Digital Commons Network^™

Look At Lincoln: Lincoln And The Constitution, Frank J. Williams

Civil War Book Review

Noah Feldman’s The Broken Constitution is the case-in-chief for his proposition that President Abraham Lincoln repeatedly violated the United States Constitution with intent and effectively rewrote the interpretation of the founding document in the American system. The revised document exists today.

Institutional Politics Of The Civil War Era, Jeffery Hardin Hobson

Civil War Book Review

Investigating institutional politics and the “Great Men” who politicked remains an essential element of Civil War era studies. The books reviewed in this issue demonstrate that studying institutional politics continues to yield new insights, understandings, and perspectives on the Civil War era.

Lincoln And The American Founding, David J. Gerleman

Civil War Book Review

Morel’s premise is that Lincoln can only be truly understood when his beliefs, words, and actions are viewed through the prism of America’s founding documents.

Joseph Smith For President: The Prophet, The Assassins, And The Fight For American Religious Freedom, Spencer Welles Mcbride

Civil War Book Review

In this issue’s author interview, McBride and I dive into Smith’s bid for the presidency. In doing so, we discuss how Smith endured tough lessons in the hollowness of states’ rights philosophy, which inspired his decision to run for president. Our discussion touches on Smith’s platform and his campaign’s infrastructure, and how the two related to his role as prophet in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Impact Report, 2021-2022, Lsu Libraries

Libraries Impact Reports

No abstract provided.

The Band Of American Ladies : Children’S Librarians And The Creation Of Children’S Literature In The Long 19th Century, Suzanne Stauffer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Louisiana Agriculture Winter, 2022, Lsu Agcenter

Louisiana Agriculture

Louisiana’s agricultural and natural resources continue to be under attack from a wide variety of invasive species. Some are new to the state, while others have been here for a long time. This issue of Louisiana Agriculture highlights the broad range of research activities being conducted by LSU AgCenter scientists to understand how invasive species survive and thrive and to identify effective means of controlling or limiting their damage in the state.

Going Virtual: Academic Conferences In The Age Of Covid-19, Leandro Rodriguez Medina, Wesley Shrum

Faculty Publications

In the context of the 2020 world pandemic of COVID-19, many professional and scientific associations have had to change the way that they gather and reorganize their scholarly conferences. For many of them, conferences are a main source of income and important occasions for business meetings and managerial decisions. Yet, with trips and face-to-face encounters banned, the opportunity arrived for going virtual and developing human and technical capacities to provide online environments for virtual conferences. In this article, we analyze the case of an e-conference co-organized by two international organizations at two levels: (a) the decision-making process and (b) the …

A Reusable Catalog Of Requirements For Gamified Mobile Health Applications, Lamyae Sardi, Ali Idri, Leanne M. Redman, Hassan Alami, José Luis Fernández-Alemán

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

The new era of mobile technologies has revolutionized all fundamental human pursuits in that many sectors have been reshaped and tangibly improved, such as education, finance, and healthcare. Referred to as mHealth, the use of mobile technologies to track and improve health outcomes is a rapidly expanding trend. A plethora of mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are being constantly developed thanks to the rapid adoption of mobile devices. From basic exercise trackers to powerful self-management tools, mHealth apps play several roles towards the provision of better healthcare. To induce playful experiences and boost engagement, gamification has proven to be extremely …

The Grandma Network In Preparation For The Fourth Gravitational-Wave Observing Run, S. Agayeva, V. Aivazyan, S. Alishov, M. Almualla, C. Andrade, Sarah Antier, J. M. Bai, A. Baransky, S. Basa, P. Bendjoya, Z. Benkhaldoun, S. Beradze, D. Berezin, U. Bhardwaj, M. Blazek, O. Burkhonov, E. Burns, S. Caudill, N. Christensen, F. Colas, A. Coleiro, W. Corradi, M. W. Coughlin, T. Culino, D. Darson, D. Datashvili, G. De Wasseige, T. Dietrich, F. Dolon, D. Dornic, J. Dubouil, J. G. Ducoin, P. A. Duverne

