The Intersectionality Of Race And Gender And Its Relationship To School Belonging And Student Mental Health, Kennedi Boatner

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

A Stable Isotopic Profile Of Atmospheric River Precipitation Impacting Northern California, Erika Clarise Ornouski

LSU Master's Theses

Atmospheric river (AR) storms are an integral part of California’s hydrologic cycle, providing 30–50% of the state’s annual precipitation. However, “too much of a good thing” can swell

rivers beyond capacity leading to widespread flooding, erosion, and environmental damage. Northern California’s steep topography coupled with its seasonal Sierra Nevada snowpack puts this region at risk for floods and extreme weather hazards that can be triggered by strong ARs. Identifying AR contributions in the water cycle is crucial for informing water resource and emergency management decisions Stable isotope analysis provides a means to understand the movement of precipitation based on fractionation …

Symmetric Functions Algebras (Sfa) Ii: Induced Matrices, Philip Feinsilver

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Kinetic And Chemical Effects Of Clays And Other Fillers In The Preparation Of Epoxy-Vinyl Ether Composites Using Radical-Induced Cationic Frontal Polymerization, Brecklyn R. Groce, Emma E. Lane, Daniel P. Gary, Douglas T. Ngo, Dylan T. Ngo, Fahima Shaon, Jorge A. Belgodere, John A. Pojman

Faculty Publications

Addition of fillers to formulations can generate composites with improved mechanical properties and lower the overall cost through a reduction of chemicals needed. In this study, fillers were added to resin systems consisting of epoxies and vinyl ethers that frontally polymerized through a radical-induced cationic frontal polymerization (RICFP) mechanism. Different clays, along with inert fumed silica, were added to increase the viscosity and reduce the convection, results of which did not follow many trends present in free-radical frontal polymerization. The clays were found to reduce the front velocity of RICFP systems overall compared to systems with only fumed silica. It …

Removal Of Radionuclides Using Capacitive Deionization, Yusik Won

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Severe nuclear accidents, including the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, can lead to the discharge of large amounts of radionuclides into aquatic environments. Some radionuclides such as ¹³⁷Cs and ⁹⁰Sr have long half-lives and can remain in the environment for a long period of time. These radionuclides can be detrimental to humans and the environments because they can cause human and environmental exposure to ionizing radiation and because they can be bioaccumulated and biomagnified. Therefore, in case of a severe accident and a radioactive spill, it is important to quickly clean up and treat radioactively contaminated water to …

Optimal Control Problems For Stochastic Processes With Absorbing Regime, Yaacov Kopeliovich

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Seasonal Seepage Fluid Flow And Pressure Detection Beneath Flood Protection Levees In The Lower Mississippi River Valley Using Non-Invasive Geophysical Methods, Daniel Locci

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores the use of shear-wave seismic reflection and electrical resistivity techniques to complement our understanding of seepage pore pressure variations and soil type estimation beneath earthen levees in the Mississippi River floodplain. The seasonal variations of water level in the river create changes in pore pressure in the adjacent aquifer, which can be detected using time-lapse shear-wave velocity analysis. The seismic reflection patterns during these pressure variations show changes in velocity that can be translated into changes in effective pressure, allowing us to distinguish between confined and leaky aquifers.

In addition, the integration of geophysical methods such as …

A Menagerie Of Symmetry Testing Quantum Algorithms, Margarite Lynn Laborde

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In Chapter 1, we establish the mathematical background used throughout this thesis. We review concepts from group and representation theory. We further establish fundamental concepts from quantum information. This will allow us to then define the different notions of symmetry necessary in the following chapters. In Chapter 2, we investigate Hamiltonian symmetries. We propose quantum algorithms capable of testing whether a Hamiltonian exhibits symmetry with respect to a group. Furthermore, we show that this algorithm is that this algorithm is DQC1-Complete. Finally, we execute one of our symmetry-testing algorithms on existing quantum computers for simple examples. In Chapter 3, we …

An Analysis Of Hurricane Laura's Storm Surge In Cameron Parish Using Synthetic Storm Tracks, Climatology, And Statistics, Cameron Goff

LSU Master's Theses

Cameron Parish is a large coastal parish in southwest Louisiana that has been impacted by several powerful tropical cyclones. In 2020, the strongest hurricane in recorded history to ever hit this region, Hurricane Laura, set a state record for the highest storm surge measurement at 6.34 meters. I examine the climatology of tropical cyclone landfalls in this parish, looking for trends in intensity and frequency with time. I then compare the extreme surge of Hurricane Laura with a dataset of 645 synthetic tropical cyclones generated and used by the Coastal Hazards System for Louisiana. Plots comparing various meteorological statistics to …

