Digital Commons Network^™

A Case Study Of Brand Associations For Yeezy Brand, Garrett Kalel Grant

LSU Master's Theses

Brands can thrive in the marketplace based on their ability to generate brand equity. Companies have utilized many techniques to gain brand equity with their consumers. One method that has been very popular has been co-branding. Branding literature explains that one way that brand equity is created is through brand associations. Brand associations are generated through a consumer's direct and indirect experience with a brand. This research looked at a special case of co-branding in the form of the clothing line Yeezy. The purpose of this research is to better understand this special case of co-branding strategy by analyzing Yeezy …

An Examination Of Preimplantation Embryos And Endometrium Developed During Induced Aluteal Cycles In The Mare, Chelsey Audra Leisinger

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Changes to the embryonic environment that occur within the first few days of development can have significant effects on subsequent fetal development. The following studies investigate the effects of progesterone-deprivation during the early preimplantation period in the mare. The first study described embryo morphology (diameter, stage, and quality grade) collected from mares with induced aluteal cycles. The second study evaluated the effect of induced aluteal cycles on the future fertility of embryo collections as a potential method for cycle manipulation of embryo donor mares. The third study characterized embryonic and endometrial transcript expression of progesterone-mediated transcripts as well as those …

Primal Matter, Lucas Allen Bush

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

Primal Matter is a physical representation of the intuitive process, through two and three dimensional forms. The pieces convey motion and tension while telling the story of their own creation. Working instinctively has always fascinated me, in the way of allowing our subconscious mind to make decisions in the place of preconceived planning. My work is heavily influenced by Intuition and the transformation of energy. I am constantly searching for the underlying image or object through scraps of wood and pieces of charcoal, and this body of work is the visible evidence. It explores the curiosity of our unknown …

Natural Colonization Of Rice By Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi In Different Production Areas, Lina Bernaola, Grace Cange, Michael O. Way, Jeffrey Gore, Jarrod Hardke, Michael Stout

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Interactions between plants and soil microorganisms can influence the other interactions in which plants participate, including interactions with herbivores. Many fungi, including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), form symbiotic relationships with the roots they inhabit, and potentially alter defense against pests. The objective of this study was to document the extent of root colonization by AMF on non-flooded rice plants grown under conditions typical of commercial fields. We hypothesized that AMF naturally colonized rice plants in different rice producing field locations. Rice plant samples were collected from areas across the southern United States, including Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and two …

Reduced Satellite Cell Density And Myogenesis In Wagyu Compared With Angus Cattle As A Possible Explanation Of Its High Marbling, X. Fu, Q. Yang, B. Wang, J. Zhao, M. Zhu, S. M. Parish, M. Du

Faculty Publications

© The Animal Consortium 2017. Mechanisms responsible for excellent marbling in Japanese black cattle, Wagyu, remain to be established. Because both muscle cells and intramuscular adipocytes are developed from mesenchymal progenitor cells during early muscle development, we hypothesized that intramuscular progenitor cells in Wagyu cattle have attenuated myogenic capacity in favor of adipogenesis, leading to high marbling but reduced muscle growth. Biceps femoris muscle biopsy samples were obtained from both Angus (n=3) and Wagyu (n=3) cattle at 12 months of age. Compared with Angus, the density of satellite cells was much lower in Wagyu muscle (by 45.8±10%, P<0.05). Consistently, the formation of myotubes from muscle-derived progenitor cells was also lower (by 64.2±12.9%, P<0.05), but adipogenic capacity was greater in Wagyu. The average muscle fiber diameter was larger in Wagyu (by 23.9±6.8%, P=0.089) despite less muscle mass, suggesting less muscle fiber formation in Wagyu compared with Angus cattle. Because satellite cells are derived from fetal myogenic cells, the reduction in satellite cell density together with lower muscle fiber formation suggests that myogenesis was attenuated during early muscle development in Wagyu cattle. Given the shared pool of mesenchymal progenitor cells, the attenuated myogenesis likely shifts progenitor cells to adipogenesis during early development, which may contribute to high intramuscular adipocyte formation in Wagyu cattle.