Faculty Publications

GRANDMA is a world-wide collaboration with the primary scientific goal of studying gravitational-wave sources, discovering their electromagnetic counterparts and characterizing their emission. GRANDMA involves astronomers, astrophysicists, gravitational-wave physicists, and theorists. GRANDMA is now a truly global network of telescopes, with (so far) 30 telescopes in both hemispheres. It incorporates a citizen science programme (Kilonova-Catcher) which constitutes an opportunity to spread the interest in time-domain astronomy. The telescope network is an heterogeneous set of already-existing observing facilities that operate coordinated as a single observatory. Within the network there are wide-field imagers that can observe large areas of the sky to search …

Moral Emotions And Unnamed Wrongs: Revisiting Epistemic Injustice, Usha Nathan

Faculty Publications

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. By moral emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, …

Civil War Treasures: The Ways Of The Whigs: Campaign Materials From The Second Party System, Hans Rasmussen

Civil War Book Review

[T]hese overtly partisan materials offer the clearest insights into the opinions and self-perceptions of party operatives during the most competitive season of the political calendar. Thus, the ways the Whigs fought their campaigns offer us some fascinating glimpses into the origins of America’s distinctive political culture

Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War In Indian Country, Sarah Elliott

Civil War Book Review

Reviewer Sarah Elliott writes that Fay A. Yarbough’s Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country, excels in demonstrating that Choctaws’ decision to align with the Confederacy was based on self-interests. Indeed, Yarbough shows that “increasingly close interaction with white Americans shifted Choctaw culture” in the antebellum era, so that by the eve of the Civil War, they were, in many ways, “’more ‘southern’” than many white southerners. Elliott finishes by praising Yarbough’s work as an “immensely valuable and illuminating” work.

The Vibrancy Of Civil War Era Studies, Jeffery Hardin Hobson

Civil War Book Review

The feature essays and books reviewed in this issue cover a range of topics: engagement with unpublished historical documents; the relationship between humans and animals and contagions in the Civil War era; war finance; Native American policies; crony capitalism and “immunocapitalism”; free people of color and their antiracist activism in regional, national, and transnational contexts; nationalism(s) and religion; devotees to democracy; public mourning; and stubbornly committed educators. In short, this issue, like so many previous ones, reflects the vibrancy and dynamism of Civil War-era studies.

Ways And Means: Lincoln And His Cabinet And The Financing Of The Civil War, Frank J. Williams

Civil War Book Review

Roger Lowenstein explores how the Lincoln administration employed "economic innovations" to fund the Civil War, and manages to do so "in a clear and enjoyable manner avoiding what could potentially become a mind-numbing summary of financial data."

Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People Of Color In The South, Evelyn L. Wilson

Civil War Book Review

Warren Milteer Jr. traces the trajectory of free people of colors' experience from the colonial era into the Civil War era, during which "'white supremacists and proslavery radicals'" circumscribed free people of colors' rights.

Persistence Through Peril: Episodes Of College Life And Academic Endurance In The Civil War South, Timothy J. Williams

Civil War Book Review

Editors Eric R. Platt and Holly A. Foster compiled a series of essays about southern institutions of higher education's disruptions and persistence in the face of war that resonate in today's COVID disrupted world of higher education.

Diversity Of Civil War Era Studies, Jeffery Hardin Hobson

Civil War Book Review

Reading through the contributions to the Fall 2022 issue of the Civil War Book Review, one notices unifying themes among the diverse books our contributors evaluate. The books explore and share subjects and themes including secession, emotions, Confederate widows and wives, extra-legal violence, and formal and informal politics. Though not all reviewed books share common themes, other subjects—maroons in the Great Dismal Swamp, a regimental history, and Civil War era libations—equally enrich our understanding of the Civil War era.

