Digital Commons Network^™

#Blackgirlmathmagic: A Mixed Methods Study Examining African American Girls In Standardized Mathematicstesting, Rakeema Thomas Toussaint

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Black women have been making successful strides in mathematics for decades; however, they continue to be underrepresented in mathematics and other STEM fields. According to Young et al. (2017), Black girls and women perform lower in mathematics than all other racial gender groups except for Black males. Considering the stakes for Black girls and women in mathematics, this study sought to address this group's challenges early in their secondary education experiences, focusing on standardized testing.

The purpose of this explanatory-sequential mixed-methods study was to determine how different mathematics item types impacted the performance of African American girls, especially multiple-select multiple-choice …

Seasonal Variation In The Feeding Ecology Of Yellowfin Tuna (Thunnus Albacares) From The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Mitchell Shay Lovell

LSU Master's Theses

Highly migratory fishes (e.g., tunas, billfishes, and sharks) play a significant role in the structure and function of open-ocean ecosystems and a better understanding of the food web dynamics that support their populations is essential to improve management and conservation. Here, I use complementary approaches (stomach contents, DNA barcoding, & stable isotopes) to examine seasonal variability in the feeding ecology of sub-adult (70 – 100 cm; n = 371) and adult (100 – 160 cm; n = 206) yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) from the northern Gulf of Mexico over a one-year period (April 2019 – March 2020). Stomach …

Operating The Digital Space In The Age Of Protest Participation, Kyle Stanley

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines young African American adults’ usage of social media and other digital spaces as tools to build community given the rise in protest participation in North American (U. S.) society while at the height of a global health pandemic. Since early adulthood is a time where African Americans are most active online, this study will examine how and why those African Americans are turning to digital spaces to find social connections. Racism and racial injustice are two of the most pressing issues in the African American community, and it is clear that it can be an emotionally laborious …

Late Embryogenesis Abundant Proteins And Mitochondrial Membranes From An Animal Extremophile: Insights Into Severe Water Stress, John Marcus Anderson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on two major topics germane to mechanisms by which animals tolerate extreme water stress. First, the impact of transgenic expression of late embryogenesis abundant proteins (LEA) on water stress tolerance of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster was investigated. The overall aim was to extend current understanding of the protective properties of LEA proteins documented with isolated cells to a desiccation-sensitive organism during exposure to drying and hyperosmotic stress. Four lines of D. melanogaster were created that expressed transgenes encoding selected LEA proteins originally identified in embryos of the extremophile Artemia franciscana. After 80% tissue water loss, …

Modeling Of Island Block Scatter For Intensity Modulated Bolus Electron Conformal Therapy, Joseph G. Scotto

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: Bolus electron conformal therapy (BECT) benefits treatment of the post-mastectomy chest wall, head and neck, paraspinal muscles, and extremities. Patient dose heterogeneities caused by bolus can be reduced through intensity modulation (IM) across the incident electron beam. This requires passive radiotherapy intensity modulation for electrons (PRIME) devices, which utilize tungsten pins (island blocks) imbedded in machinable foam. IM-BECT treatment planning requires accurate dose calculation using the pencil beam redefinition dose algorithm (PBRA). Currently, the PBRA models island blocks as perfect collimators. This work explores models to account for electrons scattering into and out of the sides of island blocks. …

A Geospatial And Statistical Analysis Of Dropout In Louisiana Public High Schools, Michael D. Stein

LSU Master's Theses

Students dropping out of high school is a nationwide problem, plaguing communities and often greatly reducing the prospects of a quality life for those students who do not complete their high school educations. Louisiana consistently has among the highest public high school dropout rates in the United States, and often the highest. This geospatial and statistical study aims to identify the factors that correlate with high school dropout in Louisiana public high schools, specifically, and to produce detailed maps of the dropout rates across the state to identify the schools most afflicted.

