The Abolitionist Spectator: Resistant Readings Of Punishment, Rehabilitation, And Reform At The Louisiana State Penitentiary, Kathryn Marie Morris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For the majority of the twenty-first century, Louisiana has been the global leader in rates of incarceration. Despite its prevalence, many people encounter prisons and punishment only through representations in movies, television, and the news, remaining distant from the actual processes of punishment and prisons built in remote areas. The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, however, is unique in the number of opportunities it presents for the public to enter the prison for large-scale events like the famous Angola Prison Rodeo, select drama club performances, or to visit the Angola Prison Museum. These opportunities are often read cynically, as moments …

Stabilizing Control Schemes For Grid-Connected Hybrid Pv-Energy Storage Systems, Indra Narayana Bhogaraju

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A nonlinear stabilizing control scheme based on Lyapunov theory is proposed for a grid- connected hybrid photovoltaic (PV)/ battery/supercapacitor (SC) system. The system dynamics is developed in the stationary reference frame, and the state-space model of the system is derived and used to formulate the Lyapunov function (LF) candidate. The global asymptotic stability of the LF-based controller is discussed in detail. The real-time implementation feasibility of the proposed control scheme is validated through hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) studies of a grid- connected hybrid system under solar energy generation and grid load variations. To address the issue of digital computational time that leads …

20-Year Assessment Of Total Suspended Sediment (Tss) Variability In Barataria Bay From Modis Ocean Color Using A Combination Of Adaptive Semi-Analytical And Neural Network Algorithms, Bijaylaxmi Sahoo

LSU Master's Theses

Barataria Bay, a hydrologically dynamic basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico, exhibits a distinct spatio-temporal distribution of total suspended sediment (TSS). However, studies on sediment distribution are limited by availability of in-situ data as well as the limitation of ocean color algorithms for suspended sediments in shallow optically complex waters. Barataria Bay TSS concentration profile is complex, influenced in the upper basin by fresh water sources such as the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion, and in the lower bay by the river plume and marine influence near the mouth of the bay. To efficiently study the sediment dynamics in the …

Numerical Flume For Wave Dissipation By Mangrove Prop Roots, Rebecca L. Schurr

LSU Master's Theses

Mangroves provide shorelines with many beneficial engineering services, including shoreline stabilization, wave attenuation, and damage mitigation during tsunami or tropical cyclone events. This research focuses on wave attenuation rates and drag coefficients, and how they are affected by mangrove prop roots. Previous lab research using a physical wave flume has quantified wave height decay and drag coefficients for synthetic mangrove forests and confirmed that attenuation does indeed increase as mangrove forest density increases. This research will use a 3D numerical flume model developed in Proteus, a Python package, to simulate prior physical model experiments. This work will attempt to validate …

The Hillman Site (16ebr60): A Glimpse Into Pre-Contact South Louisiana, Brandy Kerr

LSU Master's Theses

Situated along the north bank of Bayou Manchac lies the pre- and post-contact Hillman site, 16EBR60. First discovered in 1960 by the landowner, George Menefee, the site was subsequently investigated by Louisiana State University archaeologist Dr. William Haag, who pronounced the site a Marksville village, due to the large number of lithic tools recovered from the site. Subsequent investigations at the site by Surveys Unlimited Research Associates, Inc. (SURA) in 2021 confirmed the Marksville component of the site and found occupation continued into the succeeding Troyville and Coles Creek cultures. The principal research questions asked include: (1) How does the …

Quantifying Mud Settling Velocity As A Function Of Turbulence And Salinity In A Deltaic Estuary, Michael W. Mcdonell

LSU Master's Theses

Mud settling velocity is controlled by flocculation, which in turn strongly depends on turbulence and on the chemistry and biology of the water-sediment mixture. As a result, mud settling velocity can be poorly constrained in coastal areas and vary in space and time by orders of magnitude. Here we quantified mud settling velocity in Barataria Basin, a deltaic estuary in Louisiana (USA), using three independent methods: eddy covariance (one station for 200 days), floc cameras (4 stations at one time), and Rouse profile inversion (14 stations, replicated 10-30 times each). Eddy covariance indicates that settling velocity increases with turbulence, at …

Geophysical Characterization Of Underground Storage In Salt Domes During The Clean Energy Transition, Joses B. Omojola

