Digital Commons Network^™

Practical Considerations And Applications For Autonomous Robot Swarms, Rory Alan Hector

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, the study of autonomous entities such as unmanned vehicles has begun to revolutionize both military and civilian devices. One important research focus of autonomous entities has been coordination problems for autonomous robot swarms. Traditionally, robot models are used for algorithms that account for the minimum specifications needed to operate the swarm. However, these theoretical models also gloss over important practical details. Some of these details, such as time, have been considered before (as epochs of execution). In this dissertation, we examine these details in the context of several problems and introduce new performance measures to capture practical …

Performing Memory Forensics For Object Recovery From Android Application Memory, Sneha Sudhakaran

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The analysis of application-specific behavior has become an increasingly important technique in cyber forensics and incident response. The ability to determine the precise actions taken by a user can be the difference between a successful analysis and one that fails to meet its goals. The precise actions includes URLs visited, files downloaded, messages sent and received, images viewed, and data accessed. Evidence extraction from application memory at runtime is an effective solution to successfully extract valuable objects allocated by each application, and it is evident that there is a need for more Android forensics analysis tools that support recovering evidence …

Effects Of Engagements And Presentation Order In Informal Science Presentations, William Henry Katzman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Science museums conduct presentations for their audiences to attract and educate visitors, yet research on presentations has primarily concentrated on whether individual presentations were effective. This mixed-methods, quasi-experimental study looks at how the presenter’s mental and physical engagements within a presentation affects audience members by altering sociocultural context of the presentation.

Physical engagements involve asking audience members to physically participate, while mental engagements involved asking audience members to make predictions prior to observing a demonstration. Audiences were given presentations containing: 1) Both mental and physical engagements, 2) Physical engagements only, 3) Mental engagements only or 4) No engagements (control).

This …

The State Of Agricultural Mechanics In The Preparation Of School-Based Agricultural Education Teachers, Tyler Granberry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Agricultural mechanics has become a primary subject area for school-based agricultural education (SBAE). However, despite a long history and high prevalence in SBAE, preservice and in-service SBAE teachers have frequently expressed concerns regarding teaching agricultural mechanics. Research from the early 21st century documented the characteristics of preservice SBAE teacher training in agricultural mechanics on a national level. However, more recent studies have suggested that the agricultural mechanics training requirements for preservice SBAE teachers have changed. The purpose of this study was to compare the level of agricultural mechanics preparation of preservice SBAE teachers between 2000 and 2021. To accomplish this, …

Advanced Communication And Sensing Protocols Using Twisted Light And Engineered Quantum Statistics, Michelle L. Lollie

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Advanced performance of modern technology at a fundamental physical level is driving new innovations in communication, sensing capability, and information processing. Key to this improvement is the ability to harness the power of physical phenomena at the quantum mechanical level, where light and light-matter interactions produce technological advancement not realizable by classical means. Theoretical investigation into quantum computing, sensing capability beyond classical limits, and quantum information has prompted experimental work to bring state-of-the-art quantum systems to the forefront for commercial use. This dissertation contributes to the latter portion of the work. A set of preliminaries is included highlighting pertinent physical …

Sediment Buffering And Recycling On An Annual To Centennial Scale Along The Mississippi River, Nikki E. Neubeck

LSU Master's Theses

Although the Mississippi River and its tributaries have been investigated for many years, the alteration of the river through dams, levees, and diversions has affected how sediment is transported from source to sink (>10³ y). Previous provenance research using detrital zircon U-Pb dating indicates a slow transport time from source-to-sink, but recent anthropogenic alterations of the river may potentially diminish the transportation time of heavy minerals due to an increase in flow efficiency. The objective of this study is to analyze the degree of buffering and recycling of Mississippi River sediment over a range of short time scales, …

Electrochemical Pumping For Challenging Hydrogen Separations, Gokul Venugopalan, Deepra Bhattacharya, Evan Andrews, Luis Briceno-Mena, José Romagnoli, John Flake, Christopher G. Arges

Faculty Publications

Conventional hydrogen separations from reformed hydrocarbons often deploy a water gas shift (WGS) reactor to convert CO to CO2, followed by adsorption processes to achieve pure hydrogen. The purified hydrogen is then fed to a compressor to deliver hydrogen at high pressures. Electrochemical hydrogen pumps (EHPs) featuring proton-selective polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) represent an alternative separation platform with fewer unit operations because they can simultaneously separate and compress hydrogen continuously. In this work, a high-temperature PEM (HT-PEM) EHP purified hydrogen to 99.3%, with greater than 85% hydrogen recovery for feed mixtures containing 25-40% CO. The ion-pair HT-PEM and phosphonic acid …

