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Trump Issue Frontmatter, Taboo Journal

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

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The Receptive-Expressive Gap In English Narratives Of Spanish-English Bilingual Children With And Without Language Impairment, Todd A. Gibson, Elizabeth D. Peña, Lisa M. Bedore

Faculty Publications

Purpose: First, we sought to extend our knowledge of second language (L2) receptive compared to expressive narrative skills in bilingual children with and without primary language impairment (PLI). Second, we sought to explore whether narrative receptive and expressive performance in bilingual children's L2 differed based on the type of contextual support. Method: In a longitudinal group study, 20 Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI were matched by sex, age, nonverbal IQ score, and language exposure to 20 bilingual peers with typical development and administered the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004) in English (their L2) at kindergarten and first …

Free-Radical Polymerization Of Acid-Containing Deep Eutectic Solvents, Kylee Fazende

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The forefront of this study explored polymerization, specifically thermally-initiated, free-radical frontal polymerization of (meth)acrylic acid monomers while the monomers acted as a hydrogen bond donor of a deep eutectic solvent. These frontal polymerizations were shown to exhibit unusual front velocities and, in some cases, lower front temperatures than the frontal polymerization of the neat monomers or systems containing inert analogs in the place of the hydrogen bond acceptor of these monomer-containing deep eutectic solvents. The frontal polymerization will occur with a range of initiator concentrations including ones that were too low for the pure monomer systems to sustain a front. …

Accelerated Broadband Spectra And Attosecond Charge Migration Simulations Using Real-Time Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory, Adam S. Bruner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, the calculations of light-matter interactions offer insight into the structure and dynamical response of electrons in molecular systems. Such information is useful for characterizing molecules, electronic structure, photochemistry, photomaterials, and a host of other applications. In the first part of this work, simulations of broadband absorption spectra are accelerated by the use of Pad´e approximanants of Fourier Transforms and dipole decomposition. Electronic absorption spectra from valence and core levels are obtained using time-dependent methods and compared to results from established perturbative techniques. In addition, core level absorption spectra are calculated for a nickel porphyrin and shown to …

A Narrative And Performative Methodology For Understanding Adolescent Cancer Stories, Patrick Mcelearney

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The field of health communication places considerable attention on coping with cancer, typically using social scientific approaches to investigate uncertainty, information, and/or social networks. Social scientific models of coping with adolescent cancer often measure how behaviors seek to manage cancer’s uncontrollability and/or uncertainty; however, how adolescents cope with cancer has been unclear. Short-term studies show adolescents typically and atypically cope. Long-term studies show a significant portion of survivors exhibit post-traumatic stress. The narrative and performative turns expose the role narratives and performatives play in shaping human subjects as meaning makers rather than merely information sharers. A narrative subject reframes cancer’s …

Examining The Sex Ratio In Autism Spectrum Disorder, Maya N. Matheis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The higher prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among males compared to females is well documented but poorly understood. The ASD sex ratio may provide valuable insight into the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the disorder. A review of studies examining the prevalence in ASD published in the last 5 years was conducted, revealing a mean male/female (M/F) ratio of 4. Literature examining the ASD sex ratio in relation to risk factors and associated features of ASD was also summarized. The study aimed to examine the ASD sex ratio and its association to various risk factors among an early intervention sample. …

Differential Effects Of Mindful Breathing And Loving-Kindness Meditation Exercises On College Students' Mental Health, Sarah J. Bolognino

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mindfulness and loving-kindness are two concepts with associated meditation exercises that have been evaluated as part of mindfulness-based treatment approaches (MBTAs) to improve mental health. A common MBTA, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) includes multiple component exercises including mindful breathing meditation (MBM), and loving-kindness meditation (LKM). The purpose of the present study was to examine differential effects of MBM and LKM on the proposed process variables of social connectedness, cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance, present moment awareness, affect, and compassion for self and others, as well as across outcomes measures of general anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and wellbeing. Additionally the …