Extensive school-level data from five academic years (2014-15 …

Advanced Methods For Steady-State And Stability Analyses Of Hybrid Power Systems, Mohammad Mehdi Rezvani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The term hybrid power grids refer to the combination of two power systems with different intrinsic characteristic. For instance, ac-dc grids and transmission-distribution systems are kinds of hybrid power grids. Challenges in analyzing the hybrid power grids arise since two sets of equations should be solved either simultaneously or sequentially. In the simultaneous (unified) methods, the ac and dc system of equations are solved simultaneously, while, in the sequential approaches, these equations are solved in an error loop. In this dissertation, a unified method is proposed for steady-state and fault analyses of hybrid ac-dc power grids, while a sequential approach …

Effect Of Forage Management Strategies And Land Use Change On Nitrogen Budget And Soil Health Parameters In Pasture Systems, Yili Meng

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Pastures produce hay for livestock, and they conserve soil, water, and air resources. However, high nitrogen (N) fertilizer demands in pasture production have significant implication on greenhouse gas emission and environmental pollution. Appropriate forage management strategies can reduce environmental N loss and improve soil health, to enhance the long-term pasture productivity. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the effects of management strategies on N budgets and soil health parameters in subtropical pastures. Both field and laboratory experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of N stabilizers including urease inhibitor and nitrification inhibitor on pasture yield, greenhouse gas emission, …

Vertical Feature Delineation For Flood Hazard Assessments At The Coastal Land Margin, Shu Gao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Coastal and riverine flooding constitutes a major environmental hazard that affect millions of people residing along the world’s coastline. Improved understanding of the driving mechanisms that can cause flooding within coastal watersheds requires advanced hydrologic and coastal storm surge simulation. Such advanced simulation is dependent upon an accurate digital elevation model (DEM) for the optimal topographical representation of the true domain in the discretized model grid (mesh). However, it is not possible to afford mesh resolution as fine as contemporary DEMs, resolved at sub-10 meters, due to the impractical computational expense. Therefore, significant elevation barriers such as roadbeds, levees, railroads, …

Environmental Perception In Colombia's Páramo Protected Areas, Juliana Delgado

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the gap between farmers' environmental perceptions in Téquita, a small village in Colombia, and the definition of protected areas has led to a conflict for the use of natural resources. I examine if the protected area's policies have dealt with the social and ecological issues in the páramos and recognized the social construction of the landscape, farmers' identities, and their interpretations about work and land. The case study focuses on Güina High Mountain in the Guantiva-La Rusia páramo complex, which recently the Colombian government declared as a protected area. In light of anthropologist Tim Ingold's meaning of …

Prüfung: A Deconstruction Of Assessment Across Three Languages, Thomas Erich Benz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research aims at deconstructing and questioning certainties about assessment as an educational institution on its most fundamental levels. To achieve that, I am utilizing theoretical frameworks inspired by concepts on the existence of cultural and social capital, by artifact mediated cognition, and by a recently proposed discipline on pedagogy of assessment. The research operates with the application of narrative synthesis and network text analysis of material, on which they have not previously been used. As such, I aim to contribute to a methodological application of both methods on exam data, understood as the totality of curricular documents which govern …

Louisiana Agriculture Summer, 2021, Lsu Agcenter

Louisiana Agriculture

No abstract provided.

Phylogenomic Analyses Reveal Non-Monophyly Of The Antbird Genera Herpsilochmus And Sakesphorus (Thamnophilidae), With Description Of A New Genus For Herpsilochmus Sellowi, G A. Bravo, B M. Whitney, R Belmonte-Lopes, M R. Bornschein, G A. Bravo, R Beco, J Battilana, L N. Naka, A Aleixo, M R. Pie, L F. Silveira, E P. Derryberry, R T. Brumfield

Faculty Publications

The family Thamnophilidae is a species-rich Neotropical radiation of passerine birds. Current classification of its 235 species is mostly based on morphological similarities, but recent studies integrating comprehensive phenotypic and phylogenetic data have redefined taxonomic limits of several taxa. Here, we assess generic relationships of Herpsilochmus, Sakesphorus, Thamnophilus, Biatas, and Dysithamnus using DNA sequences from the mitochondrion, nuclear exons, and ultraconserved elements, with further attention to interspecific relationships within Herpsilochmus. We show that Herpsilochmus and Sakesphorus are not monophyletic. We resolve Herpsilochmus sellowi as a deep-branch sister to the monotypic genus Biatas and Sakesphorus cristatus as sister to a clade …

