Digital Commons Network^™

Spatial And Temporal Patterns Of Ecological Succession And Land Development Along A Coastal Deltaic Floodplain Chronosequence, Anika Abena Campbell Aarons

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Coastal deltaic floodplain development occurs when riverine sediment delivery to coastal margins facilitates land accretion at a rate that exceeds the combined effect of eustatic sea level rise and geologic subsidence, leading to an actively prograding deltaic landscape. In a coastal setting environmental conditions are driven by river discharge, winds, tides and vegetation. The combination of these physical and biological forces over time creates a spatial heterogeneity in the landscape, which determines patterns of ecological succession. These successional changes are recorded in the soils and sediments of the delta and occur along age and elevation gradients. I described spatial and …

The Garbage That We Eat: Metabolizing Food-Waste In New Orleans, Louisiana, Kelly L. Haggerty

LSU Master's Theses

The 2017 Climate Action for a Resilient New Orleans report strives to divert 50 percent of waste by 2030. In the same year, waste companies had only managed to divert 5 percent of the total annual waste in Orleans Parish. Nearly a decade away from 2030, city officials have not even tested or implemented strategies to reach this goal. While city officials scramble to launch pilot projects, community and grassroots organizations center around recovering and transforming garbage and food waste. Using interviews and surveys with food-waste organizers from May to August 2018, this paper reveals that managing food-waste on a …

A Comprehensive Techno-Economic Framework For Shale Gas Exploitation And Distribution In The United States, Jorge Asis Charbel Chebeir

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past years, shale gas has turned into one of the most significant sources of energy in the United States. Technological advancements have provided the energy industry with the necessary tools to allow the economic exploitation of an enormous volume of natural gas trapped in shale formations. This has boosted the domestic gas production and generated a boom in other sectors of the economy in the country. However, major challenges are involved in the development of shale gas resources. A drastic decline of wells’ productivity, the costs involved in the gas production and distribution facets, and the volatile behavior …

Deltaic Wetland Dynamics From Seasonal To Centennial Scales, Giancarlo A. Restreppo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The lower plain of the Mississippi River Delta contains approximately five coastal sedimentary basins that are topographically defined, and one shelf-crossing depocenter (the Birds Foot Delta). These depositional systems receive varying quantities of sediment from fluvial and marine sources and have rates of coastal land loss that are roughly inversely proportional to fluvial sediment supply. To combat land loss along these regions, Louisiana has launched a historic campaign to sustain and regrow coastal lands using, in part, river sediment diversions. Fine sediments constitute the majority of sediment load in the Mississippi River, but are under-studied with respect to dispersal processes, …

A Niche Of Her Own: The Nine Piano Preludes Of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Joshua Medrano

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For a large part of music history, women composers like Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901 1953) were easily overlooked. Often, their music and ambitions in contributing to the repertoire were not taken seriously by the masses. Instead, they tended to be disregarded in comparison to the great many male figures that have prevailed through the years. Through gaining an understanding of Crawford Seeger as a woman from upbringing until death, her compositional style, specifically focusing on her first distinctive style period during her years studying in Chicago from 1921-1929, and also through hands on learning of the Nine Preludes that will …

Impacts Of Land Use Change On Soil Organic Matter Chemistry In The Everglades, Florida - A Characterization With Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry, Zhongsheng Zhang, Jian Jim Wang, Xianguo Lyu, Ming Jiang, Jehangir Bhadha, Alan Wright

Faculty Publications

Reclamation of marshlands for agricultural land use is widespread. An example of large-scale land use shifts is evident in the Everglades Agricultural Area of Florida where freshwater wetlands were converted to sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) production. Such land-use shifts can markedly influence soil organic matter cycling and processes. The effect of such land use change on molecular characteristics of soil organic carbon is unknown. In this study, three surface soils cores (0–5 cm, 5–10 cm, and 10–19 cm) from a representative marsh and a sugarcane field in the Florida Everglades with known land use history and management practices were characterized using …

From Rationality To Relationality: Teacher-Student Relationship As Unknowing, Shaofei Han

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation reimagines the teacher-student relationship through a philosophical approach that draws on Laozi, Karen Barad, Deleuze & Guattari, and Emmanuel Levinas. The teacher-student relationship is normally considered a relationship of the knower (teacher) and the unknower (student) based on the modern western tradition of episteme. This dissertation interrogates the modern binary of the teacher/student, subject/object relationship by bringing ontology and ethics into educational discourse. The problematic practices of modern schooling include the reduction of teaching to knowledge transmission, and the rigid dichotomy of a subject/object relation between teacher and student. Following a Taoist Way of philosophical thinking, this work …

An Archive Of Pain: In Queer Suicide's Cultural Wake, Evan Schares

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that queer death is a chief site of political struggle over gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary culture. I consider myriad archives in the aftermath of three queer suicides, an aggregate of discourses I call cultural wakes, to examine how white affective investments circulate around the forces of racism, sexism, and citizenship. I place in situ the trauma of queer pain and loss against the global backdrop of public emotionality.