LSU Master's Theses

Safely transforming geological formations into cost-effective underground storage is critical for the US energy security and global energy transition. Seasonal energy demand requires relatively cheap, impermeable, non-reactive materials for storing vast amounts of natural gas and hydrogen. Due to their low risk of fracturing and leakage, salt formations are ideal for these purposes however, pressure variations during drawdown, differential salt creep, and reactivation of pre-existing fractures along boundary shear zone(s) (BSZ) can be detrimental to salt cavern safety and long-term cavern operations. Several environmental disasters at storage facilities in the US and Europe, have created a need to understand how …

Mapping, Modeling, And Predicting Extreme Flood Events With Cloud Computing, Dan Tian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Floods represent one of the most severe natural disasters worldwide. It is crucial to accurately assess flood hazards to mitigate the impact and enhance community resilience. This study focuses on three key components of flood hazard management, including (1) flood frequency estimation, (2) inundation delineation, and (3) flood susceptibility assessment. The first project presents a Bayesian Log-Pearson Type III model with Spatial Priors (BLP3-SP) that utilizes spatial regression priors to enhance the accuracy of flood frequency estimation for sites with limited data. The method is compared with two other algorithms with different priors. The results indicate that BLP3-SP performs the …

Blockchain Accelerators And An Application On Covid-19 Contact Tracing, Tao Lu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Blockchain technology has been an emerging technology in recent years. Its nature of decentralization and anonymity enables many applications to be built in a trustless environment but can still be validated and agreed upon by all the participants. Ever since the invention of blockchain technology, its concepts and forms are explored extensively, and it has shown the potential to be used in many industries. However, the low efficiency and the poor performance have prevented the technology to be adopted in practical largescale usage. In this dissertation, we present three major works around blockchain technology. The first one is BPU, an …

The What And When Of Psychomotor Retardation: A Multimodal Approach, Ole Edvard Granrud

LSU Master's Theses

Psychomotor retardation (PMR) is a diagnostic criterion that reflects a gross slowing of movement, speech, and thought. More so, PMR is a transdiagnostic, pervasive source of impairment and distress that can be observed across disorders, such as Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Schizophrenia (SZ), and Bipolar Disorder (BD). In clinical settings, PMR is associated with more severe psychopathology and is used to both inform treatment and predict long-term treatment outcomes. However, despite being clinically meaningful, PMR is poorly understood and is often conceptualized as a motor disturbance that happens in isolation from, rather than concurrently with, higher-order cognitive-emotional processes – such …

Deposition, Material Characterization, And Mechanical Testing Of Cr Containing Diamond-Like Carbon Films, Nicholas Anderson

LSU Master's Theses

A series of amorphous hydrogenated chromium containing diamond-like carbon films were deposited on 316 stainless steel substrates with a chromium interlayer through inductively coupled plasma assisted direct current magnetron sputtering. Details on the deposition process of these films are discussed. The film is characterized using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The coating hardness and indentation modulus is measured by instrumented nanoindentation. The coefficient of friction and the upper bound of the coating wear coefficient is measured using the pin-on-disk method. The fracture toughness of the diamond-like carbon film and a …

Expand And Compare The Use Of Different Digital Fashion Technologies In Simulation Three-Dimensional Structured Designs, Fatimah Hakeem

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research determined the ability of three-dimensional (3D) simulation technology (CLO3D^TM and OptiTex^TM software) to develop digital prototypes of structured apparel designs using different creative pattern-cutting techniques. The project’s focus was to compare the similarities between physical and virtual prototypes and evaluate differences in performance between the two software programs using fit and appearance criteria. The participants’ evaluations were analyzed with their performance on the Apparel Spatial Visualization Test (ASVT) to determine whether there was a correlation between the level of performance on the ASVT and evaluation of the technologies. It was predicted that participants with higher …

Machine-Learning Approaches For Developing An Autograder For High School-Level Cs-For-All Initiatives, Sirazum Munira Tisha

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Most existing autograders used for grading programming assignments are based on unit testing, which is tedious to implement for programs with graphical output and does not allow testing for other code aspects, such as programming style or structure. We present a novel autograding approach based on machine learning that can successfully check the quality of coding assignments from a high school-level CS-for-all computational thinking course. For evaluating our autograder, we graded 2,675 samples from five different assignments from the past three years, including open-ended problems from different units of the course curriculum. Our autograder uses features based on lexical analysis …