Ligo Detector Characterization In The Second And Third Observing Runs, D. Davis, J. S. Areeda, B. K. Berger, R. Bruntz, A. Effler, R. C. Essick, R. P. Fisher, P. Godwin, E. Goetz, A. F. Helmling-Cornell, B. Hughey, E. Katsavounidis, A. P. Lundgren, D. M. Macleod, Z. Márka, T. J. Massinger, A. Matas, J. Mciver, G. Mo, K. Mogushi, P. Nguyen, L. K. Nuttall, R. M.S. Schofield, D. H. Shoemaker, S. Soni, A. L. Stuver, A. L. Urban, G. Valdes, M. Walker, R. Abbott, C. Adams, R. X. Adhikari, A. Ananyeva, S. Appert, K. Arai, Y. Asali, S. M. Aston, C. Austin, A. M. Baer, M. Ball, S. W. Ballmer, S. Banagiri, D. Barker, C. Barschaw, L. Barsotti, J. Bartlett, J. Betzwieser, R. Beda, D. Bhattacharjee, J. Bidler, G. Billingsley, S. Biscans, J. Bidler, G. Billingsley, S. Biscans, C. D. Blair, R. M. Blair, N. Bode, P. Booker, R. Bork, A. Bramley, A. F. Brooks, D. D. Brown, A. Buikema, C. Cahillane, T. A. Callister, G. Caneva Santoro, K. C. Cannon, J. Carlin, K. Chandra, X. Chen, N. Christensen, A. A. Ciobanu, F. Clara, C. M. Compton, S. J. Cooper, K. R. Corley, M. W. Coughlin, S. T. Countryman, P. B. Covas, D. C. Coyne, S. G. Crowder, T. Dal Canton, B. Danila, L. E. H. Datrier, G. S. Davies, T. Dent, N. A. Didio, C. Di Fronzo, K. L. Dooley, J. C. Driggers, P. Dupej, S. E. Dwyer, T. Etzel, M. Evans, T. M. Evans, S. Fairhurst, J. Feicht, A. Fernandez-Galiana, R. Frey, P. Fritschel, V. V. Frolov, P. Fulda, M. Fyffe, B. U. Gadre, J. A. Giaime, K. D. Giardina, G. Gonzalez, S. Gras, C. Gray, A. C. Green, A. Gupta, E. K. Gustafson, R. Gustafson, J. Hanks, J. Hanson, T. Hardwick, I. W. Harry, R. K. Hasskew, M. C. Heintze, J. Heinzel, N. A. Holland, I. J. Hollows, C. G. Hoy, S. Hughey, S. P. Jadhav, K. Janssens, G. Johns, J. D. Jones, S. Kandhasamy, S. Karki, M. Kasprzak, K. Kawabe, D. Keitel, N. Kijbuchoo, Y. M. Kim, P. J. King, J. S. Kissel, S. Kulkarni, R. Kumar, M. Landry, B. B. Lane, B. Lantz, M. Laxen, Y. K. Lecoeuche, J. Leviton, J. Liu, M. Lormand, R. Macas, A. Macedo, M. Macinnis, V. Mandic, G. L. Mansell, S. Marka, B. Martinez, K. Martinovic, D. V. Martynov, K. Mason, F. Matichard, N. Mavalvala, R. Mccarthy, D. E. Mcclelland, S. Mccormick, L. Mcculler, C. Mcisaac, T. Mcrae, G. Mendell, K. Merfeld, E. L. Merilh, P. M. Meyers, F. Meylahn, I. Michaloliakos, H. Middleton, J. C. Mills, T. Mistry, R. Mittleman, G. Moreno, C. M. Mow- Lowry, S. Mozzon, L. Mueller, N. Mukund, A. Mullavey, J. Muth, T. J. N. Nelson, A. Neunzert, S. Nichols, E. Nitoglia, J. Oberling, J. J. Oh, S. H. Oh, R. J. Oram, R. G. Ormiston, N. Ormsby, C. Osthelder, D. J. Ottaway, H. Overmier, A. Pai, J. R. Palamos, F. Pannarale, W. Parker, O. Patane, M. Patel, E. Payne, A. Pele, R. Penhorwood, C. J. Perez, K. S. Phukon, M. Pillas, M. Pirello, H. Radkins, K. E. Ramirez, J. W. Richardson, K. Riles, K. Rink, N. A. Robertson, J. G. Rollins, C. L. Romel, J. H. Romie, M. P. Ross, K. Ryan, T. Sadecki, M. Sakellariadou, E. J. Sanchez, L. E. Sanchez, L. Sandles, T. R. Saravanan, R. L. Savage, D. Schaetzl, R. Schnabel, E. Schwartz, D. Sellers, T. Shaffer, D. Sigg, A. M. Sintes, B. J. J. Slagmolen, J. R. Smith, K. Soni, B. Sorazu, A. P. Spencer, K. A. Strain, D. Strom, L. Sun, M. J. Szczepanczyk, J. Tasson, R. Tenorio, M. Thomas, P. Thomas, K. A. Thorne, K. Toland, C. I. Torrie, A. Tran, G. Traylor, M. Trevor, M. Tse, G. Vajente, N. Van Remortel, D. C. Vander-Hyde, A. Vargas, J. Veitch, P. J. Veitch, K. Venkateswara, G. Venugopalan, A. D. Viets, V. Villa-Ortega, T. Vo, C. Vorvick, M. Wade, G. S. Wallace, R. L. Ward, J. Warner, B. Weaver, A. J. Weinstein, R. Weiss, K. Wette, D. D. White, L. V. White, C. Whittle, A. R. Williamson, B. Willke, C. C. Wipf, L. Xiao, R. Xu, H. Yamamoto, H. Yu, H. Yu, L. Zhang, Y. Zheng, M. E. Zucker, J. Zweizig