Anomalous Magnetic Behavior Of Ba2coo4 With Isolated Coo4 Tetrahedra, Qiang Zhang, Guixin Cao, Feng Ye, Huibo Cao, Masaaki Matsuda, D. A. Tennant, Songxue Chi, S. E. Nagler, W. A. Shelton, Rongying Jin, E. W. Plummer, Jiandi Zhang

Faculty Publications

The dimensionality of the electronic and magnetic structure of a given material is generally predetermined by its crystal structure. Here, using elastic and inelastic neutron scattering combined with magnetization measurements, we find unusual magnetic behavior in three-dimensional (3D) Ba2CoO4. In spite of isolated CoO4 tetrahedra, the system exhibits a 3D noncollinear antiferromagnetic order in the ground state with an anomalously large Curie-Weiss temperature of 110 K compared to TN=26 K. More unexpectedly, spin dynamics displays quasi-two-dimensional spin-wave dispersion with an unusually large spin gap, and one-dimensional magnetoelastic coupling. Our results indicate that Ba2CoO4 is a unique system for exploring the …

Mechanisms To Regulate Genes Encoding Clinically Relevant Multidrug Transporters At The Crossroads Of Antibiotic Resistance And Oxidative Stress Detection, Afsana Sabrin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Multiple Antibiotic Resistance Regulators (MarRs) are DNA binding proteins involved in bacterial survival and pathogenesis. My PhD dissertation focuses on a MarR homolog, OstR, which regulates genes encoding major multidrug transporters, a resistance-nodulation-division (RND) and an E. coli multidrug resistance B (EmrB) efflux pump homolog in Burkholderia thailandensis. The ostR gene is divergently oriented from genes encoding a hypothetical protein (Hyp) and an RND transporter and adjacent to a gene encoding an EmrB transporter. OstR binds to the promoters of each gene (K_d = 64.9 ± 8.0 nM, K_d = 126.1 ± 10.9 nM and K …

Epic Beginnings: A Symphonic Work And Aaron Copland (The American Stravinsky) Versus Igor Stravinsky, Terrell O. Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The first part of my dissertation is the original music written for this dissertation, which consists of tonal music that describes my life’s journey. I wanted to write something dark, melodic, and very energetic that described my struggles and shows the road I have taken. It exhibits everything that I have learned from my time here at the university. One of the many things that makes my passion so strong is the desire to express myself through music written for ensembles and used in films. The piece is entitled “Epic Beginnings.” Originally, it was named “The Last Dance,” a …

A Decade Of Ejecta Dust Formation In The Type Iin Sn 2005ip, A. Bevan, R. Wesson, M. J. Barlow, I. De Looze, J. E. Andrews, G. C. Clayton, K. Krafton, M. Matsuura, D. Milisavljevic

Faculty Publications

In order to understand the contribution of core-collapse supernovae to the dust budget of the early Universe, it is important to understand not only the mass of dust that can form in core-collapse supernovae but also the location and rate of dust formation. SN 2005ip is of particular interest since dust has been inferred to have formed in both the ejecta and the post-shock region behind the radiative reverse shock. We have collated eight optical archival spectra that span the lifetime of SN 2005ip and we additionally present a new X-shooter optical-near-IR spectrum of SN 2005ip at 4075 d post-discovery. …

A Pedagogical And Performance Approach To A Selection Of Piano Solo Pieces Written By Chen Yi And Zhou Long, Weiying Tang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation will focus on the performance and pedagogical features of six piano solos composed by Chen Yi and Zhou Long. Both composers are Chinese-American who earned their Bachelor degrees in music from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and came to United States in 1985-1986 to pursue doctoral studies in composition at Columbia University. Because of the composers’ personal experience, they were not only familiar with Chinese regional folk elements, but also trained in the Western classical music tradition. Their works tend to blend and expand both Chinese and Western cultural traditions, musical ideas and techniques.

