Digital Commons Network^™

Genetic Studies Of Body Mass Index Yield New Insights For Obesity Biology, A. E. Locke, B. Kahali, S. I. Berndt, A. E. Justice, T. H. Pers, F. R. Day, C. Powell, S. Vedantam, M. L. Buchkovich, J. Yang, D. C. Croteau-Chonka, T. Esko, T. Fall, T. Ferreira, S. Gustafsson, Z. Kutalik, J. Luan, R. Mägi, J. C. Randall, T. W. Winkler, A. R. Wood, T. Workalemahu, J. D. Faul, J. A. Smith, J. H. Zhao, W. Zhao, J. Chen, R. Fehrmann, K. Hedman, J. Karjalainen, E. M. Schmidt, D. Absher, N. Amin

Faculty Publications

Obesity is heritable and predisposes to many diseases. To understand the genetic basis of obesity better, here we conduct a genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI), a measure commonly used to define obesity and assess adiposity, in up to 339,224 individuals. This analysis identifies 97 BMI-associated loci (P < 5 × 10-8), 56 of which are novel. Five loci demonstrate clear evidence of several independent association signals, and many loci have significant effects on other metabolic phenotypes. The 97 loci account for ∼2.7% of BMI variation, and genome-wide estimates suggest that common variation accounts for >20 % of BMI variation. Pathway analyses provide strong support for a role of the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and implicate new genes and pathways, including those related to synaptic function, glutamate signalling, insulin secretion/action, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

Cwbr Author Interview: Empty Sleeves: Amputation In The Civil War South, Brian Craig Miller

Civil War Book Review

Interview with Brian Craig Miller, Associate Professor of History at Emporia State University

Interviewed by Zach Isenhower

Civil War Book Review (CWBR): Today the Civil War Book Review is happy to speak with Brian Craig Miller, Associate Professor of History at Emporia State University. Professor Miller previously authored John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory, and is Editor of the journal Civil War History. Today we get to discuss his most recent book, Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South. Professor Miller, thank you for joining us today. Brian Craig Miller (BCM) …

Faculty Senate Newsletter, January 2015, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

LSU Faculty Senate Publications

Message from President: In one of his Proverbs of Hell, the late-Enlightenment poet William Blake shows the devil recommending that we “Bring out number weight and measure in a year of dearth.” Blake’s advice, uttered by the Provost of Perdition, throws a bituminous light on our contemporary preoccupation with assessment. Academic people everywhere not only labor under, but amicably collaborate in the production of statistics, measurements, evaluations, “metrics,” and a menagerie of purportedly informative numbers. We have arithmetical estimates of everything—except assessment itself. The absence of evidence for the efficacy of assessment is, if not overwhelming, at least imposing. Faculty …

The Civil War As Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings Of The American Civil War, Paul D. Escott

Civil War Book Review

Putting the Civil War in a Transnational Context

This diverse but useful volume had its origin in a conference held at the College of Charleston in 2011. Thanks to rather small print, the volume contains no fewer than twelve essays, plus an introduction by the editors and the text of a ro....

The Civilian War: Confederate Women And Union Soldiers During Sherman's March, Ashley Baggett

Civil War Book Review

Resistance and Confederate Patriotism in the Face of Sherman’s March

In The Civilian War, Lisa Tendrich Frank examines the impact of Union soldiers’ interactions with elite white women in Georgia and the Carolinas. More than tactical victories or destruction of Confederate morale, S....

Empty Sleeves: Amputation In The Civil War South, Steven Noll

Civil War Book Review

Disability and Masculinity in the Postwar South

Empty Sleeves mixes new Civil War history, gender and masculinity studies, and disability history to examine the experiences of southern soldiers who lost limbs in the horrific conflict that was the American Civil War. It also analyze....

A Tale Of Two Plantations: Slave Life And Labor In Jamaica And Virginia, Eric Burin

Civil War Book Review

Slavery in Comparative Perspective

In A Tale of Two Plantations, Richard S. Dunn examines in minute detail two plantations, Mesopotamia in Jamaica and Mount Airy in Virginia. Dunn’s study is based largely on annual slave inventories, documents that allow him to reconstruct the live....

Social Transitions Cause Rapid Behavioral And Neuroendocrine Changes, Karen P. Maruska

Faculty Publications

© 2015 The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. All rights reserved. In species that form dominance hierarchies, there are often opportunities for low-ranking individuals to challenge high-ranking ones, resulting in a rise or fall in social rank. How does an animal rapidly detect, process, and then respond to these social transitions? This article explores and summarizes how these social transitions can rapidly (within 24 h) impact an individual's behavior, physiology, and brain, using the African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, as a model. Male A. burtoni form hierarchies in …

Confirming The Multidimensionality Of Psychologically Controlling Parenting Among Chinese-American Mothers: Love Withdrawal, Guilt Induction, And Shaming, Jing Yu, Charissa S.L. Cheah, Craig H. Hart, Shuyan Sun, Joseph A. Olsen

