Digital Commons Network^™

Foreign News Coverage In Selected U.S. Newspapers 1927-1997: A Content Analysis, Cleo Joffrion Allen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This content analysis was designed to examine, in a single longitudinal study, trends in the quantity and kinds of world news coverage in selected U.S. newspapers during times of relative peace. Using complementary proportion and absolute-item frequencies, two constructed weeks in 1927, 1947, 1977, and 1997 in three newspapers, 168 issues in all, were analyzed. The findings indicate that the percentage of foreign news coverage compared to non-foreign coverage in the three newspapers actually increased between 1927 and 1997. The amount of foreign coverage spiked in 1947 and then started to decline. But even with the decline, coverage by proportion …

Boundary Effects On Non-Equilibrium Localized Structures In Spatially Extended Systems, Aniruddha Yadav

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A study of the effects of system boundaries on bistable front propagation in nonequilibrium reaction-diffusion systems is presented. Two model partial differential equations displaying bistable fronts, with distinct experimental motivations and mathematical structure, are examined in detail utilizing simulations and perturbation techniques. We see that propagating fronts in both models bounce, trap, pin, or oscillate at the boundary, contingent on the imposed boundary condition, initial front speed and distance from the boundary. The similarities in front boundary interactions in these two models is traced to the fact that they display the same front instability (Ising-Bloch bifurcation) that controls the speed …

African-American Women's Reception Influence And Utility Of Television Content: An Exploratory Qualitative Analysis, Bettye A. Grable

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study featured 33 in-depth interviews of college-aged, African-American women and offers baseline exploratory data about how a majority cultural artifact like televised depictions become utilized in the everyday lives of an underrepresented group in media studies. This research represents one of a few studies to explore how black females decode and utilize TV content, and offers a new theoretical framework to explain informants' decoded receptions, influence and utility of television. An inductive analysis of interview narratives found that viewers use TV content like a looking-glass to understand how they are seen by others and where they fit in …

The Iconography Of Nationalism: Icons, Popular Culture, And American Nationalism, Dallas Hulsey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Iconography of Nationalism: Icons, Popular Culture, and American Nationalism develops a model of cultural icons, defining icons as highly visible, culturally variable, and overdetermined auratic images. Situating icons within the context of mass reproduction technologies and American nationalism, this study seeks to demystify the simple images presented by infantile, national, and scapegoat icons in literature, film, and political rhetoric. This dissertation argues that icons participate in the American nationalist project by channeling citizens’ political and patriotic feelings through seemingly simple images. While acknowledging that icons are necessary to construct what Benedict Anderson calls “the imagined community” of the nation, …

An Examination Of Teacher Migration In A Large, Urban School District, Christine C. Arab

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Teaching is professional work that as an occupation is characterized by many of the same rules of employment as other white-collar jobs. It is typically steady work with predictably rising pay, requires limited physical effort, a fixed amount of work time, and occurs in organizations that are rule-bound. Teaching is also uniquely complex, in that it requires a high degree of autonomy, responsibility for others, and extensive management activities. It is also work that has been the focus of significant public criticism for more than twenty-five years as students test scores have declined, the achievement gap among the races has …

Development, Evaluation And Characterization Of Protein-Isoflavone Enriched Soymilk, Janette Ethel-Pessi Saidu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Adequate provision of soy isoflavone and protein in soybean products is essential in meeting the soy health claim and the promotion of a healthy product. Commercial soymilks contain inadequate amounts of protein and isoflavone to meet the FDA recommended 25g and 40-50mg/day level, respectively, in 1-2 servings. This research study set out to investigate the possibility of producing a protein-isoflavone enriched (PIE) soymilk by incorporating soy germ in soymilk to provide the recommended FDA level in 1-2 servings. Three PIE soymilks containing 25 (SG25), 30 (SG30), and 35% (SG35) germ were prepared and compared to 100% whole soybean milk (WSB-control) …

Technology Adoption Into Teaching And Learning By Mainstream University Faculty: A Mixed Methodology Study Revealing The 'How, When, Why, And Why Not', Pamela Stone Nicolle

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The field of educational technology has been and continues to be an influential component within the vast array of educational strategies, pedagogies, plans, and processes designed to enhance student learning. Faculties are realizing the relevance and potential of educational technologies in their teaching and professional and personal growth. However, the distance between envisioning technological use and actual implementation is often a long, winding road for many educators.

