Digital Commons Network^™

Effective Visualization Approaches For Ultra-High Dimensional Datasets, Gurminder Kaur

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Multivariate informational data, which are abstract as well as complex, are becoming increasingly common in many areas such as scientific, medical, social, business, and so on. Displaying and analyzing large amounts of multivariate data with more than three variables of different types is quite challenging. Visualization of such multivariate data suffers from a high degree of clutter when the numbers of dimensions/variables and data observations become too large. We propose multiple approaches to effectively visualize large datasets of ultrahigh number of dimensions by generalizing two standard multivariate visualization methods, namely star plot and parallel coordinates plot. We refine three variants …

Tidal-, Wind-, And Buoyancy-Driven Dynamics In The Barataria Estuary And Its Impact On Estuarine-Shelf Exchange Processes, Linlin Cui

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A three-dimensional, high-resolution, Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) was used to study the dynamics of Barataria Estuary located in the Southeastern Louisiana. Three numerical experiments with different discharge scenarios, including the actual discharge (average ~ 160 m³ s^-1) from the Davis Pond Diversion (DPD) over three months from April to June 2010, no discharge (NO), and the proposed Mid-Barataria Diversion (MBD) with a constant discharge of 850 m³ s^-1, were conducted to investigate the impacts of river diversions on salinity gradients and residence times in the estuary. The three-month average salinity indicated that surface …

Large Eddy Simulations Of Vertical Jets In Crossflow, Pranaya Pokharel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Jets in crossflow (JICF) have applications ranging from oil spill to film cooling of turbine blades. Hence, an understanding of the flow physics is important. The majority of the research has been conducted for low velocity ratios between jet and crossflow with round jets. JICF is demonstrated to behave differently for high velocity ratios and different jet shapes. Circular and rectangular jets are commonly used in aircraft applications. Current study focuses on high velocity ratio JICF issuing from both circular and rectangular exit.

For simulating JICF, an in house code “Chem3D” is used with Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to model …

First-Principles Study On The Catalytic Role Of Cerium Dioxide In The Conversion Of Organic Compounds, Chuanlin Zhao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Ceria is an earth-abundant material that has been widely used in heterogeneous catalysis, environmental catalysis, and energy applications thanks for its ability to readily convert between different oxidation states. The objective of this study is to theoretically elucidate the reaction mechanisms for the conversion of model organic compounds on ceria, in order to gain insights for the design of cost-effective and selective ceria-based catalysts. Acetaldehyde, acetic acid, and para-nitrophenyl phosphate monoester were selected as the model compounds to probe ceria surfaces. Density functional theory calculations can provide accurate predictions of adsorption and reaction energetics, which can be used to …

Observation Of High-Energy Gamma-Rays With The Calorimetric Electron Telescope (Calet) On-Board The International Space Station, Nicholas Wade Cannady

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is a multi-instrument high-energy astrophysics observatory deployed to the International Space Station (ISS) in August 2015. The primary instrument is the calorimeter (CAL), which is intended for measurement of the cosmic ray electron flux in the energy range 10 GeV - 20 TeV. The CAL is also sensitive to gamma-rays in the energy range 1 GeV - 10 TeV and protons and nuclei up to PeV energies. Also present on the CALET payload are an Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC) for the fine determination of the pointing direction and the CALET Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (CGBM) for …

Reinforcement Learning In Robotic Task Domains With Deictic Descriptor Representation, Harry Paul Moore

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the field of reinforcement learning, robot task learning in a specific environment with a Markov decision process backdrop has seen much success. But, extending these results to learning a task for an environment domain has not been as fruitful, even for advanced methodologies such as relational reinforcement learning. In our research into robot learning in environment domains, we utilize a form of deictic representation for the robot’s description of the task environment. However, the non-Markovian nature of the deictic representation leads to perceptual aliasing and conflicting actions, invalidating standard reinforcement learning algorithms. To circumvent this difficulty, several past research …

The Use Of Systematic Distractions To Increase Sustained Attention In School-Aged Children With Attention Problems, Emma Larson

LSU Master's Theses

With the growing prevalence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children (DSM-5, 2013), it has been established that the ability of these children to sustain attention is marked with difficulty (Barkley, 2006). Prior research has addressed the need to increase sustained attention in children with ADHD, however, not all of the promising methods take into consideration that children with ADHD have difficulty ignoring distractions (Rapport et al., 2009). This is problematic because the typical classroom environment is filled with distractions. The current study attempted to fill this research gap by training participants to sustain attention while systematically introducing distractions …