Experimental, Analytical, And Numerical Evaluation Of The Mechanical Properties Of The Brain Tissue, Aref Samadidooki

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A true understanding of the mechanisms behind most of the brain diseases is still out of reach. For several years, the interest of scientists has been focused on the genetic and biological causes, however, recent studies unraveled the importance of the biomechanics of the brain growth, folding, impact resistance, and deformation on its pathological conditions. While, a wide range of different methods have been used for characterization of the mechanical properties of the brain at the tissue level, the obtained results from different studies are extremely scattered and sometimes in contrast to one another. Since the brain tissue is extremely …

Experimental And Numerical Investigation Of Liquid-Assisted Gas-Lift Unloading, Renato Peixoto Coutinho

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The case for a unique form of gas-lift unloading, termed “Liquid-Assisted Gas-Lift (LAGL),” is presented. This work demonstrates that the injection of a gas-liquid mixture allows transport of gas to a deep injection point utilizing injection pressure considerably lower than single-phase gas injection. The LAGL is demonstrated in a 2,880 ft deep test well. The test well is kicked-off using an injection pressure that would normally be lower than the pressure for single-point single-phase gas injection at this depth. Experimental results indicate that the LAGL can lower the injection pressure by up to 75%.

This work breaks the LAGL system …

Building Program Quality In Youth Development Staff Training: Critical Components As Perceived By Currently Employed Youth Development Professionals In The United States, Jeantyl Norze

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Program quality is the program characteristics, indicators, and implementation practices that stakeholders mutually agreed upon. These program quality components are interlinked. Therefore, it is critical to help youth practitioners think through the logical connection among the components of program quality. This can be partly achieved through professional development, which equips practitioners with competencies necessary to perform their tasks. As a result, a staff training model was designed to corroborate the work that has been done in the positive youth development field with the aim of achieving program quality using a systematic review method. This staff training model comprises four components: …

Development Of A Slab-Based Monte Carlo Proton Dose Algorithm With A Robust Material-Dependent Nuclear Halo Model, John Wesley Chapman Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Pencil beam algorithms (PBAs) are often utilized for dose calculation in proton therapy treatment planning because they are fast and accurate under most conditions. However, as discussed in Chapman et al (2017), the accuracy of a PBA can be limited under certain conditions because of two major assumptions: (1) the central-axis semi-infinite slab approximation; and, (2) the lack of material dependence in the nuclear halo model. To address these limitations, we transported individual protons using a class II condensed history Monte Carlo and added a novel energy loss method that scaled the nuclear halo equation in water to arbitrary geometry. …

Tetrafluorobenzo-Fused Bodipy: A Platform For Regioselective Synthesis Of Bodipy Dye Derivatives, Andrea Savoldelli, Qianli Meng, Roberto Paolesse, Frank R. Fronczek, Kevin M. Smith, M. Graça H. Vicente

Faculty Publications

© 2018 American Chemical Society. A novel route for the synthesis of unsymmetrical benzo-fused BODIPYs is reported using 4,5,6,7-tetrafluoroisoindole as a precursor. The reactivity of the 3,5-dibromo tetrafluorobenzo-fused BODIPY was investigated under nucleophilic substitution and Pd(0)-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction conditions. In addition to the 3,5-bromines, one α-fluoro group on the benzo-fused ring can also be functionalized, and an unusual homocoupling with formation of a bisBODIPY was observed. This new class of fluorinated BODIPYs could find various applications in medicine and materials.

