Digital Commons Network^™

Buffaloed, Miles Kinney

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this paper is to explain the methodologies of painting that I have adapted over my time as an MFA candidate at LSU. Through this examination, I elaborate on the inspirations for those methodologies and how they inform my studio practice. This thesis is broken down into separate essays that investigate those methodologies, artistic influences, chosen content, and an analysis of paintings selected for the final thesis exhibition.

Soil Salinity Estimation Over Coastal Wetlands Based On Random Forest Algorithm And Hydrological Connectivity Metric, Haochen Sui, Dawei Chen, Jiaguo Yan, Bin Li, Wei Li, Baoshan Cui

Faculty Publications

Owing to climate warming and human activities (irrigation and reservoirs), sea level rise and runoff reduction have been threatening the coastal ecosystem by increasing the soil salinity. However, short-term sparse in situ observations limit the study on the response of coastal soil salinity to external stressors and thus its effect on coastal ecosystem. In this study, based on hydrological connectivity metric and random forest algorithm (RF), we develop a coastal soil salinity inversion model with in situ observations and satellite-based datasets. Using Landsat images and ancillary as input variables, we produce a 30-m monthly grid dataset of surface soil salinity …

Mental Health Matters: Mental Health Service Utilization Among African American Emerging Adults, Tamecia Curry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Evidence indicates that people of color underutilize mental health services, but little is known empirically about the help-seeking behaviors of African American emerging adults. The present mixed method study utilizes a concurrent design with nested samples for the qualitative and quantitative components to examine willingness to seek help and help-seeking intentions among college students. Data was collected from four location sites including Louisiana State University (n=38), Texas State University (n=15), The University of Southern Mississippi (n=65) and Southern University and A&M College (n=3). Minority and non-minority participants completed the Willingness-To-Seek-Help Questionnaire and …

The Impact Of Second-Year Membership Experiences On Retention Among Panhellenic Sororities, Elizabeth Richardson Newell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Sorority membership retention is a newly emerging research topic with little to no existing information on what motivates members to remain. There are countless studies concerning college student retention in general, but there have yet to be studies that focus specifically on sorority women and their membership experiences. One major research question drove this study: What factors and/or experiences influence a second year National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) sorority member’s decision to actively participate in their sorority?

Using a theoretical framework developed from the social integration retention model proposed by Braxton, Hirschy, and McClendon in 2011, this study explored what …

'My Name Is Peaches': Black Women's Affect In The Blues Biomyth, Taylor C. Scott

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For this project, I am interested in the study of nuanced self-representations of Black rage that appear within African American literary traditions, specifically the blues aesthetic, wherein artists narrativize a wide spectrum of intelligent and specific emotion--not just melancholy. Blues narratives in which Black people self-represent are in direct opposition to flattened narratives of certain affective modes such as anger as a useless, backwards, pathologized, and flat feeling that appear within dominant U.S. and global iconographies. What I see in the blues aesthetic is the capacity for a multichromatic approach to studying rage and Black authorship in America. By using …

Evaluating And Incorporating Site Variability In Different Geotechnical Engineering Applications, Md Habibur Rahman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Site investigation and characterization of subsurface soil conditions are crucial for geotechnical engineering design and analysis. Geotechnical properties vary inherently from one point to another within the same site. This study focused on evaluating the site variability from cone penetration tests (CPT) and soil boring data, and its implementation into the Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) formulation. The total Coefficient of Variation (COV_R,total) for each site was estimated from COV_R,spatial (Spatial Coefficient of Variation) and COV_R,method (Method Coefficient of Variation) which were then used to calibrate the resistance factors (ϕ_spatial, ϕ_total) …

A Mixed Methods Research Investigation Of Middle School Students’ Team Cohesion Development Within A Sport Education Season, Baofu Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Team cohesion is critical to the functioning and success of groups or teams. Sport Education (SE) has the potential to develop team cohesion due to its emphasis on authentic, team-based sporting experiences in physical education (PE). The purposes of the study were: (a) to examine the longitudinal changes of team cohesion within a SE season; (b) to identify facilitators and barriers associated with cohesion development. A longitudinal, concurrent, mixed-methods design was employed to address the research purposes. Students from 6^th to 8^th grades (all girls; n = 76), in small teams (n = 15), and their PE teacher …

