Digital Commons Network^™

New Limit Theorems For Increments Of Birth-And-Death Processes With Linear Rates, Alexander Ya. Kreinin, Vladimir V. Vinogradov

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Backward Stochastic Differential Equations With No Driving Martingale And Pseudo-Pdes, Adrien Barrasso, Francesco Russo

Journal of Stochastic Analysis

No abstract provided.

Infrared Investigation Of Lithium Ion Electrolytes: Characterization Of Structure And Dynamics Via Linear And Nonlinear Spectroscopy, Jeramie Christopher Rushing

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lithium ion batteries are widely employed in energy storage, but the connection between the molecular interactions in their electrolytes and the macroscopic properties remains elusive. Across three vastly different electrolytes, speciation and dynamics were studied via linear and nonlinear infrared spectroscopy to shed light on this relationship. The impact of mixed solvation on ionic speciation was studied from the perspective of the anion, which revealed a significant energetic favorability for the formation of contact ion pairs in linear carbonate solvents over cyclic carbonates. Infrared spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations described a complete inversion of the speciation due to solvent …

A Comparative Review Of Peridynamics And Phase-Field Models For Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Patrick Diehl, Robert Lipton, Thomas Wick, Mayank Tyagi

Faculty Publications

Computational modeling of the initiation and propagation of complex fracture is central to the discipline of engineering fracture mechanics. This review focuses on two promising approaches: phase-field (PF) and peridynamic (PD) models applied to this class of problems. The basic concepts consisting of constitutive models, failure criteria, discretization schemes, and numerical analysis are briefly summarized for both models. Validation against experimental data is essential for all computational methods to demonstrate predictive accuracy. To that end, the Sandia Fracture Challenge and similar experimental data sets where both models could be benchmarked against are showcased. Emphasis is made to converge on common …

Nudging Away From Plastic Bags With Charitable Donations, Jerrod Penn, Sapana Bastola, Wuyang Hu

Faculty Publications

To respond to the environmental problems posed by disposable plastic bags, several mechanisms exist, such as bag taxes and bans, but such policies are infeasible in several U.S. states and municipalities. This study uses a social quasi-experiment to examine the effect of a voluntary token-donation program, which reduces disposable plastic bag use by providing a small charitable donation incentive. We find that the token-donation program reduces the probability of disposable bag use by 11.4–12.9 percentage points, representing about 30%–34% decrease in bag use. Our results demonstrate effective mechanisms to reduce plastic bags exist without government-mandated policy.

Geographic Analysis Of Alcohol-Related Crashes In Nine High-Need Louisiana Parishes, Aimee H. Moles, Austin L. Matthews, John K. Aggrey, Leanna B. Cupit

Reports

This report examines nine Louisiana communities and their alcohol availability concerns from a public health perspective. The nine communities are part of The Louisiana Partnership for Success II (LPFS ll), a 5-year Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grant. The LPFS ll grant is focused exclusively on addressing underage drinking behaviors, consequences, and risk factors among 9 to 20-year-olds in nine high-need, parish-level communities (HNCs) (Louisiana Department of Health [LDH], 2020a). Communities were selected through a data-driven, participatory process and supported to form a cross-sector coalition to implement interventions within those communities. The process for choosing the high-need …

A Food-Based Intervention In A Military Dining Facility Improves Blood Fatty Acid Profile, Asma S. Bukhari, Laura J. Lutz, Tracey J. Smith, Adrienne Hatch-Mcchesney, Kristie L. O’Connor, Christopher T. Carrigan, Michael R. Hawes, Susan M. Mcgraw, Kathryn M. Taylor, Catherine M. Champagne, Scott J. Montain

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Enhancing dietary omega-3 high unsaturated fatty acids (n-3 HUFA) intake may confer neuroprotection, brain resiliency, improve wound healing and promote cardiovascular health. This study determined the efficacy of substituting a few common foods (chicken meat, chicken sausage, eggs, salad dressings, pasta sauces, cooking oil, mayonnaise, and peanut butter) lower in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-6 PUFA) and higher in n-3 HUFA in a dining facility on blood fatty acid profile. An eight-week prospective, between-subjects (n = 77), repeated measures, parallel-arm trial was conducted. Participants self-selected foods consumed from conventionally produced foods (control), or those lower n-6 PUFA and higher n-3 …

Introduction To Theory Of High-Harmonic Generation In Solids: Tutorial, Lun Yue, Mette B. Gaarde