Faculty Publications

© The Author(s) 2014. Despite the theoretical conceptualization of parental psychological control as a multidimensional construct, the majority of previous studies have examined psychological control as a unidimensional scale. Moreover, the conceptualization of shaming and its associations with love withdrawal and guilt induction are unclear. The current study aimed to fill these gaps by evaluating the latent factor structure underlying 18 items from Olsen et al. (2002) that were conceptually relevant to love withdrawal, guilt induction, and shaming practices in a sample of 169 mothers of Chinese-American preschoolers. A multidimensional three-factor model and bi-factor model were specified based on our …

Wrongful Convictions And Race: Structural Incentives And Implicit Bias, Leslie Lacoste

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Components, Volume 11 (2015), Lsu Center For Computation And Technology

Components

No abstract provided.

Lsu General Catalog 2015-2016, 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.

Sacred Vs. Secular Mindfulness Meditation: The Influence Of Presentation Priming On Therapeutic Effectiveness, Amanda R. Morice

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Economies Of Violence, John Protevi

Faculty Publications

I discuss "economies of violence," comparing non-state (acephalic forager bands and horticultural chiefdoms) and state societies. Capital punishment and tolerated personal revenge in forager bands is both anti-war and anti-state, while some chiefdoms practice war as an anti-state practice.

Satanic Devotions The Prayers Of Robert Lovelace In Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Juliette Paul

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

No abstract provided.

"Go Not Far To Dine" Pedagogical Approaches To Sustainable Consumption In The Eighteenth-Century Studies Classroom And Beyond, Marlon Pareja, Sher Li Ong, Michelle Merrill, Samara Anne Cahill

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

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

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

No abstract provided.

Missing. . . A Story Of Ambiguous Loss, Ashley Nicole Adams

LSU Master's Theses

There are two forms of ambiguous loss. Type one occurs when there is a physical absence, but a psychological presence, such as the loss one feels towards the grandparent that passed away before their birth. Type two occurs when there is a psychological absence, but a physical presence, such as the loss one feels towards a spouse with Alzheimer’s or dementia (Morris). The opportunity to create, direct, and star in my own one-woman show inspired me to explore the form of ambiguous loss my family and I endure each and every day due to the disappearance of my aunt, Sharon …

An Investigation Of The Quality And Quantity Of Student Motivation In Physical Education, Trey Douglas Willoughby

LSU Master's Theses

Physical inactivity is a prevalent problem in the United States associated with numerous health risk factors. Over half the population fails to meet prescribed physical activity recommendations, suggesting that individuals become less active as they age. It is important to observe individuals in the Physical Education setting because it is an ideal environment to provide meaningful physical activity, while promoting lifetime physical activity. This research sought to understand motivational behaviors in high school adolescents, attempting to draw links between physical education, student satisfaction, and leisure-time physical activity. Three research questions were present: (1) What relationships do high school student perceive …

Examining The Role Of Episodic And Semantic Networks In Anhedonia: Applying The Accessibility Model Of Emotional Self-Report To Psychometrically-Defined Schizotypy, Kyle Robert Mitchell

LSU Master's Theses

Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit a range of abnormalities in self-reported non-current experience of pleasure, but undisrupted current experience of pleasure. Several researchers have sought to address the mechanism of this deficit, yielding useful models of anhedonia. The accessibility model of emotional self-report suggests that deficits in hedonic response are due to differential activation of, and reliance upon, semantic and episodic memory systems. While this model has been proposed as an explanation of the deficits in hedonic response in schizophrenia, it has not been experimentally validated, and it remains to be seen whether the model will hold across the schizophrenia spectrum. …

The Role Of Salience In Second Language Acquisition, Ian South Comeaux

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract Cues to the actor role such as word order, noun animacy, case inflection and verb agreement vary in strength across languages. The competition model (CM; MacWhinney, 2005) suggests that adult L2 acquisition is difficult due to differences in cue strength between the native and target languages. Using a paradigm inspired by the CM, the present study examines whether salience plays a role in facilitating adjustments of cue strength during L2 learning. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language (via an actor-assignment task) which utilized four different cues: verb agreement, case marking, animacy, and word order. Word order, …

The Lived Body In Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty And Derrida, Manhua Li

LSU Master's Theses

In my thesis, I discuss the accounts of the lived body in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida in terms of the extent to which they succeed as counter-accounts to the Cartesian metaphysical view of the body-object, as well as the limits of each account. I first introduce Descartes’ account of the body as substantiality (res extensa), which isolates the body as the object from its subject, the mind, the “I think” (res cogitans). After contextualizing the body as non-living objectivity in Cartesian metaphysics, I discuss the later Heidegger’s appropriation of the Husserlian notion of the lived body (Leib)—as separate from the …

Using A Dependent Group Contingency To Increase Homework Completion And Accuracy In A General Education Classroom, Sarah Alexa Metallo