The six piano solo …

Phylogeny And Evolution Of Swallows (Hirundinidae) With A Transcriptomic Perspective On Seasonal Migration, Clare Elisabeth Brown

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Evolutionary biology seeks to understand the forces that have generated and shaped patterns of diversity. In this dissertation, I investigated phylogenetic relationships and the evolution of three traits—migration, nest-type, and geographic distribution—in the swallow family (Hirundinidae), a globally distributed group of about 85 species of aerial insectivorous birds. I first applied a dataset of several thousand ultraconserved element (UCE) loci to reconstructing the phylogeny of the New World genus Tachycineta. Three methods of phylogenetic inference produced topologically discordant trees, but post-inference analyses provided evidence that the tree produced by maximum likelihood analysis of a concatenated data matrix is the most …

Population Dynamics And Demographics Of Spotted Seatrout, Cynoscion Nebulosus, Through Spatial Analysis: Towards An Integrative Management Approach, Ashley Melancon Baer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) is one of the most highly prized sportfish along the Gulf of Mexico coast, particularly in Louisiana. Although spotted seatrout are considered to be well managed and sustainably fished according to the state’s most recent stock assessment, the spatial ecology of this species is largely understudied in Louisiana waters. Acoustic telemetry is an innovative technology that is commonly used to assess the movements and behavior of aquatic species, and can be used as a tool to address the paucity of information on the spatial dynamics of spotted seatrout. The focus of this study was …

Sonata For Violin And Piano By John Corigliano: A Performance Guide, Xinyu Yang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

John Corigliano is one of the most famous American composers of modern times having gained global recognition over the course of his career. The focus of this dissertation is on one of his earlier works, the Sonata for Violin and Piano. This sonata is the first of his compositions to have gained international attention. In the Sonata for Violin and Piano, Corigliano uses traditional music elements that are accessible to the audience. Although it is based on the traditional composition, Corigliano uses ambiguous tonality, polytonality, complicated rhythm, and polyrhythm throughout the piece. These factors cause several technical issues which occur …

Can Assisted Reproductive Technologies Help Conserve 300 Million Years Of Evolution? A First Attempt At Developing These Technologies For Male Reptiles, Sean M. Perry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Biodiversity loss is the most critical environmental problem threatening ecosystem, animal, and human health today. Increases in extinction rates have been observed over the past 50 years, with reptile losses occurring twelve times faster than traditional extinction rates. This demonstrated biodiversity loss is secondary to climate change, habitat destruction, infectious disease, invasive species, poaching, and unsustainable trade. Approximately 20% of all reptiles are threatened with extinction and population declines are approaching rates similar to the current amphibian extinction crisis. Preventing the extinction of reptiles will require humans to acknowledge these losses and develop plans to preserve these evolutionary sentinel species. …

"Moving One Seat Over": Division I Women's Basketball Female Assistant Coaches' Views Of Head Coaching, Caitlin Kriesel-Bigler

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

At the time Title IX passed in 1972, over 90% of women’s athletic teams were coached by women. By 2014, that percentage had dropped to 43%. This study used in-depth interviews with four female Division I assistant basketball coaches with varying years of experience to explore their experiences and attitudes towards becoming head coaches. The interviews revealed five major themes: (a) The Power of Same-Sex Role Models; (b) Gender Differences and Whether They Matter; (c) Title IX Collateral Damage: “It’s Nothing but the Money”; (d) Gender-Related Obstacles; and (e) Preparation for “Moving Over One Seat.” The findings reveal that …

Understanding The Social Relationships Of Youth With Callous-Unemotional Traits Using Peer Nominations, Tatiana M. Matlasz

LSU Master's Theses

The current study investigated the social correlates of conduct problems (CP) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits using peer nominations. Participants (n = 289), drawn from a sample of 3^rd, 6^th, and 8^thgraders (M_age = 11.47 years; SD = 2.26), were asked to identify peers who they believed fit a number of different characteristics, in addition to individuals who they liked most and liked least. We also obtained self-, parent-, and teacher-reports of children’s behaviors. Analyses extracted three primary dimensions from peer nominations, including, indicators of being mean and cold (Mean/Cold), of being aloof and …

Determination Of Conversion Factors For Various Calibration Geometries Using Barium-133 In A Silver Zeolite Cartridge, Amin Hamideh

