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Gumbo Yearbook, Class Of 2015, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College Jan 2015

Gumbo Yearbook, Class Of 2015, 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.

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Can We Identify Genes With Increased Phylogenetic Reliability?, Vinson P. Doyle, Randee E. Young, Gavin J.P. Naylor, Jeremy M. Brown Jan 2015

Can We Identify Genes With Increased Phylogenetic Reliability?, Vinson P. Doyle, Randee E. Young, Gavin J.P. Naylor, Jeremy M. Brown

Faculty Publications

© The Author(s) 2015. Topological heterogeneity among gene trees is widely observed in phylogenomic analyses and some of this variation is likely caused by systematic error in gene tree estimation. Systematic error can be mitigated by improving models of sequence evolution to account for all evolutionary processes relevant to each gene or identifying those genes whose evolution best conforms to existing models. However, the best method for identifying such genes is not well established. Here, we ask if filtering genes according to their clock-likeness or posterior predictive effect size (PPES, an inference-based measure of model violation) improves phylogenetic reliability and …

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Escherichia Coli Yqja, A Member Of The Conserved Deda/Tvp38 Membrane Protein Family, Is A Putative Osmosensing Transporter Required For Growth At Alkaline Ph, Sujeet Kumar, William T. Doerrler Jan 2015

Escherichia Coli Yqja, A Member Of The Conserved Deda/Tvp38 Membrane Protein Family, Is A Putative Osmosensing Transporter Required For Growth At Alkaline Ph, Sujeet Kumar, William T. Doerrler

Faculty Publications

© 2015, American Society for Microbiology. The ability to persist and grow under alkaline conditions is an important characteristic of many bacteria. In order to survive at alkaline pH, Escherichia coli must maintain a stable cytoplasmic pH of about 7.6. Membrane cation/proton antiporters play a major role in alkaline pH homeostasis by catalyzing active inward proton transport. The DedA/Tvp38 family is a highly conserved membrane protein family of unknown function present in most sequenced genomes. YqjA and YghB are members of the E. coli DedA family with 62% amino acid identity and partially redundant functions. We have shown that E. …

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Economies Of Violence, John Protevi Jan 2015

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.

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Jump-Diffusion Approximation Of Stochastic Reaction Dynamics: Error Bounds And Algorithms, Arnab Ganguly, Derya Altintan, Heinz Koeppl Jan 2015

Jump-Diffusion Approximation Of Stochastic Reaction Dynamics: Error Bounds And Algorithms, Arnab Ganguly, Derya Altintan, Heinz Koeppl

Faculty Publications

Biochemical processes in living cells are comprised of reactions with vastly varying speeds and molecular counts of the reactant species. Classical deterministic or stochastic approaches to modeling often fail to exploit this multiscale nature of the reaction systems. In this paper, we propose a jump-diffusion approximation to these types of multiscale systems that couples the two traditional modeling approaches. An error bound of the proposed approximation is derived and used to partition the reactions into two sets, where one set is modeled by continuous stochastic differential equations and the other by discrete state processes. The methodology leads to a very …

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Predictor-Based Tracking For Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation, Iasson Karafyllis, Michael Malisoff, Marcio De Queiroz, Miroslav Krstic, Ruzhou Yang Jan 2015

Predictor-Based Tracking For Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation, Iasson Karafyllis, Michael Malisoff, Marcio De Queiroz, Miroslav Krstic, Ruzhou Yang

Faculty Publications

We present a new tracking controller for neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), which is an emerging technology that artificially stimulates skeletal muscles to help restore functionality to human limbs. The novelty of our work is that we prove that the tracking error globally asymptotically and locally exponentially converges to zero for any positive input delay, coupled with our ability to satisfy a state constraint imposed by the physical system. Also, our controller only requires sampled measurements of the states instead of continuous measurements and allows perturbed sampling schedules, which can be important for practical purposes. Our work is based on a …

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Manual For Ageing And Sexing Birds Of Bosque Fray Jorge National Park And Northcentral Chile, With Notes On Range And Breeding Seasonality, Peter Pyle, Andrew Engilis, Douglas A. Kelt Jan 2015

