Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of The Arab Spring On Security Concerns In Yemen: An Analysis Of The Houthis, The Southern Movement, And Al Qaeda In The Arabian Peninsula, Rachel Beard

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Faculty Senate Newsletter, February 2013, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

LSU Faculty Senate Publications

Message from President: Years ago, American Airlines backgrounded its television advertisements with a hauntingly optimistic jingle featuring one phrase, “something special in the air.” Tone, whether musical or inflectional or atmospheric, is indeed something airy— something halfway between the inferred and the empirical. One of the wonders if not miracles of recent educational policy is the sudden change in tone among the campuses of the University of Louisiana System since the arrival of new, imaginative, and energetic leadership in the “UoL” System office. Nothing has changed in the budget picture and therefore not too much has happened empirically. Nevertheless, and …

Super-Aptamer Bio-Imprinted Hydrogels : An Investigation Into The Optimization And Characterization Of Cross-Linked Polymeric Materials Displaying Macromolecular Amplified Responses, Nicholas Alexander Gariano

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

It is becoming more important to detect ultra-low concentrations of analytes for biomedical, environmental, and national security applications. Equally important is that new methods should be easy to use, inexpensive, portable, and if possible allow detection using the naked eye. Detection of low concentrations of analytes generally cannot be achieved directly, but requires signal amplification by catalysts, macromolecules, metal surfaces or supramolecular aggregates. The rapidly progressing field of macromolecular signal amplification has been advanced using conjugated polymers, chirality in polymers, solvating polymers and polymerization/depolymerization strategies. The use of molecularly imprinted polymers is ideal for creation of novel sensors to meet …

In Spite Of Yourself : The Asignifying Force Of Humor And Laughter, Kevin Michael Casper

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In Spite of Yourself: The Asignifying Force of Humor and Laughter calls upon the interruptive moments of uncontrollable laughter to challenge rhetoric’s historical treatment of humor and laughter. Anyone who has ever suffered a fit of hysterical laughter at precisely the wrong moment, or has begun to laugh spontaneously at an inappropriate joke before stopping short, can attest to laughter’s uniquely uncontrollable force. Beyond all reason and control, laughter interrupts us and reminds us of the limits of the human subject. Because laughter does not signify meaning in the traditional communicative sense, it exerts an asignifying force irreducible to the …

Guerrilla Hunters In Civil War Missouri, Ralph Mann

Civil War Book Review

What it Took to Win in Civil War Missouri

In this concise, well-illustrated narrative, the author, attorney James W. Erwin, undertakes to tell the story of the Unionist militias that were the ultimate victors in Missouri’s murderous guerrilla war. The militias produced no talented leade....

Ruin Nation: Destruction And The American Civil War, J. Tracy Power

Civil War Book Review

New Approach to the Civil War’s Legacy

No American in the spring of 1861, Northerner or Southerner, white or black, free or slave, could have imagined the scale and devastating longterm effects of the war that would soon engulf them. If the sectional conflict generated a great deal of an....

Civil War Sesquicentennial: Strategy, Tactics, And Fighting The Civil War, Earl Hess

Civil War Book Review

Now that we are deep in the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it is a good time to take some high ground and survey the historiography, remind ourselves what has been done in the past, and tweak our imagination about what ought to be done in the future. Perhaps there are no more fundamental subject....

The Civil War In Missouri: A Military History, Jack Becker

Civil War Book Review

A Look at Conventional Warfare in a Guerrilla Area

Professor Louis S. Gerteis writes in The Civil War in Missouri, that although guerrilla warfare in Missouri has been thoroughly studied (and he does not dispute its importance), the state’s conventional battles also played an imp....

The Guard Always Changes But The Quality Remains The Same, Nathan Buman

Civil War Book Review

Since the smoke cleared from battlefields across the United States and the guns of the Civil War’s combatants fell silent Americans began their timeless endeavor to understand what they had endured. This (now 150-year-old) struggle to understand the complexity of the war and its causes guarantees t....

