Digital Commons Network^™

A Study Of The Lived Experience Of African American Males Who Transition From Out-Of-Home Care To Postsecondary Education, Marvin Cain Alexander

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While the literature is replete with studies of the factors contributing to the failure and social deviance of African American males, few qualitative studies have been conducted to determine the factors that support the success of African American males, and virtually none have focused on the transition of African American males from out-of-home care to postsecondary educational institutions. Despite the challenges faced preceding and during out-of-home care, African American males can transition to postsecondary educational institutions. There is a need to understand why some African American males who experience out-of-home care can accomplish this while others cannot. It is imperative …

Solution Self-Assemblies Of Sequence-Defined Ionic Peptoid Block Copolymers, Garrett L. Sternhagen, Sudipta Gupta, Yueheng Zhang, Vijay John, Gerald J. Schneider, Donghui Zhang

Faculty Publications

© 2018 American Chemical Society. A series of amphiphilic ionic peptoid block copolymers where the total number (1 or 3) and position of ionic monomers along the polymer chain are precisely controlled have been synthesized by the submonomer method. Upon dissolution in water at pH = 9, the amphiphilic peptoids self-assemble into small spherical micelles having hydrodynamic radius in ∼5-10 nm range and critical micellar concentration (CMC) in the 0.034-0.094 mg/mL range. Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) analysis of the micellar solutions revealed unprecedented dependence of the micellar structure on the number and position of ionic monomers along the chain. It …

Sn2012ab: A Peculiar Type Iin Supernova With Aspherical Circumstellar Material, Christopher Bilinski, Nathan Smith, G. Grant Williams, Paul Smith, Weikang Zheng, Melissa L. Graham, Jon C. Mauerhan, Jennifer E. Andrews, Alexei V. Filippenko, Carl Akerlof, E. Chatzopoulos, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Leah Huk, Douglas C. Leonard, G. H. Marion, Peter Milne, Robert M. Quimby, Jeffrey M. Silverman, Jozsef Vinkó, J. Craig Wheeler, Fang Yuan

Faculty Publications

We present photometry, spectra, and spectropolarimetry of supernova (SN) 2012ab, mostly obtained over the course of ~300 d after discovery. SN 2012ab was a Type IIn (SN IIn) event discovered near the nucleus of spiral galaxy 2MASXJ12224762+0536247. While its light curve resembles that of SN 1998S, its spectral evolution does not. We see indications of CSM interaction in the strong intermediate-width emission features, the high luminosity (peak at absolute magnitude M = -19.5), and the lack of broad absorption features in the spectrum. The Hα emission undergoes a peculiar transition. At early times it shows a broad blue emission wing …

Ethnicity, Climate, And House Types As Mortality Factors In The New Orleans' 1878 Yellow Fever Outbreak, Gabriele Richardson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The following study is first a demonstration that even incomplete health data from 1878 New Orleans’ yellow fever outbreak can be used with modern epidemiological methods and achieve useful and revealing results. Accordingly, this research examines three possible associations between New Orleans’ population exposed to yellow fever and the environment they lived in, using 4,755 yellow fever cases, derived from the New Orleans Board of Health report, Cemetery Burial records, Hospital, Asylum, and prison registers, and New Orleans obituaries. The first relationship addresses the vulnerability to yellow fever for people born in Italy, France, Great Britain, and the German Empire, …

A Phenomenological Investigation Into The Impact Of The College Student Union On Student Engagement At A Historically Black University, Nathalie Nicole Godfrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Known as the proverbial “living room of campus,” college student union facilities date back to the late 1800s. Unions were a place for congregation and fellowship, a place where student engagement was crucial. Today’s college union varies from campus to campus, with some focused on student development, some with a keen focus on generating revenue through providing services, and some that attempt to strike a balance between the two.