Influence Of Salinity, Sunlight, And Sediment On The Toxicity Of Pesticides In Three Non-Target Organisms, Emily Noelle Vebrosky

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Pesticides used in the United States must undergo registration by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), after a multitude of analyses ranging from environmental fate to aquatic toxicological impacts to human risk exposure. Testing varies for each chemical, some requiring more testing than others. In many cases, environmental factors are restricted in the analysis of chemical behavior and organismal testing is limited to larvae. Many pesticides are formulated to breakdown in the environment by means of photolysis, hydrolysis, or oxidation, either to ensure low-persistence, limited transport, or to form the active ingredient (pro-pesticides). Environmental influences on chemical behaviors include …

Proton Therapy For Adults With Mediastinal Lymphomas: The International Lymphoma Radiation Oncology Group Guidelines, Bouthaina Shbib Dabaja, Bradford S. Hoppe, John P. Plastaras, Wayne Newhauser, Katerina Rosolova, Stella Flampouri, Radhe Mohan, N. George Mikhaeel, Youlia Kirova, Lena Specht, Joachim Yahalom

Faculty Publications

Among adult lymphoma survivors, radiation treatment techniques that increase the excess radiation dose to organs at risk (OARs) put patients at risk for increased side effects, especially late toxicities. Minimizing radiation to OARs in adults patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas involving the mediastinum is the deciding factor for the choice of treatment modality. Proton therapy may help to reduce the radiation dose to the OARs and reduce toxicities, especially the risks for cardiac morbidity and second cancers. Becauseproton therapymay have some disadvantages, identifying the patients and the circumstances that may benefit the most from proton therapy is important. We …

A Note On The Knot Floer Homology Of Fibered Knots, John A. Baldwin, David Shea Vela-Vick

Faculty Publications

We prove that the knot Floer homology of a fibered knot is nontrivial in its next-to-top Alexander grading. Immediate applications include new proofs of Krcatovich’s result that knots with L–space surgeries are prime and Hedden and Watson’s result that the rank of knot Floer homology detects the trefoil among knots in the 3–sphere. We also generalize the latter result, proving a similar theorem for nullhomologous knots in any 3–manifold. We note that our method of proof inspired Baldwin and Sivek’s recent proof that Khovanov homology detects the trefoil. As part of this work, we also introduce a numerical refinement of …

Computational Aerodynamics And Anatomical Characterization Of Laryngotracheal Stenosis In Children, William Poynot

LSU Master's Theses

Laryngotracheal stenosis (LTS) is a health condition in which an obstruction in the upper trachea can cause breathing difficulties and increased incidence of infection, among other symptoms. Occurring most commonly due to intubation in infants, LTS often requires corrective surgery. Currently, clinical methods of assessing the blockage region are simplistic and subjective, and it is challenging to determine the most effective surgical strategy for any given patient. In the present work, a comprehensive methodology is proposed for characterizing the stenosis region both in terms of its anatomical parameters and its corresponding aerodynamic properties. The combination of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) …

Three-Dimensional Flow, Morphologic Change, And Sediment Deposition And Distribution Of Actively Evolving Neck Cutoffs Located On The White River, Arkansas, Derek Allen Richards

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Neck cutoffs are important and prominent features of alluvial rivers yet detailed field-based research of neck cutoffs has been insufficient to fully characterize three-dimensional flow, morphologic change, and sediment deposition and distribution. The main objectives of this research are to examine the formation and evolution of neck cutoffs by characterizing the flow field, morphology, and sediment distribution through neck cutoffs with complex planform configurations located on the White River, Arkansas. Results led to the production of two conceptual models. The flow model has main hydrodynamic characteristics of (1) tight bend flow resulting from flow redirection of nearly 180° through the …

Observation Of Inclined Eev Air Showers With The Radio Detector Of The Pierre Auger Observatory, A. Aab, P. Abreu, M. Aglietta, I. F.M. Albuquerque, J. M. Albury, I. Allekotte, A. Almela, J. Alvarez Castillo, J. Alvarez-Muñiz, G. A. Anastasi, L. Anchordoqui, B. Andrada, S. Andringa, C. Aramo, N. Arsene, H. Asorey, P. Assis, G. Avila, A. M. Badescu, A. Balaceanu, F. Barbato, R. J.Barreira Luz, S. Baur, K. H. Becker, J. A. Bellido, C. Berat, M. E. Bertaina, X. Bertou, P. L. Biermann, J. Biteau, S. G. Blaess, A. Blanco, J. Blazek