Manual For Ageing And Sexing Birds Of Bosque Fray Jorge National Park And Northcentral Chile, With Notes On Range And Breeding Seasonality, Peter Pyle, Andrew Engilis, Douglas A. Kelt

Special Publications of the Museum of Natural Science

Bosque Fray Jorge National Park (hereafter "Fray Jorge") comprises 9,959 ha on the coast of Chile’s Region IV (Coquimbo), approximately 400 km north of Santiago and 100 km south of La Serena (30°41’S, 71°40’W) (Fig. 1). It is a Biosphere Reserve and has been protected from grazing and disturbance since 1941 (Squeo et al. 2004). As such, it is a biotic oasis surrounded by agricultural and increasingly disturbed terrain (Bahre 1979). The climate is Mediterranean, with ca. 130 mm of annual precipitation measured since 1989 at an on-site meteorological station, 90% falling in winter (May-Sept). Summers are warm and dry, …

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Manual Para Estimar Edad Y Sexo En Aves Del Parque Nacional Bosque Fray Jorge Y Chile Central, Con Notas Sobre Rangos De Distribución Y Estación Reproductiva, Peter Pyle, Andrew Engilis Jr., Douglas A. Kelt Jan 2015

Manual Para Estimar Edad Y Sexo En Aves Del Parque Nacional Bosque Fray Jorge Y Chile Central, Con Notas Sobre Rangos De Distribución Y Estación Reproductiva, Peter Pyle, Andrew Engilis Jr., Douglas A. Kelt

Special Publications of the Museum of Natural Science

El Parque Nacional Fray Jorge (en adelante "Fray Jorge") comprende 9.959 ha. en la costa de la IV Región de Chile (Coquimbo), a unos 400 km al norte de Santiago y a 100 km al sur de La Serena (30 ° 41'S, 71 ° 40'W) (Fig. 1). Se trata de una Reserva de la Biosfera que se ha protegido del pastoreo y las perturbaciones antrópicas desde 1941 (Squeo et al. 2004). Como tal, es un oasis biótico rodeado de áreas agrícolas cada vez más intervenidas por el hombre (Bahre 1979). El clima es mediterráneo, con 130 mm de precipitación anual, …

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"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 Jan 2015

"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.

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Assessing Uncertainty In Coastal Marsh Core Sampling For Waterfowl Foods, Kevin M. Ringelman, Christopher K. Williams, John M. Coluccy Jan 2015

Assessing Uncertainty In Coastal Marsh Core Sampling For Waterfowl Foods, Kevin M. Ringelman, Christopher K. Williams, John M. Coluccy

Faculty Publications

Quantifying foraging resources available to waterfowl in different habitat types is important for estimating energetic carrying capacity. To accomplish this, most studies collect soil-core samples from the marsh substrate, sieve and sort food items, and extrapolate energy values to wetland or landscape scales. This is a costly and time-intensive process; furthermore, extrapolation methods yield energy estimates with large variances relative to the mean. From both research and management perspectives, it is important to understand sources of this variation and estimate the number of soil cores needed to reduce the variance to desired levels. Using 2,341 cores collected from freshwater and …

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A Resistant-Starch Enriched Yogurt: Fermentability, Sensory Characteristics, And A Pilot Study In Children, Frank Greenway, Jolene Zheng, Kayanush Aryana, Nikhil Dhurandhar, Richard Tulley, John Finley, Michael Keenan, Roy Martin, Christine Pelkman, Douglas Olson Jan 2015

A Resistant-Starch Enriched Yogurt: Fermentability, Sensory Characteristics, And A Pilot Study In Children, Frank Greenway, Jolene Zheng, Kayanush Aryana, Nikhil Dhurandhar, Richard Tulley, John Finley, Michael Keenan, Roy Martin, Christine Pelkman, Douglas Olson