The Man Who Started The Civil War: James Chesnut, Honor, And Emotion In The American South, R. Boyd Murphree

Civil War Book Review

Anna Koivusalo examines arch-secessionist James Chesnut’s emotions in The Man Who Started the Civil War: James Chesnut, Honor, and Emotion in the American South. Reviewer R. Boyd Murphree writes that Koivusalo expands our understanding of honor, which she demonstrates was an emotion, “not just a code of conduct.” The Man Who Started the Civil War “is academic in the best sense of the word: analytic, revelatory, and innovative,” Murphree writes.

Infighting, Fusion, And Fraud In The Election Of 1872, Hans Rasmussen

Civil War Book Review

No abstract provided.

Rebels In The Making: The Secession Crisis And The Birth Of The Confederacy, Daniel W. Crofts

Civil War Book Review

In Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy, William L. Barney reveals that southern separatists, namely young Breckinridge-aligned planters, succeeded in seceding by propagating “utopian visions” and conspiracy theories that amounted to a nineteenth-century Big Lie, writes reviewer Daniel W. Crofts. In sum, “Barney contributes to the twin causes of racial justice and historical truth,” Crofts concludes.

We The Miners: Self-Government In The California Gold Rush, John Suval

Civil War Book Review

Andrea G. McDowell illuminates the informal politics California gold miners practiced in the heady days following 1849 in We the Miners: Self Government in the California Gold Rush. Without governmental institutions, the miners developed their own democratic bodies to establish rules, dispense justice, and confront monopolists who threatened their livelihoods and independence. These bodies’ use of violence, especially against racial minorities, reveal the consequences of unbound democracy, however. Reviewer John Suval writes that McDowell “does admirable work unearthing overlooked dimensions of U.S. democracy and frontier law, while enriching our understanding of a storied chapter of American history.”

The War After The War: A New History Of Reconstruction, Xiaxiao Li

Civil War Book Review

Historians have long focused on violence’s permeation of the postwar South. However, in The War After the War: A New History of Reconstruction, John Patrick Daly argues that the violence was so elemental to, so pervasive and organized in the postbellum South that it constituted a new war—a Southern Civil War. Reviewer Xiaoxiao Li writes that Daly’s “lively military history” reveals that White southerners waged a war of violent terror to control the former-Confederate states’ governments. Further, Daly finds resonances between the war after the war in the U.S. and the aftermath of other civil wars in world history.

Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization And The Making Of Veteran Identity, Tracy L. Barnett

Civil War Book Review

Bradley R. Clampitt explores the “emotional lives” of Confederates as they transitioned from soldiers to civilians in Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity. Reviewer Tracy L. Barnett writes that by using a large sample of sources including letters, journals, and questionnaires collected from Tennessee soldiers who fought in all the war’s theaters, Clampitt reveals “the Confederate mindset and details the on-the-ground process of southern demobilization” as the soldiers moved from the battlefront to the homefront.

Early And Middle Miocene Ice Sheet Dynamics In The Ross Sea: Results From Integrated Core-Log-Seismic Interpretation, Lara F. Pérez, Laura De Santis, Robert M. Mckay, Robert D. Larter, Jeanine Ash, Phil J. Bart, Gualtiero Böhm, Giuseppe Brancatelli, Imogen Browne, Florence Colleoni, Justin P. Dodd, Riccardo Geletti, David M. Harwood, Gerhard Kuhn, Jan Sverre Laberg, R. Mark Leckie, Richard H. Levy, James Marschalek, Zenon Mateo, Timothy R. Naish, Francesca Sangiorgi, Amelia E. Shevenell, Christopher C. Sorlien, Tina Van De Flierdt

Faculty Publications

Oscillations in ice sheet extent during early and middle Miocene are intermittently preserved in the sedimentary record from the Antarctic continental shelf, with widespread erosion occurring during major ice sheet advances, and open marine deposition during times of ice sheet retreat. Data from seismic reflection surveys and drill sites from Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 28 and International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 374, located across the present-day middle continental shelf of the central Ross Sea (Antarctica), indicate the presence of expanded early to middle Miocene sedimentary sections. These include the Miocene climate optimum (MCO ca. 17-14.6 Ma) and the middle …