University faculty members are in the midst of a strong emphasis by various stakeholders to travel that road and to travel it with speed and accuracy. The mainstream members of tertiary level faculties …

Illinois Legislators Revisited: A Comparison Of Legislators' Perceptions And Attitudes Toward Constituent E-Mail, Mary Louise Sheffer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This is a follow up study to a 2000 report, which measured and compared Illinois state legislators’ attitudes and perceptions toward constituent e-mail, and its impact on personal political agendas. Along with measuring attitudes, this study sought to measure and compare the impact of advances in e-mail technology on Illinois legislators’ use of e-mail as a political tool of communication. The panel comparison consisted of 59% of respondents who participated in both the 2000 and the 2004 study. A survey conducted in February 2000 showed that 89% of Illinois legislators had an active e-mail address, but only 65% of those …

Exile As Severance, Alexandru Boldor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Exile is a phenomenon probably as ancient as humanity itself, and one of the oldest topics in universal literature. The great majority of its variants (political, economical, social,) are founded on the idea of "forced displacement." Consequently, most often exile is reflected in literary creations in discourses dominated by a sentiment of loss. However, in some cases exile is not seen as a tragic event, but rather as an opportunity for intellectual growth - as attested by a number of authors who have chosen voluntarily to exile themselves. The rationale behind this occurrence is a mental process I called "severance." …

Speciation, Equilibrium Distribution And Kinetics Of Rainfall-Runoff Phosphorus In Adsorptive-Filtration Unit Operations And Processes, Jia Ma

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the influence of hydrology on rainfall runoff phosphorus partitioning between aqueous and particulate-bound phase, and dissolved phosphorus speciation at the upper end of a Cementitious Porous Pavement (CPP) small urban watershed. This study also investigated particulate bound phosphorus temporal distribution during storm event and phosphorus equilibrium distribution on a wide gradation of solids captured by hydrodynamic separator after the storm completed. Results indicate that EMC of urban rainfall runoff phosphorus exceeds EPA water quality criteria, with majority of particulate-bound phosphorus while rainfall by itself contains non-comparable low concentration of phosphorus. Dissolved phosphorus was mainly H2PO4- and HPO4-2 …

Aspects Of The Life History, Ecophysiology, Bioenergetics, And Population Dynamics Of The Cownose Ray, Rhinoptera Bonasus, In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Julie Ann Neer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The cownose ray, Rhinoptera bonasus, is an elasmobranch commonly observed throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Cownose rays appear to be sensitive to water temperature. I performed laboratory experiments and collected field data to obtain basic life history information, and used the information to configure an individual-based bioenergetics model. The bioenergetics model was coupled to a matrix projection model, and the coupled models were used to predict how warmer and cooler water temperatures, compared to current conditions, would affect the growth and population dynamics of the cownose rays. The life history study determined weight at age, maturity by weight, and fecundity …

Common Sense Philosophy And Politics In America: John Witherspoon, James Mccosh, And William James, Scott Philip Segrest

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the political significance of the two leading strains of common sense thought in the history of American philosophy—Scottish Common Sense and Pragmatism—as suggested in the writings of John Witherspoon and James McCosh in the Scottish Common Sense line, and of the more famous co-founder of Pragmatism, William James. These two strains of American common sense are placed in context of the larger Western common sense tradition. Each is shown to aim at finding a solid middle ground epistemologically between skeptical doubt and idealistic certitude that could serve as a stable basis for moral and political life. Witherspoon, …

Health And Growth, Petia Stoianova Stoytcheva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Inarguably the most important question is about the unequal distribution of income among countries. Development economists have recently turned to health for an answer. This dissertation investigates the e®ect of health on cross-country income. The first essay sheds new light on the impact of AIDS on cross-country income levels. We control for a variety of factors that are potentially related to income as suggested by our empirical model and existing related literature. Using the extended (for human capital) Solow model as our baseline empirical specification, we consider cross-sectional and panel estimation. For the full sample it is shown that AIDS …

Speciation, Equilibria And Kinetics For Rainfall-Runoff Metals In Adsorptive-Filtration Unit Operations And Processes, Tianpeng Guo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Populations transferred by rainfall runoff can have many adverse effects livings and people. Treatment of rainfall-runoff continues to pose unique challenges due to the unsteady nature of processes including mobilization, partitioning and transport of heavy metals as well as other constituent loads. BMPs that incorporate heavy metal removal are generating more attention as the nature of stormwater is better understood. This dissertation focused on metal partitioning and speciation in rainfall-runoff through the in-situ Partial Exfiltration Reactor (PER) and exposed to various redox circumstances, and metal removal by sorptive engineered manganese oxides coated media. Adsorption capacity of three manganese oxides coated …

Re-Conceptualizing Southern Rhetoric: A Meta-Critical Perspective, Christina L. Moss