Faculty Publications

The rising prevalence of obesity and the vulnerability of the pediatric age group have highlighted the critical need for a careful consideration of effective, safe, remedial and preventive dietary interventions. Amylose starch (RS2) from high-amylose maize (HAM) ferments in the gut and affects body weight. One hundred and ten children, of 7-8 (n=91) or 13-14 (n=19) years of age scored the sensory qualities of a yogurt supplemented with either HAM-RS2 or an amylopectin starch. The amylopectin starch yogurt was preferred to the HAM-RS2-enriched yogurt by 7-8 year old panelists (P<0.0001). Appearance, taste, and sandiness scores given by 13- to 14-year-old panelists were more favorable for the amylopectin starch yogurt than for HAM-RS2-enriched yogurt (P<0.05). HAM-RS2 supplementation resulted in acceptable (≥6 on a 1-9 scale) sensory and hedonic ratings of the yogurt in 74% of subjects. Four children consumed a HAM-RS2-enriched yogurt for four weeks to test its fermentability in a clinical trial. Three adolescents, but not the single pre-pubertal child, had reduced stool pH (P=0.1) and increased stool short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) (P<0.05) including increased fecal acetate (P=0.02), and butyrate (P=0.089) from resistant starch (RS) fermentation and isobutyrate (P=0.01) from protein fermentation post-treatment suggesting a favorable change to the gut microbiota. HAM-RS2 was not modified by pasteurization of the yogurt, and may be a palatable way to increase fiber intake and stimulate colonic fermentation in adolescents. Future studies are planned to determine the concentration of HAM-RS2 that offers the optimal safe and effective strategy to prevent excessive fat gain in children.

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In Vitro And In Vivo Characterization Of Pentaerythritol Triacrylate-Co-Trimethylolpropane Nanocomposite Scaffolds As Potential Bone Augments And Grafts, Cong Chen, Leah Garber, Mollie Smoak, Carmel Fargason, Thomas Scherr, Caleb Blackburn, Sasha Bacchus, Mandi J. Lopez, John A. Pojman, Fabio Del Piero, Daniel J. Hayes Jan 2015

In Vitro And In Vivo Characterization Of Pentaerythritol Triacrylate-Co-Trimethylolpropane Nanocomposite Scaffolds As Potential Bone Augments And Grafts, Cong Chen, Leah Garber, Mollie Smoak, Carmel Fargason, Thomas Scherr, Caleb Blackburn, Sasha Bacchus, Mandi J. Lopez, John A. Pojman, Fabio Del Piero, Daniel J. Hayes

Faculty Publications

© 2015 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. A thiol-Acrylate-based copolymer synthesized via an amine-catalyzed Michael addition was studied in vitro and in vivo to assess its potential as an in situ polymerizing graft or augment in bone defect repair. The blends of hydroxyapatite (HA) with pentaerythritol triacrylate-co-trimethylolpropane (PETA), cast as solids or gas foamed as porous scaffolds, were evaluated in an effort to create a biodegradable osteogenic material for use as a bone-void-filling augment. Osteogenesis experiments were conducted with human adipose-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (hASCs) to determine the ability of the material to serve as an osteoinductive substrate. Poly(É-caprolactone) (PCL) composites …

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The Ubiquitin Ligase Siah2 Regulates Obesity-Induced Adipose Tissue Inflammation, Gail Kilroy, Lauren E. Carter, Susan Newman, David H. Burk, Justin Manuel, Andreas Möller, David D. Bowtell, Randall L. Mynatt, Sujoy Ghosh, Z. Elizabeth Floyd Jan 2015

The Ubiquitin Ligase Siah2 Regulates Obesity-Induced Adipose Tissue Inflammation, Gail Kilroy, Lauren E. Carter, Susan Newman, David H. Burk, Justin Manuel, Andreas Möller, David D. Bowtell, Randall L. Mynatt, Sujoy Ghosh, Z. Elizabeth Floyd

Faculty Publications

© 2015 The Obesity Society. Objective Chronic, low-grade adipose tissue inflammation associated with adipocyte hypertrophy is an important link in the relationship between obesity and insulin resistance. Although ubiquitin ligases regulate inflammatory processes, the role of these enzymes in metabolically driven adipose tissue inflammation is relatively unexplored. Herein, the effect of the ubiquitin ligase Siah2 on obesity-related adipose tissue inflammation was examined. Methods Wild-type and Siah2KO mice were fed a low- or high-fat diet for 16 weeks. Indirect calorimetry, body composition, and glucose and insulin tolerance were assayed along with glucose and insulin levels. Gene and protein expression, immunohistochemistry, adipocyte …