Faculty Publications

With the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we have observed the radio emission from 561 extensive air showers with zenith angles between 60 and 84. In contrast to air showers with more vertical incidence, these inclined air showers illuminate large ground areas of several km2 with radio signals detectable in the 30 to 80 MHz band. A comparison of the measured radio-signal amplitudes with Monte Carlo simulations of a subset of 50 events for which we reconstruct the energy using the Auger surface detector shows agreement within the uncertainties of the current analysis. As expected …

Controlling Refractionusing Sub-Wavelength Resonators, Yue Chen, Robert Lipton

Faculty Publications

We construct metamaterials from sub-wavelength nonmagnetic resonators and consider the refraction of incoming signals traveling from free space into the metamaterial. We show that the direction of the transmitted signal is a function of its center frequency and bandwidth. The directionality of the transmitted signal and its frequency dependence is shown to be explicitly controlled by sub-wavelength resonances that can be calculated from the geometry of the sub-wavelength scatters. We outline how to construct a medium with both positive and negative index properties across different frequency bands in the near infrared and optical regime.

Numerical Study Of Liquid Atomization And Breakup Using The Volume Of Fluid Method In Ansys Fluent, Sai Saran Kandati

LSU Master's Theses

The spherical metal particles produced from the centrifugal atomization process have been the topic of numerous theoretical, experimental and numerical studies from the past few years. This atomization process uses centrifugal force to break-up molten material into spherical droplets, which are quenched into solidified granules by the flow of cold air on the spherical droplets. In the present work, a transient three-dimensional multiphase CFD model is applied to three different materials: Molten slag, aqueous glycerol solution, and molten Ni-Nb to study the influence of the dimensionless parameters on the centrifugal atomization outcome.

Results from numerical experiments indicated that the droplet …

An Evaluation Of Sciaenid Growth In The Gulf Of Mexico, Shane Flinn

LSU Master's Theses

Growth models estimate life history parameters that are used in the management of fisheries stocks. The most commonly used growth model in fisheries is the von Bertalanffy growth model (VBGM), yet it has been shown to provide a poor fit for length-at-age data of some species and other models exist. I reviewed 196 peer-reviewed age and growth studies and 50 NOAA stock assessments to examine temporal trends in the use of growth models and model selection in fisheries. I found that the use of multi-model frameworks has increased since the year 2000 and information theoretic approaches are replacing goodness-of-fit and …

A Regional Survey Of River-Plume Sedimentation On The Mississippi River Delta Front, Andrew J. Courtois

LSU Master's Theses

Many studies of the Mississippi River Delta (MRD) have shown historic declines in sediment load over the last few decades. Recent studies also reported that ~50% of the suspended load during floods is sequestered within the delta. While the impact of declining sediment load on wetland loss is relatively well documented, submarine sedimentary processes on the delta front during this recent period of are understudied. To better understand modern sediment dispersal and deposition across the Mississippi River Delta Front, 31 multicores were collected in June 2017 from locations extending offshore from the main river outlets in water depths of 25-280 …

Evaluation Of Synthetic Cpt And Soil Boring Data By Various Spatial Interpolation Techniques, Md Habibur Rahman

LSU Master's Theses

In order to incorporate the influence of collected in-situ data, the spatial correlation between the data and the foundation needs to be explored. However, risk and uncertainty are the characteristics of the soil that cannot be eliminated. Statistical information of the soil property can be estimated from available field data obtained from testing at discrete locations across the site. In this research, several well-established spatial interpolation methods like ordinary kriging (OK), simple kriging (SK), inverse distance weight (IDW), spline, natural neighbor (NaN) and universal kriging (UK) were incorporated to evaluate the best method. Six CPT (Cone penetration test) (Tip Resistance …

Deconstruction And Conditional Erasure Of Quantum Correlations, Mario Berta, Fernando G.S.L. Brandaõ, Christian Majenz, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

We define the deconstruction cost of a tripartite quantum state on systems ABE as the minimum rate of noise needed to apply to the AE systems, such that there is negligible disturbance to the marginal state on the BE systems, while the system A of the resulting state is locally recoverable from the E system alone. We refer to such actions as deconstruction operations and protocols implementing them as state deconstruction protocols. State deconstruction generalizes Landauer erasure of a single-party quantum state as well the erasure of correlations of a two-party quantum state. We find that the deconstruction cost of …