The concept of student engagement and the research surrounding engagement rarely has shed light on the role of the college student union facility in the engagement process. Entities traditionally found within …

Analysis Of Lineage-Specific Alu Subfamilies In The Genome Of The Olive Baboon, Papio Anubis, Cody J. Steely, Jasmine N. Baker, Jerilyn A. Walker, Charles D. Loupe, Mark A. Batzer, Jeffrey Rogers, R. Alan Harris, Muthuswamy Raveendran, Yue Liu, Shwetha Murali, Tauras P. Vilgalys, Jerilyn A. Walker, Miriam K. Konkel, Vallmer E. Jordan

Faculty Publications

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Alu elements are primate-specific retroposons that mobilize using the enzymatic machinery of L1 s. The recently completed baboon genome project found that the mobilization rate of Alu elements is higher than in the genome of any other primate studied thus far. However, the Alu subfamily structure present in and specific to baboons had not been examined yet. Results: Here we report 129 Alu subfamilies that are propagating in the genome of the olive baboon, with 127 of these subfamilies being new and specific to the baboon lineage. We analyzed 233 Alu insertions in the genome …

Sediment And Plant Dynamics In A Degrading Coastal Louisiana Landscape, Glenn Michael. Suir

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Alterations to Louisiana’s river systems and local hydrology have resulted in reduced freshwater, sediment, and nutrient inputs into wetland landscapes, causing significant negative impacts on marsh productivity and stability. To combat these losses many restoration projects have been constructed or planned throughout coastal Louisiana. Typical goals of wetland restoration efforts are to conserve, create, or enhance wetland form, and to achieve wetland function that approaches natural conditions. Failure to adequately maintain wetland elevation and hydrology can have serious implications on sedimentation and vegetation processes, which significantly reduces the likelihood of reaching structural and functional targets. Measures of wetland condition have …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Covalent Adaptable Networks Comprised Of Dynamic Imine And Aminal Covalent Bonds, Albert Chao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation is about the design, synthesis and characterization of materials comprised of covalent adaptable networks (CANs). There are three chapters within this dissertation.

Chapter 1 contains a short overview of conventional thermosets and thermoplastics. A new strategy of combining advantages from thermosets and thermoplastics is utilizing dynamic covalent chemistry (DCC) for material design. Dynamic covalent bonds are able to undergo dynamic exchange which allow the material to adapt to a new state when under stimuli such as stress or strain. Material comprised of such reversible networks is called covalent adaptable networks (CANs). These types of reversible covalent bonds followed …

5-Lipoxygenase (5-Lox)-5-Lipoxygenase Activating Protein (Flap)-Nanodisc Complex: A Model For The 5-Lox-Flap Interaction, Erin Elizabeth Schexnaydre

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Leukotrienes (LT) are lipid mediators of the inflammatory response that play important roles in diseases such as asthma and atherosclerosis. Leukotriene A4 (LTA₄) is synthesized from arachidonic acid (AA) by 5-lipoxygenase (5-LOX) with the help of 5-lipoxygenase activating protein (FLAP), a trimeric nuclear transmembrane protein. Exactly how 5-LOX and FLAP interact is not well understood, however FLAP is essential for the production of leukotrienes in vivo. I used nanodiscs (NDs), engineered membrane systems, as a tool to study the 5-LOX-FLAP interaction. FLAP was incorporated into NDs with a phospholipid composition to mimic of the nuclear membrane. Structural features …

The Influence Of River Discharge On Fishes And Invertebrates Associated With Small Oil And Gas Platforms In Nearshore Louisiana, David Bradley Reeves

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The nearshore region off Louisiana’s coast is one of the most productive areas in the United States. Nutrient-rich discharge from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers forms the base of this productivity, but it also contributes to the annual formation of a large hypoxic zone (DO < 2.0 mg l^-1). This region contains >900 oil and gas platforms (platforms) that are de facto artificial reefs and support fish and invertebrate communities. In this dissertation, I examined how select platform-associated fishes and invertebrates responded to river-driven productivity and hypoxia. Settlement plates were used to compare barnacle production at depths of 2 and 7-m along …

Signal Propagation, Provenance, And Climate Records In The Indus Submarine Canyon Since The Last Deglacial, Yuting Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Monsoon is one of the most powerful climatic phenomena on Earth and controls environments in South Asia. Erosion and weathering patterns are influenced by monsoon variations and can be reconstructed through marine sediment records. However, such reconstruction is based on the assumption that such sediments are representative of the onshore basins from which they are sourced. Debate continues regarding the degree to which storage and recycling homogenize short-term variations in sediment compositions. The Indus Submarine Canyon links the river mouth and the deep-water fan of the Indus drainage system. Determining how sediment fluxes through this canyon is important if …

On Almost-Planar Graphs, Guoli Ding, Joshua Fallon, Emily Marshall

Faculty Publications

A nonplanar graph G is called almost-planar if for every edge e of G, at least one of G\e and G/e is planar. In 1990, Gubser characterized 3-connected almost-planar graphs in his dissertation. However, his proof is so long that only a small portion of it was published. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a short proof of this result. We also discuss the structure of almost-planar graphs that are not 3-connected.