Faculty Publications

High-harmonic generation (HHG) in solids has emerged in recent years as a rapidly expanding and interdisciplinary field, attracting attention from both the condensed-matter and the atomic, molecular, and optics communities. It has exciting prospects for the engineering of new light sources and the probing of ultrafast carrier dynamics in solids, and the theoretical understanding of this process is of fundamental importance. This tutorial provides a hands-on introduction to the theoretical description of the strong-field laser–matter interactions in a condensed-phase system that give rise to HHG. We provide an overview ranging from a detailed description of different approaches to calculating the …

The Body As A Means Of Cultural Awareness And Social Intervention: The Case Of Raymond Duncan And Penelope Sikelianos, Ekaterini Diakoumopoulou

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Using the example of the Duncan family this article will explore the human body as an object of self-determination, a means of overcoming social boundaries, a field of racist shooting and phobic enforcement, a reference point of public outrage and the complex between sociality and corporality, but also as a tool of political vigilance and social intervention. Does a body dressed in a tunic resist the western way of life? Or is it a stereotypical outpouring of people unable to modernize? Is the body instrumentalized as a means of narrating exoticism? The bodies of the Duncan family members are an …

Elgin's "Native Tongue": A "Me Too" Universe?, Amir Barati

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Suzette Haden Elgin’s novel Native Tongue (1984) provides a fascinating critique of the ideologies inscribed into patriarchal language and evokes an extremely valuable linguistic and political awareness. This article will examine the liability of the ways the novel revolts against the patriarchal society via the introduction of a gynocentric linguistic intervention. I claim, Elgin’s novel showcases an invaluable instance of how it is possible for women to revolt against the pillars of patriarchy through manipulations at the gestalt and schematic level of language and most specifically, the bodily metaphoric quality of the English. This proposed transformation of the schematic and …

The Sensible Body Of The Female Reader, Anoosheh Ghaderi

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Imagined Locality Of A Girlhood Home: A Performative Reading Of Maxine Hong Kingston’S “White Tigers”, Jing Tan

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Both the locality and the language of Sze Yup are of immense significance to Kingston, as well as to her narrator-protagonist: it is the locus of her mother’s storytelling, the land whence her mother absorbed the incredible power of “talking-story” that has been inherited by Kingston and has permeated her text, the soil whose spirit has been transplanted to her birthplace in America and whose mystery has never ceased to inspire her imagination. Likewise, the Sze Yup dialect is the language that both the writer and her narrator first learned to speak (Jaggi): she “entered school speaking no English” (Talbot …

Using Memory Forensics To Analyze Programming Language Runtimes, Modhuparna Manna

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The continued increase in the use of computer systems in recent times has led to a significant rise in the capabilities of malware and attacker toolkits that target different operating systems and their users. Over the last several years, cybersecurity threat reports have documented numerous instances of users that were targeted by governments, intelligence agencies, and criminal groups, and the result was that the victims ended up having highly sophisticated malware installed on their systems. Unfortunately, the rise of these threats has not been met with equal research and development of defensive mechanisms that can detect and analyze such malware. …

The Influence Of Perceived Realistic And Symbolic Threat On College Students’ Attitudes Toward Immigrants And Immigration, Brook Shantel Spurlock

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Immigration has been one of the most dominant and salient political issues during recent presidential election. Unfortunately, the debates surrounding immigration often castigated Latin Americans as threatening, with the intent to spark fear among voters, while increasing the support for anti-immigration policies, such as the border wall and opposition to passage of a law granting citizenship to Dreamers. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine how realistic and symbolic threats influence college students’ attitudes on immigrants and immigration. Very few studies have been conducted on how realistic and symbolic threats influence immigration attitudes and opinions regarding a wide range …

Search For Continuous Gravitational Waves From 20 Accreting Millisecond X-Ray Pulsars In O3 Ligo Data, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams

Faculty Publications

Results are presented of searches for continuous gravitational waves from 20 accreting millisecond x-ray pulsars with accurately measured spin frequencies and orbital parameters, using data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The search algorithm uses a hidden Markov model, where the transition probabilities allow the frequency to wander according to an unbiased random walk, while the J-statistic maximum-likelihood matched filter tracks the binary orbital phase. Three narrow subbands are searched for each target, centered on harmonics of the measured spin frequency. The search yields 16 candidates, consistent with a false alarm probability of …

Search For Continuous Gravitational Waves From 20 Accreting Millisecond X-Ray Pulsars In O3 Ligo Data, R. Abbott