Thermodynamic Characterization Of Grease Oxidation–Thermal Stability Via Pressure Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Jude A. Osara, Piet M. Lugt, Michael D. Bryant, Michael M. Khonsari

Faculty Publications

This study investigates and characterizes, via thermodynamic laws, a widely employed standard for measuring oxidation-thermal stability of lubricating greases—ASTM 5483—based on first-order chemical kinetics, using pressure differential scanning calorimetry (PDSC). Steps and active mechanisms in the controlled test are analyzed and modeled using energy and entropy transformations. Applying the degradation-entropy generation (DEG) theorem, oxidation induction time is related to accumulated oxidation entropy and entropy transfer by mass flow to obtain characteristic degradation coefficients. These DEG coefficients are calibrated using available measured data from the literature and subsequently used to predict induction times at various temperatures. DEG elements—trajectories, planes, and domain—presented …

Vapor Isotopic Evidence For The Worsening Of Winter Air Quality By Anthropogenic Combustion-Derived Water, Meng Xing, Weiguo Liu, Xia Li, Weijian Zhou, Qiyuan Wang, Jie Tian, Xiaofei Li, Xuexi Tie, Guohui Li, Junji Cao, Huiming Bao, Zhisheng An

Faculty Publications

© 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Anthropogenic combustion-derived water (CDW) may accumulate in an airshed due to stagnant air, which may further enhance the formation of secondary aerosols and worsen air quality. Here we collected three-winter-season, hourly resolution, water-vapor stable H and O isotope compositions together with atmospheric physical and chemical data from the city of Xi’an, located in the Guanzhong Basin (GZB) in northwestern China, to elucidate the role of CDW in particulate pollution. Based on our experimentally determined water vapor isotope composition of the CDW for individual and weighted fuels in the basin, we found …

Vapor Isotopic Evidence For The Worsening Of Winter Air Quality By Anthropogenic Combustion-Derived Water, Meng Xing, Weiguo Liu, Xia Li, Weijian Zhou, Qiyuan Wang, Jie Tian, Xiaofei Li, Xuexi Tie, Guohui Li, Junji Cao, Huiming Bao, Zhisheng An

Faculty Publications

© 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Anthropogenic combustion-derived water (CDW) may accumulate in an airshed due to stagnant air, which may further enhance the formation of secondary aerosols and worsen air quality. Here we collected three-winter-season, hourly resolution, water-vapor stable H and O isotope compositions together with atmospheric physical and chemical data from the city of Xi’an, located in the Guanzhong Basin (GZB) in northwestern China, to elucidate the role of CDW in particulate pollution. Based on our experimentally determined water vapor isotope composition of the CDW for individual and weighted fuels in the basin, we found …

Calamity And Resiliency: Reflections On The Past Two Years And Library Responses, Martin Halbert

Library Diversity and Residency Studies

This editorial introduces the second issue of Library Diversity and Residency Studies. It discusses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent phenomena, and how libraries can help support efforts to achieve resiliency in society. It also discusses future plans for the journal and invites contributions.

Functional Structure Of Biomacromolecules In Plant Biomass Using Solid-State Nmr And Dynamic Nuclear Polarization, Alex Kipchirchir Kirui

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation summarizes the recent findings on complex biomacromolecules in cell wall of plants and fungi which perform important roles in cell recognition, structural build up, and energy storage. Because of the technical difficulty in characterizing these biomacromolecules, which are often polymorphic and disordered in structure, the functional structure of these biomacromolecules remains elusive. In this dissertation, I present two solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) and dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) studies of carbohydrate-rich biosystems: the energy-rich plant biomass and disease-relevant, pathogenic fungi.

First, we have investigated the secondary cell wall of plant biomass which is a carbohydrate-rich biosystem using solid …