Equivalence Of Edge Bicolored Graphs On Surfaces, Oliver T. Dasbach, Heather M. Russell

Faculty Publications

Consider the collection of edge bicolorings of a graph that are cellularly embedded on an orientable surface. In this work, we count the number of equivalence classes of such colorings under two relations: reversing colors around a face and reversing colors around a vertex. In the case of the plane, this is well studied, but for other surfaces, the computation is more subtle. While this question can be stated purely graph theoretically, it has interesting applications in knot theory.

Providing Information And Public Outreach Across Three U.S. State Archaeology Offices During The Age Of Open Access, Samuel Thomas Ayers

LSU Master's Theses

Archaeology in the United States has been transformed into a mainstream, practical science over the past fifty years by Cultural Resource Management (CRM) and the federal regulations imposed by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966. However, this form of archaeology has been plagued with criticisms since the NHPA’s enactment including issues of access and use of data maintained by state site files. State archaeology is publicly funded yet state and federal legislation often exempts CRM data from freedom of information laws. To mitigate this contradiction and stem the growing body of “gray literature”, new open-access (OA) technologies are …

Satellite Estimation Of Coastal Pco2 And Air-Sea Flux Of Carbon Dioxide In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, S. E. Lohrenz, W. J. Cai, S. Chakraborty, W. J. Huang, X. Guo, R. He, Z. Xue, K. Fennel, S. Howden, H. Tian

Faculty Publications

Satellite approaches for estimation of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and air-sea flux of CO2 in coastal regions offer the potential to reduce uncertainties in coastal carbon budgets and improve understanding of spatial and temporal patterns and the factors influencing them. We used satellite-derived products in combination with an extensive data set of ship-based observations to develop an unprecedented multi-year time-series of pCO2 and air-sea flux of CO2 in the northern Gulf of Mexico for the period 2006–2010. A regression tree algorithm was used to relate satellite-derived products for chlorophyll, sea surface temperature, and dissolved and detrital organic matter …

Cdk1-Dependent Phosphoinhibition Of A Formin-F-Bar Interaction Opposes Cytokinetic Contractile Ring Formation, Alaina H. Willet, K. Adam Bohnert, Kathleen L. Gould

Faculty Publications

© 2018 Willet et al. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, cytokinesis requires the assembly and constriction of an actomyosin-based contractile ring (CR). A single essential formin, Cdc12, localizes to the cell middle upon mitotic onset and nucleates the F-actin of the CR. Cdc12 medial recruitment is mediated in part by its direct binding to the F-BAR scaffold Cdc15. Given that Cdc12 is hyperphosphorylated in M phase, we explored whether Cdc12 phosphoregulation impacts its association with Cdc15 during mitosis. We found that Cdk1, a major mitotic kinase, phosphorylates Cdc12 on six N-terminal residues near the Cdc15-binding site, and phosphorylation on these sites inhibits …

Elemental Assessment Of Vegetation Via Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (Pxrf) Spectrometry, Candice Mcgladdery, David C. Weindorf, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Bin Li, Laura Paulette, Dorina Podar, Delaina Pearson, Nana Yaw O. Kusi, Bogdan Duda

Faculty Publications

Elemental concentrations in vegetation are of critical importance, whether establishing plant essential element concentrations (toxicity vs. deficiency) or investigating deleterious elements (e.g., heavy metals) differentially extracted from the soil by plants. Traditionally, elemental analysis of vegetation has been facilitated by acid digestion followed by quantification via inductively coupled plasma (ICP) or atomic absorption (AA) spectroscopy. Previous studies have utilized portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) spectroscopy to quantify elements in soils, but few have evaluated the vegetation. In this study, a PXRF spectrometer was employed to scan 228 organic material samples (thatch, deciduous leaves, grasses, tree bark, and herbaceous plants) from smelter-impacted …

Non-Gaussianity In Loop Quantum Cosmology, Ivan Agullo, Boris Bolliet, V. Sreenath

Faculty Publications

We extend the phenomenology of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) to second order in perturbations. Our motivation is twofold. On the one hand, since LQC predicts a cosmic bounce that takes place at the Planck scale, the second-order contributions could be large enough to jeopardize the validity of the perturbative expansion on which previous results rest. On the other hand, the upper bounds on primordial non-Gaussianity obtained by the Planck Collaboration are expected to play a significant role on explorations of the LQC phenomenology. We find that the bounce in LQC produces an enhancement of non-Gaussianity of several orders of magnitude, …

