Digital Commons Network^™

The Curve Not Taken: Effects Of Covid-19 International Comparison News, Seon Woo Kim, Martina Santia, Raymond J. Pingree, Ayla Oden, Kirill Bryanov, Jessica Wyers

Faculty Publications

International news can inform people not only about what is happening in other countries, but also about how their own country could benefit from policies that have proved successful elsewhere. Specifically, international policy comparison news, or news that compares the policies of two or more countries on the same issue, is a potentially important but underutilized and understudied form of news content. We use an experiment to test effects of exposure to news comparing the COVID-19 pandemic policies of the U.S. versus South Korea, and find that this increases knowledge of policy differences between the two countries, support for adopting …

A Framework For Vibration Attenuation In Traffic Mast Arm Structures Under Wind Loads, A. M. Aly, H. Gol-Zaroudi, M. Rezaee

Faculty Publications

Traffic signals and information signs play a vivid role in maintaining safe travel by guiding drivers on highways and urban roads. Traffic mast arm structures are susceptible to vibrations induced by wind loads. Fatigue-induced failure is common in these structures. However, it is crucial to ascertain the functionality of signal support structures. This paper lays the foundation for a fully computational framework to model and mitigate wind-induced vibrations in traffic lighting support structures by conducting computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, dynamic modeling, and damping enhancement. We validated the CFD simulations by aerodynamic testing. The dependence of flow pattern and aerodynamic …

Bio-Inspired Geotechnical Engineering: Principles, Current Work, Opportunities And Challenges, Alejandro Martinez, Jason Dejong, Idil Akin, Ali Aleali, Chloe Arson, Jared Atkinson, Paola Bandini, Tugce Baser, Rodrigo Borela, Ross Boulanger, Matthew Burrall, Yuyan Chen, Clint Collins, Douglas Cortes, Sheng Dai, Theodore Dejong, Emanuela Del Dottore, Kelly Dorgan, Richard Fragaszy, J. David Frost, Robert Full, Majid Ghayoomi, Daniel I. Goldman, Nicholas Gravish, Ivan L. Guzman, James Hambleton, Elliot Hawkes, Michael Helms, David Hu, Lin Huang, Sichuan Huang, Christopher Hunt, Duncan Irschick

Faculty Publications

A broad diversity of biological organisms and systems interact with soil in ways that facilitate their growth and survival. These interactions are made possible by strategies that enable organisms to accomplish functions that can be analogous to those required in geotechnical engineering systems. Examples include anchorage in soft and weak ground, penetration into hard and stiff subsurface materials and movement in loose sand. Since the biological strategies have been 'vetted' by the process of natural selection, and the functions they accomplish are governed by the same physical laws in both the natural and engineered environments, they represent a unique source …

Exploring The Use Of Machine Learning To Parameterize Vertical Mixing In The Ocean Surface Boundary Layer, Jun Hong Liang, Jianguo Yuan, Xiaoliang Wan, Jinliang Liu, Bingqing Liu, Hakun Jang, Mayank Tyagi

Faculty Publications

In ocean and climate models, the simulation of upper-ocean temperature and salinity depends on mixing parameterizations for ocean surface boundary layer turbulence. Existing mixing parameterizations are based on physical principles with empirical parameters. However, they are still imperfect, leading to biases in the simulation of physical states in the upper ocean. In this study, we explore the use of the data-based machine learning technique, specifically, a deep neural network model, for the effects of vertical mixing in the ocean surface boundary layer. The model is trained using process-oriented simulations of the upper-ocean turbulence driven by realistic forcing conditions at the …

A Deep Learning Tool For The Assessment Of Pavement Smoothness And Aggregate Segregation During Construction, Mostafa Elseifi, Ramchandra Paudel, Md Tanvir Ahmed Sarkar, Hossam Abohamer, Nirmal Dhakal

Publications

Pavement construction monitoring and quality assurance (QA) practices are mostly based on costly, discrete, and destructive methods. Most quality assurance programs are based on pavement construction procedures encompassing in-situ coring for layer thickness determination, density measurements, laboratory testing to measure volumetric properties, and smoothness measurements in case of the availability of a profiler. The main objective of this study was to develop a machine learning-based classifier for predicting pavement roughness and aggregate segregation based on digital image analysis, image recognition, and deep learning machine models. The developed Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) models were trained, tested, and validated using 600-pavement surface …

The Construction And Estimation Of Hidden Semi-Markov Models, Kurdstan Abdullah, John Van Der Hoek

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

The Thermodynamics Of A Stochastic Geometry Model With Applications To Non-Extensive Statistics, O.K. Kazemi, A. Pourdarvish, J. Sadeghi

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

2-Dimensional String Problems: Data Structures And Quantum Algorithms, Dhrumilkumar Patel

LSU Master's Theses

The field of stringology studies algorithms and data structures used for processing strings efficiently. The goal of this thesis is to investigate 2-dimensional (2D) variants of some fundamental string problems, including \textit{Exact Pattern Matching} and \textit{Longest Common Substring}.