Domain Specific Analysis Of Privacy Practices And Concerns In The Mobile Application Market, Fahimeh Ebrahimi Meymand

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mobile applications (apps) constantly demand access to sensitive user information in exchange for more personalized services. These-mostly unjustified-data collection tactics have raised major privacy concerns among mobile app users. Existing research on mobile app privacy aims to identify these concerns, expose apps with malicious data collection practices, assess the quality of apps' privacy policies, and propose automated solutions for privacy leak detection and prevention. However, existing solutions are generic, frequently missing the contextual characteristics of different application domains. To address these limitations, in this dissertation, we study privacy in the app store at a domain level. Our objective is to …

Stabilizing Control Schemes For Grid-Connected Hybrid Pv-Energy Storage Systems, Indra Narayana Bhogaraju

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A nonlinear stabilizing control scheme based on Lyapunov theory is proposed for a grid- connected hybrid photovoltaic (PV)/ battery/supercapacitor (SC) system. The system dynamics is developed in the stationary reference frame, and the state-space model of the system is derived and used to formulate the Lyapunov function (LF) candidate. The global asymptotic stability of the LF-based controller is discussed in detail. The real-time implementation feasibility of the proposed control scheme is validated through hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) studies of a grid- connected hybrid system under solar energy generation and grid load variations. To address the issue of digital computational time that leads …

Nanosecond Infrared Laser Ablation Dynamics, Achala Priyadarshani Deenamulla Kankanamalage

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Laser ablation dynamics encompasses studies of fundamental physical processes of mid infrared laser ablation. Understanding the mechanisms of IR laser desorption and ionization can lead to improvements in laser ablation-based techniques and expansion of their applications. Control of material removal ensures both accuracy and precision of the laser ablation-based techniques. The laser ablation mechanism in the studied wavelength region, is a process of water vaporization and photothermal disruption of tissue. Glycerol was used as the ablation target to establish the methods. Experiments were first aimed at developing methods to monitor material removal during ablation using a 2.94 µm wavelength mid-IR …

20-Year Assessment Of Total Suspended Sediment (Tss) Variability In Barataria Bay From Modis Ocean Color Using A Combination Of Adaptive Semi-Analytical And Neural Network Algorithms, Bijaylaxmi Sahoo

LSU Master's Theses

Barataria Bay, a hydrologically dynamic basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico, exhibits a distinct spatio-temporal distribution of total suspended sediment (TSS). However, studies on sediment distribution are limited by availability of in-situ data as well as the limitation of ocean color algorithms for suspended sediments in shallow optically complex waters. Barataria Bay TSS concentration profile is complex, influenced in the upper basin by fresh water sources such as the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion, and in the lower bay by the river plume and marine influence near the mouth of the bay. To efficiently study the sediment dynamics in the …

Evaluating Fungal Population Response To The Miocene Climatic Optimum: High-Resolution Palynological Insights From The South China Sea And Mcmurdo Sound, Antarctica, Mallory Pilie

LSU Master's Theses

Fungi play key and specific roles in ecosystems, specifically as many have restricted geographic distributions, known host/substrate preferences, and are important local environmental indicators due to their short dispersal distances. This study of fossil fungi from a time interval of pronounced global warming, the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO), allows analysis of fungal response to an analogue for future climate change scenarios. The research presented herein is part of a larger project, Fungi in a Warmer World (FiaWW), which is using globally-distributed sediment samples to provide foundational information on fungal community distribution patterns and will provide the first fungi-based climatological reconstructions …

Quantifying Mud Settling Velocity As A Function Of Turbulence And Salinity In A Deltaic Estuary, Michael W. Mcdonell

LSU Master's Theses

Mud settling velocity is controlled by flocculation, which in turn strongly depends on turbulence and on the chemistry and biology of the water-sediment mixture. As a result, mud settling velocity can be poorly constrained in coastal areas and vary in space and time by orders of magnitude. Here we quantified mud settling velocity in Barataria Basin, a deltaic estuary in Louisiana (USA), using three independent methods: eddy covariance (one station for 200 days), floc cameras (4 stations at one time), and Rouse profile inversion (14 stations, replicated 10-30 times each). Eddy covariance indicates that settling velocity increases with turbulence, at …

Snow Distribution And Influence In Taylor Valley, Antarctica, Using Remote Sensing, Katherine Mcnulty, Peter Doran, Mark Salvatore, Suniti Karunatillake