Breastfeeding And The Role Of Maternal Religion: Results From A National Prospective Cohort Study, Samuel Stroope, Heather M. Rackin, Jessica L. Stroope, Jeremy E. Uecker

Faculty Publications

Background Recent research on religion and breastfeeding from a low-income, urban sample in the USA found that religious affiliation and religious attendance were associated with breastfeeding initiation. Purpose We assessed the relationship between religion (religious affiliation and religious attendance) and breastfeeding (initiation and duration) in a nationally representative prospective cohort study. We examined whether education and other sociodemographic characteristics mediated or moderated relationships. Methods Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (n = 3,719), we regressed breastfeeding initiation and breastfeeding duration for first births on religious affiliation and religious attendance, comparing conservative Protestants with other religious groups. …

Foraminiferal Assemblages From Ice-Proximal Paleo-Settings In The Whales Deep Basin, Eastern Ross Sea, Antarctica, Wojciech Majewski, Philip J. Bart, Austin J. Mcglannan

Faculty Publications

Reconstructions of Ross Sea paleoenvironments based on foraminifera are hindered by the dearth of actualistic data, especially from below the Ross Ice Shelf. To fill this gap, we used a recently developed well-resolved deglaciation record from the Whales Deep Basin of the eastern Ross Sea to understand the ecological affinities of different foraminiferal assemblages. During open-water conditions similar to the present, two benthic foraminiferal communities are strongly dominated by agglutinated species. However, in the underlying sediments that represent sub-ice-shelf and grounding-zone proximal settings on the outer continental shelf, we identified five different assemblages of calcareous foraminifera. By Antarctic margin standards, …

Characterizing The Phylogenetic Specialism-Generalism Spectrum Of Mammal Parasites, A. W. Park, M. J. Farrell, J. P. Schmidt, S. Huang, T. A. Dallas, P. Pappalardo, J. M. Drake, P. R. Stephens, R. Poulin, C. L. Nunn, T. J. Davies

Faculty Publications

© 2018 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. The distribution of parasites across mammalian hosts is complex and represents a differential ability or opportunity to infect different host species. Here, we take a macroecological approach to investigate factors influencing why some parasites show a tendency to infect species widely distributed in the host phylogeny (phylogenetic generalism) while others infect only closely related hosts. Using a database on over 1400 parasite species that have been documented to infect up to 69 terrestrialmammal host species,we characterize the phylogenetic generalism of parasites using standard effect sizes for three metrics: …

Public Knowledge Of Monarchs And Support For Butterfly Conservation, Jerrod Penn, Hannah Penn, Wuyang Hu

Faculty Publications

© 2018 by the authors. Pollinator populations in North America are in decline, including the iconic monarch butterfly. In order to determine if public knowledge of monarchs informs opinions on butterfly conservation, we surveyed the public to assess their knowledge of monarchs. We also asked participants about their attitudes towards general butterfly conservation and if they believe that butterfly gardens contribute to conservation. Respondents generally had some knowledge of monarchs but were unaware of monarch population declines and the necessity of milkweed to their life cycle. Respondent knowledge was correlated with more positive attitudes about butterfly conservation. Furthermore, membership in …

Exactly Solvable Configuration Mixing Scheme In The Vibrational Limit Of The Interacting Boson Model, Feng Pan, Dongkang Li, Guoqing Cheng, Zheng Qiao, Jiachao Bai, Jerry P. Draayer

Faculty Publications

An intruder configuration mixing scheme with 2n-particle and 2n-hole configurations from n=0 up to n→ in the U(5) (vibrational) limit of the interacting boson model is proposed. A simple Hamiltonian suitable to describe the intruder and normal configuration mixing is found to be exactly solvable, and its eigenstates can be expressed as the SU(1,1) coherent states built on the U(5) basis vectors of the interacting boson model. It is shown that the configuration mixing scheme keeps lower part of the vibrational spectrum unchanged and generates the intruder states due to the mixing. Some low-lying level energies and experimentally known B(E2) …