In the 2D pattern matching problem, we are given a matrix $\M[1\dd n,1\dd n]$ that consists of $N = n \times n$ symbols drawn from an alphabet $\Sigma$ of size $\sigma$. The query consists of a $ m \times m$ square matrix $\PP[1\dd m, 1\dd m]$ drawn from the same alphabet, and the task is to find all the locations of $\PP$ …

Novel Synthetic Routes To Functionalized Tetrahydrobenzofurans And Chiral A-Quaternary A'-Hydroxy Ketones, Fatimat Oluwayemisi Badmus

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Various naturally occurring organic compounds possess unique biological activities and have found exclusive applications in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Their undeniable significance has necessitated the discovery and development of novel reactions that unveil advanced chemical transformations. This dissertation will detail our new approaches towards the synthesis of functionalized tetrahydrobenzofurans and chiral α-quaternary α’-hydroxy ketones. The transformations in these approaches were enabled by the chemistries of oxyallyl cations, Grignard reaction and Claisen rearrangement.

Chapter 1 introduces oxyallyl cations, their generation, reactions and applications. Our previous contributions, in the form of silyloxyallyl cations, to solve the regioselective issues associated with unsymmetrical oxyallyl cations …

Scheduling Many-Task Computing Applications For A Hybrid Cloud, Shifat Perveen Mithila

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A centralized scheduler can become a bottleneck for placing the tasks of a many-task application on heterogeneous cloud resources. Previously, it was demonstrated that a decentralized vector scheduling approach based on performance measurements can be used successfully for this task placement scenario. In this dissertation, we extend this approach to task placement based on latency measurements. Each node collects performance metrics from its neighbors on an overlay graph, measures the communication latency, and then makes local decisions on where to move tasks. We present a decentralized and a centralized algorithm for configuring the overlay graph based on latency measurements and …

Wetland Soil Development Along Salinity And Hydrogeomorphic Gradients In Active And Inactive Deltaic Basins Of Coastal Louisiana, Amanda Fontenot

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal wetlands provide an abundance of ecosystem services that benefit society, such as essential habitat for commercial species, storm protection, nutrient cycling, and carbon storage. Louisiana faces rapid rates of relative sea level rise (natural subsidence and eustatic sea levels) that threaten wetland survival, which are amplified by a reduction of riverine sediment input. An important determining factor of marsh survival is the formation of wetland platform elevation, known as vertical accretion, which is determined by several processes including sediment deposition & erosion, below ground biomass (BGB) productivity, decomposition of organic matter, shallow & deep subsidence, and soil compaction. Feldspar …

Adaptive Balancing Compensation In Distribution Grid Of Ultra High-Power Manufacturing Plants, Motab Almousa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a method of adaptive compensation, capable of handling power factor and the supply quality improvement under non-sinusoidal conditions. The focus in this dissertation is put on developing compensation for ultra-high power metallurgical plants, meaning on compensation in three-phase, four-wire ultra-high power dynamic, distribution systems. A separate attention in the dissertation is put on the adaptive compensation of ultrahigh power arc furnaces. The dissertation also presents an original method of adaptive compensation of DC current generated by such arc furnaces.

The proposed compensator is developed in the frame of the Currents’ Physical Components (CPC) – based power theory. …

Apparatuses, Systems, And Methods For Performing Remote Real-Time Experiments, Paulo J. Waltrich

College of Engineering Patents

Embodiments of the present invention include apparatuses and methods for performing remote experiments in real-time. The method includes sending requests to perform remote experiments for a desired configuration to a first and second facility. The desired configuration may include a first and second configuration. The method includes running a first remote experiment in real-time at the first facility to obtain a first output variable. The first facility may include the first configuration with a first input variable. The method includes simultaneously running a second remote experiment in real-time at a second facility to obtain a second output variable. The second …

Gis Automated Delineation And Analysis Of Cancer Service Areas In The United States, Changzhen Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Delineating a meaningful and reliable geographic unit pertaining to cancer care is essential in examining geographic variations in cancer care for better analysis, management, and planning. Public health researchers have devoted great efforts to defining various service areas, which; however, lack scientific rigor or are unrepresentative of the highly specialized cancer care markets, and their methods have become obsolete in the era of big data and high geo-computation. This study develops the “Spatially Constrained Leiden (ScLeiden)” method, a network community detection algorithm in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and applies it to delineate a series of coherent cancer service …

Quantization Of The Poisson Type Central Limit Theorem (1), Yungang Lu

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Development Of 1,2-Cis-Selective Glycosylation Protocols And Multistep Synthesis Of Glycans From Acinetobacter Baumannii., Dancan Kamau Njeri

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Access to various oligosaccharides has been made possible by glycosylation reactions. This is mainly through chemical synthesis and enzymatic approaches. Herein, I talk about glycosylation through chemical synthesis. In general, glycosylation reactions lead to a mixture of 1,2-cis and 1,2-trans stereoisomers. Stereoselective access to 1,2-trans isomer is highly developed; it efficiently relies on neighboring group participation. However, efficient access to 1,2-cis selective glycosylation is still a work in progress. In Chapter 1, I highlight notable efforts developed so far that address the 1,2-cis selectivity challenge in glycosylation.