Specialized Fibroblast Differentiated States Underlie Scar Formation In The Infarcted Mouse Heart, Xing Fu, Hadi Khalil, Onur Kanisicak, Justin G. Boyer, Ronald J. Vagnozzi, Bryan D. Maliken, Michelle A. Sargent, Vikram Prasad, Iñigo Valiente-Alandi, Burns C. Blaxall, Jeffery D. Molkentin

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Academic Press. All rights reserved. Fibroblasts are a dynamic cell type that achieve selective differentiated states to mediate acute wound healing and long-term tissue remodeling with scarring. With myocardial infarction injury, cardiomyocytes are replaced by secreted extracellular matrix proteins produced by proliferating and differentiating fibroblasts. Here, we employed 3 different mouse lineage-tracing models and stage-specific gene profiling to phenotypically analyze and classify resident cardiac fibroblast dynamics during myocardial infarction injury and stable scar formation. Fibroblasts were activated and highly proliferative, reaching a maximum rate within 2 to 4 days after infarction injury, at which point they expanded 3.5-fold …

Relics, Replication, And Reputation King Arthur, Edward I, And The Conquest Of Wales, Danielle Maurer

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

A Virtual Screen For Protein Targets: Elucidating Druggability In The Human Proteome With Efindsite, Omar Kana

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Single And Multiparameter Estimation Using Multimode Interferometry And Single Photons, Margarite L. Laborde

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Business Plan For Face To Face Els, Llc, Ellen Lucy Simon

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Modeling Of The Metallic Port In Breast Tissue Expanders For Photon Radiotherapy, Jihyung Yoon, Yibo Xie, David Heins, Rui Zhang

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to model the metallic port in breast tissue expanders and to improve the accuracy of dose calculations in a commercial photon treatment planning system (TPS). The density of the model was determined by comparing TPS calculations and ion chamber (IC) measurements. The model was further validated and compared with two widely used clinical models by using a simplified anthropomorphic phantom and thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLD) measurements. Dose perturbations and target coverage for a single postmastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT) patient were also evaluated. The dimensions of the metallic port model were determined to be 1.75 cm in …

Magnetostructural Transitions And Magnetocaloric Effects In Ni50mn35in14.25b0.75 Ribbons, Sudip Pandey, Abdiel Quetz, P. J. Ibarra-Gaytan, C. F. Sánchez-Valdés, Anil Aryal, Igor Dubenko, Jose Luis Sanchez Llamazares, Shane Stadler, Naushad Ali

Faculty Publications

The structural, thermal, and magnetic behaviors, as well as the martensitic phase transformation and related magnetocaloric response of Ni50Mn35In14.25B0.75 annealed ribbons have been investigated using room-temperature X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and magnetization measurements. Ni50Mn35In14.25B0.75 annealed ribbons show a sharper change in magnetization at the martensitic transition, resulting in larger magnetic entropy changes in comparison to bulk Ni50Mn35In14.25B0.75. A drastic shift in the martensitic transformation temperature (TM) of 70 K to higher temperature was observed for the annealed ribbons relative to that of the bulk (TM = 240 K). The results obtained for magnetic, thermal, structural, and magnetocaloric …

Magnetic And Magnetocaloric Properties Of Ni-Mn-Cr-Sn Heusler Alloys Under The Effects Of Hydrostatic Pressure, Sudip Pandey, Ahmad Us Saleheen, Abdiel Quetz, Jing Han Chen, Anil Aryal, Igor Dubenko, Shane Stadler, Naushad Ali

Faculty Publications

The magnetic, thermal, and magnetocaloric properties of Ni45Mn43CrSn11 Heusler alloy have been investigated using differential scanning calorimetry and magnetization with hydrostatic pressure measurements. A shift in the martensitic transition temperature (TM) to higher temperatures was observed with the application of pressure. The application of pressure stabilizes the martensitic state and demonstrated that pressure can be a parameter used to control and tune the martensitic transition temperature (the temperature where the largest magnetocaloric effect is observed). The magnetic entropy change significantly decreases from 33 J/kg K to 16 J/kg K under the application of a hydrostatic pressure of 0.95 GPa. The …

Effect Of Bi Substitution On The Magnetic And Magnetocaloric Properties Of Ni50mn35in15-Xbix Heusler Alloys, Anil Aryal, Abdiel Quetz, Sudip Pandey, Igor Dubenko, Shane Stadler, Naushad Ali