Faculty Publications

The characterization of the Advanced LIGO detectors in the second and third observing runs has increased the sensitivity of the instruments, allowing for a higher number of detectable gravitational-wave signals, and provided confirmation of all observed gravitational-wave events. In this work, we present the methods used to characterize the LIGO detectors and curate the publicly available datasets, including the LIGO strain data and data quality products. We describe the essential role of these datasets in LIGO–Virgo Collaboration analyses of gravitational-waves from both transient and persistent sources and include details on the provenance of these datasets in order to support analyses …

Comparative Antennal Morphometry And Sensilla Organization In The Reproductive And Non-Reproductive Castes Of The Formosan Subterranean Termite, Paula Castillo, Nathan Le, Qian Sun

Faculty Publications

Antennae are the primary sensory organs in insects, where a variety of sensilla are distributed for the perception of the chemical environment. In eusocial insects, colony function is main-tained by a division of labor between reproductive and non-reproductive castes, and chemosensation is essential for regulating their specialized social activities. Several social species in Hymenoptera display caste-specific characteristics in antennal morphology and diversity of sensilla, reflecting their differential tasks. In termites, however, little is known about how the division of labor is associated with chemosensory morphology among castes. Using light and scanning electron microscopy, we performed antennal morphometry and characterized the …

Extended Investigation Of Field-Evolved Resistance Of The Corn Earworm Helicoverpa Zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) To Bacillus Thuringiensis Cry1a.105 And Cry2ab2 Proteins In The Southeastern United States, Wenbo Yu, Shucong Lin, Marcelo Dimase, Ying Niu, Sebe Brown, Graham P. Head, Paula A. Price, Francis P.F. Reay-Jones, Don Cook, Dominic Reisig, Ben Thrash, Xinzhi Ni, Silvana V. Paula-Moraes, Fangneng Huang

Faculty Publications

Previous studies have reported that the corn earworm/bollworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie), has developed field resistance to pyramided Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) Cry1A/Cry2A maize and cotton in certain areas of the southeastern United States. The objective of the current study was to determine the current status and distribution of the resistance to Cry1A.105 and Cry2Ab2 in H. zea. In the study, 31 H. zea populations were collected from major maize planting areas across seven southeastern states of the United States during 2018 and 2019 and assayed against the two Bt proteins. Diet over-lay bioassays showed that most of the populations collected during …

Breeding Ecology Of Mottled Ducks: A Review, Elizabeth S. Bonczek, Kevin M. Ringelman

Faculty Publications

Mottled ducks (Anas fulvigula) are endemic to the Gulf Coast of North America, and their range stretches from Alabama to the Laguna Madre of Mexico, with a distinct population in peninsular Florida and an introduced population in South Carolina. As one of the few non-migratory ducks in North America, mottled ducks depend on a variety of locally available habitat throughout the annual cycle, and threats to these landscapes may affect mottled ducks more acutely than migratory species. Annual population monitoring has revealed declines in mottled duck populations in Texas and Louisiana since 2008, and the genetic integrity of the Florida …