A Case Study Of The Underrepresentation Of African American Male Educators: Career Choices And Experiences In Secondary Schools, Anthony Wayne Graham Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to examine the career choices and experiences of African American male teachers in secondary grade settings. Participants included 17 African American males who taught core subjects at varying grade levels. All participants worked at schools in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, metropolitan area. The main source of data collection was completed through semistructured interviews with 17 African American male teachers. I arranged to visit the different schools and address all potential teachers interested in participating in this study. Additionally, I contacted all interested subjects through email. The findings provided important information related to …

Novel Platforms For Large-Scale Adherent Culture Of Mammalian Cells, Ashkan Yekrangsafakar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

With recent advances in biotechnology, there is a strong and urgent need for robust platforms to culture mammalian cells on a large scale to produce biopharmaceuticals. To this end, various bioreactors have been developed over the past decades, but their capacity and efficiency are often limited by insufficient mass transfer rate and excessive shear stress. In this work, multiple novel bioreactors for the large-scale adherent culture of anchorage-dependent cells were developed.

Hollow MicroCarriers (HMC) was developed as an alternative solution for the microcarrier-based culture system in a stirred-tank bioreactor. In the conventional microcarrier technique, cells are exposed to the harmful …

Folk Elements In Bright Sheng’S Three Fantasies For Violin And Piano: A Performer’S Guide To Interpretation, Kaiyue Zhu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the present age, a wide variety of popular music is composed. Contemporary classical music of the twenty-first century also promotes the development and innovation of world music. All these various genres of music give people a sense of peace and comfort, briefly escaping from the bustle and hurry of busy working lives. Bright Sheng is a Chinese American composer who is one of the representatives of contemporary classical music and has gained attention and popularity in the musical field. The project aims to show how he fuses folk elements and western musical techniques to form his unique musical style …

Confederately Wrong: The Names Of Hermitage Neighborhood It Should Be Changed, Christopher Toombs

LSU Master's Theses

The Civil War was one of the most defining acts of war in American History. The Union and the Confederacy battled over the future of African born slaves. The Confederacy wanted to see the African born slaves in chains forever. However, the Union possessed the desire to allow the African slave a proper place in their society. LSU played a major part in the civil war on behalf of the confederacy. LSU’s staff, faculty, and students fought in the war for Baton Rouge and lost to the Union. Hence, the spirit of confederacy was embedded in Baton Rouge culture regardless …

The Adoption Of Conservation Practices And Program Participation Among Socially Disadvantaged Agricultural Producers: A Meta-Analysis, Myles A. Brown

LSU Master's Theses

As climate change has become undeniable in recent years, it has become increasingly important for the agriculture industry to address conservation. Within the agriculture industry, small farmers are usually the ones who take on this burden on a daily basis. However, some socially disadvantaged agricultural producers face unique challenges compared to the average farmer, which may impede their ability to adopt the necessary conservation practices or participate in conservation programs. This review sought to provide a definitive economic analysis on the possible effect of race on conservation adoption and program participation, as there is not much research on this topic. …

Nanoparticle Quantification And Distribution On Fluorescently Coated Angioplasty Balloons, Allison Dobson Zieschang

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

A New Generation Of Open-Graded Friction Course For Enhanced Durability And Functionality, Hossam Abohamer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study aims at (1) enhancing Open Graded Friction Course (OGFC) mixes durability using additives and other by-products; (2) investigating the impacts of selected factors on OGFC pavements seepage characteristics; (3) developing a quantitative tool to model the deterioration in OGFC pavements functional performance; and (4) developing new guidelines of Air Void (AV) content for OGFC for optimum functionality and durability. For the durability objective, eight mixes were prepared with a PG 76-22 binder and two sources of aggregate (i.e., # 78 limestone and # 67 sandstone). Three Warm Mix Additives (WMA), one by-product (i.e., crumb rubber [CR]), and two …

Passive Air Samplers For Community Monitoring Of Air Toxics Following Hurricane Ida In Terrebonne Parish, Sarah Besson

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Fit-Effectiveness Of Fabric-Based Reusable Face Masks On 3d Printed Niosh Headforms, Casey Stannard, Charles Freeman, Lesley Strawderman, Meagan Moore, Wayne Newhauser, Reuben Burch, Catherine Black, David Saucier

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Machine Learning Assisted Discovery Of Shape Memory Polymers And Their Thermomechanical Modeling, Cheng Yan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As a new class of smart materials, shape memory polymer (SMP) is gaining great attention in both academia and industry. One challenge is that the chemical space is huge, while the human intelligence is limited, so that discovery of new SMPs becomes more and more difficult. In this dissertation, by adopting a series of machine learning (ML) methods, two frameworks are established for discovering new thermoset shape memory polymers (TSMPs). Specifically, one of them is performed by a combination of four methods, i.e., the most recently proposed linear notation BigSMILES, supplementing existing dataset by reasonable approximation, a mixed dimension (1D …