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The study of southern rhetoric and public address remains important to the study of American rhetoric and public address. However, recent years indicate a decline in the amount and variety of scholarship in this area of study. This project provides a meta-critical analysis of the history of southern rhetorical scholarship, focusing mainly on southern public address. By tracing ideology from the Agrarians, Richard Weaver, Dallas Dickey, Waldo Braden, Stephen Smith, and Stuart Towns, clear attitudes and definitions of the South, southern identity and southern rhetoric evolved to create an area of study in much need of revision. The remainder of …

Control Of Vibrio Vulnificus And Vibrio Parahaemolyticus In Oysters, Ligia Virginia Antonia Da Silva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus are gram-negative halophilic bacteria found in the natural aquatic environment. V. vulnifcus and V. parahaemolyticus have been implicated in foodborne illness and can cause gastroenteritis that has been associated with consumption of raw or undercooked seafood. V. vulnificus can cause primary septicemia after its ingestion, and secondary septicemia through skin lesions in individuals with preexisting conditions such as elevated serum iron levels. Bacteriophages, viruses that invade and lyse bacteria, specific to V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus are naturally found in seawater and oysters. Every summer, the oyster industry is threatened by recall of oysters due …

Public Sexuality: A Contemporary History Of Gay Images And Identity, Shaun Erwin Sewell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study is an examination of the public imaging of gay men and lesbians during the latter part of the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first centuries. The study looks at public imaging as it is performed in the service of the political aims of gay people, with an eye towards the kinds of tensions and erasures that occur when one monolithic identity is promoted. Through these examinations, I create a kind of contemporary history of the gay political rights movement. In the study, I examine theoretical approaches to identity from several postmodern theorists and then use these approaches …

Long Term Pressure Behavior In Turbidite Reservoirs, Feng Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, we investigated several possible mechanisms that would give rise to the anomalous pressure behavior (early concave-up on Horner plot or upward drift on the derivative curve of the log-log plot and asymmetry between the pressure drawdown and buildup behavior) sometimes encountered in the turbidite reservoirs in GOM primarily using numerical simulation and 2-level experimental designs. We ascertained the most influential parameters to the pressure behavior and identified that multilayer commingled system and the leaky compartment model are the most probable mechanisms to cause the anomalous behavior due to layer or zone property contrast to a certain degree. …

Ability Of College Students To Simulate Adhd On Objective Measure Of Attention, Randee Lee Booksh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Complaints of ADHD symptoms in college students are not uncommon and college students frequently self-refer for assessment of ADHD. Some may seek out a diagnosis to obtain academic accommodations and/or stimulant medication. Diagnosing ADHD in college students is largely reliant on self-report measures, and to a lesser extent, objective measures of attention. The typical college student has easy access to information about ADHD, potentially facilitating efforts to simulate self-reported symptoms. The present study examined the ability of college students to effectively simulate ADHD on objective and self-report measures of attention, and examined the relationship between knowledge of ADHD and ability …

Development Of High Performance Hybrid Syntactic Foams: Structure And Material Property Characterization, Rahul R. Maharsia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Syntactic foams are light weight particulate composites that use hollow particles (microballoons) as reinforcement in a polymer resin matrix. High strength microballoons provide closed cell porosity which helps in reducing weight of the material. Due to their wide range of possible applications such as in aerospace and marine structures, it is desirable to modify the physical and mechanical properties of syntactic foams as per the requirements of an application. Various filler materials can be used to modify the foam microstructure to attain these desired properties. Compression tests have revealed that high density syntactic foams demonstrate poor damage tolerance and low …

After Scotland: Irvine Welsh And The Ethic Of Emergence, Benjamin George Lanier-Nabors

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In “After Scotland: Irvine Welsh and the Ethic of Emergence,” the author’s objective is to mirror what he argues is the Scottish writer Irvine Welsh’s objective: to chart out a future Scotland guided by a generative life ethic. In order to achieve this objective, the author lays open and reengages Scotland’s past, discovers and commits to neglected or submerged materials and energies in its past, demonstrates how Welsh’s work is faithful to those and newly produced materials and energies, and suggests that Welsh’s use of those materials and energies enables readers to envision a new Scotland that will be integral …

The Diffusion Of Gis In Journalism, Ben S. Wasike

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to determine the likelihood of reporters to adopt Geographical Information Systems and to predict the future of the diffusion of GIS in the journalism industry using the diffusion of innovations theory. The study used two data collection methods: in-depth interviews and a Web survey. The indepth-interviews revealed factors that will influence the diffusion of GIS, including the availability of map data, competition between media agencies, the ease of getting management to buy GIS once its functionality has been demonstrated to them, and the general use of secondary GIS products. The Web survey showed that …