Tiempo De Hibridos, Paul Acevedo Gomez

LSU Master's Theses

Tiempo De Hibridos is a body of work that celebrates the multiplicity of my shifting identity. It navigates back and forth between two different worlds, each packing different experiences that become a crossbreed or hybrid of information. Using historical references, pop culture, and personal experiences, I create a narrative story that maneuvers through familiar and foreign spaces.

The images suggest a celebration of cultural identity, vitality, but also psychological pain. I purposely combine objects that can be perceived as conflicting, altering their function to reference elements that are both playful and painful. The viewer should question the combination of objects …

In-Phantom Film Measurements Of Two Treatment Planning Systems For Single-Fraction Spine Sbrt, Michael J. Taylor

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: Treatment planning accuracy for spine stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) varies depending on the dose calculation algorithm utilized in the treatment planning system (TPS). This project compared the end-to-end accuracy between spine SBRT plans calculated in a convolution-superposition based TPS (TPS_CS) and Monte Carlo based TPS (TPS_MC) with radiochromic film measurements. The hypothesis was that TPS_MC would calculate the dose gradient in the critical region between the vertebral body and the spinal cord more accurately than TPS_CS.

Methods: Single-fraction spine SBRT treatments following RTOG 0631 and local institutional guidelines were planned in …

Ceramics And Life In Tandem, Katharine Lee Robbins

LSU Master's Theses

From the ground up, my work emerges slowly. As each coil is added, I am conscious of how my body is interacting with the rich red clay body. Each time I press clay between my hands, the material reacts and changes. It gives me comfort to feel a tangible response as I push my body into the clay. The cyclical process of art making becomes my daily ritual. Each step is repeated over and over again until it becomes ingrained in my body’s existence.

As I add coils to my work, particularly the large sculptures, I continuously circle around each …

Growthlines, Alexandra Saunders

LSU Master's Theses

The work in Growthlines is a collection of ceramic objects that are characterized by floral pattern and their potential for use. I make ceramic work that is functional and designed to be in the home. I think that the way something looks is an integral part of function and I seek to make objects that function well. The surface of my pottery is rich with images of flowers and I hope that the surface both draws in the user and highlights flowers and how important they are for the preservation of the natural world. My work functions as a surrogate …

I'M Going Cycle Every Day, Lauren Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

Many designers and scientists have been able to integrate design and science in their respective fields to create works that effectively inform their audiences of complicated subjects. Each of these individuals can express their creativity and viewpoint of the subject matter in a way that is interesting, visually appealing, and informative. Using the medium of graphic design, I created printed posters that represent the way I view the processes of the human body that are technical, yet also visually appealing.

My thesis exhibition walks my audience through the biological cycles that maintain the human body on an everyday basis from …

A Relational Study Of Self-Taught And Formally Trained Musicians: Trends Within Memory And Socioeconomic Factors, Matthew N. Jimenez, Emily M. Elliott

LSU Master's Theses

It has been well documented that musicians perform better in memory tasks than non-musicians. The current study utilized self-taught musicians, formally trained musicians, and non-musicians, and focused on short-term memory (STM), musicianship, and SES factors to explore this finding. Do the memory benefits of musical training extend to self-taught musicians? First, we addressed musicianship amongst all groups using the Goldsmith’s Musical Sophistication Index (GMSI), which contained subjective and objective measures. The subjective measure was a survey regarding the role of music in daily life. In the objective measures, participants completed tests of beat and melody perception. To measure STM, participants …

It's Not All Rainbows & Glitter, Jerry B. Lockaby

LSU Master's Theses

The goal of this exhibition is to contextualize the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community by anchoring personal stories with collage and poetry to demonstrate the ongoing difficulties of growing up queer. Mixed media digitized collages have been created and paired with companion typographic treatments of poems and narratives from diverse points of view.