Faculty Publications

Results are presented of searches for continuous gravitational waves from 20 accreting millisecond x-ray pulsars with accurately measured spin frequencies and orbital parameters, using data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The search algorithm uses a hidden Markov model, where the transition probabilities allow the frequency to wander according to an unbiased random walk, while the J-statistic maximum-likelihood matched filter tracks the binary orbital phase. Three narrow subbands are searched for each target, centered on harmonics of the measured spin frequency. The search yields 16 candidates, consistent with a false alarm probability of …

The Lived Experiences Of Migrant Domestic Workers In Taiwan, Li-Yu Liao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The constantly increasing demand of domestic workers in developed and newly industrialized countries had prompted many women of less developed countries migrating to engage in transnational domestic work. Among these newly industrialized countries (NICs) in Asia, Taiwan is one of them with burgeoning market of domestic work. In 2019, Taiwan accommodated 261,457 foreign domestic workers. Indonesian, Filipino, and Vietnamese women constitute the three major groups of the population. Compare to their counterparts in other host countries in Asia such as Hong Kong and Singapore, migrant domestic workers in Taiwan were understudied. This research was committed to explore the experiences of …

Moisture-Tolerant And Operationally Simple Synthesis Of Synthetic Polypeptides And Polypeptoids By Ring-Opening Polymerization Of N-Thiocarboxyanhydrides, David Siefker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This work aims to develop a new synthetic strategy for synthesizing advanced functional This work aims to develop a new synthetic strategy for synthesizing advanced functional pseudo-peptidic polymers. Pseudo-peptidic polymers mimic poly(glycine) backbone with substituents on either the α-carbon or the nitrogen, appealing properties for various biomedical applications. One of the critical challenges in pseudo-peptidic polymers research is the synthesis of functional pseudo-peptidic polymers under mild conditions. We developed a system based on ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of N-Thiocarboxyanhydrides (NTAs) initiated by primary amines to synthesize polypeptides with a wide range of controlled molecular weights …

Towards A Quantum Notion Of Covariance In Spherically Symmetric Loop Quantum Gravity, Rodolfo Gambini, Javier Olmedo, Jorge Pullin

Faculty Publications

The covariance of loop quantum gravity studies of spherically symmetric space-times has recently been questioned. This is a reasonable worry, given that they are formulated in terms of slicing-dependent variables. We show explicitly that the resulting space-times, obtained from Dirac observables of the quantum theory, are covariant in the usual sense of the way-they preserve the quantum line element-for any gauge that is stationary (in the exterior, if there is a horizon). The construction depends crucially on the details of the Abelianized quantization considered, the satisfaction of the quantum constraints, and the recovery of standard general relativity in the classical …

Towards A Quantum Notion Of Covariance In Spherically Symmetric Loop Quantum Gravity, Rodolfo Gambini, Javier Olmedo, Jorge Pullin

Faculty Publications

The covariance of loop quantum gravity studies of spherically symmetric space-times has recently been questioned. This is a reasonable worry, given that they are formulated in terms of slicing-dependent variables. We show explicitly that the resulting space-times, obtained from Dirac observables of the quantum theory, are covariant in the usual sense of the way-they preserve the quantum line element-for any gauge that is stationary (in the exterior, if there is a horizon). The construction depends crucially on the details of the Abelianized quantization considered, the satisfaction of the quantum constraints, and the recovery of standard general relativity in the classical …

Instructional Design Framework For Construction Materials Training, Hazem Jadallah, Carol J. Friedland, Isabelina Nahmens, Charles Pecquet, Charles Berryman, Yimin Zhu

Faculty Publications

The construction industry is suffering, in part, from a lack of training programs offered to the construction workforce. Unfortunately, most construction training and education research focuses on university student education. Integrating education science theory into construction workforce training has the potential to improve industry training but there is a dearth of studies that present details of this integration process. To address this gap, a training framework was developed to educate material stakeholders on material properties, selection, and installation. This framework is based on andragogical and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. An assessment method evaluates training agendas to improve upon …

Women Of Power: Mapping The Spiritual Journeys Of Caribbean Women Across Regional Fiction As Portrayed In The Book Of Night Women, Texaco, And Erzulie's Skirt, Natalie Sandy D'Auvergne-Lamotte

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary Caribbean fiction serves as an active agent for refining and expanding definitions of Caribbeanness. This study aims at demonstrating how Caribbean writers use representations of Caribbean women to contribute to an opaquer regional vision that argues against homogenizing ideas of Caribbeanness. The Book of Night Women, Texaco, and Erzulie’s Skirt, respectively written by Marlon James (Jamaica), Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique), and Anna-Maurine Lara (Dominican Republic), work by making space for more historically accurate and locally representative images of Caribbeanness through the Caribbean women they portray. Though characters live on different islands (at different times), they still manage to represent …