LSU Master's Theses

Current trends in homework research have sought to understand the importance behind homework assignment and completion as well as effective interventions to increase accurate homework productivity. Classroom contingencies have been shown to effectively increase a variety of academic behaviors in the classroom, but research remains limited on the efficacy of a dependent group contingency administered in a general education classroom to improve homework completion and accuracy. The study utilized a dependent group contingency in the general education classroom setting in southeastern Louisiana public schools to improve students’ homework performance. Teacher, individual student and classroom data were collected in order to …

An Investigation Of The Effect Of Irrelevant Sounds On Serial Order Recall In Children And Adults, Corey Ian Mcgill

LSU Master's Theses

Irrelevant sound is detrimental to performance on serial order recall for both adults and children. Many current models of the effects of irrelevant sound on serial order recall propose that the irrelevant sound interferes with rehearsal in adults. However a direct test of rehearsal on the irrelevant sound effect (ISE) had not been examined prior to the present study. Furthermore, the cause of the ISE in children remains unclear as children are less proficient at rehearsal, yet typically show larger effects. We examined how certain factors hypothesized to relate to the size of the ISE correlate to performance in both …

Survivors Of Individuals Who Completed Suicide: The Influence Of Time Since The Loss, Alexis M. Rabalais

LSU Master's Theses

This cross sectional study explores associations between elapsed time since the loss and outcomes of prominent feelings and self-regard among 187 help-seeking survivors bereaved by suicide. Chi-square tests were conducted to examine the aforementioned relationships. In examining suicide survivors’ most prominent feelings over time, this study found mixed results in early bereavement. This study showed that at 25 to 59 months elapsed time since the loss both scared and happiness were significant for suicide survivors. No significance was found before 25 to 59 months, suggesting a change in suicide survivors’ prominent feelings following two years elapsed time since the loss. …

Effect Of Specific Feedback On Growth Mindset And Achievement, Erin Elizabeth Gauthreaux

LSU Master's Theses

Every student has a different mindset, or their own way of viewing challenges and setbacks. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a specific feedback intervention on student mindset and achievement in a middle school life science course. Several tests were used to compare the data at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year. These tests included mindset, competency in science, attitudes about learning science, and life science content knowledge. The control group was taught by the use of lecture, note-taking, and life science activities. The experimental group was …

Utilization Of The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire Across Family Structures: Do The Same Constructs Apply?, Leah Michelle Adams

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

America has experienced a marked increase in non-nuclear family structures over the last five decades. The evolution of more diverse family systems has led some researchers to eschew a “one size fits all” approach to parenting assessment, as these measures may neglect or misconstrue parent-child dynamics unique to non-nuclear families. The current study examined the underlying factor structure of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) in two distinct family structures to determine if parenting constructs were replicated across groups. Participants included 246 mothers from single parent and two-parent households in Louisiana. Statistical analyses included exploratory factor analysis, replication analysis, hierarchical regression …

A Comparison Of Psychotic Symptoms Recorded In Patient Files Of Persons With A First Diagnosis Of Schizophrenia In 1930 And 1960 Cohorts Drawn From A Large State Hospital, Kristopher Michael Lee Henderson

LSU Master's Theses

The growth of mental hospital populations during the 19th and 20th centuries along with the corresponding increase in the number of mental institutions is well documented. The cause of the growth is the subject of considerable debate. One hypothesis is that the growth in hospital population was due, in part, to an increase in the prevalence or incidence of schizophrenia. Another is that diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia changed with time in such a manner that increasing numbers of patients were given this diagnosis. The present study sought to address these issues in two ways: 1) by comparing the number and …

Augmented Renaissance: From Creation To Revelation, Christopher Atkinson

LSU Master's Theses

During the summer of 2013, the M.F.A. acting ensemble at Louisiana State University was charged with devising solo performance projects that would be performed December 6-14, 2014. We were given artistic freedom to create shows that could cover different topics and a variety of genres. The writing and performance of this project served as a graduation requirement, but was also pitched as a professional opportunity post graduation. Initially I opposed this project, but I soon became elated once I chose my subject matter. I knew that if I was going to perform a solo piece for 30-40 minutes it had …

"Operation Red Campus”: An Experimental Analysis Of Crnc Advertisements Targeting The Millennial Generation, Ellen Mullee Schmidt

LSU Master's Theses

Using an experimental survey design, this study evaluated an advertising campaign developed by the College Republican National Committee targeting Millennials in the 2014 midterm elections. Three particular advertisements from “Operation Red Campus” were selected and tested using a pre-survey and two post-surveys. Due to data constraints, only the results of the first post-survey were used in this analysis. This campaign was designed in response to the Republican Party’s continued problems of low youth turnout and poor party perceptions. This thesis analyzes the effectiveness of the strategies employed by the CRNC to target 18-24-year-olds with this campaign, adding to the limited …