Investigation Of Groundwater Depletion And Leveel Underseepage With Unstructured-Grid Modeling Approach, Ye-Hong Chen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Unstructured grid is a tessellation of geometric shapes in irregular patterns that provides flexibility in grid design for groundwater modeling. However, groundwater modeling is mostly developed with uniform grid tessellation and layer, which could simplify model structure or cause expensive computational costs in high-resolution simulations. Unstructured grid incorporates non-uniform horizontal and non-uniform vertical discretizations providing the capability to replicate complex hydrostratigraphy, capture geologic features that are crucial for groundwater flow simulation, and reduce computational costs while maintaining a high resolution for areas of interest. This study contains three parts to investigate unstructured-grid approach on constructing high-fidelity groundwater models, comparisons with …

Competitive Sorption And Transport Of Heavy Metals In Soil And Mn Oxide-Coated Sand, Joshua Tyler Padilla

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigated the competitive sorption of Ni, Pb, and Zn as well as synergistic interactions between Ni and phosphate (P) in soils and Mn oxide-coated sand. During stirred-flow experiments, the sorption of heavy metal cations by Olivier soil was mutually reduced when applied simultaneously. When applied consecutively, the cation of higher affinity was able to displace the cation of lower affinity from the soil surface, however, no evidence for the reverse case was observed. A novel general exchange kinetics model was able to correctly describe such displacement. Competition between Ni and Zn mutually increased mobility in Olivier and Windsor …

Model-Guided Design Of Rna-Based Synthetic Circuits For The Dynamic Regulation Of Gene Expression, Jordan R. Ryan

LSU Master's Theses

A longstanding goal in synthetic biology has been to build synthetic gene circuits with the ability to harness nature’s capability of precise gene expression regulation. Advancements in RNA technology have established RNA-based regulators with distinct advantages over traditional protein-based regulators such as faster signal propagation, versatile programmability, and low cellular burden, which has created an interest in the field to construct innovative synthetic gene circuits using de novo RNA- based regulators. However, our understanding of the behavior and kinetics of RNA-RNA interactions for the construction of gene circuits is incomplete. This thesis proposes a model-guided design framework that integrates mechanistic …

Effects Of Meteorologic Events On Wave Climate And Current Regime In A Shallow, Microtidal Bay, Jay S. Merrill

LSU Master's Theses

Along coastal Louisiana and within the shallow microtidal Barataria Bay estuary, meteorological events can play a primary role in influencing wave climate and circulation patterns. Understanding the effects of hurricanes and smaller tropical storms on hydrodynamic processes is important for constraining and predicting hydrodynamic variation in Barataria Bay, which, largely due to impacts from wave energy, is currently experiencing rapid wetland loss and is a major focus of coastal restoration efforts. Two bottom-mounted upward-facing Acoustic Current Doppler Profilers and wave, temperature, and depth recorders were installed in the lower portions of Barataria Bay to measure the wave climate and three-dimensional …

Image And Video Segmentation Of Appearance-Volatile Objects, Yongqing Liang

LSU Master's Theses

Segmentation is a process of partitioning a digital image or frame into multiple regions or objects. The goal of segmentation is to identify and locate the objects of interest with their boundaries. Recent segmentation approaches often follow such a pipeline: they first train the model on a collected dataset and then evaluate the trained model on a given image or video. They assume that the appearance of object is consistent in training and testing sets. However, the appearance of object may change in different photography conditions. How to effectively segment the objects with volatile appearance remains under-explored. In this work, …

Development And Structural Organization Of Mexico’S Mangrove Monitoring System (Smmm) As A Foundation For Conservation And Restoration Initiatives: A Hierarchical Approach, María Teresa Rodríguez-Zúñiga, Carlos Troche-Souza, María Isabel Cruz-López, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy

Faculty Publications

Mangroves provide ecosystem services worth billions of dollars worldwide. Although countries with extensive mangrove areas implemented management and conservation programs since the 1980s, the global area is still decreasing. To recuperate this lost area, both restoration and rehabilitation (R/R) projects have been implemented but with limited success, especially at spatial scales needed to restore functional properties. Monitoring mangroves at different spatial scales in the long term (decades) is critical to detect potential threats and select cost-effective management criteria and performance measures to improve R/R program success. Here, we analyze the origin, development, implementation, and outcomes of a country-level mangrove monitoring …

Visible Light Illuminated Tin Oxide-Gold Nanoparticle Schottky Junctions For H2o2 Generation In Water, Sarah Glass

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Designing For The Future: Sensor And Gauge Assembly Work Cell Design, Kaitryana Leinbach

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Gender, Leadership, And Diversity Policies In The Workplace: A Quantitative Study Of Gender Bias In The Context Of Dei, Francesca Manfucci

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Case For Large-Scale Carbon Capture And Utilization In Louisiana, Gloria Mullins

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Obstacles Of Self-Expression In Vulnerable Populations, Maria Pham

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Is Tesla, Inc.’S Market Value Justified Relative To Its Competitors?, Cody Silas

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Mathematica Assessment Of Spatial Reasoning Development After Virtual Reality Collaboration, Arthur Odenheimer

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.