In Chapter 2, I demonstrate how I improved …

Determining The 3d Structure And Dynamics Of Mouse Notch1 Epidermal Growth Factor-Like Repeat 26 Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Kendra D. Jenkins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

NOTCH is a transmembrane protein that transmits signals between cells in direct contact and alters gene expression. The signaling pathway is important because it is involved in cell fate determination. The NOTCH1 extracellular domain has 36 epidermal growth factor-like (EGF) repeats that are responsible for ligand binding. Mutations in the EGF-like repeats cause various neurological and developmental disorders. NOTCH1 signaling initiates when DSL ligands bind to EGF11-12, the minimum Ligand Binding Domain (LBD). The Abruptex region of the NOTCH1 protein (EGF24-29) is a highly glycosylated, flexible region with calcium binding sites that regulates NOTCH1 signaling and binding by interacting with …

Consequences Of Gulf Of Mexico Estuarine Tropical Cyclone Disturbance Regimes For Fish Assemblage Dynamics Conditionally Depend On Life-History Traits And Niche Characteristics, Stephen Edward Potts

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Tropical cyclones (TC) are intense, localized disturbances that can potentially cause extensive damage to ecosystems. This dissertation is motivated by a need for interdisciplinary study of TC-ecosystem dynamics with applications to ecology, geography, and analytical methodology. I explore concept linkages between TC dynamics and ecosystems to characterize TC-ecosystem relationships as ecological disturbance regimes. This dissertation tests hypotheses and relationships of TC effects on estuarine fish assemblages in the north-western Gulf of Mexico. I explore concepts in TC-ecosystem relationships to link biotic dynamics with physical disturbance.

In Chapter 2, I compared spatial performance of generalized linear models (GLMs) and generalized additive …

Winding Down River Road, Gillian Harper

LSU Master's Theses

As a mechanism to explore my temporary home in Louisiana, Winding Down River Road is a collection of artworks that integrates natural materials collected from landscapes in southern Louisiana with steel and petroleum-based products. My interest in researching environmental issues, ecology, and industry has shaped my vehicles for observation and how I generate data. Through a variety of methodologies, I am considering how climate change is forcing many of us to re-contextualize how our home can be affected by the very industries we rely on. Personal engagement with residents living in the dystopian atmosphere of southern Louisiana’s industrial corridor and …

Bioremediation Of Petroleum-Based Contaminants By Alkane-Degrading Bacterium Alcanivorax Borkumensis, Amber Julaine Pete

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The world’s dependence on petroleum hydrocarbons has led to significant environmental implications. For example, oil spills cause lasting environmental damage, and the increase of plastics in the marine environment has been growing, specifically, microplastics that can be difficult to detect due to their small size. Petroleum hydrocarbons occur naturally in nearly all marine environments, which has allowed hundreds of microorganisms to evolve to utilize these hydrocarbons as their primary energy source. These microbes are classified as hydrocarbonoclastic and are utilized to remove spilled oil biodegradation. Over the last ten years, progress has been made in the biodegradation of oil spills …

Experimental Investigation Of The Physical Properties Of Irmsnn (M = 1, 3 And N = 2, 4, 7), Smita Speer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Exploration of transition metal stannides, formed from a combination of transition metals (T) and Sn, has resulted in the discovery a variety of materials with interesting physical properties, which is in part due to the complexity of interactions that can occur between the T-d orbitals and Sn-p orbitals. There have been observations of (extremely) large magnetoresistance [1-4], topological flat and nearly flat bands [5-7], superconducting behavior in 2D and 3D systems [5, 8-11], ultrahigh carrier mobility [12-13], and more attributed to d-p orbital mixing in such systems. This dissertation will address the effects of T-Sn interactions …

Control And Planning For Mobile Manipulators Used In Large Scale Manufacturing Processes, Joshua T. Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

Sanding operations in industry is one of the few manufacturing tasks that has yet to achieve automation. Sanding tasks require skilled operators that have developed a sense of when a work piece is sufficiently sanded. In order to achieve automation in sanding with robotic systems, this developed sense, or intelligence, that human operators have needs to be understood and implemented in order to achieve, at the minimum, the same quality of work. The system will also need to have the equivalent reach of a human operator and not be constrained to a single, small workspace. This thesis developed solutions for …

On A Relation Between Ado And Links-Gould Invariants, Nurdin Takenov

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this thesis we consider two knot invariants: Akutsu-Deguchi-Ohtsuki(ADO) invariant and Links-Gould invariant. They both are based on Reshetikhin-Turaev construction and as such share a lot of similarities. Moreover, they are both related to the Alexander polynomial and may be considered generalizations of it. By experimentation we found that for many knots, the third order ADO invariant is a specialization of the Links-Gould invariant. The main result of the thesis is a proof of this relation for a large class of knots, specifically closures of braids with five strands.