LSU Master's Theses

The McMurdo Dry Valleys is the largest ice-free area in Antarctica, but seasonal snow covers the valley floors sporadically throughout the year. In this study, a model to estimate areal snow coverage from satellite imagery was created. An area-volume model was created to estimate the amount of snow water equivalent (SWE) from the snow area extracted from the imagery. Snow cover influences the total albedo, the hydrologic budget, and the soil moisture and soil temperature in Taylor Valley (TV). Quantifying snow precipitation in TV is challenging because snow redistributes with winds, sublimates, or melts within a short period. Previous estimates …

First-Order Algorithms For Nonlinear Structured Optimization, Miao Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nonlinear optimization is a critical branch in applied mathematics and has attracted wide attention due to its popularity in practical applications. In this work, we present two methods which use first-order information to solve two typical classes of nonlinear structured optimization problems.

For a class of unconstrained nonconvex composite optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth but possibly nonconvex function and a convex but possibly nonsmooth function, we propose a unified proximal gradient method with extrapolation, which provides unified treatment to convex and nonconvex problems. The method achieves the best-known convergence rate for first-order methods when …

Geophysical Characterization Of Underground Storage In Salt Domes During The Clean Energy Transition, Joses B. Omojola

LSU Master's Theses

Safely transforming geological formations into cost-effective underground storage is critical for the US energy security and global energy transition. Seasonal energy demand requires relatively cheap, impermeable, non-reactive materials for storing vast amounts of natural gas and hydrogen. Due to their low risk of fracturing and leakage, salt formations are ideal for these purposes however, pressure variations during drawdown, differential salt creep, and reactivation of pre-existing fractures along boundary shear zone(s) (BSZ) can be detrimental to salt cavern safety and long-term cavern operations. Several environmental disasters at storage facilities in the US and Europe, have created a need to understand how …

Matroid Generalizations Of Some Graph Results, Cameron Crenshaw

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The edges of a graph have natural cyclic orderings. We investigate the matroids for which a similar cyclic ordering of the circuits is possible. A full characterization of the non-binary matroids with this property is given. Evidence of the difficulty of this problem for binary matroids is presented, along with a partial result for binary orderable matroids.

For a graph G, the ratio of |E(G)| to the minimum degree of G has a natural lower bound. For a matroid M that is representable over a finite field, we generalize this to a lower bound on …

A Study Of Max Reger's Four Sonatas For Solo Violin, Op. 42, No. 1: Analyzing Musical Structure And Exploring Performance Approaches, Hayoung Cho

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines four sonatas for solo violin op.42, no.1 by Max Reger, a composer relatively unknown in the modern era despite his significant contributions to the violin repertoire. Reger's lack of popularity as a composer for the violin and the infrequency of his solo violin sonatas' performance and recording are the main reasons for this study. The research is based on a comprehensive analysis of Reger's musical language and violin works focusing on his use of polyphonic textures, rhythmic and melodic phrasing, and ornamentation. By examining Reger's compositional techniques, this study aims to shed light on his unique approach …

Mapping, Modeling, And Predicting Extreme Flood Events With Cloud Computing, Dan Tian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Floods represent one of the most severe natural disasters worldwide. It is crucial to accurately assess flood hazards to mitigate the impact and enhance community resilience. This study focuses on three key components of flood hazard management, including (1) flood frequency estimation, (2) inundation delineation, and (3) flood susceptibility assessment. The first project presents a Bayesian Log-Pearson Type III model with Spatial Priors (BLP3-SP) that utilizes spatial regression priors to enhance the accuracy of flood frequency estimation for sites with limited data. The method is compared with two other algorithms with different priors. The results indicate that BLP3-SP performs the …

Finite Element Methods For Elliptic Optimal Control Problems With General Tracking, Seonghee Jeong

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation concerns a linear-quadratic elliptic distributed optimal control problem with pointwise state constraints in two spatial dimensions, where the cost function tracks the state at points, curves and regions of a domain.

First we explore the elliptic optimal control problem subject to pointwise control constraints. This problem is reduced into a problem that only involves the control. The solution of the reduced problem is characterized by a variational inequality. Then we introduce the elliptic optimal control problem with general tracking and pointwise state constraints. Here we reformulate the optimal control problem into a problem that only involves the state, …

Attentional Focus Effects On Motor Variability, Charlend Kenneth Howard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Subtle changes in task instructions with associated changes of one’s focus of attention (FOA) can have measurable effects on performance and learning of complex motor skills (Wulf, 2013). The beneficial effects of adopting an external focus of attention (EF) have been well-documented in physical environments, and recently have also been demonstrated in virtual reality (VR) environments (Cochran, Aiken, Rhea, & Raisbeck, 2021; Yamada, Kuznetsov, Diekfuss, & Raisbeck, 2021). However, these studies primarily focused on performance outcomes (such as error and accuracy), with relatively less emphasis on movement coordination. Given that most human movements are motor abundant (more degrees of freedom …