Svip Dependent Tubular Lysosomal Restoration: A New Direction In Vcp Diseases, Ankita Basu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Multisystem Proteinopathy-1 (MSP-1) is a rare, autosomal dominant, degenerative disease resulting from single amino acid mis-sense mutations in the AAA+ ATPase, Valosin containing protein (VCP). Patients with VCP mutations vary widely in their pathology and clinical penetrance, making it difficult to devise effective treatment strategies. To investigate the pathology of VCP- related disease, we engineered CRISPR knock-in Drosophila models for nine MSP-1 associated VCP mutations. These mutant animals mimic human MSP-1 disease phenotypes, including progressive mobility decline and accumulation of protein aggregates, making them excellent models to study the pathology of VCP associated mutations and test potential treatment strategies. At …

Analog Cosmology And Superfluidity In Atomic Gases And Electronic Materials, Anshuman Bhardwaj

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We present a study of analog cosmological models in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and in graphene, and superfluidity in a box-shaped traps. We start by examining the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped inside an expanding toroid that can realize an analog inflationary universe. The expanding condensate forces phonons to undergo redshift and damping due to quantum pressure, owing to the thinness of the ring. We predict that such expanding BECs can exhibit spontaneous phonon creation from the vacuum state and show how it would manifest in the atom density and density correlations and discuss connections with the inflationary theory. …

Improving Teacher Intervention Decisions Using The Fraction Error Flowchart, Katherine Pettrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the U.S. the fifth-grade mathematics curriculum is largely devoted to building fraction skills, providing an essential foundation for future success in mathematics (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008). Unfortunately, students in the U.S. struggle with fraction proficiency (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2022; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2018). Even when teachers facilitate interventions for struggling students those interventions may not be aligned with student need (Riccomini, 2005). Additionally, teachers struggle to identify research-based practices (RBPs) when presented with student data (Means et al., 2009). The purpose of this study was to create and test a flowchart that could …

Evaluating Attitudes Toward Non-Formal Science Education Programs Among High School Science Teachers In Southeast Louisiana, Heather Egger

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has begun implementing Louisiana Student Standards for Science (LSSS), as well as developing high school science certification programs. The LDOE recognizes that teaching science using three-dimensional learning methods and phenomena based inquiry learning will be a challenge that would be addressed in part by partnerships between formal science teachers and nonformal science education programs. However, limited available information on this topic shows that utilization of nonformal science education opportunities by science educators has declined and, in some instances, have been relegated to unstructured “fun” outings to reward students, often after the final quarter …

Design Of A Method To Quantify And Detect Microplastics In Water Reservoirs, Nacey Goodson

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Synthesis Of Tunable, Micron-Sized, Polyethylene Particles As Models For Microplastics, Ruby Roberg

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Optimizing Microfluidic Chips For Endangered Species Sperm Cell Research, Elizabeth Reich

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Why Transformation Occurs In Community-University Partnerships Of The Lsu Community Playground Project, Lauren Hynson

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Multi-Zone Cell-Free Synthesis Incubation Device, Chloe Heitmeier

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Utilization Of Glufosinate-Ammonium For Zygosity Verification In Maize, Anne Marie Gahagan

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Decoration Of A Thiol-Acrylate Hydrogel With Hyaluronic Acid For Application In 3d Cell Cultures, Kaitlyn Hall

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Sitting Posture Affecting Infant Storage Behaviors, Christina Bird

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation To Study The Dynamics Of A Collection Of Interacting Elliptical Cylinders Drive By Shear Flow In A Periodic Domain, Rahul Ramaraju

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Engineers Of The Human Soul: Soviet Union And Cuba, Levi Mayeux

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Art Behind Science Communication: A Content Analysis Of Visual And Verbal Communication Techniques Employed In “Bill Nye The Science Guy”, Hannah Michel

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Horizontally Transferred Genes As Rna Interference Targets For Aphid And Whitefly Control, Honglin Feng, Wenbo Chen, Sonia Hussain, Sara Shakir, Vered Tzin, Femi Adegbayi, Todd Ugine, Zhangjun Fei, Georg Jander

Faculty Publications

RNA interference (RNAi)-based technologies are starting to be commercialized as a new approach for agricultural pest control. Horizontally transferred genes (HTGs), which have been transferred into insect genomes from viruses, bacteria, fungi or plants, are attractive targets for RNAi-mediated pest control. HTGs are often unique to a specific insect family or even genus, making it unlikely that RNAi constructs targeting such genes will have negative effects on ladybugs, lacewings and other beneficial predatory insect species. In this study, we sequenced the genome of a red, tobacco-adapted isolate of Myzus persicae (green peach aphid) and bioinformatically identified 30 HTGs. We then …

Spring 2023 Catalog, Lsu Press

LSU Press Seasonal Catalogs

No abstract provided.