodborne illness. Increasingly, growers are altering agricultural practices and farm environments to manage food-safety hazards, but these changes often result in substantial economic, social, and environmental costs. Here, we present a comprehensive evidence synthesis evaluating the efficacy of soil, non-crop vegetation, animal, landscape, and irrigation water management strategies aimed at reducing produce-safety risk in North America. We systematically summarized findings from 78 peer-reviewed papers on the effect of 21 management practices on the prevalence, abundance, or survival of four foodborne pathogens (i.e., E. coli, Salmonella spp., Listeria spp., and Campylobacter spp.), …

Going With The Flow: The Supply And Demand Of Sediment Retention Ecosystem Services For The Reservoirs In Puerto Rico, R. De Jesus Crespo, M. Valladares-Castellanos, Volodymyr V. Mihunov, T. H. Douthat

Faculty Publications

Impounding surface waters in reservoirs is a major mechanism for providing water for human consumption, including potable water, hydroelectric power, and industrial uses. Building reservoirs incurs environmental and social costs, and therefore safeguarding their effectiveness and longevity is a concern of clear public interest. One factor that affects the longevity of reservoirs is sedimentation, a process exacerbated by land use conversion in upstream watershed areas. Despite the economic importance of preventing sedimentation in existing reservoirs, few consumers are aware of the natural features that provide sediment retention services and the relevance of their conservation in their daily lives. Moreover, managing …

Lsu General Catalog 2023-2024, 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.

Louisiana Survey 2023, Lsu Reilly Center For Media & Public Affairs

Reilly Center Louisiana Surveys

The 2023 Louisiana Survey is the twenty-first in an annual series of statewide surveys beginning in 2003 and sponsored by 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 …

The Rise Of Native Lordships At Pashash, A.D. 200–600, North Highlands Of Ancash, Peru, George F. Lau, Milton Luján Dávila, Jacob L. Bongers, David Chicoine

Faculty Publications

This article examines the rise of native, segmentary lordships in the highlands of north-central Peru. It reports on new excavations and mapping at the seat of a prehispanic polity, Pashash (Recuay culture), a large hilltop center that developed after the collapse of Chavín civilization. Fieldwork revealed monumental constructions and two special activity contexts radiocarbon-dated to ca. a.d. 200–400: an offering area in a large palatial compound and a room-complex with chambers closed off and sealed with feasting refuse. Multiple lines of evidence help reconstruct a regional picture for the establishment of wealthy local elites. Cultural innovations explicitly link new leaders …

Briquetage And Brine: Living And Working At The Classic Maya Salt Works Of Ek Way Nal, Belize, Heather Mckillop, E. Cory Sills

Faculty Publications

Systematic flotation survey and spatial analysis of artifacts at the submerged salt work of Ek Way Nal reveal evidence of a residence, salt kitchens, and additional activities. Ek Way Nal is one of 110 salt works associated with a Late to Terminal Classic (A.D. 600-900) salt industry known as the Paynes Creek Salt Works. Wooden posts that form the walls of 10 buildings are remarkably preserved in a peat bog below the sea floor providing an opportunity to examine surface artifacts in relation to buildings. Numerous salt kitchens have been located at the Paynes Creek Salt Works by evidence of …

Disparities In Spatial Accessibility Of Primary Care In Louisiana: From Physical To Virtual Accessibility, Fahui Wang, Yutian Zeng, Lingbo Liu, Tracy Onega

Faculty Publications

Telehealth has been widely employed and has transformed how healthcare is delivered in the United States as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. While telehealth is utilized and encouraged to reduce the cost and travel burden for access to healthcare, there are debates on whether telehealth can promote equity in healthcare services by narrowing the gap among diverse groups. Using the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) and Two-Step Virtual Catchment Area (2SVCA) methods, this study compares the disparities of physical and virtual access to primary care physicians (PCPs) in Louisiana. Both physical and virtual access to PCPs exhibit similar spatial patterns …

A Cyclically Adjusted Spatio-Temporal Kernel Density Estimation Method For Predictive Crime Hotspot Analysis, Ya Han, Yujie Hu, Haojie Zhu, Fahui Wang

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a new method for predictive crime hotspot analysis that further improves the kernel density estimation (KDE) method and the spatio-temporal kernel density estimation (STKDE) method by accounting for temporal crime cycles and is therefore termed the ‘cyclically adjusted STKDE (cSTKDE) method’. The case study on robbery incidents in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shows a temporal cycle with a 6-month period of statistical significance from January 2010 to May 2018. This identified period is incorporated into the temporal kernel function of the new cSTKDE method. For validation, the Forecast Accuracy Index (FAI) and Forecast Precision Index (FPI) are used …

Exploring The Spatial Autocorrelation In Soil Moisture Networks: Analysis Of The Bias From Upscaling The Texas Soil Observation Network (Txson), Yaping Xu, Cuiling Liu, Lei Wang, Lei Zou