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Reciprocal Osmotic Challenges Reveal Mechanisms Of Divergence In Phenotypic Plasticity In The Killifish Fundulus Heteroclitus, Reid S. Brennan, Fernando Galvez, Andrew Whitehead Jan 2015

Reciprocal Osmotic Challenges Reveal Mechanisms Of Divergence In Phenotypic Plasticity In The Killifish Fundulus Heteroclitus, Reid S. Brennan, Fernando Galvez, Andrew Whitehead

Faculty Publications

© 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd. The killifish Fundulus heteroclitus is an estuarine species with broad physiological plasticity, enabling acclimation to diverse stressors. Previous work suggests that freshwater populations expanded their physiology to accommodate low salinity environments; however, it is unknown whether this compromises their tolerance to high salinity.We used a comparative approach to investigate the mechanisms of a derived freshwater phenotype and the fate of an ancestral euryhaline phenotype after invasion of a freshwater environment. We compared physiological and transcriptomic responses to high-and low-salinity stress in fresh and brackish water populations and found an enhanced plasticity …

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Preserved Filamentous Microbial Biosignatures In The Brick Flat Gossan, Iron Mountain, California, Amy J. Williams, Dawn Y. Sumner, Charles N. Alpers, Suniti Karunatillake, Beda A. Hofmann Jan 2015

Preserved Filamentous Microbial Biosignatures In The Brick Flat Gossan, Iron Mountain, California, Amy J. Williams, Dawn Y. Sumner, Charles N. Alpers, Suniti Karunatillake, Beda A. Hofmann

Faculty Publications

© Copyright 2015, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2015. A variety of actively precipitating mineral environments preserve morphological evidence of microbial biosignatures. One such environment with preserved microbial biosignatures is the oxidized portion of a massive sulfide deposit, or gossan, such as that at Iron Mountain, California. This gossan may serve as a mineralogical analogue to some ancient martian environments due to the presence of oxidized iron and sulfate species, and minerals that only form in acidic aqueous conditions, in both environments. Evaluating the potential biogenicity of cryptic textures in such martian gossans requires an understanding of how microbial textures form …

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Bioturbating Animals Control The Mobility Of Redox-Sensitive Trace Elements In Organic-Rich Mudstone, Dario Harazim, Duncan Mcilroy, Nicholas P. Edwards, Roy A. Wogelius, Phillip L. Manning, Kristin M. Poduska, Graham D. Layne, Dimosthenis Sokaras, Roberto Alonso-Mori, Uwe Bergmann Jan 2015

Bioturbating Animals Control The Mobility Of Redox-Sensitive Trace Elements In Organic-Rich Mudstone, Dario Harazim, Duncan Mcilroy, Nicholas P. Edwards, Roy A. Wogelius, Phillip L. Manning, Kristin M. Poduska, Graham D. Layne, Dimosthenis Sokaras, Roberto Alonso-Mori, Uwe Bergmann

Faculty Publications

© 2015 Geological Society of America. Bioturbating animals modify the original mineralogy, porosity, organic content, and fabric of mud, thus affecting the burial diagenetic pathways of potential hydrocarbon source, seal, and reservoir rocks. High-sensitivity, synchrotron rapid scanning X-ray fluorescence elemental mapping reveals that producers of phycosiphoniform burrows systematically partition redox-sensitive trace elements (i.e., Fe, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, and As) in fine-grained siliciclastic rocks. Systematic differences in organic carbon content (total organic carbon >1.5 wt%) and quality (Δ13Corg~0.6%) are measured between the burrow core and host sediment. The relative enrichment of redox-sensitive elements in the burrow core does …

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Fish Assemblage Response To Environmental Gradients And Altered Dendritic Connectivity In The Red River Basin, Central Louisiana, Catherine Nell Reuter Jan 2015

Fish Assemblage Response To Environmental Gradients And Altered Dendritic Connectivity In The Red River Basin, Central Louisiana, Catherine Nell Reuter