Theoretical Studies Of Ultrafast Electron Dynamics In Atoms And Molecules Via High-Order Harmonic Generation, Paul Vincent Abanador

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The interaction of atoms and molecules with strong laser pulses is of fundamental interest in physics and chemistry. Notably, the process known as high-order harmonic generation (HHG) refers to the production of extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) light, which occurs when an ensemble of atoms or molecules is subjected to a strong infrared laser field. Characterized by an attosecond time scale (1 as = 10^-18 s), the HHG process provides the capability for experimental measurements to capture the ultrafast motion of electrons in these target atoms and molecules. The underlying physical mechanism behind this process naturally leaves imprints in the properties of …

Bipartite Quantum Interactions: Entangling And Information Processing Abilities, Siddhartha Das

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to advance the theory behind quantum information processing tasks, by deriving fundamental limits on bipartite quantum interactions and dynamics. A bipartite quantum interaction corresponds to an underlying Hamiltonian that governs the physical transformation of a two-body open quantum system. Under such an interaction, the physical transformation of a bipartite quantum system is considered in the presence of a bath, which may be inaccessible to an observer. The goal is to determine entangling abilities of such arbitrary bipartite quantum interactions. Doing so provides fundamental limitations on information processing tasks, including entanglement distillation and secret key …

Cactusnets: Layer Applicability As A Metric For Transfer Learning, Edward Collier, Robert Dibiano, Supratik Mukhopadhyay

Faculty Publications

Deep neural networks trained over large datasets learn features that are both generic to the whole dataset, and specific to individual classes in the dataset. Learned features tend towards generic in the lower layers and specific in the higher layers of a network. Methods like fine-tuning are made possible because of the ability for one filter to apply to multiple target classes. Much like the human brain this behavior, can also be used to cluster and separate classes. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no metric for how applicable learned features are to specific classes. In this …

Identifying Key Factors Associated With High Risk Asthma Patients To Reduce The Cost Of Health Resources Utilization, Amani Ahmad

LSU Master's Theses

Asthma is associated with frequent use of primary health services and places a burden on the United States economy. Identifying key factors associated with increased cost of asthma is an essential step to improve practices of asthma management.

The aim of this study was to identify factors associated with over utilization of primary health services and increased cost via claims data and to explore the effectiveness of case management program in reducing overall asthma related cost.

Claims data analysis for Medicaid insured asthma patients in Louisiana was conducted. Asthma patients were identified using their ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes, forward variable …

The Sedimentology And Origins Of A Giant Mass Transport Complex: The Nataraja Slide, Arabian Sea, Sarah Dailey

LSU Master's Theses

A giant mass transport complex (MTC) was recently discovered in the eastern Arabian Sea exceeding in volume all but one other known complex on passive margins worldwide. The complex, named the Nataraja Slide, was drilled by IODP Expedition 355 in two locations where it is ~300 m (Site U1456) and ~200 m thick (Site U1457). The top is defined by the presence of both reworked microfossil assemblages and deformation structures, such as folding and faulting. The deposit consists of two main phases of mass wasting, each which consists of smaller pulses, with generally fining upward cycles, all emplaced just prior …

Applications Of Position-Based Coding To Classical Communication Over Quantum Channels, Haoyu Qi, Qingle Wang, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

Recently, a coding technique called position-based coding has been used to establish achievability statements for various kinds of classical communication protocols that use quantum channels. In the present paper, we apply this technique in the entanglement-assisted setting in order to establish lower bounds for error exponents, lower bounds on the second-order coding rate, and one-shot lower bounds. We also demonstrate that position-based coding can be a powerful tool for analyzing other communication settings. In particular, we reduce the quantum simultaneous decoding conjecture for entanglement-assisted or unassisted communication over a quantum multiple access channel to open questions in multiple quantum hypothesis …

Nonlocal Diffusions And The Quantum Black-Scholes Equation: Modelling The Market Fear Factor, Will Hicks

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

A Decomposition Of A Space Of Multiple Wiener Integrals By The Difference Of Two Independent Lévy Processes In Terms Of The Lévy Laplacian, Atsushi Ishikawa

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

An Asymptotic Comparison Of Two Time-Homogeneous Pam Models, Hyun-Jung Kim, Sergey Vladimir Lototsky

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Parametric Family Of Sdes Driven By Lévy Noise, Suprio Bhar, Barun Sarkar

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Directional Malliavin Derivatives: A Characterisation Of Independence And A Generalised Chain Rule, Stefan Koch

Communications on Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.