Faculty Publications

Microwave remote sensing such as soil moisture active passive (SMAP) can provide soil moisture data for agricultural and hydrological studies. However, the scales between station-measured and satellite-measured products are quite different, as stations measure on a point scale while satellites have a much larger footprint (e.g., 9 km). Consequently, the validation for soil moisture products, especially inter-comparison between these two types of observations, is quite a challenge. Spatial autocorrelation among the stations could be a contribution of bias, which impacts the dense soil moisture networks when compared with satellite soil moisture products. To examine the effects of spatial autocorrelation to …

Natural Dyeing With Madder: Exploring Traditional Techniques And Color Characteristics, Guangguo Tian, Rongrong Cui, Chuanlan Liu, Xiaorui Hu

Faculty Publications

The color red has a significant presence in cultures around the world. The organic dye madder, derived from plants, has been used throughout human civilization and remains an important natural dye. The research reviews five traditional madder dyeing techniques from China, Europe, Turkey, and Japan. The techniques are applied to cotton, linen, silk, and wool fabrics, and their similarities and differences are compared and analyzed. Additionally, the environmental sustainability, resource conservation, and process efficiency of these dyeing techniques are also evaluated in this article. The chromatic value of dyed textile color was tested by means of an American Hunterlab spectrophotometer, …

Monitoring Of Wave, Current, And Sediment Dynamics Along The Chincoteague Living Shoreline, Virginia, Hongqing Wang, Qin Chen, Nan Wang, William D. Capurso, Lukasz M. Niemoczynski, Ling Zhu, Gregg A. Snedden, Kevin S. Holcomb, Bowdoin W. Lusk, Carol A. Wilson, Sean R. Cornell

Faculty Publications

Nature-based features, also called living shorelines, are increasingly applied in coastal protection and restoration. However, the processes and mechanisms (feedbacks and interactions) of wave attenuation, current velocity change, and sediment deposition and erosion along the living shoreline remain unclear, thus limiting the adaptive management of living shoreline restoration projects for coastal shoreline resilience under future storm conditions. In this study, wave, current, and sediment dynamics along the Little Toms Cove living shoreline, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia, a low wave energy environment, were investigated during a 2-month winter period in 2019 to examine the effects of living shoreline structures on …

Improving Social Media Use For Disaster Resilience: Challenges And Strategies, Nina S.N. Lam, Michelle Meyer, Margaret Reams, Seungwon Yang, Kisung Lee, Lei Zou, Volodymyr Mihunov, Kejin Wang, Ryan Kirby, Heng Cai

Faculty Publications

This paper develops a social media-disaster resilience analysis framework by categorizing types of social media use and their challenges to better understand and assess its role in disaster resilience research and management. The framework is derived primarily from several case studies of Twitter use in three hurricane events in the United States–Hurricanes Isaac, Sandy, and Harvey. The paper first outlines four major contributions of social media data for disaster resilience research and management, which include serving as an effective communication platform, providing ground truth information for emergency response and rescue operations, providing information on people’s sentiments, and allowing predictive modeling. …

Effects Of Riverine Barriers On Avian Evolution In The Amazon Basin, Andre Eugene Moncrieff

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The high biodiversity found in the Amazon Basin has long captivated the attention of naturalists and evolutionary biologists seeking to explain its origins. Early observations by Alfred Wallace highlighted the role of rivers in delimiting the geographic ranges of many species; furthermore, where rivers narrow towards their headwaters, he noted that some species cross rivers freely. A major goal of this dissertation is to investigate how these and other observations about riverine barriers might inform our understanding of how speciation unfolds in Amazonia. My approach involved generating genomic data with dense geographic sampling for manakins in the genus Lepidothrix, …

Research Gaps And Opportunities In Precision Nutrition: An Nih Workshop Report, Bruce Y. Lee, José M. Ordovás, Elizabeth J. Parks, Cheryl A.M. Anderson, Albert László Barabási, Steven K. Clinton, Kayla De La Haye, Valerie B. Duffy, Paul W. Franks, Elizabeth M. Ginexi, Kristian J. Hammond, Erin C. Hanlon, Michael Hittle, Emily Ho, Abigail L. Horn, Richard S. Isaacson, Patricia L. Mabry, Susan Malone, Corby K. Martin, Josiemer Mattei, Simin Nikbin Meydani, Lorene M. Nelson, Marian L. Neuhouser, Brendan Parent, Nicolaas P. Pronk, Helen M. Roche, Suchi Saria, Frank A.J.L. Scheer, Eran Segal, Mary Ann Sevick, Tim D. Spector, Linda Van Horn, Krista A. Varady, Venkata Saroja Voruganti

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Precision nutrition is an emerging concept that aims to develop nutrition recommendations tailored to different people's circumstances and biological characteristics. Responses to dietary change and the resulting health outcomes from consuming different diets may vary significantly between people based on interactions between their genetic backgrounds, physiology, microbiome, underlying health status, behaviors, social influences, and environmental exposures. On 11-12 January 2021, the National Institutes of Health convened a workshop entitled "Precision Nutrition: Research Gaps and Opportunities" to bring together experts to discuss the issues involved in better understanding and addressing precision nutrition. The workshop proceeded in 3 parts: part I covered …

