Digital Commons Network^™

“Whatever God Has Yoked Together, Let No Man Put Apart:” The Effect Of Religion On Black Marriages, Cassandra Chaney Phd, Lucy Shirisia, Linda Skogrand

Faculty Publications

This qualitative study examined how religion strengthened the marriages of three (n = 6) African American couples. An ancillary purpose of this study is to examine the extent that spirituality influences the marriages of these couples. Through the use of a family-strengths framework, this study examined how a religious orientation (Hill, 1968) stabilized Black marriages. Qualitative analysis revealed the following four themes: (1) Religion is The Foundation of the Marriage; (2) Couples Consistently Practiced their Religion; (3) Couples Turned to Religion during Difficult Times; and (4) Religion Transcended Race. The findings indicate these couples practiced their religion …

Faculty Senate Newsletter, February 2016, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

LSU Faculty Senate Publications

Message from President: This season of political campaigns, in which every candidate tries to be universally nice to everyone while also mounting a universal attack against all enemies, brings to mind the strange link between niceness and authoritarianism. In Louisiana, a state with a royalist heritage (whether the French or the Spanish monarchies) and a state in which a preoccupation with etiquette and sociability blunts the painful recognition of a long history of disappointments, losses, failures, exclusions, and disasters, the linkage between sugary sweetness and acidic repression affects almost everything, whether the reluctance to speak out against social ills such …

Gumbo Yearbook, Class Of 2016, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

Gumbo Yearbook

The Gumbo yearbook chronicles the entire academic year at LSU. In words and especially photos, the Gumbo shows the people, places, and events that make each year unique. In addition to formal portraits of schools and departments, the book contains hundreds of snapshots of students with their friends and dozens of pages showcasing organizations.

Urban Microbiomes And Urban Agriculture: What Are The Connections And Why Should We Care?, Gary M. King

Faculty Publications

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016. A large percentage (~50 %) of the global human population lives in urban systems. The transition from largely rural to urban lifestyles began gradually, but has accelerated. Given the magnitude of anthropogenic changes in the Earth system as a whole and concerns about resource availability and continued population growth, questions about the sustainability of urban systems have become a focal point for a variety of research and civic efforts, including programs promoting urban agriculture as a means to provide local food sources and to better manage critical nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. The …

Is Genetic Drift A Force?, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

One hotly debated philosophical question in the analysis of evolutionary theory concerns whether or not evolution and the various factors which constitute it (selection, drift, mutation, and so on) may profitably be considered as analogous to “forces” in the traditional, Newtonian sense. Several compelling arguments assert that the force picture is incoherent, due to the peculiar nature of genetic drift. I consider two of those arguments here—that drift lacks a predictable direction, and that drift is constitutive of evolutionary systems—and show that they both fail to demonstrate that a view of genetic drift as a force is untenable. I go …

Linking The Histories Of Slavery: North America And Its Borderlands, Sterling Evans

Civil War Book Review

Slavery in the North American Borderlands

The editors of Linking the Histories of Slavery state that the goal of their volume is that by introducing “unexpected scenes" and by “challeng[ing] assumptions about how slavery worked across North America," they want readers to “expand th....

Searching For Freedom After The Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, And Freedman, Justin Behrend

Civil War Book Review

The Origins of an Iconic Reconstruction Image

On September 1, 1868, a crude and simply-drawn cartoon appeared in the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor that shocked newspaper readers across the country. Titled “A Prospective Scene in the ‘City of Oaks,’ 4th of March, 1869," it showed a ....

Comparison Of Electrophysiological Auditory Measures In Fishes, Karen P. Maruska, Joseph A. Sisneros

Faculty Publications

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Sounds provide fishes with important information used to mediate behaviors such as predator avoidance, prey detection, and social communication. How we measure auditory capabilities in fishes, therefore, has crucial implications for interpreting how individual species use acoustic information in their natural habitat. Recent analyses have highlighted differences between behavioral and electrophysiologically determined hearing thresholds, but less is known about how physiological measures at different auditory processing levels compare within a single species. Here we provide one of the first comparisons of auditory threshold curves determined by different recording methods in a single fish species, …

Lsu General Catalog 2016-2017, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

LSU General Catalog

The LSU General Catalog describes all undergraduate and graduate departments and programs with degree requirements and courses offered for each one. The LSU General Catalog includes information on registration and financial aid as well as academic services offered to all students.