Faculty Publications

The structural, magnetic, magnetocaloric, and transport properties of Ni50Mn35In15-xBix (x = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5) compounds has been studied through X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry, and magnetization measurements. A mixture of high temperature austenite phase (AP) and low temperature martensitic phase (MP) was observed from the XRD at room temperature. The saturation magnetization MS at 10 K was found to decrease with increasing Bi content. A shift in the martensitic transition temperature (TM) relative to the parent compound was observed with a maximum shift of ∼ 36 K for x = 1.5. Abnormal shifts in TC and TM …

Microwave Absorption Through The Martensitic And Curie Transitions In Ni45cr5mn37in13, Sudip Pandey, Sergey Vyzulin, Abdiel Quetz, Anil Aryal, Igor Dubenko, Alexander Granovsky, Shane Stadler, Naushad Ali

Faculty Publications

We have investigated the electron spin resonance (ESR) of the Ni45Cr5Mn37In13 Heusler alloy near the structural and magnetic phase transition temperatures. Ni45Cr5Mn37In13 is characterized by a first order magnetostructural (martensitic) transition (MST) with magneto-responsive properties such as magnetoresistance, Hall and magnetocaloric effects, etc., in the vicinity of the MST. Since the details and origins of these behaviors are not well understood, we used a technique beyond magnetometry, i.e., "microwave absorption", to reveal new information. ESR studies of Ni45Cr5Mn37In13 shows that this compound is characterized by wide absorption spectra at temperatures greater than 250 K that depend on the angle of …

Observation Of An Optical Spring With A Beam Splitter, Jonathan Cripe, Baylee Danz, Benjamin Lane, Mary Catherine Lorio, Julia Falcone, Garrett D. Cole, Thomas Corbitt

Faculty Publications

We present the experimental observation of an optical spring without the use of an optical cavity. The optical spring is produced by interference at a beam splitter and, in principle, does not have the damping force associated with optical springs created in detuned cavities. The experiment consists of a Michelson–Sagnac interferometer (with no recycling cavities) with a partially reflective GaAs microresonator as the beam splitter that produces the optical spring. Our experimental measurements at input powers of up to 360 mW show the shift of the optical spring frequency as a function of power and are in excellent agreement with …

The Physical Limnology Of A Permanently Ice-Covered And Chemically Stratified Antarctic Lake Using High Resolution Spatial Data From An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Robert H. Spigel, John C. Priscu, Maciej K. Obryk, William Stone, Peter T. Doran

Faculty Publications

© 2018 The Authors Limnology and Oceanography published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography We used an Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctic Explorer to make measurements of conductivity and temperature in Lake Bonney, a chemically stratified, permanently ice-covered Antarctic lake that abuts Taylor Glacier, an outlet glacier from the Polar Plateau. The lake is divided into two lobes – East Lobe Bonney (ELB) and West Lobe Bonney (WLB), each with unique temperature and salinity profiles. Most of our data were collected in November 2009 from WLB to examine the influence of …

Allele And Dosage Specificity Of The Peg3 Imprinted Domain, Corey L. Bretz, Wesley D. Frey, Ryoichi Teruyama, Joomyeong Kim

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Bretz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The biological impetus for gene dosage and allele specificity of mammalian imprinted genes is not fully understood. To address this, we generated and analyzed four sets of mice from a single breeding scheme with varying allelic expression and gene dosage of the Peg3 domain. The mutants with abrogation of the two paternally expressed genes, Peg3 and Usp29, showed a significant decrease …

Peanuts That Keep Aflatoxin At Bay: A Threshold That Matters, Kiran K. Sharma, Arunima Pothana, Kalyani Prasad, Dilip Shah, Jagdeep Kaur, Deepak Bhatnagar, Zhi Yuan Chen, Yenjit Raruang, Jeffrey W. Cary, Kanniah Rajasekaran, Hari Kishan Sudini, Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur

Faculty Publications

Aflatoxin contamination in peanuts poses major challenges for vulnerable populations of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Developing peanut varieties to combat preharvest Aspergillus flavus infection and resulting aflatoxin contamination has thus far remained a major challenge, confounded by highly complex peanut–Aspergilli pathosystem. Our study reports achieving a high level of resistance in peanut by overexpressing (OE) antifungal plant defensins MsDef1 and MtDef4.2, and through host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) of aflM and aflP genes from the aflatoxin biosynthetic pathway. While the former improves genetic resistance to A. flavus infection, the latter inhibits aflatoxin production in the event of infection providing durable …