From Mapping Place To Mapping Space In Library Gis Work, Lena Denis

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

At many academic libraries, library workers run the teaching, general reference consultations, technical troubleshooting, and software and licensing maintenance in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for their institutions. This is very much the case in the Data Services unit of Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries, where staff receive requests for help with a wide variety of mapping projects every semester. Sometimes they are straightforward requests for technical assistance, but sometimes they underpin much deeper investigations into how to situate people and significant events through time and geographic settings. This article discusses these types of requests in the context of the philosophical …

Using Solar Radiation Data In Soil Moisture Diagnostic Equation For Estimating Root-Zone Soil Moisture, Olumide Omotere, Feifei Pan, Lei Wang

Faculty Publications

The soil moisture daily diagnostic equation (SMDE) evaluates the relationship between the loss function coefficient and the summation of the weighted average of precipitation. The loss function coefficient uses the day of the year (DOY) to approximate the seasonal changes in soil moisture loss for a given location. Solar radiation is the source of the energy that drives the complex and intricates of the earth-atmospheric processes and biogeochemical cycles in the environment. Previous research assumed DOY is the approximation of other environmental factors (e.g., temperature, wind speed, solar radiation). In this article, two solar radiation parameters were introduced, i.e., the …

A Subspecies-Level Database Of Amazonian Bird Distributions, With Inferences On Suture Zones And Conservation, Marco Antonio Rego

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Amazonia has the largest and most biodiverse tropical forest on the planet. However, the distributions of its species are still poorly understood, even for well-studied vertebrates such as birds. Available distribution maps for Amazonian birds often lack accuracy in delimiting the area where species occur. Existing distributional information for Amazonian birds is often limited to species-level level taxonomy, even though many Amazonian bird subspecies represent biological species. Here, I investigate the geographic distributions of 4,148 bird taxa (species and subspecies) using museum scientific specimens as the primary source of data. To build the data base I use more than 600,000 …

Spatial And Temporal Changes Of Sand Mining In The Yangtze River Basin Since The Establishment Of The Three Gorges Dam, Yugai Ma, Yingying Chai, Y. Jun Xu, Zijun Li, Shuwei Zheng

Faculty Publications

The global demand for sand and gravel is at 50 billion tons per year, far exceeding global resource capacities. It reached 7.6 billion tons in 2021 in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB), China. However, production is severely limited in the YRB. Therefore, the incongruity between the supply and demand of river sand is prominent. Wise management of decreasing sand resources in the YRB has become critical since the Three Gorges Dam became operational in 2003. This study synthesized spatial and temporal changes in sand mining activities and quantities along the Yangtze River and its major tributaries from 2004 to 2020. …

Channel Bed Adjustment Of The Lowermost Yangtze River Estuary From 1983 To 2018: Causes And Implications, Ming Tang, Heqin Cheng, Yijun Xu, Hao Hu, Shuwei Zheng, Bo Wang, Zhongyong Yang, Lizhi Teng, Wei Xu, Erfeng Zhang, Jiufa Li

Faculty Publications

Deltaic channels are significant landforms at the interface of sediment transfer from land to oceanic realms. Understanding the dynamics of these channels is urgent because delta processes are sensitive to climate change and adjustments in human activity. To obtain a better understanding of the morphological processes of large deltaic channels, this study assessed the evolution and response mechanism of the South Channel and South Passage (SCSP) in the Yangtze Estuary between 1983 to 2018 using hydrology, multibeam echo sounding and historical bathymetry datasets. Decadal changes in riverbed volume and erosion/deposition patterns in the SCSP were assessed. The results showed that …

Leaf Habit Affects The Distribution Of Drought Sensitivity But Not Water Transport Efficiency In The Tropics, German Vargas G., Norbert Kunert, William M. Hammond, Z. Carter Berry, Leland K. Werden, Chris M. Smith-Martin, Brett T. Wolfe, Laura Toro, Ariadna Mondragón-Botero, Jesús N. Pinto-Ledezma, Naomi B. Schwartz, María Uriarte, Lawren Sack, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Jennifer S. Powers

Faculty Publications

Considering the global intensification of aridity in tropical biomes due to climate change, we need to understand what shapes the distribution of drought sensitivity in tropical plants. We conducted a pantropical data synthesis representing 1117 species to test whether xylem-specific hydraulic conductivity (KS), water potential at leaf turgor loss (ΨTLP) and water potential at 50% loss of KS (ΨP50) varied along climate gradients. The ΨTLP and ΨP50 increased with climatic moisture only for evergreen species, but KS did not. Species with high ΨTLP and ΨP50 values were associated with both dry and wet environments. However, drought-deciduous species showed high ΨTLP …