Front Matter

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Drifting Unguided Or Involuntary Motion And The Enlightenment Sense Of Direction, Kevin L Cope

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Turning Round Or Standing Still Movement And Stasis In Defoe, Pope, And Sterne, Allan Ingram, Hélène Dachez

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Highly Salient Pictures On Unfamiliar Face Matching Performance, Karyn Warner

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Phenotypes And The Evolution Of Animal Decisions, Tamra C. Mendelson, Courtney L. Fitzpatrick, Mark E. Hauber, Charles H. Pence, Rafael L. Rodríguez, Rebecca J. Safran, Caitlin A. Stern, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Faculty Publications

Despite the clear fitness consequences of animal decisions, the science of animal decision making in evolutionary biology is underdeveloped compared with decision science in human psychology. Specifically, the field lacks a conceptual framework that defines and describes the relevant components of a decision, leading to imprecise language and concepts. The ‘judgment and decision-making’ (JDM) framework in human psychology is a powerful tool for framing and understanding human decisions, and we apply it here to components of animal decisions, which we refer to as ‘cognitive phenotypes’. We distinguish multiple cognitive phenotypes in the context of a JDM framework and highlight empirical …

Concept, Conversion, Cultivation, And Consequence: The Four Cs Of Successful Collaboration, Sarah Simms, Hayley Johnson

Faculty Publications

In an effort to change the librarian-faculty collaboration culture at Nicholls State University, librarians actively sought grant opportunities to make resources available to the university which would facilitate collaboration. Nicholls was able to secure grant funding for a collaborative multidisciplinary research workshop series to promote undergraduate research. The objective of this grant funded opportunity was to place the library in a central role in the enhancement and expansion of the university’s research initiatives and partner with those disciplines that were traditionally self-contained. The technology and training made available to students through this initiative is important as it provides all students …

Stanley On Ideology, John Protevi

Faculty Publications

I explore Jason Stanley's notion of ideology. After preliminary remarks on ideology and coercion in social reproduction, I offer a restatement of Stanley's position on ideology, examining his notion of epistemic harm. I then examine the role of emotion in his thinking as that which binds beliefs to agents, and conclude with an argument for a notion I call "affective ideology" that enables us to connect ideology with the use of force in "coercive social reproduction".

Editorial, Thomas J. Lampoltshammer, Michael Leitner, Noella Edelmann

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Validity Of Two General Outcome Measures Of Science And Social Studies Achievement, Paul Mooney, Renée E. Lastrapes, Amanda M. Marcotte, B. S. Amy Matthews

Faculty Publications

The present research expanded validity findings for a structured formative assessment measure of content learning that was administered online and known as critical content monitoring. The study also evaluated the potential for additional measures, including sentence verification technique and written retell, to explain variance in student achievement in science and social studies classrooms. Participants were fifth-grade students (N=51) enrolled in a public primary school in the southeastern U.S. Three predictor variables (i.e. critical content monitoring, sentence verification technique and written retell) were correlated with content test scores from the nationally representative standardized achievement test (i.e. Stanford Achievement Test-Tenth Edition abbreviated …

On Old Facts And New Understandings, Zach Isenhower

Civil War Book Review

I was perusing a garage sale not long ago when among the antique Tupperware and forgotten cassette tapes I came across a set of encyclopedias. It was a grand old set, complete, with bindings meant to look substantial and authoritative just sitting on a shelf. Thirty years ago they probably cost a ....

Treatment Acceptability And Child Discipline: The Influence Of Parent Factors, Kasia Simone Plessy

LSU Master's Theses

The consideration of parents’ acceptance of child discipline methods is important when developing culturally sensitive parent training programs, as treatment acceptability has been associated with treatment adherence and effectiveness. Past parent training research has primarily been conducted with middle-income, Caucasian mothers. The purpose of this study is to examine parents’ acceptance of five common discipline methods often used by or recommended to parents. To address the lack of research considering parental factors, this study examines the influence of gender, race, and income on parents’ acceptability ratings. Participants were 106 mothers from heterogeneous backgrounds. Acceptability ratings were measured using the Treatment …

Activity Level As A Moderator Of The Relationship Between Child And Maternal Anxiety, Paige Marie Ryan

LSU Master's Theses

Anxiety is excessive and impairing for approximately 30% of individuals. Families with anxiety problems tend to pass on those problems to their children, specifically due to a variety of factors: genetics, parenting style, and other environmental risks. On the other hand, promoting behaviors like positive activity scheduling, participation in clubs, and physical activity has been shown to decrease symptoms of anxiety. However, research has yet to focus on this relationship by increasing activity level (e.g., participation in organizations, hobbies, sports). The purpose of this study is to investigate if the relationship between maternal and child anxiety is dependent upon the …

Examining Teacher Multicultural Competence In The Classroom: Further Validation Of The Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale, Melissa Jo Hamilton

LSU Master's Theses

The focus of this study is to strengthen the technical adequacy of the Multicultural Teacher Competency Scale (MTCS; Spanierman et al., 2011) self-assessment measure for teacher multicultural competence. This study will also examine the relationship between it and the teacher-student relationship and teacher self-efficacy. Results show that the MTCS shows similar internal consistency reliability with a new demographic of in-service teachers. The MTCS also has predictive significance for teacher self-efficacy and student-teacher relationship scores. Implications of the study include the importance for teachers to be taught and practice this competency, as well as, validation that this construct is related to …