Gulf Sturgeon Mesohabitat Use And Movement In The Lower Pearl River Louisiana-Mississippi, Amanda Popovich

LSU Master's Theses

After spring migrations to natal rivers Gulf Sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi reside in freshwater holding areas prior to fall emigrations to nearby estuaries. Limited published information on the physical habitat characteristics of these holding areas is available, especially for juvenile fish in the western portion of the Gulf Sturgeon’s distribution. To further investigate freshwater occupancy and movement patterns, 32 acoustic receivers were deployed from late April to October of 2021 and 2022 in 1600-m reaches distributed throughout the lower Pearl River, Louisiana-Mississippi, the westernmost river within their distribution. Generalized linear mixed models and multi-state models were used to determine what …

Machine-Learning Approaches For Developing An Autograder For High School-Level Cs-For-All Initiatives, Sirazum Munira Tisha

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Most existing autograders used for grading programming assignments are based on unit testing, which is tedious to implement for programs with graphical output and does not allow testing for other code aspects, such as programming style or structure. We present a novel autograding approach based on machine learning that can successfully check the quality of coding assignments from a high school-level CS-for-all computational thinking course. For evaluating our autograder, we graded 2,675 samples from five different assignments from the past three years, including open-ended problems from different units of the course curriculum. Our autograder uses features based on lexical analysis …

Sl(2,Z) Representations And 2-Semiregular Modular Categories, Samuel Nathan Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We address the open question of which representations of the modular group SL(2,Z) can be realized by a modular category. In order to investigate this problem, we introduce the concept of a symmetrizable representation of SL(2,Z) and show that this property is necessary for the representation to be realized. We then prove that all congruence representations of SL(2,Z) are symmetrizable. The proof involves constructing a symmetric basis, which greatly aids in further calculation. We apply this result to the reconstruction of modular category data from representations, as well as to the classification of semiregular categories, which are defined via an …

Expand And Compare The Use Of Different Digital Fashion Technologies In Simulation Three-Dimensional Structured Designs, Fatimah Hakeem

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research determined the ability of three-dimensional (3D) simulation technology (CLO3D^TM and OptiTex^TM software) to develop digital prototypes of structured apparel designs using different creative pattern-cutting techniques. The project’s focus was to compare the similarities between physical and virtual prototypes and evaluate differences in performance between the two software programs using fit and appearance criteria. The participants’ evaluations were analyzed with their performance on the Apparel Spatial Visualization Test (ASVT) to determine whether there was a correlation between the level of performance on the ASVT and evaluation of the technologies. It was predicted that participants with higher …

Analog Cosmology And Superfluidity In Atomic Gases And Electronic Materials, Anshuman Bhardwaj

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We present a study of analog cosmological models in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and in graphene, and superfluidity in a box-shaped traps. We start by examining the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped inside an expanding toroid that can realize an analog inflationary universe. The expanding condensate forces phonons to undergo redshift and damping due to quantum pressure, owing to the thinness of the ring. We predict that such expanding BECs can exhibit spontaneous phonon creation from the vacuum state and show how it would manifest in the atom density and density correlations and discuss connections with the inflationary theory. …

Improving Teacher Intervention Decisions Using The Fraction Error Flowchart, Katherine Pettrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the U.S. the fifth-grade mathematics curriculum is largely devoted to building fraction skills, providing an essential foundation for future success in mathematics (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008). Unfortunately, students in the U.S. struggle with fraction proficiency (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2022; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2018). Even when teachers facilitate interventions for struggling students those interventions may not be aligned with student need (Riccomini, 2005). Additionally, teachers struggle to identify research-based practices (RBPs) when presented with student data (Means et al., 2009). The purpose of this study was to create and test a flowchart that could …

Evaluating Attitudes Toward Non-Formal Science Education Programs Among High School Science Teachers In Southeast Louisiana, Heather Egger

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has begun implementing Louisiana Student Standards for Science (LSSS), as well as developing high school science certification programs. The LDOE recognizes that teaching science using three-dimensional learning methods and phenomena based inquiry learning will be a challenge that would be addressed in part by partnerships between formal science teachers and nonformal science education programs. However, limited available information on this topic shows that utilization of nonformal science education opportunities by science educators has declined and, in some instances, have been relegated to unstructured “fun” outings to reward students, often after the final quarter …