LSU Master's Theses

Louisiana’s small streams provide critical habitat for diverse ecologically and economically important fish species. However, the relationship between these fish assemblages and habitat variables remains poorly understood. The role of anthropogenic alteration of dendritic stream connectivity is of specific interest and has been shown to significantly influence stream ecology. This study explored the interaction among watershed characteristics, stream connectivity, stream physico-chemistry, and fish assemblages in little-studied Red River basin of central Louisiana as well as how reservoir littoral zones compared to streams, both in terms of fish assemblage and habitat. Fish and habitat were sampled in 21 headwater streams, half …

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A Study Of The Effectiveness Of A Common Household Chemical For Maceration, Sara O'Neil Wyatt Jan 2015

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of A Common Household Chemical For Maceration, Sara O'Neil Wyatt

LSU Master's Theses

Maceration is often a necessary component when working on a forensic case. Since it is not very common to get a case with fully skeletonized remains, the soft tissue must be removed for the forensic anthropologist to start their assessment. There are varying maceration techniques, but the goal is the same: to remove the soft tissue without damaging the bone The main purpose of my research is to examine a common household chemical, Drano® Max Gel, to determine its effectiveness for maceration. I tested two diluted solutions of Drano® Max Gel, 25% and 12.5%, both heated and unheated, to determine …

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Multiscale Modeling Of Smart Materials Under Static And Dynamic Thermo-Mechanical Loading, Soodabeh Sharafi Jan 2015

Multiscale Modeling Of Smart Materials Under Static And Dynamic Thermo-Mechanical Loading, Soodabeh Sharafi

LSU Master's Theses

Engineering material systems with tailored capabilities are a topic trend in plethora of research. Polymer based Artificial Muscle, PAM, and Shape memory polymer fiber, SMPF, enable structural engineers to incorporate smartness functionality into their design through programming cycles. Smartness functionality leads to the production of artificial muscles with different load carrying capability. SMPF is another category of smart materials, which are capable of being micro-structurally engineered to isolate vibration at different temperature and frequency conditions. The smartness functionality offers the adjustment between inherent properties of these materials with their industrial applications through modeling techniques. Mixture of phenomenological, numerical, mathematical models …

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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 Jan 2015

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. …

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The Effectiveness Of Online Homework Tutorials As Compared To Pen And Paper Tutorials, Molly Shuman Jan 2015

The Effectiveness Of Online Homework Tutorials As Compared To Pen And Paper Tutorials, Molly Shuman

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if students learn more from completing web based homework (WBHW) compared to completing homework by traditional means with pen and paper. Determining the efficacy of WBHW is important because many schools are being pressured to implement technology in the classroom. To determine the effectiveness of WBHW, student normalized learning gains were calculated from pre and post-test scores for 62 students. Learning gains were then compared when students completed WBHW, traditional homework, or did not complete homework at all, over four units in a high school chemistry class. No difference in learning gains …

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The Role Of Salience In Second Language Acquisition, Ian South Comeaux Jan 2015

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, …

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An Autonomic Performance Environment For Exascale, Kevin A. Huck, Allan Porterfield, Nick Chaimov, Hartmut Kaiser, Allen D. Malony, Thomas Sterling, Rob Fowler Jan 2015

An Autonomic Performance Environment For Exascale, Kevin A. Huck, Allan Porterfield, Nick Chaimov, Hartmut Kaiser, Allen D. Malony, Thomas Sterling, Rob Fowler

Faculty Publications

Exascale systems will require new approaches to performance observation, analysis, and runtime decision-making to optimize for performance and efficiency. The standard "first-person" model, in which multiple operating system processes and threads observe themselves and record first-person performance profiles or traces for offline analysis, is not adequate to observe and capture interactions at shared resources in highly concurrent, dynamic systems. Further, it does not support mechanisms for runtime adaptation. Our approach, called APEX (Autonomic Performance Environment for eXascale), provides mechanisms for sharing information among the layers of the software stack, including hardware, operating and runtime systems, and application code, both new …

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The Lived Body In Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty And Derrida, Manhua Li Jan 2015

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 …

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Wading Bird Food Availability In Rice Fields And Crawfish Ponds Of The Chenier Plain Of Southwest Louisiana And Southeast Texas, Cullen C. Foley Jan 2015