War On The Waters: The Union And Confederate Navies, 1861-1865, Robert M. Browning Jr.

Civil War Book Review

New Comprehensive Analysis of Civil War Naval History

In August 1863, Abraham Lincoln wrote to his long-time friend James Conklin, summing up the US Navy’s all-encompassing role in the war effort. While the president noted that the army had received most of the notable accolades, Lincol....

The Paddle Wheel Boat A Technical Invention Of Late Antiquity, Dorit Engster

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Translating Arthur : The Historia Regum Brittanniae Of Geoffrey Of Monmouth And Roman De Brut Of Wace, George Gregory Molchan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation primarily focuses on re-presentations of the foreign others in the twelfth-century chronicles Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Roman de Brut of Wace of the Isle of Jersey. Geoffrey and Wace, I argue, deploy a number of strategies in their narratives regarding the Matter of Britain that mainly though not wholly work to reinforce hegemonic versions of history through dehumanizing and demonizing the others that inhabit their narratives. The strategies that Geoffrey and Wace deploy towards the inhabitants of their narratives, I contend, operate within a framework that both celebrates and defends the Normans’ pretensions to …

On Contests With Complementarities, Matthew Wiser

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, we consider the role of complementarities in contests. In most contests, there is either a single prize available, or multiple prizes whose joint value is simply the sum of the values of the individual prizes. We consider contests involving competitions for multiple objectives whose value depend on the combination of objectives won. These combinations of objectives are the basis for the complementarities we examine. We use contests consisting of multiple subcontests, with the subcontests determining the winner of each objective. The overall contest thus determines which combinations of objectives each player achieves, and thus the overall prize …

Emergent Irrigation Agriculture And Settlement Patterns In The Lower Nepeña Valley, North-Central Coast Of Peru, Caitlyn Yoshiko Mcnabb

LSU Master's Theses

The Andes is one of many regions thought to have developed as a pristine hydraulic state; thus the region serves as a testing ground for theories on the development of irrigation. Since Wittfogel (1957) proposed a correlation between irrigation and the development of pristine states, the relationships between social organization, political power, and coordinated subsistence strategies have been hotly debated. This research will examine the role of irrigation in the transition to early urban settlements in the Nepeña Valley, on the north-central coast of Peru. I especially focus on the nature of political structure and social organization, examining the validity …

Res Voluntaria, Non Necessaria: The Conquest And Forced Conversion Of The Saxons Under Charlemagne, Alexander Scott Dessens

LSU Master's Theses

This study focuses on Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and the policies of forced conversion he espoused in his attempts to bring the peoples of these territories to the Christian religion. Often remarked upon is the Carolingian king’s prescription of the death penalty for failure to be baptized, but this development was a logical consequence of contemporary ideology with regard to missionizing. I employ the letters of contemporaries, historical annals, and hagiographical sources to examine how the use of force in missionizing was viewed in this period, and I argue that with regard …

Where Do Transnational Terrorist Organizations Operate? : The Impact Of State Capacity And Civil Conflict, Rebecca Noto

LSU Master's Theses

Despite overlapping explanatory theories for the occurrence of terrorism and civil conflict, these two phenomena have largely been studied in isolation. This study addresses this gap in the conflict literature by investigating the influence of state capacity and civil conflict on the presence of a transnational terrorist organization’s base of operations. It is postulated that weak state capacity provides the opportunity to organize while civil conflict increases this opportunity via the transmission of information on and the reduction in the state’s capacity to prevent organization formation. This hypothesis is then tested by estimating a logistic regression analysis for the years …

Queenship, Intrigue And Blood-Feud: Deciphering The Causes Of The Merovingian Civil Wars, 561-613, Brandon Taylor Craft