Work And Reversibility In Quantum Thermodynamics, Álvaro M. Alhambra, Stephanie Wehner, Mark M. Wilde, Mischa P. Woods

Faculty Publications

It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state ρ to a final state σ and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For example, we might ask how much work can be obtained by thermalizing ρ to a thermal state σ at temperature T of an ambient heat bath. Here, we show that, for different sets of resource-theoretic thermodynamic operations, the amount of entropy produced along a transition is characterized by how reversible the process is. More specifically, this entropy production depends on how …

A Performance Guide To New Studies For Clarinet By Louis Desantis, Samuel Schreiber

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Louis DeSantis (1893-1940) was a prominent Italian-American clarinetist during the twentieth century. His musical training began in Naples and after immigrating to America in 1912, he held principal clarinet positions with the Chicago Civic Opera Company (1914-1917), St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (1925-1926), Cleveland Orchestra (1926-1929), Philadelphia Orchestra (1930) and the CBS Symphony Orchestra (1931-1940).

Louis DeSantis’s New Studies for Clarinet offers the clarinetist a chance to further familiarize himself with selected orchestral excerpts while also exploring the beautiful aspects of the Italian “bel canto” singing style. The orchestral excerpts come from Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon, Franz Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody …

Focality In Prospective Memory: A Thorough Examination Of Cue Specificity And Task-Appropriateness, Bethany Alice Lyon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Prospective memory (PM) refers to memory for future intentions (e.g. remembering to press a button when you see an animal word). Researchers classify PM intentions in the laboratory as focal or nonfocal primarily in two ways. One way, task-appropriateness, refers to how the processing for the intention relates to the processing required for an ongoing task; the PM intention and the ongoing task either match in processing (TAP; focal) or mismatch in processing (TIP; nonfocal). The second way researchers classify focality is based on cue specificity, with the PM task either being specific (focal) or general (nonfocal). Resolving this ambiguity …

Contribution Of Benthic Processes To The Growth Of Ooids On A Low-Energy Shore In Cat Island, The Bahamas, Giulio Mariotti, Sara B. Pruss, Roger E. Summons, Sharon A. Newman, Tanja Bosak

Faculty Publications

Ooids are typically found in frequently reworked coastal sediments, and are thought to accrete by inorganic chemical precipitation around moving grains. The high organic content and the presence of biosignatures, however, suggest that ooids interact with benthic microbial communities. Here, we investigate the role of benthic processes on ooid growth on a leeward shore of Cat Island, The Bahamas. Polished ooids are present in the surf zone, whereas dull ooids and grapestones are present in microbially colonized sediments seaward of the surf zone. Wave hydrodynamics and sediment transport modeling suggest that microbially colonized sediments are mobilized at monthly time scales. …

Ten Weeks Of High-Intensity Interval Walk Training Is Associated With Reduced Disease Activity And Improved Innate Immune Function In Older Adults With Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Pilot Study, David B. Bartlett, Leslie H. Willis, Cris A. Slentz, Andrew Hoselton, Leslie Kelly, Janet L. Huebner, Virginia B. Kraus, Jennifer Moss, Michael J. Muehlbauer, Guillaume Spielmann, William E. Kraus, Janet M. Lord, Kim M. Huffman

Faculty Publications

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease in which adults have significant joint issues leading to poor health. Poor health is compounded by many factors, including exercise avoidance and increased risk of opportunistic infection. Exercise training can improve the health of patients with RA and potentially improve immune function; however, information on the effects of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) in RA is limited. We sought to determine whether 10 weeks of a walking-based HIIT program would be associated with health improvements as measured by disease activity and aerobic fitness. Further, we assessed whether HIIT was associated with improved …

Catharsis, Matthew Barton

LSU Master's Theses

Catharsis is a series of eight works that highlight the spiritual and emotional benefits I receive from repetitive manual action. Pulling loosely from Catholic iconography and practices, my work discusses the personal solutions I’ve found to the adverse effects that organized religion can have on the psyche. Using both ceramic and found object sculptures, I aim to discuss both the internal and external results of this catharsis.