Wading Bird Food Availability In Rice Fields And Crawfish Ponds Of The Chenier Plain Of Southwest Louisiana And Southeast Texas, Cullen C. Foley

LSU Master's Theses

Wading birds in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas rely heavily on rice fields and crawfish ponds as foraging areas; however, little information exists on food availability throughout the annual crop cycle. The objectives of this study are: 1) Develop a classification for rice and crawfish fields based upon tillage, forage crop (for crawfish fields), water depths, vegetation density, vegetation height, and other visible parameters; 2) Quantify the distribution of rice and crawfish fields in various stages across the landscape through time; 3) Determine the effects of rice and crawfish field types and landscape characteristics on wading bird use; and, 4) …

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"Operation Red Campus”: An Experimental Analysis Of Crnc Advertisements Targeting The Millennial Generation, Ellen Mullee Schmidt Jan 2015

"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 …

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Identification Of The Causal Agent Of Leaf And Crown Rot Of Liriope In Louisiana, Carla Milena Proano Jan 2015

Identification Of The Causal Agent Of Leaf And Crown Rot Of Liriope In Louisiana, Carla Milena Proano

LSU Master's Theses

Leaf and crown rot of Liriope is an increasing problem affecting Liriope in the nursery and landscape for the past eight years primarily in the southeastern United States. Symptoms start with water soaking of leaves at the crown area, followed by yellowing of the entire leaf starting at the base. Affected crowns rot and leaves turn brown leading to death of the plants. Phytophthora palmivora and Fusarium oxysporum were isolated and identified from ‘Big Blue’ Liriope symptomatic plants taken from the nursery and landscape. The pathogens were positively identified by morphological features of the pathogens and then confirmed with polymerase …

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Otoliths Then And Now: A Study Of Ancient And Modern Fish Populations In Louisiana's Coastal Waters, Marshall James Kormanec Jan 2015

Otoliths Then And Now: A Study Of Ancient And Modern Fish Populations In Louisiana's Coastal Waters, Marshall James Kormanec

LSU Master's Theses

Fish otoliths are composed of inorganic calcium carbonate that aid in gravity and auditory reception. Substances permanently accrete to otolith surfaces in distinct temporal patterns of alternating opaque and translucent rings; these rings are direct proxies for a fish’s age. The objective of my research is to demonstrate how otoliths can be used through time and space to estimate both age and growth of fish. I investigated the spatial differences in age distributions and growth models for red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus, at four natural shelf-edge reefs in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Red snapper cohorts ranged 1987-2010 cohorts, with the …

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Poly (Lactic Co-Glycolic) Acid Nanoparticles: Synthesis Using Millifluidic Chip And Interaction With Red Blood Cells, Sumit Libi Jan 2015

Poly (Lactic Co-Glycolic) Acid Nanoparticles: Synthesis Using Millifluidic Chip And Interaction With Red Blood Cells, Sumit Libi

LSU Master's Theses

Nanoparticles (NPs) have recently been developed for application as drug carriers in different fields, including biomedical engineering. This study was focused on the use of a millifluidic chip for synthesis of polymeric poly (lactic co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) NPs and the understanding of PLGA NPs interaction and effect on red blood cells (RBCs). A method for NPs synthesis on a millifluidic chip was developed, exploiting the precise flow control offered by this device. PLGA NPs ranging from 230nm to 350nm in diameter were produced. Smaller NPs of lower polydispersity were synthesized at higher flow rates of the aqueous phase; increase in …

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Mathematical Model Of The Split Firefly Luciferase Assay, Renee Dale Jan 2015

Mathematical Model Of The Split Firefly Luciferase Assay, Renee Dale

LSU Master's Theses

The firefly luciferase complementation assay is widely used as a bioluminescent reporter technology to detect protein-protein interactions in vitro and in vivo. Firefly luciferase oxidates its substrate, luciferin, resulting in the emission of light. A previous study suggests that the firefly luciferase complementation assay has different luminescence kinetics from full length luciferase. The mechanism behind this is still unknown. Although half of the previously published studies utilizing the firefly luciferase complementation assay consider it quantitative. To understand how the molecular reactions and the changes in the affinity of the protein pair affect experimental results, a mathematical model was constructed. This …

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