LSU Master's Theses

The Frankish civil wars of AD 561-613 were a series of devastating encounters involving the four sons of Chlothar I and their descendants. While no party was guiltless during this period, modern scholars have tended to focus on two prominent Queens, Brunhild of Austrasia and Fredegund of Neustria, and the possibility of a blood-feud between their two families. King Sigibert of Austrasia married Brunhild because he believed she was worthy of a king, unlike many of the wives his brothers were taking. One of these women was Fredegund, who was married to King Chilperic of Neustria. Fredegund is often blamed …

Detection Of Microorganisms Using Maldi And Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry, Juaneka Monet Hayes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Matrix-assisted laser ablation desorption ionization MALDI and ion mobility (IM) MALDI mass spectrometry (MS) were used for the detection and identification of microorganisms. MALDI MS is an analytical tool that separates ions by their mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) and is routinely used for bioanalysis because of its sensitivity, selectivity, general applicability, and tolerance to impurities. Ion mobility is a gas phase technique that separates ions based on their charge and collision cross-section. In this research, MALDI-TOF MS and MALDI-IM-TOF MS analysis were conducted in parallel to assess the effectiveness of MALDI-IM-TOF MS for microorganism identification. Whole cell bacteria Escherichia coli strain …

Amplifying Conjugated Polymers For Fluorescent Chemosensing, Deepa Pangeni

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Chemo- and biosensors based on fluorescent conjugated polymers benefit from greater detection sensitivity due to amplification of the electronic perturbations produced by analyte binding. This amplification stems from the exciton-transporting properties of conjugated polymers. In the conventional sensor design paradigm, excitons migrate from the bulk of the polymer to the analyte binding sites which can be either fluorescence quenching sites (turn-off sensors) or lower energy fluorophores (turn-on sensors). In this dissertation, we proposed an alternative design paradigm when analyte binding creates a higher energy gap site in the polymer backbone. In the case of isolated polymer chains in dilute solution, …

The Creation Of "A Single Revolution Of The Sun," A One-Person Play, Gregory Alan Leute

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis details the process of creating and performing A Single Revolution of the Sun, a one-act, one-man play by Gregory Leute. As a primary requirement in fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree at LSU, MFA acting candidates were charged with the task of producing a devised work. I chose as the central premise of my piece the story of a father and his son, both army officers, inspired by a true event. The contemporary tale bore similarities to Matthew Arnold’s translation of Sohrab and Rustum , derived from the ancient Persian epic poem Shahnemah . The thesis …

A Calvinist View Of Visual Art In Seventeenth-Century Holland : The Iconography Of Esther In Post-Reformation Dutch Painting, Sarah Grafton Peaster

LSU Master's Theses

The Book of Esther, found in the Old Testament, has been represented in a variety of ways throughout history. In a sweeping tale of love, honor, and sacrifice, the Jewish maiden queen, Esther, is a heroine to the oppressed. Dutch Protestants in the Golden Age felt a kinship to this subject, particularly after the Protestant Reformation and the new religious freedom gained in Holland during the sixteenth century, which continued in the seventeenth century. These men and women saw many parallels between Esther’s experience and their own, both as the covenant people of God and as the remnant preserved by …

Sites Of Indigenous Language Practice : Geography Of American Indian Language Policy, Thomas Pierre-Yves Brasdefer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For over 1.9 million indigenous people in the United States, speaking their native language has become a rare opportunity. There are several obstacles standing in their way, from geographically separated communities to hundreds of years of contrarian policies and sometimes a collective lack of interest. Today, indigenous language use has become an integral part of self-determination and political sovereignty, sometimes more so than a communicative activity. This dissertation examines the political steps taken by American Indian communities around the United States to ensure that their languages can still be spoken into the twenty-first century, and analyzes the complex implications of …

Unconscious Awareness Of A Branded Life: Consumer Disillusionment And The Cultivated Commercialization Of Public Health, Laura H. Crosswell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