Factors Protecting Against A Decline In Physical Activity During The Covid-19 Pandemic, S. Nicole Fearnbach, Emily W. Flanagan, Christoph Höchsmann, Robbie A. Beyl, Abby D. Altazan, Corby K. Martin, Leanne M. Redman

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Purpose The spread of COVID-19 and the associated stay-At-home orders and shutdowns of gyms and fitness centers have drastically influenced health behaviors leading to widespread reductions in physical activity (PA). The recent Call to Action from the American College of Sports Medicine has promoted "innovative strategies to promote PA during the COVID-19 pandemic."We aimed to identify individual-level factors that protected against declines in PA levels amid the COVID-19 restrictions. Methods We used the Pennington Biomedical COVID-19 Health Behaviors Survey for our analyses and used mixed-effect linear and generalized linear models to estimate the effects of individual-level factors on changes in …

Exercise Is Key To Sustaining Metabolic Gains After Bariatric Surgery, Bruno Gualano, John P. Kirwan, Hamilton Roschel

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

The extent to which the benefits of bariatric surgery may be maintained by lifestyle changes after surgery is unclear. Our hypothesis is that exercise may sustain some metabolic benefits and counteract some of the adverse effects of surgery. In this review, we present findings supporting the proposition that exercise is key to improving overall health in patients after bariatric surgery.

Effects Of Water Stress And Auxin Application On Growth And Yield Of Two Sugarcane Cultivars Under Greenhouse Conditions, Jiraporn Bamrungrai, Brenda Tubana, Vidhaya Tre-Loges, Arunee Promkhambut, Anan Polthanee

Faculty Publications

Water stress (drought and flood) is one of the major factors that limits sugarcane growth and yield. The two greenhouse experiments were conducted at Khon Kaen University, Thailand. The first experiment investigated the individual and combined effects of droughts and floods on two sugarcane cultivars. The results showed that photosynthetic potential, based on chlorophyll a fluorescence (PSII) and chlorophyll content, exhibited a response to the water regime treatments. However, stomatal conductance in the K93-219 cultivar was higher than the KK3 cultivar. Similarly, plant height, number of tillers, number of stems, fresh stem weight, and sugar quality were not affected by …

Blockumulus: A Scalable Framework For Smart Contracts On The Cloud, Nikolay Ivanov, Qiben Yan, Qingyang Wang

Faculty Publications

Public blockchains have spurred the growing popularity of decentralized transactions and smart contracts, especially on the financial market. However, public blockchains exhibit their limitations on the transaction throughput, storage availability, and compute capacity. To avoid transaction gridlock, public blockchains impose large fees and per-block resource limits, making it difficult to accommodate the ever-growing high transaction demand. Previous research endeavors to improve the scalability and performance of blockchain through various technologies, such as side-chaining, sharding, secured off-chain computation, communication network optimizations, and efficient consensus protocols. However, these approaches have not attained a widespread adoption due to their inability in delivering a …

Functional And Phenotypic Evaluation Of Murine Cytomegalovirus Infection Of The Heart, Cassandra Marie Bonavita

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a ubiquitous pathogen which infects 50-90% of the world population and results in lifelong latent infection with periodic transient reactivations. In immunocompetent populations acute infection is generally asymptomatic but seropositivity is associated with many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease. Despite 139 years of research into HCMV pathogenesis there is still no licensed vaccine and many gaps in the general knowledge of the virus. This includes the role of long term infection as it pertains to chronic diseases. In these studies, murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) was used as a model of HCMV pathogenesis in the heart. MCMV shares …

Policing Understood As A Racial Project: An Exploration Of The Role Law Enforcement Has Played In The Shaping Of Race Relations In The United States, Jahaan Chandler

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Law enforcement and minority communities have had a complicated history in the United States to say the least. The theoretical propositions used to explain the myriad of interlocking relationships between race, criminal activity, neighborhood disorder, public perceptions of crime, and law enforcement itself, have provided us with nuggets of insight that have all contributed to enhancing our understanding of crime and policing in the U.S., but none have provided an overall interpretation of this complex and often convoluted relationship. This dissertation seeks to rectify this issue by not only examining the history of law enforcement and its relation to minority …