LSU Master's Theses

Iodine-131 (I-131) is a major fission product among other radionuclides released during a nuclear incident. This radioiodine has a half-life of 8.02 days and the primary organ of uptake through ingestion or inhalation is the thyroid gland. For these reasons, nuclear power plants must routinely monitor I-131 through air sampling. Currently, there are two adsorbing media to collect I-131: activated charcoal and silver zeolite cartridges. Silver zeolite cartridges are generally used during a post nuclear incident due to its affinity for iodine while not adsorbing noble gases such as krypton-85 and xenon-135. After an air sample is taken from a …

Targeting Perceived Risk Through An Online Personalized Feedback Intervention For Cannabis-Using College Students, Katherine Walukevich-Dienst

LSU Master's Theses

Although online personalized feedback interventions (PFIs) that include personalized normative feedback (PNF) have been found to reduce drinking in college populations (for review, see Miller et al., 2013), there is little evidence to support that similar PFIs reduce risky cannabis use in college students (e.g., Elliott, Carey, & Vanable, 2014). The present study sought to examine perceived risk, a leading indicator of cannabis use (Bachman, Johnston, & O'Malley, 1998), as a potential intervention target for online cannabis PFIs. Undergraduate students who reported current (past-month) cannabis use and experiencing at least one past three-month cannabis use-related problem were randomly assigned to …

Investigating Cationic Metal Centers For Hydroformylation, Ryan Alexander Johnson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Bimetallic cooperativity can potentially increase activity of reactions. This concept is another way to increase reactivity besides simply focusing on the steric and electronic effects of a ligand. A binucleating tetrasphosphine ligand has been developed to showcase bimetallic cooperativity between two rhodium metal centers. Hydroformylation is a widely used industrial process to produce aldehydes from alkenes, H₂, and CO. The dirhodium catalyst, [Rh₂(μ-CO)(CO)₃(rac-et,ph-P4-Ph)](BF₄)₂,is highly active leading to favorable results when using a DMF/water solvent system, 1-hexene, 90 psi 1:1 H₂/CO, and 90° C: initial turnover frequency …

Entropic Energy-Time Uncertainty Relation, Patrick J. Coles, Vishal Katariya, Seth Lloyd, Iman Marvian, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

Energy-time uncertainty plays an important role in quantum foundations and technologies, and it was even discussed by the founders of quantum mechanics. However, standard approaches (e.g., Robertson's uncertainty relation) do not apply to energy-time uncertainty because, in general, there is no Hermitian operator associated with time. Following previous approaches, we quantify time uncertainty by how well one can read off the time from a quantum clock. We then use entropy to quantify the information-theoretic distinguishability of the various time states of the clock. Our main result is an entropic energy-time uncertainty relation for general time-independent Hamiltonians, stated for both the …

Crystal Structure Of Spirocyclic Pentaerythritol Phenol Ester Of Phosphoric Acid, Dawei Jiang, Lu Zhang, Ying Wang, Qingling Xu, Biaobiao Ren, Zijian Wu, Bin Li, Caiying Sun

Faculty Publications

Spirocylic pentaerythritol phosphate ester, a kind of intumescent flame retardant, has good compatibility with the polypropylene and excellent flame retardant on PP. However the correlation between the space structures of the intumescent flame retardant and polypropylene has not been revealed. In this paper crystal diffraction of spirocyclic pentaerythritol phenol ester of phosphoric acid are used to study its structure features and the results show that the phenol ester crystal is orthorhombic, Pna21 space group, and there are two six-member rings linked to the same atom which belongs to similar chair conformation forming a stable spiro structure and an irregular axisymmetric …

Assessing The Relation Between Quality And Sustainability In The Operating Room, Yasaswi Sri Sai Gudipudi

LSU Master's Theses

Maintaining quality at an affordable cost has been a major challenge for many healthcare organizations. Healthcare providers are trying to address this issue while protecting the environment, meeting social responsibilities and contributing to sustainable development of systems. Instead of linking quality with just clinical outcomes, healthcare services are trying to view quality and safety as part of professional ethics or “the right thing to do.” In order to provide a framework for quality assessment in healthcare systems, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) pointed out that the system should have the following six aims: safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity. …