By unraveling the intricately powerful influences of pharmaceutical funding, this project examines ways in which product marketing infiltrates and contaminates public awareness efforts in the healthcare industry. Specifically, the following work deconstructs ways in which Merck Pharmaceuticals & Co. crafted a product endorsement through social marketing and nationwide lobbying efforts to most efficiently profit from the company’s Gardasil vaccination. Through means of textual analysis, interviews, focus groups, and eyetracking experimentation, I use Merck’s product endorsement efforts to illuminate the complex dynamics muddling direct-to-consumer marketing and social marketing campaigns. Social cognitive theory (SCT) offers a strong supportive foundation from which to …

Quantum-Secured Imaging, Mehul Malik, Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, Robert W. Boyd

Faculty Publications

We have built an imaging system that uses a photon's position or time-of-flight information to image an object, while using the photon's polarization for security. This ability allows us to obtain an image which is secure against an attack in which the object being imaged intercepts and resends the imaging photons with modified information. Popularly known as "jamming," this type of attack is commonly directed at active imaging systems such as radar. In order to jam our imaging system, the object must disturb the delicate quantum state of the imaging photons, thus introducing statistical errors that reveal its activity. © …

Searching In Clutter: Visual Attention Strategies Of Expert Pilots, Melissa R. Beck, Michael Trenchard, Amanda Van Lamsweerde, Rebecca R. Goldstein, Maura Lohrenz

Faculty Publications

Clutter can slow visual search. However, experts may develop attention strategies that alleviate the effects of clutter on search performance. In the current study we examined the effects of global and local clutter on visual search performance and attention strategies. Pilots and undergraduates searched for an elevation marker in charts of high, medium, and low global clutter. The target was in a low or high local clutter region of the chart or it was absent. High global and local clutter slowed search performance for both pilots and undergraduates. Pilots were more accurate but slower. Pilots' search strategies differed from undergraduates …

Faculty Senate Newsletter, September 2012, Louisiana State University And Agricultural & Mechanical College

LSU Faculty Senate Publications

Message from President: T. S. Eliot brooded that the world might end not with a bang but with a whimper. The new academic year, far from commencing with the sense of optimism that often accompanies a new tour of scholarly duty, is opening with a whimper in fearful anticipation of a bang: with the accumulated burden of several disappointing years and the fear that some greater calamity might erupt at any moment. As the annual parade of welcome messages pours from the electronic inkwells of assorted campus and system leaders, it might be time to look at those areas in …

A Content Analysis Into The Social Development Campaigns Of The Fédération Internationale De Football Association (Fifa), Tyler Henry

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Development Of Modern Healthcare In Pre-1949 China With Emphasis On Geographical Relationships, Matthew Monroe Schexnayder

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Trans-Atlantic Circulation Of Black Tropes: Èsù And The West African Griot As Poetic References For Liberation In Cultures Of The African Diaspora, Jean-Baptiste Meunier

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, under the direction of Dr Pius Ngandu Nkashama explores the spread of African rhetorical tropes in the Atlantic world. Building on Henry Louis Gates theory of Signifying, I use the West African God of fate Èsù and the West African cultural figure of the griot as cultural referents for the persistence of African tropes in the New World and their subsequent dissemination throughout the Atlantic world. Analyzing those two West African referents and their connections to New World cultures such as Afro-Brazilian capoeira angola, hip hop and African-American poetry, I attempt to demonstrate the centrality of the trope …

Cwbr Author Interview: The Civil War In The West: Victory And Defeat From The Appalachians To The Mississippi, Earl J. Hess

Civil War Book Review

Interview with Earl J. Hess, the Stewart W. McClelland Chair in history at Lincoln Memorial University

Interviewed by Nathan Buman

Civil War Book Review (CWBR): Today, Professor Earl J. Hess, the Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at Lincoln Memorial University, joins me to discuss his most recent work, The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. Professor Hess, thank you for joining me today. Earl Hess (EH): You're welcome and good morning. I'm happy to be here.