The word queer as a term to describe gay men, lesbians, and other non-conforming sexual identities, has evolved over the past 100 years. This evolution of the word parallels the struggles of LGBTQ+ people to achieve equal rights, marriage equality, protection in housing and employment, and an …

Changes In Heat Metrics Following A Major Hurricane And Implications On Heat Stress, Cade Reesman

LSU Master's Theses

Tropical cyclones modify surface-atmosphere interactions in several ways, including the destruction of patches of tree canopy, increasing the direct and diffuse (shortwave) radiation reaching the surface. This addition of radiation at the surface impacts the sensible, latent, and substrate heat (energy) fluxes, generating heat anomalies along the hurricane’s track, which, among other effects, contributes to the higher post-hurricane surface air temperatures. This study consists of a case study on Hurricane Laura (2020) to examine hurricane defoliation impacts on heat stress metrics. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) identified the spatial extent of defoliation …

Improved Limit On Tensor Currents In The Weak Interaction From Li 8 Β Decay, M. T. Burkey, G. Savard, A. T. Gallant, N. D. Scielzo, J. A. Clark, T. Y. Hirsh, L. Varriano, G. H. Sargsyan, K. D. Launey, M. Brodeur, D. P. Burdette, E. Heckmaier, K. Joerres, J. W. Klimes, K. Kolos, A. Laminack, K. G. Leach, A. F. Levand, B. Longfellow, B. Maaß, S. T. Marley, G. E. Morgan, P. Mueller, R. Orford, S. W. Padgett, A. Pérez Galván, J. R. Pierce, D. Ray, R. Segel, K. Siegl, K. S. Sharma, B. S. Wang

Faculty Publications

The electroweak interaction in the standard model is described by a pure vector-axial-vector structure, though any Lorentz-invariant component could contribute. In this Letter, we present the most precise measurement of tensor currents in the low-energy regime by examining the β-ν¯ correlation of trapped Li8 ions with the Beta-decay Paul Trap. We find aβν=-0.3325±0.0013stat±0.0019syst at 1σ for the case of coupling to right-handed neutrinos (CT=-CT′), which is consistent with the standard model prediction.

Unifying Text And Music: Applying Shurtleff's Twelve Guideposts To Operatic Arias For Soprano, Jamey J. Wright

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the present culture of operatic performance, artistry is measured not only by singers’ musical interpretation and vocal technique, but also by their ability to communicate compelling characterization. This monograph explores a helpful technique for dramatic interpretation in opera. The discipline of musical performance provides helpful guides to characterization through elements such phrasing, rhythm, harmony, and instrumentation. Techniques borrowed from the spoken theater, particularly those pioneered by Constantin Stanislavski, include the Magic If, objectives, actions, and tactics. The literature on auditioning for the theater is useful for synthesizing these techniques for singers, because audition techniques emphasize compelling characterization with …

Transitioning From Traditional In-Person Studio-Based Education Of Apparel Design Courses To Online Education During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Divya Desai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns many post-secondary educational institutions all-around the world, including the USA, were forced to transition their teaching methods from a traditional in-person to an online teaching format starting in the spring of 2020. This research however is focused on the transitioning of university-level studio-based Apparel Design (AD) courses to an online teaching format during the spring and fall 2020 semesters. Teaching AD courses that are studio-based and that particularly require hands-on skills like hand rendering, draping, sewing, or pattern drafting, are challenging to be taught online as they require in person step-by-step guidance …

Grotesque Masculinities In The Works Of Harry Crews, Barry Hannah, And Padgett Powell, Matt Brandon Blasi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Grotesque Masculinities in the Works of Harry Crews, Barry Hannah, and Padgett Powell” explores how these authors use the grotesque to complicate, distort, and criticize hegemonic white Southern masculinity as represented in contemporary American literature. In “Grotesque Masculinities,” I argue that the presence of the grotesque mode in these author’s works offers a unique critical perspective by which to better understand how masculinity is constructed by and for white Southern men in literature, and how alternative configurations of identity are not only possible, but necessary to decenter whiteness and heteronormativity as dominant categories. Using what sociologists refer to as body-reflexive …