A Conductor's Guide To Alec Roth's "A Time To Dance", Eric Z. Rubinstein

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this monograph is to provide a comprehensive analysis and conductor’s guide for Alec Roth’s masterwork, A Time to Dance. This study will explore the origins of this work, provide rehearsal and performance considerations, and bring greater attention to its composer, Alec Roth. Compared to his English contemporaries, Alec Roth’s (b.1948) music is lesser-known within the British tradition. Roth composes for choir, orchestra, and musical theatre and is also well-known for his contributions to both the guitar and gamelan repertory. His music spans a variety of languages, voicings, orchestrations, and levels of difficulty, as he is also …

Motivic Voice-Leading In Selected Piano Cycles Of Johannes Brahms, Jacob Joel Gran

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation identifies a technique used by Brahms to organize the compositional designs of his piano cycles. The technique is motivic voice-leading. By that I mean that certain patterns of triadic voice-leading gain significance through their unconventional use or varied repetition that have implications throughout the cycle. And, in the same way that traditional melodic or rhythmic motives can be developed and reworked, the composer may break these voice-leading patterns into their component stepwise connections. These stepwise dyads may be developed independently of their original triadic context, in the manner of a pitch-class motive.[1] We can understand many …

Supernova 2017eaw: Molecule And Dust Formation From Infrared Observations, Samaporn Tinyanont, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Kelsie Krafton, Ryan Lau, Jeonghee Rho, Douglas C. Leonard, Kishalay De, Jacob Jencson, Dimitri Mawet, Maxwell Millar-Blanchaer, Ricky Nilsson, Lin Yan, Robert D. Gehrz, George Helou, Schuyler D. Van Dyk, Eugene Serabyn, Ori D. Fox, Geoffrey Clayton

Faculty Publications

We present infrared (IR) photometry and spectroscopy of the Type II-P SN 2017eaw and its progenitor in the nearby galaxy NGC 6946. Progenitor observations in the Ks band in four epochs from 1 yr to 1 day before the explosion reveal no significant variability in the progenitor star greater than 6% that lasts longer than 200 days. SN 2017eaw is a typical SN II-P with near-IR and mid-IR photometric evolution similar to those of SNe 2002hh and 2004et, other normal SNe II-P in the same galaxy. Spectroscopic monitoring during the plateau phase reveals a possible high-velocity He i 1.083 μm …

The Calorimetric Electron Telescope (Calet) On The International Space Station: Results From The First Two Years On Orbit, Y. Asaoka, O. Adriani, Y. Akaike, K. Asano, M. G. Bagliesi, E. Berti, G. Bigongiari, W. R. Binns, S. Bonechi, M. Bongi, A. Bruno, P. Brogi, J. H. Buckley, N. Cannady, G. Castellini, C. Checchia, M. L. Cherry, G. Collazuol, V. Di Felice, K. Ebisawa, H. Fuke, T. G. Guzik, T. Hams, N. Hasebe, K. Hibino, M. Ichimura, K. Ioka, W. Ishizaki, M. H. Israel, K. Kasahara, J. Kataoka, R. Kataoka, Y. Katayose

Faculty Publications

The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is a high-energy astroparticle physics space experiment installed on the International Space Station (ISS), developed and operated by Japan in collaboration with Italy and the United States. The CALET mission goals include the investigation of possible nearby sources of high-energy electrons, of the details of galactic particle acceleration and propagation, and of potential signatures of dark matter. CALET measures the cosmic-ray electron+positron flux up to 20 TeV, gamma-rays up to 10 TeV, and nuclei with Z=1 to 40 up to 1, 000 TeV for the more abundant elements during a long-term observation aboard the ISS. …

Distinct Fractions Of An Artemisia Scoparia Extract Contain Compounds With Novel Adipogenic Bioactivity, Anik Boudreau, Alexander Poulev, David M. Ribnicky, Ilya Raskin, Thirumurugan Rathinasabapathy, Allison J. Richard, Jacqueline M. Stephens

Faculty Publications

© 2019 Boudreau, Poulev, Ribnicky, Raskin, Rathinasabapathy, Richard and Stephens. Adipocytes are important players in metabolic health and disease, and disruption of adipocyte development or function contributes to metabolic dysregulation. Hence, adipocytes are significant targets for therapeutic intervention in obesity and metabolic syndrome. Plants have long been sources for bioactive compounds and drugs. In previous studies, we screened botanical extracts for effects on adipogenesis in vitro and discovered that an ethanolic extract of Artemisia scoparia (SCO) could promote adipocyte differentiation. To follow up on these studies, we have used various separation methods to identify the compound(s) responsible for SCO's adipogenic …