Visualization And Quantification Of Cancer-Associated Enzymes With Fluorescent Small-Molecule Substrate Probes, Zhenhua Shen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Fluorescence imaging can be used both as a tool to diagnose diseases and guide treatment in clinical settings, and as a technique to monitor dynamic events or biological species in basic research. Therefore, there is a great need for the development of a multitude of fluorescent probes that can be incorporated with fluorescence imaging techniques to track and report endogenous enzymes with high specificity and selectivity. In contrast to always-on and targeted always-on fluorescent probes that continually emit light, activity-based substrate probes either emit low numbers of photons or are completely quenched. They can be converted to highly fluorescent reporters …

Investigating Elearning Continuance Through Expectation Disconfirmation Theory, Susana Reyes Lee

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study set out to investigate the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) eLearning participation and completion phenomenon of learners and to explore motivation of CPD eLearning intentions and completions. This study focused on why learners choose CPD eLearning and why they continue in CPD eLearning. Based on the Expectations Disconfirmation theory (EDT) and the DeLone and McLean Information Systems Success Model (1992), a survey was developed and then sent to a cross-section of registered CPD eLearners from the first responder community. After the data was collected 217 responses were analyzed with SPSS correlational techniques and through PROCESS which is a modeling …

Silicon(Iv) Corroles, Giuseppe Pomarico, Donato Monti, Martina Bischetti, Andrea Savoldelli, Frank R. Fronczek, Kevin M. Smith, Damiano Genovese, Luca Prodi, Roberto Paolesse

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Silicon complexes of corrole were obtained for the first time by reaction of the free-base corrole with hexachlorodisilane. The peripheral substituents of corrole strongly influence the nature of the reaction products: β-octaalkyl corrole was mainly isolated as the μ-oxo dimer, while a hydroxo complex was obtained in the case of 5,10,15-tris-(pentafluorophenyl)corrole. In the case of meso-tritolyl corrole, a mixture of monomer/μ-oxo dimer was obtained. The silicon corrole complexes are more stable toward hydrolysis than the corresponding porphyrin derivatives and are endowed with brilliant luminescence properties. The high affinity of silicon for …

On The Holocene Evolution Of The Ayeyawady Megadelta, Liviu Giosan, Thet Naing, Myo Min Tun, Peter D. Clift, Florin Filip, Stefan Constantinescu, Nitesh Khonde, Jerzy Blusztajn, Jan Pieter Buylaert, Thomas Stevens, Swe Thwin

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Author(s). The Ayeyawady delta is the last Asian megadelta whose evolution has remained essentially unexplored so far. Unlike most other deltas across the world, the Ayeyawady has not yet been affected by dam construction, providing a unique view on largely natural deltaic processes benefiting from abundant sediment loads affected by tectonics and monsoon hydroclimate. To alleviate the information gap and provide a baseline for future work, here we provide a first model for the Holocene development of this megadelta based on drill core sediments collected in 2016 and 2017, dated with radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence, together with …

Spatial Trends And Variability Of Marsh Accretion Rates In Barataria Basin, Louisiana, Usa Using 210pb And 137cs Radiochemistry, Samuel Bryant Shrull

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal Louisiana is presently experiencing large amounts of coastal land loss with estimated rates exceeding 50 km² lost per year. In an attempt to mitigate or reverse land loss, billions of dollars are earmarked for restoration projects that promote land reclamation, habitat stabilization, and defending against saline intrusion. This study was performed in an effort to better understand spatial trends of accretion rates in Barataria Basin in coastal Louisiana. Data for this project came from twenty-five shallow cores extracted over a broad span of the entire basin, from freshwater to saline environments. Cores were processed for ¹³⁷Cs and …

Templates For Representable Matroids, Kevin Manuel Grace

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The matroid structure theory of Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle has led to a hypothesis that a highly connected member of a minor-closed class of matroids representable over a finite field is a mild modification (known as a perturbation) of a frame matroid, the dual of a frame matroid, or a matroid representable over a proper subfield. They introduced the notion of a template to describe these perturbations in more detail. In this dissertation, we determine these templates for various classes and use them to prove results about representability, extremal functions, and excluded minors.

Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction …

Investigation Of Structure And Dynamics Of Deep Eutectic Solvent Using Infrared Spectroscopy, Yaowen Cui

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) are liquid mixtures prepared from solids. As a new class of green solvents, DES not only share many properties with ionic liquids, such as low volatility, conductivity, tailorable constituents, but also have some advantages over ionic liquids, like easier preparation, safe and inexpensive materials, biodegradability, low toxicity, and excellent solubility. Because of those attractive properties, DES has been studied in many scientific and engineering fields. However, compared with the great number of studies of the application, many questions about structure and dynamics of DES are unanswered. To shed light on the mystery of solvent or solvation …

Two Results In Drawing Graphs On Surfaces, Joshua E. Fallon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this work we present results on crossing-critical graphs drawn on non-planar surfaces and results on edge-hamiltonicity of graphs on the Klein bottle. We first give an infinite family of graphs that are 2-crossing-critical on the projective plane. Using this result, we construct 2-crossing-critical graphs for each non-orientable surface. Next, we use 2-amalgamations to construct 2-crossing-critical graphs for each orientable surface other than the sphere. Finally, we contribute to the pursuit of characterizing 4-connected graphs that embed on the Klein bottle and fail to be edge-hamiltonian. We show that known 4-connected counterexamples to edge-hamiltonicity on the Klein bottle are hamiltonian …

Essays On The Impact Of Parents' Investment And School Curriculum On Educational Outcomes In China, Han Yu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays studying how students’ educational outcomes are affected by parents’ investment and school curriculum, which are two of the most important determinants of students’ educational performance, respectively. Specifically, in chapter 2, I investigate whether Chinese children born in the auspicious years of Dragon perform better than their comparable peers in school. Using three recently collected datasets from China, I find that students born in the years of the Dragon indeed outperformed their peers in study. I furtherly test the possible mechanisms for the better performance of the “Dragons” in school. The results suggest that parents’ …

Coincident Detection Significance In Multimessenger Astronomy, G. Ashton, E. Burns, T. Dal Canton, T. Dent, H. B. Eggenstein, A. B. Nielsen, R. Prix, M. Was, S. J. Zhu

Faculty Publications

We derive a Bayesian criterion for assessing whether signals observed in two separate data sets originate from a common source. The Bayes factor for a common versus unrelated origin of signals includes an overlap integral of the posterior distributions over the common-source parameters. Focusing on multimessenger gravitational-wave astronomy, we apply the method to the spatial and temporal association of independent gravitational-wave and electromagnetic (or neutrino) observations. As an example, we consider the coincidence between the recently discovered gravitational-wave signal GW170817 from a binary neutron star merger and the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A: we find that the common-source model is enormously …

Children With Adha Or Anxiety Disorders: Are Common Or Specific Variables Associated With Decreased Performance On Intelligence Indices?, Franziska Noacklesage

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Although overall psychopathology has been linked to lower intellectual functioning, research has yet to investigate whether one or multiple specific underlying symptom clusters significantly correlate with working memory (WM) and processing speed (PS) deficits. The current study investigated these relationships as they apply to Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and anxiety disorders. As such, one goal of this study was to investigate the extent to which common and specific symptom clusters would predict ADHD and anxiety diagnoses compared to a control group when PS and WM were partialled out. A further goal was to determine if one could differentially predict ADHD from …

The 1987-1989 Phytoplankton Bloom In Kaneohe Bay, Edward Laws, Satoru Taguchi

Faculty Publications

A remarkable bloom of phytoplankton occurred in the southeast sector (SE) of Kaneohe Bay from 1987 through 1989. During the bloom, concentrations of chlorophyll a at the former site of the Kaneohe municipal wastewater treatment plant outfall averaged a little more than 2 mg m^-3 for a period of 40 months. The increase of chl a was accompanied by a roughly twofold increase in the percentage of chl a accounted for by cells retained on a 35-micron filter, a drawdown of silicate concentrations from roughly 10 μM to 3-4 μM, an increase of nitrate concentrations from roughly 0.5 to …