The Foundation Of An Apparel Factory: Culture's Place Becomes A Practiced Space, Kim T. Chavis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The study provides a reformulation of culture as space. Building on Michel Certeau's theory of space and place, this study incorporates Karla Holloway's theory of historicity, memory, and metaphor - specifically, how these elements are formed and behave - W.E.B. Dubois's theory of double consciousness, Homi Bhabha's theory of the beyond and interstices, John Fiske's culture of everyday life, Bourdieu's idea of the habitus, Brett Williams' theory of texturing, and Edward Said's travel theory. These critical ideas are woven together to construct an operating construct of space, which allows for that culture to be a dynamic, fluid construction, represented in …

Biologically Inspired Learning System, Patrick Mcdowell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Learning Systems used on robots require either a-priori knowledge in the form of models, rules of thumb or databases or require that robot to physically execute multitudes of trial solutions. The first requirement limits the robot’s ability to operate in unstructured changing environments, and the second limits the robot’s service life and resources. In this research a generalized approach to learning was developed through a series of algorithms that can be used for construction of behaviors that are able to cope with unstructured environments through adaptation of both internal parameters and system structure as a result of a goal based …

Conspiracy Culture In America After World War Ii, Valerie Rose Holliday

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Feminism has all too often been reified as a theoretical category. Specifically, Marxist critical categories fail to account for the integral importance of gender in any sociopolitical critique. This dissertation attempts to dereify gender and demonstrate a theoretical model that seamlessly integrates psychoanalysis, Marxism, and feminism. Conspiracy culture in America since World War II is an ideal aperture through which we may envision such a theoretical approach, and indeed see the critical need for such an approach. This dissertation looks at several post-war American conspiracy narratives, including Oliver Stone’s JFK and Nixon, Don DeLillo’s Libra, Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe, John …

Cultural Performance Of Roadside Shrines: A Poststructural Postmodern Ethnography, Rebecca Marie Kennerly

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Marking the site of death on the road with a shrine, an increasingly popular cultural practice in the United States, is a deeply personal, private affair, however, because shrines are placed in the public right-of-way, they attract attention and invite participation, comment, and criticism. These sites, the materials that mark them, how people come to build them, the messages that those who build them hope to convey, and the accumulative force these sites bring to bear in various contexts offer unique insights into our complex, fragmented, and often confounding relationships with death, living memory, and selective forgetting. This project takes …

Cementitious Permeable Pavement As A Passive Unit Operation And Process For Stormwater Quality And Quantity Control, Xuheng Kuang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

With respect to the problems caused by impervious pavements, cementitous permeable pavement (CPP) functions as a passive unit operation and process for stormwater quality and quantity control through infiltration, evaporation, filtration, absorption and reaction mechanisms. CPP pore characteristics were examined through pore connectivity analysis using X-Ray Tomography (XRT). Image resolution influence on image analysis results was evaluated. Relationships between parameters of pore characteristics were evaluated. Factors that significantly influence fluid flow in CPP media include effective porosity, pore connectivity and pore size distribution. A modified Kozeny-Carman model in which effective porosity, specific surface area based on effective pores (SSA)pe, and …

The Operational Aesthetic In The Performance Of Professional Wrestling, William P. Lipscomb Iii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study analyzes the relationship between professional wrestling as performance and its fans. For decades, professional wrestling has been characterized as a fraudulent sport of scams and illusion rather than actual and fair competition between athletes. Why then is wrestling so popular? I pursue the question by taking a close look at professional wrestling in four different cultural venues or sites of production: the historical archive, the live wrestling event, the televised event, and the Internet. In each site, I focus on what components define professional wrestling, how they operate, and what appears to be their purpose. Drawing on Neil …

Sites Of Resistance: Language, Intertextuality, And Subjectivity In The Poetry Of Diane Wakoski, Cordelia Maxwell Hanemann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interconnectedness of language and related cultural texts and women’s subjectivity. The poststructuralist feminist enterprise of examining and critiquing language and signifying practices for the ways in which they impose social values and of interrogating and undermining the fixity of meanings in cultural texts will serve as my primary frame. Concerned with the individual (gendered) consciousness, poststructuralist feminist theory of subject formation posits that while language, along with ideologically biased texts of the culture, construct subjects, language and the cultural texts also serve as sites of resistance for the deconstruction and reconception of individual and collective subjectivities. …

Public Relations Ethics: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Paul Stuart Lieber

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This two-part study employed 11 qualitative interviews, the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and a quantitative version of the five-factor TARES test to complete the first cross-cultural analysis of the ethical decision-making patterns of public relations practitioners. The DIT is an instrument based on Kohlberg’s (1969) moral development theory, the TARES test composed of 14 self-enforced, ethical consideration statements derived from the research of Baker and Martinson (2001). Results indicate no statistically significant difference in levels of moral development and ethical consideration between sampled practitioners in Australia, New Zealand and the United States (Lieber, 2003). This finding argues for a vocational …