Distributed Matrix Tiling Using A Hypergraph Labeling Formulation, Avah Banerjee, Maxwell Reeser, Guoli Ding

Faculty Publications

Partitioning large matrices is an important problem in distributed linear algebra computing, used in ML among others. Briefly, our goal is to perform a sequence of matrix algebra operations in a distributed manner on these large matrices. However, not all partitioning schemes work well with different matrix algebra operations and their implementations (algorithms). This is a type of data tiling problem. In this paper we consider a data tiling problem using hypergraphs. We prove some hardness results and give a theoretical characterization of its complexity on random instances. Additionally we develop a greedy algorithm and experimentally show its efficacy.

Isocaloric Low Protein Diet In A Mouse Model For Vanishing White Matter Does Not Impact Isr Deregulation In Brain, But Reveals Isr Deregulation In Liver, Lisanne E. Wisse, Denise Visser, Timo J. Ter Braak, Abdellatif Bakkali, Eduard A. Struys, Christopher D. Morrison, Marjo S. Van Der Knaap, Truus E.M. Abbink

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

Objective: Vanishing white matter (VWM) is a genetic brain white matter disorder caused by mutations in eIF2B. eIF2B is central in the integrated stress response (ISR), during which its activity is inhibited by various cellular stresses. VWM is a chronic progressive disease with episodes of rapid neurological deterioration provoked by stresses. VWM patients and VWM mouse models show ISR deregulation in brain, correlating with chronic disease development. ISR inhibition ameliorates the chronic disease in VWM mice. The subacute deteriorations have not been modeled yet. We hypothesized that ISR activation could worsen disease progression in mice and model the episodic neurological …

Obesity: Understanding And Achieving A Healthy Weight, George A. Bray, Catherine M. Champagne

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Obesity is a chronic, relapsing, stigmatized disease process that is increasing in prevalence, affecting both adults and children. It is the result of a small positive energy imbalance from too much food or too little activity. These underlying causes are influenced by many environmental factors. The food we eat is more than “calories,” and focusing on calories alone may not be as productive as focusing on patterns of eating and the role of sugar and fat in the diet. Obesity increases the risk of many diseases and shortens life span, and weight loss provides benefits in reducing health risks and …

Obesity, Body Composition, And Sex Hormones: Implications For Cardiovascular Risk, Prachi Singh, Naima Covassin, Kara Marlatt, Kishore M. Gadde, Steven B. Heymsfield

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to be the leading cause of death in adults, highlighting the need to develop novel strategies to mitigate cardiovascular risk. The advancing obesity epidemic is now threatening the gains in CVD risk reduction brought about by contemporary pharmaceu-tical and surgical interventions. There are sex differences in the development and outcomes of CVD; premenopausal women have significantly lower CVD risk than men of the same age, but women lose this advantage as they transition to menopause, an observation suggesting potential role of sex hormones in determining CVD risk. Clear differences in obesity and regional fat distribution among …

Guesswork With Quantum Side Information, Eric P. Hanson, Vishal Katariya, Nilanjana Datta, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

What is the minimum number of guesses needed on average to guess a realization of a random variable correctly The answer to this question led to the introduction of a quantity called guesswork by Massey in 1994, which can be viewed as an alternate security criterion to entropy. In this paper, we consider the guesswork in the presence of quantum side information, and show that a general sequential guessing strategy is equivalent to performing a single quantum measurement and choosing a guessing strategy based on the outcome. We use this result to deduce entropic one-shot and asymptotic bounds on the …

The Cacophony Of Politics: Northern Democrats And The American Civil War, Michael Todd Landis

Civil War Book Review

J. Matthew Gallman delights in the chaos, offering a dizzying litany of anecdotes and personalities to give readers a sense of the opacity of partisanship in the early 1860s. “One chief goal here is to demonstrate how fundamentally messy, and often inconsistent, Civil War partisan politics really was,” he warns at the start. (3)

Lincoln’S Northern Nemesis And Opposing Lincoln, Matthew Pinsker

Civil War Book Review

Two books examine the antagonistic relationship between Clement L. Vallandigham and Abraham Lincoln, but the authors approach their subject in different ways.

Joseph Smith For President: The Prophet, The Assassins, And The Fight For American Religious Freedom, Derek R. Sainsbury

Civil War Book Review

In this important work, McBride employs the causes and outcomes of Smith’s sincere but quixotic campaign as a lens to effectively evaluate antebellum religious inequality and the systems that perpetuated it.