Neural Stimulator, Jose A. Parodi Amaya, Edward F. Austin, Jin-Woo Choi

Pennington Biomedical Research Center Patents

Methods and apparatus are disclosed relating to the stimulating of tissue including nerve tissue based on combinations of capacitors and resistors. Application and removal of voltage to an electrical circuit is taught as part of a method of creating voltage waveforms for nerve and other tissue with such waveforms creating neural signals. The electrical apparatus taught may, include a first electrical node grounded through a first resistor; a second electrical node grounded through a second resistor; a first capacitor connected to both the first electrical node and the second electrical node; a second capacitor separating the second electrical node from …

High Performance And Recyclable Thermoset Ink For 3d Or 4d Printing, Ang Li, Guoqiang Li

College of Engineering Patents

A UV-curable and recyclable thermoset shape memory polymer is provided. The polymer includes a vitrimer-based monomer and a photoinitiator. The vitrimer-based monomer includes a first unit rendering a high chain stiffness upon polymerization of the monomer, and a second photopolymerizable unit for photopolymerization of the monomer under a UV irradiation. The polymer has high strength, high stiffness, high recovery stress, high energy storage, reasonable recycling efficiency, and is printable using SLA with high resolution.

Uv Curable, Flame Retardant, And Pressure-Sensitive Adhesives With Two-Way Shape Memory Effect, Xiaming Feng, Guoqiang Li

Faculty Publications

Novel UV curable acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) with exceptional flame retardancy and promising two-way shape memory effect have been developed using a commercial diethyl phosphoramidate as multifunctional tackifier for the first time. The abundant hydrogen bonds and high viscosity of the resultant networks contribute to the low temperature and repeatable adhesions. The PSA with 5 wt % tackifier exhibited the best overall adhesion at both 25 °C and 0 °C, especially with the relatively high peak adhesive stress and the highest work of adhesion. Owing to the synergistic effect with nitrogen containing acylate monomer, the 15 wt% diethyl phosphoramidate endowed …

Sodium Mediates Developmentally Plastic Responses In Plants And Herbivores, Luis Santiago-Rosario

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sodium plays a crucial role in organismal performance, trophic-level interactions, and eco-evolutionary dynamics. For plants, sodium impacts osmoregulation, growth, and water uptake. For animals, sodium is essential influencing osmoregulatory processes, muscle and neural development, and blood regulation. My dissertation aims to disentangle why sodium mismatch affects resource-consumer interactions and its influence on morphological and behavioral plasticity. First, I identified how sodium impacts plant performance and sodium accumulation strategies. I initially focused my research on understanding how increasing substrate sodium affects plant growth and tissue sodium accumulation strategies in controlled settings using a systematic review approach. I found that saltier plants …

The Prime Aesthetic: Exploratory Research On The Relationship Between The Imprinting Of Aesthetic Dress Preferences And The Sensitive Period Of Emerging Adulthood, Jeremy Bernardoni

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to explore the theoretical concept of Prime Aesthetic across generational cohorts through the investigation of individual aesthetic dress preferences (ADP), which are formed during the Prime of Life, and their potential influence on present-day ADP. The Prime Aesthetic concept is defined as a theoretical concept representative of the cumulative ADP imprinted from all influences during an individual’s Prime of Life. The Prime Aesthetic was derived from Holbrook and Schindler’s (1989) study on the development of musical tastes during late adolescence and early adulthood and linked to theories on imprinting during sensitive periods (Bornstein, 1989) …

Dosimetric Simulation Of A Talbot-Lau X-Ray Interferometry System For Medical Diagnostic Radiography, Charles A. Zimmerman

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: Lung cancer and other pulmonary disease is typically diagnosed by means of X-ray imaging, such as conventional radiography and computed tomography (CT). However, these modalities are not ideal for lung imaging due to their poor soft tissue contrast and the microscopic nature of early-stage disease. Diagnosis of lung disease could potentially be improved by an imaging modality which is as convenient and low-dose as current X-ray imaging, but provides better visualization of lung tissue.