Ambulatory Blood Pressure Threshold For Black Africans: More Questions Than Answers, Abiodun M. Adeoye, Bamidele O. Tayo, Mayowa O. Owolabi, Adewole A. Adebiyi, Daniel T. Lackland, Richard Cooper, Akinlolu Ojo, Gbenga Ogedegbe

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Health Insurance Coverage With Or Without A Nurse-Led Task Shifting Strategy For Hypertension Control: A Pragmatic Cluster Randomized Trial In Ghana, Gbenga Ogedegbe, Jacob Plange-Rhule, Joyce Gyamfi, William Chaplin, Michael Ntim, Kingsley Apusiga, Juliet Iwelunmor, Kwasi Yeboah Awudzi, Kofi Nana Quakyi, Jazmin Mogaverro, Kiran Khurshid, Bamidele Tayo, Richard Cooper

Faculty Publications

Background: Poor access to care and physician shortage are major barriers to hypertension control in sub-Saharan Africa. Implementation of evidence-based systems-level strategies targeted at these barriers are lacking. We conducted a study to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of provision of health insurance coverage (HIC) alone versus a nurse-led task shifting strategy for hypertension control (TASSH) plus HIC on systolic blood pressure (SBP) reduction among patients with uncontrolled hypertension in Ghana. Methods and findings: Using a pragmatic cluster randomized trial, 32 community health centers within Ghana’s public healthcare system were randomly assigned to either HIC alone or TASSH + HIC. A …

Amortization Does Not Enhance The Max-Rains Information Of A Quantum Channel, Mario Berta, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

Given an entanglement measure E, the entanglement of a quantum channel is defined as the largest amount of entanglement E that can be generated from the channel, if the sender and receiver are not allowed to share a quantum state before using the channel. The amortized entanglement of a quantum channel is defined as the largest net amount of entanglement E that can be generated from the channel, if the sender and receiver are allowed to share an arbitrary state before using the channel. Our main technical result is that amortization does not enhance the entanglement of an arbitrary quantum …

Decadal-Scale Riverbed Deformation And Sand Budget Of The Last 500 Km Of The Mississippi River: Insights Into Natural And River Engineering Effects On A Large Alluvial River, Bo Wang, Y. Jun Xu

Faculty Publications

Alluvial rivers are shaped by interactions of flow and sediment transport. Their lower reaches to the world's oceans are highly dynamic, often presenting engineering and management challenges. Here we analyzed over 6,000 single-beam cross-sectional measurements surveyed in 1992, 2004, and 2013 in the last 500-km reach of the highly engineered Mississippi River, also known as the lowermost Mississippi River or LmMR, starting from the river's Gulf outlet to its avulsion into the Atchafalaya River. We applied inverse distance weighted interpolation to downscale the survey records into 10 × 10 m digital elevation models. We assessed riverbed deformation from bank to …

Prime: A Novel Low-Mass, High-Repetition Approach To Improve Function In Older Adults, Jason D. Allen, Mitch D. Vanbruggen, Neil M. Johannsen, Jennifer L. Robbins, Daniel P. Credeur, Carl F. Pieper, Richard Sloane, Conrad P. Earnest, Timothy S. Church, Eric Ravussin, William E. Kraus, Michael A. Welsch

Faculty Publications

Introduction The ability to maintain functional independence in a rapidly aging population results in an increased life expectancy without corresponding increases in health care costs. The accelerated decline in VO2peak after the age of 65 yr is primarily due to peripheral tissue changes rather than centrally mediated factors. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Peripheral Remodeling through Intermittent Muscular Exercise (PRIME) approach, consisting of a low-mass, high-repetition/duration skeletal muscle focused training regimen would provide superior functional benefits in participants older than 70 yr old and at risk for losing functional independence. Methods In this clinical trial, …

Childhood Adversity, Daily Stress, And Marital Strain In Same-Sex And Different-Sex Marriages, Rachel Donnelly, Debra Umberson, Rhiannon A. Kroeger

Faculty Publications

Childhood adversity has enduring consequences for individuals throughout life, including increased reactivity to stress that may contribute to marital strain in adulthood. Past research on gendered experiences of heterosexual spouses raises questions about how the influence of childhood adversity might differ for men and women in same-sex marriages. We analyze dyadic diary data from 756 individuals in 106 male same-sex, 157 female same-sex, and 115 different-sex marriages to consider how childhood adversity moderates the association between daily stress and marital strain. Results suggest that the negative consequences of daily stress for marital strain are amplified by past childhood adversity with …