Developing A Questionnaire To Assess Young Adults' Motivation To Prepare Healthy Foods, Ariana Delong Bailey

LSU Master's Theses

This study developed a questionnaire to estimate young adults’ motivation to prepare healthy foods based on the psychological needs identified by the Self-Determination Theory. Participants (n=507; mean age 20.2±1.9 years; 63% female) were recruited to complete the questionnaire. Due to incomplete responses, data from 492 individuals were analyzed (63% female). Racial/ethnic representation was 360 (71%) Caucasian, 78 (15%) African American, 25 (5%) Hispanic/Latino, 41 (8%) other/mixed race, and 3 participants who did not indicate race/ethnicity. Participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with 25 statements using a 5-point Likert scale. Statements evaluated the participants’ …

All Are Immigrants, Seyedehghazal Gazelle Naghshbandi

LSU Master's Theses

“I constantly migrate and among many places and always to and fro I do it alone, although many people act like me”— Agnes Heller Three years ago, I left my home country of Iran for many reasons. I wanted something new in my life: new challenges and new experiences. This move expanded my world. I was not satisfied in Iran and, the United States was always the place I dreamed about being; I had an American dream and I decided my dream should become true. I became an immigrant. As my world expanded, I lost my comfort and security. I …

Testing Fitness-Related Phone Application Technology In Physical Activity Classes, Angela Nicole Simonton

LSU Master's Theses

Many young adults are inactive (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010) and time spent on smartphones and applications (“apps”) is high (Pew Research Center, 2014; The Nielsen Company, 2014). Technology is often viewed as a barrier to health behavior, so seeking ways of using technology to facilitate physical activity (PA) and other health-related behaviors could be beneficial. The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) framework was used to determine if the NexTrack smartphone app could increase PA behaviors and SCT-related constructs among university students in PA courses. Participants in the NexTrack app intervention group were hypothesized to report increased psychosocial and …

A Crow And A Hanger, Kelsey Ann-Morgan Livingston

LSU Master's Theses

A Crow and A Hanger is a body of work that explores and illustrates the nature of life and death through the use of mixed-media drawing and printmaking techniques. My intention for this work, and this thesis paper, is to explain my thought process and how the imagery came to be. For me it is not at all important for every viewer to fully understand each image and the thoughts that went into the body as a whole. I let the images and their titles lead the viewer in a general direction and allow for their personal history and biases …

Cutting The Deficit: An Examination Of Factors Contributing To The Success Of Black Males Seeking Doctoral Degrees At A Predominantly White Institution, Larry Paul Manthei, Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the experiences of eight Black male higher education doctoral students attending a predominantly White institution in the South. Interviews were conducted asking the participants to reflect upon their educational experiences. The primary overarching research question guiding this study was: What factors contribute to the academic success of Black males seeking doctoral degrees in Higher Education at a predominately White institution? Sub-questions assisting in this research were: A) What experiences, educational and otherwise, promote academic success? B) What strategies and resources did Black males utilize in persisting and seeking doctoral degrees at a predominately White institution? Analysis …

Resilient Future: The Cultural Riverfront Edge In The New Capital, Amaravathi, In Andhra Pradesh, India, Priyanka Malik

LSU Master's Theses

India faced the bifurcation of a united Andhra Pradesh state into the state of Telangana and state of Andhra Pradesh or Seemandhra, on 2nd June 2014. Since the year 1948, the city of Hyderabad remained the capitol of united Andhra Pradesh. However, post the bifurcation, the two states are required to share Hyderabad as their administrative capitol for ten years after which the city of Hyderabad will be the centre for the state of Telangana. The state of Andhra Pradesh is thus building a new capital Amaravathi, along the banks of Krishna River. The name of the capital is borrowed …

Psychometric Extension Of The Memory For Names Test, Heather Chance Foil

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate the psychometric properties of the Memory for Names (Mem4Names) test among a sample of older adults without cognitive impairment. Mem4Names is a test of famous face recognition that was shown to be a reliable and valid measure of semantic memory in older adults both with and without cognitive impairment (Brouillette et al., 2011). The current study re-examined the psychometric properties of the Mem4Names test among 133 volunteers at Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Institute for Dementia Research and Prevention. The study confirmed previously reported calculations of the test’s reliability by calculating Cronbach’s alpha …

Social Media Network Data Mining And Optimization, Neha Clare Jose

LSU Master's Theses

Many small social aid organizations could benefit from collaborating with other organizations on common causes, but may not have the necessary social relationships. We present a framework for a recommender system for the Louisiana Poverty Initiative that identifies member organizations with common causes and aims to forge connections between these organizations. Our framework employs a combination of graph and text analyses of the organizations' Facebook pages. We use NodeXL, a plugin to Microsoft Excel, to download the Facebook graph and to interface with SNAP, the Stanford Network Analysis Platform, for calculating network measurements. Our framework extends NodeXL with algorithms that …