Methods: We are developing chest radiography and CT systems for medical imaging which use a triple-grating Talbot-Lau X-ray interferometry (TLXI) design to extract dark-field and …

Measuring Agricultural Competitiveness: The Case Of U.S. Rice Exports, Estela Barahona

LSU Master's Theses

The United States is known for being one of the world’s largest rice exporters. Rice from the United States is exported to more than 130 nations and territories on all continents. The world rice market accounts for around 50 percent of the U.S. rice yearly sales volume. Even though the U.S. produces less than 2 percent of global rice, exports are significant to its rice industry. Given the various factors that determine trade (e.g., production, distance, income, and trade agreements), theory suggests that the impact of factors on the U.S. agricultural trade will vary according to commodity and country. There …

Adaptive Deep Density Approximation For Fokker-Planck Equations, Kejun Tang, Xiaoliang Wan, Qifeng Liao

Faculty Publications

In this paper we present an adaptive deep density approximation strategy based on KRnet (ADDA-KR) for solving the steady-state Fokker-Planck (F-P) equations. F-P equations are usually high-dimensional and defined on an unbounded domain, which limits the application of traditional grid based numerical methods. With the Knothe-Rosenblatt rearrangement, our newly proposed flow-based generative model, called KRnet, provides a family of probability density functions to serve as effective solution candidates for the Fokker-Planck equations, which has a weaker dependence on dimensionality than traditional computational approaches and can efficiently estimate general high-dimensional density functions. To obtain effective stochastic collocation points for the approximation …

A Drift-Flux Model For Upward Two-Phase In Pipes With High Velocity Flows, Woochan Lee

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study proposes the evaluation and development of a drift-flux model for upward two-phase high-velocity flow in large diameter pipes. A case where the proposed model is applicable is WCD (Worst-Case-Discharge) calculations for offshore wells. WCD assumes relatively larger pipe diameters and higher flow rates than the flow experiments at laboratory conditions utilized to validate and develop most of the flow models available in the literature.

Most of the two-phase flow models describe flow regime transitions as discrete processes by assigning the required void fraction or velocity for each flow regime transition. Therefore, for each flow regime, flow-regime-dependent correlations or …

Temperature Across Vegetation Canopy-Water-Soil Interfaces Is Modulated By Hydroperiod And Extreme Weather In Coastal Wetlands, Xiaochen Zhao, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Chunyan Li, Ivan A. Vargas-Lopez, Robert V. Rohli, Z. George Xue, Edward Castañeda-Moya, Carlos Coronado-Molina

Faculty Publications

Environmental temperature is a widely used variable to describe weather and climate conditions. The use of temperature anomalies to identify variations in climate and weather systems makes temperature a key variable to evaluate not only climate variability but also shifts in ecosystem structural and functional properties. In contrast to terrestrial ecosystems, the assessment of regional temperature anomalies in coastal wetlands is more complex since the local temperature is modulated by hydrology and weather. Thus, it is unknown how the regional free-air temperature (TFree) is coupled to local temperature anomalies, which can vary across interfaces among vegetation canopy, water, and soil …

Branching Off: New Insight Into Lysosomes As Tubular Organelles, K A. Bohnert, A E. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Lysosomes are acidic, membrane-bound organelles that play essential roles in cellular quality control, metabolism, and signaling. The lysosomes of a cell are commonly depicted as vesicular organelles. Yet, lysosomes in fact show a high degree of ultrastructural heterogeneity. In some biological contexts, lysosome membranes naturally transform into tubular, non-vesicular morphologies. Though the purpose and regulation of tubular lysosomes has been historically understudied, emerging evidence suggests that tubular lysosomes may carry out unique activities, both degradative and non-degradative, that are critical to cell behavior, function, and viability. Here, we discuss recent advances in understanding the biological significance of tubular lysosomes in …