Eloquence In Talke And Vertue In Deedes: Education And Discontent In Early Modern England, Mary Alison Webb

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The title for the project, Eloquence in Talke and Vertue in Deedes, comes from educational theorist William Kempe’s claim that the early modern humanist educational system was guaranteed to produce eloquence and virtue. It is, however, my argument that the educational failed in its promises. This project seeks to dissect the educational practices of the early modern period and reanimate the pieces to show how these practices were regularly critiqued on the early modern stage. More than showing the influence of the educational system in the production of drama, I point out that these practices are re-represented as rebuttals of …

Investigation On The Structure And Dynamics Of Lithium Ion Solvation Shell By Linear And Non-Linear Infrared Spectroscopy, Xiaobing Chen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lithium ion battery (LIB) is a lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery that is used widely from mobile phones to laptops to electric cars. It has many exceptional advantages such as high energy density, high output power, relatively low self-discharge, etc. However, it has some disadvantages such as safety issues, capacity loss, and expensive manufacture. LIB is composed of three main components: electrolytes, positive and negative electrodes. Researchers have been working on improving the performance of LIB for the past decade, but only a few have focused on investigating the electrolytes at the molecular level. In addition, the molecular mechanisms behind …

Atomistic Thermo-Mechanical Description Of The Deformation Behavior, Scaling Laws, And Constitutive Modeling Of Nanoporous Gold, Mohammed Hassan Yousef Saffarini

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Metallic foams, or nanoporous (NP) metals as it is widely referred to in literature, with ligament sizes up to a few tens of nm show exceptional mechanical properties such as high strength and stiffness per weight ratio under different loading scenarios due to their high surface area to solid volume ratio. Therefore, they can be utilized in a wide range of applications making them of great interest to researchers. While their elasticity and yield strength have been the subject of several studies, very limited attention was given to the effect of size, strain rate, and temperature on the material plastic …

Shape Memory Polymer Proppants, Methods Of Making Shape Memory Polymer Proppants For Application In Hydraulic Fracturing Treatments, Arash Dahi Taleghani, Amir Shojaei, Guoqiang Li

College of Engineering Patents

The present disclosure provides for shape memory proppants, methods for making shape memory proppants, and methods of using shape memory proppants, and the like. The strong expandable proppants of the present disclosure may be used in maintaining fracture openings.

Microglial Implications In Sars-Cov-2 Infection And Covid-19: Lessons From Viral Rna Neurotropism And Possible Relevance To Parkinson's Disease, Ifeoluwa O. Awogbindin, Benneth Ben-Azu, Babatunde A. Olusola, Elizabeth T. Akinluyi, Philip A. Adeniyi, T. Di Paolo, Marie-Eve Tremblay

Faculty Publications

Since December 2019, humankind has been experiencing a ravaging severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak, the second coronavirus pandemic in a decade after the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) disease in 2012. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 results in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is responsible for over 3.1 million deaths worldwide. With the emergence of a second and a third wave of infection across the globe, and the rising record of multiple reinfections and relapses, SARS-CoV-2 infection shows no sign of abating. In addition, it is now evident that SARS-CoV-2 infection presents with neurological symptoms that include early …

An Equivalence Between Contact Gluing Maps In Sutured Floer Homology: A Conjecture Of Zarev, Charles Ryan Leigon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We show that the contact gluing map of Honda, Kazez, and Matic has a natural algebraic description in bordered sutured Floer homology. In particular, we establish Zarev's conjecture that his gluing map on sutured Floer homology is equivalent, in the appropriate sense, to the contact gluing map. This further solidifies the relationship between bordered Floer theory and contact geometry.

Using Distributed Techology To Make Music In The Time Of The Attention Economy, Tate Carson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sounds Aware is a mobile web app that allows users to record soundwalks and share them so that other people can experience them. The creator of the soundwalk records their perceptions of the restorativeness of a specific place on the walk, these answers are then sonified for whoever experiences the walk later to hear. Sounds Aware aims to be a social app that is restorative to our attention. It does this by encouraging experience of nature and by using decentralized technology that exists outside of the attention economy.

The attention economy is discussed as a force that exists within much …