Commutative C*-Algebras Generated By Toeplitz Operators On The Fock Space, Vishwa Nirmika Dewage

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Fock space $\mathcal{F}(\mathbb{C}^n)$ is the space of holomorphic functions on $\mathbb{C}^n$ that are square-integrable with respect to the Gaussian measure on $\mathbb{C}^n$. This space plays an essential role in several subfields of analysis and representation theory. In particular, it has for a long time been a model to study Toeplitz operators. Grudsky and Vasilevski showed in 2002 that radial Toeplitz operators on $\mathcal{F}(\mathbb{C})$ generate a commutative $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{T}^G$, while Esmeral and Maximenko showed that $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{T}^G$ is isometrically isomorphic to the $C^*$-algebra $C_{b,u}(\mathbb{N}_0,\rho_1)$. In this thesis, we extend the result to $k$-quasi-radial symbols acting on the Fock space $\mathcal{F}(\mathbb{C}^n)$. …

Impact Of Oil And A Tropical Cyclone On An Omnivore And Herbivore Population In Salt Marshes Of Louisiana, Hannah K. Gordon

LSU Master's Theses

Terrestrial arthropods are the ideal ecological indicators for the health of a salt marsh. Salt marshes are under extreme continuous stressors including climate change, land loss, oil spills, and tropical cyclones. Such stressors impact trophic and species level interactions, food resources, dispersal and population size of insects. In the present study, we collected terrestrial arthropods from eleven sites around Barataria Bay, five sites were oiled and five sites were unoiled, to determine the impact of the redistribution of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Site C6 was excluded from the oiled and unoiled data because it was in close …

Neutron Interferometry Using A Single Modulated Phase Grating, Ivan J. Hidrovo Giler

LSU Master's Theses

Neutron grating interferometry provides information on phase and small-angle scatter in addition to attenuation. Previously, phase grating moiré interferometers (PGMI) with two or three phase gratings have been developed. These phase-grating systems use the moiré far-field technique to avoid the need for high-aspect absorption gratings used in Talbot-Lau interferometers (TLI) which reduce the neutron flux reaching the detector. We demonstrate through simulations a novel phase grating interferometer system for cold neutrons that requires a single modulated phase grating (MPG) for phase-contrast imaging, as opposed to the two or three phase gratings in previously employed PGMI systems. We compare the MPG …

Local And State Climate Initiatives In Louisiana Since 2005: Content And Thematic Analyses, Jessie F. Parrott

LSU Master's Theses

Louisiana is uniquely exposed to severe weather because of its geography and climate. Louisiana’s extreme weather is exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, which will worsen in the future. The risks its population and environment are exposed to has generated several policies and planning documents, nine of which are analyzed in this thesis. Three plans are from the state level, three are from the parish level, and three are from the urban (New Orleans) level. These planning documents pose various adaptation and mitigation actions to ameliorate and address multiple climate issues. These actions utilize specific mitigation strategies. The content and thematic …

A Closed Form Formula For The Stochastic Exponential Of A Matrix-Valued Semimartingale, Peter Kern, Christian Müller

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Understanding Children's Museums' Approaches To Diversity: A Critical And Socio-Cultural Investigation, Amber Nicole Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Children begin to develop self-awareness and awareness of others at an early age (Marion, 2011). Before they reach kindergarten, children begin to make distinctions about race by noticing similarities and differences between themselves and others (Winkler, 2009). Exposing young children to diversity can help each child embrace their identity, accept and celebrate differences, and be accepting of themselves and others (Cole & Verwayne, 2018).

The purpose of this study is to explore how children’s museums support diversity through their programs and planning. The research of this study focuses on four children’s museums located in the United States. There are many …

Navier-Stokes Equations In One And Two Dimensions, Jon Nerdal

LSU Master's Theses

The Navier-Stokes equations are an important tool in understanding and describing fluid flow. We investigate different formulations of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the one-dimensional case along an axis and in the two-dimensional case in a circular pipe without swirl. For the one-dimensional case we show that the velocity approximations are remarkably accurate and we suggest that understanding this simple axial behaviour is an important starting point for further exploration in higher dimensions. The complexity of the boundary is then increased with the two-dimensional case of fluid flow through the cross section of a circular pipe, where we investigate two …