Changes In Physicochemical Properties And Starch Crystallinity Of Sponge Cake Containing Hpmc And Extra Virgin Coconut Oil During Room Temperature Storage, Naratip Poonnakasem, Kalaya Laohasongkram, Saiwarun Chaiwanichsiri, Witoon Prinyawiwatkul

Faculty Publications

Starch retrogradation is an important factor affecting cake firmness. Effects of hydroxy-propyl-methylcellulose (HPMC) at 0.5% (w/w) or extra virgin coconut oil (EVCO) at 20% (w/w), either alone or together, on physicochemical properties and starch crystallinity of sponge cake during storage was investigated. Addition of EVCO increased specific volume and expansion ratio, while addition of HPMC increased water activity of the freshly baked sponge cake. Changes in firmness, moisture, and spin-lattice relaxation time from nuclear magnetic resonance (T1) of sponge cakes followed a first-order kinetic reaction. Use of HPMC and/or EVCO in sponge cake could retard the firmness rate in the …

Identification Of Candidate Resistance Genes Of Cotton Against Aspergillus Flavus Infection Using A Comparative Transcriptomics Approach, Muthamilarasan Mehanathan, Renesh Bedre, Venkata Mangu, Kanniah Rajasekaran, Deepak Bhatnagar, Niranjan Baisakh

Faculty Publications

A comparative transcriptome analysis was performed using the genes significantly differentially expressed in cotton, corn and peanut in response to aflatoxin producing fungus Aspergillus flavus with an objective of identifying candidate resistance genes in cotton. Two-way analyses identified 732 unique genes to be differentially regulated by the fungus with only 26 genes common across all three crops that were considered candidate A. flavus resistance genes with an assumption that these genes have specific roles in conferring the resistance trait. Genes of membrane cellular component involved in DNA binding with involvement in defense responses were highly represented among the differentially expressed …

Targeting Target With A 100 Million Dollar Data Breach, Federico Pigni, Marcin Bartosiak, Gabriele Piccoli, Blake Ives

Faculty Publications

In January 2014, the CEO of the renowned U.S. discount retailer Target wrote an open letter to its customers apologizing for the massive data breach the company experienced during the 2013 holiday season. Attackers were able to steal credit card data of 40 million customers and more were probably at risk. Share prices, profits, but above all reputation were all now at stake. How did it happen? What was really stolen? What happened to the data? How could Target win consumer confidence back? While the company managed the consequences of the attack, and operations were slowly back to normal, in …

Generalized Symmetric Admm For Separable Convex Optimization, Jianchao Bai, Jicheng Li, Fengmin Xu, Hongchao Zhang

Faculty Publications

The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has been proved to be effective for solving separable convex optimization subject to linear constraints. In this paper, we propose a generalized symmetric ADMM (GS-ADMM), which updates the Lagrange multiplier twice with suitable stepsizes, to solve the multi-block separable convex programming. This GS-ADMM partitions the data into two group variables so that one group consists of p block variables while the other has q block variables, where p≥ 1 and q≥ 1 are two integers. The two grouped variables are updated in a Gauss–Seidel scheme, while the variables within each group are updated …

Yield Components And Reproductive, Physiological, And Root Traits Used In Early Selection For Nitrogen Use Efficiency In Corn, Pedro Patric Pinho Morais, Massaine Bandeira E Sousa, Giovanni Galli, Luciano Rogério Braatz E Andrade, Roberto Fritsche-Neto, Aluízio Borém De Oliveira

Faculty Publications

O objetivo deste trabalho foi examinar a possibilidade de usar componentes de produção e caracteres reprodutivos, fisiológicos e de raiz na seleção precoce para eficiência de uso de nitrogênio (EUN) em milho. Foram avaliadas 64 linhagens em dois regimes de adubação nitrogenada: ideal e baixo. As avaliações foram feitas em três estádios fenológicos: oito folhas completamente expandidas, florescimento masculino e maturação fisiológica. é possível selecionar linhagens superiores quanto à EUN, mas os componentes de produção não tiveram comportamento diferencial sob os diferentes níveis de nitrogênio avaliados. Os caracteres radiculares, reprodutivos e fisiológicos não se mostraram confiáveis para seleção precoce de …