The Determinants Of Nucleosome Patterns And The Impact Of Phosphate Starvation On Nucleosome Patterns And Gene Expression In Rice, Qi Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In eukaryotic cells, DNA is a large molecule that must be greatly condensed to fit within the nucleus. DNA is wrapped around histone proteins to form nucleosomes, which facilitate DNA condensation, but on the other hand, may limit DNA processes. Organisms must respond to environmental stress in order to survive, and one strategy is by remodeling nucleosomes to promote changes in DNA accessibility to alter gene expression. Studies have demonstrated a clear correlation between nucleosome dynamics and transcriptional change in some eukaryotes, however factors that affect nucleosome positioning in plants are largely unknown, and the correlation between nucleosome dynamics and …

Effect Of Pipe Rotation On Casing Pressure Within Mpd Applications, Zahrah Ahmed Al Marhoon

LSU Master's Theses

Well control is one of the most crucial sectors in drilling engineering. Human lives and safety depend on the correct execution of the engineering design. Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) is a new technology that has recently emerged in the oil and gas industry. It has special well control abilities supported by the RCD to continue drilling or carry operations that involve pipe rotation, while circulating out a gas kick. This thesis examines the effect of pipe rotation on casing pressure profiles within MPD kick circulation application. The analysis was carried on real scale kick experiments. These experiments were carried in …

Comparative Assessment Of Strategies To Identify Similar Ligand-Binding Pockets In Proteins, Rajiv Gandhi Govindaraj, Michal Brylinski

Faculty Publications

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Detecting similar ligand-binding sites in globally unrelated proteins has a wide range of applications in modern drug discovery, including drug repurposing, the prediction of side effects, and drug-target interactions. Although a number of techniques to compare binding pockets have been developed, this problem still poses significant challenges. Results: We evaluate the performance of three algorithms to calculate similarities between ligand-binding sites, APoc, SiteEngine, and G-LoSA. Our assessment considers not only the capabilities to identify similar pockets and to construct accurate local alignments, but also the dependence of these alignments on the sequence order. We point …

Digitization On A Budget, Cara M. Key, Zachary G. Stein, Cheylon K. Woods

Faculty Publications

Archives and libraries are seen as public hubs of information on demand. As expectations for digital information grows, it is imperative that archives and libraries strive to accommodate users' growing needs for effective online access, while ensuring the longevity of digitized and born-digital primary sources. There is still a struggle for digital access to archival and special collections; many factors, such as time, funds, and administrative support limit the digitization of archival collections. None of these things have to be a real hindrance to digital migration and preservation. In this presentation, we will explore "DIY" ways to establish a functioning …

Nonlinear Response Of Streamflow To Climate Change In High-Latitude Regions: A Case Study In Headwaters Of Nenjiang River Basin In China's Far Northeast, Yanfeng Wu, Guangxin Zhang, Hong Shen, Y. Jun Xu

Faculty Publications

Assessment of the response of streamflow to future climate change in headwater areas is of a particular importance for sustainable water resources management in a large river basin. In this study, we investigated multiscale variation in hydroclimatic variables including streamflow, temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration in the Headwater Areas of the Nenjiang River Basin (HANR) in China's far northeast, which are sensitive to climate change. We analyzed 50-year-long (1961-2010) records of the hydroclimatic variables using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method to identify their inherent changing patterns and trends at the inter-annual and inter-decadal scales. We found that all these …

The Process Of A Completed Digitization Project: Ingest, Cara M. Key, William W. Conlin

Faculty Publications

As physical archival materials age and begin to degrade, there is a push to digitize for further access so that the originals can be better preserved. By making digital collections available online, scholarship is made more widely known. This workshop covers the process of completing successful digitization projects. The presentations will include selecting and evaluating materials to digitize, scanning and appropriate formats, ingesting digital surrogates for accessibility, storage and preservation, and copyright issues for digitized materials. Through lecture and discussion, participants will gain insight into what digitization projects entail so they can expand on their institutions' digitization programs. They will …

Personalized Normative Feedback For College Student Condom Use, Sonia Mahesh Shah

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Personalized normative feedback (PNF) interventions provide corrective normative feedback and have been found to successfully elicit behavior change (e.g., related to alcohol consumption, gambling). There are no known PNF interventions that explicitly target risky sexual behavior (RSB). PNF interventions have demonstrated significant reductions on drinking outcomes and normative perceptions, highlighting the potential utility of a PNF intervention specifically for RSB. The current study tested the utility of a web-based PNF intervention to correct normative perceptions regarding condom use as well as to increase condom use among college students. A sample of 189 undergraduate students (80.6% female, 62.2% non-Hispanic Caucasian) who …