Digital Commons Network^™

Using Poultry Litter Ash As A Fertilizer Source For Bermudagrass (Cynodon Dactylon) Establishment And Loblolly Pine (Pinus Taeda) Plantation, Crystal L. Vance

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lower solubility of P in poultry litter ash (PLA) than conventional phosphorus (P) fertilizers such as triple superphosphate (TSP) may reduce P losses in drainage and runoff; however, lower P solubility may reduce its efficacy as a P source. A laboratory experiment was conducted to examine the effect of acidity on P release and the effect of different combustion temperatures on P solubility as a prerequisite to the following studies. The first research objective was to determine the effect of soil pH on the efficiency of PLA relative to TSP for establishment of common bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon L.) and …

The Impact Of Anthropogenic Noise On Fish Behavior, Communication, And Development, Julie Butler

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Noise pollution is pervasive to nearly all aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and was labeled a pollutant of global concern by the World Health Organization in 2011. In the past few decades, underwater ambient noise levels have risen almost 30 dB SPL re: 1 µPa in the frequency range that most fish produce and detect acoustic stimuli due to rises in shipping, oil exploration, and pile driving. Changes to the natural soundscape can impact almost all aspects of an animal’s life. My dissertation research takes an integrative, whole-animal approach to examining how increased background noise impacts fish behavior, physiology, development, and …

On I/O Performance And Cost Efficiency Of Cloud Storage: A Client's Perspective, Binbing Hou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cloud storage has gained increasing popularity in the past few years. In cloud storage, data are stored in the service provider’s data centers; users access data via the network and pay the fees based on the service usage. For such a new storage model, our prior wisdom and optimization schemes on conventional storage may not remain valid nor applicable to the emerging cloud storage.

In this dissertation, we focus on understanding and optimizing the I/O performance and cost efficiency of cloud storage from a client’s perspective. We first conduct a comprehensive study to gain insight into the I/O performance behaviors …

5-Bit Dual-Slope Analog-To-Digital Converter-Based Time-To-Digital Converter Chip Design In Cmos Technology, Jojoe S. Sagoe

LSU Master's Theses

Time-to-Digital Converters (TDC) have gained increasing importance in modern implementations of mixed-signal, data-acquisition and processing interfaces and are used to perform high precision time intervals in systems that incorporate Time-of-Flight (ToF) or Time-of-Arrival (ToA) measurements. The linearity of TDCs is very crucial since most Digital Signal Processing (DSP) systems require very linear inputs to achieve high accuracy.

In this work, a TDC has been designed in the 0.5 μm n-well CMOS process that can be used for on-chip integration and in applications requiring high linearity. This TDC used a Dual-Slope-ADC-based architecture for the time-to-digital conversion and consists of the following …

Gulf Of Mexico Hypoxia: Past, Present, And Future, Nancy N. Rabalais, R. Eugene Turner

Faculty Publications

One of the largest human-caused areas of bottom-water oxygen deficiency in the coastal ocean is on the northern Gulf of Mexico continental shelf adjacent to the Mississippi River, which discharges nitrogen and phosphorus loads into its surface waters. The beginnings of seasonal hypoxia (≤2 mg l−1 dissolved oxygen) in this area was in the 1950s with an acceleration in the worsening of severity during the 1970s. Currently, the bottom area of hypoxic areas can approach 23,000 km2, and the volume, 140 km3. Ecosystems, people, and economies are now at risk within the Mississippi River watershed and in the northern Gulf …

Integrating Imaging Spectrometer And Synthetic Aperture Radar Data For Estimating Wetland Vegetation Aboveground Biomass In Coastal Louisiana, Daniel Jensen, Kyle C. Cavanaugh, Marc Simard, Gregory S. Okin, Edward Castañeda-Moya, Annabeth Mccall, Robert R. Twilley

Faculty Publications

Aboveground biomass (AGB) plays a critical functional role in coastal wetland ecosystem stability, with high biomass vegetation contributing to organic matter production, sediment accretion potential, and the surface elevation's ability to keep pace with relative sea level rise. Many remote sensing studies have employed either imaging spectrometer or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for AGB estimation in various environments for assessing ecosystem health and carbon storage. This study leverages airborne data from NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) and Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) to assess their unique capabilities in combination to estimate AGB in coastal deltaic wetlands. …

Combining Context-Aware Design-Specific Data And Building Performance Models To Improve Building Performance Predictions During Design, Chanachok Chokwitthaya, Y. Zhu, Robert Dibiano, Supratik Mukhopadhyay

Faculty Publications

Building performance models (BPMs) such as building energy simulation models have been widely used in building design. Conventional BPMs may not be able to effectively address human- building interactions in new buildings still under design. The lack of such capability often contributes to the existence of building performance gaps, i.e., differences between predicted performance during design and actual performance of buildings. To improve the prediction accuracy of conventional BPMs, a computational framework is developed. It combines an existing BPM with context-aware design-specific data involving human-building interactions in new designs, using a machine learning approach. Immersive virtual environment (IVE) is used …

Open Computing Infrastructure For Sharing Data Analytics To Support Building Energy Simulations, Omer T. Karaguzel, Mohammed Elshambakey, Yimin Zhu, Tianzhen Hong, William J. Tolone, Sreyasee Das Bhattacharjee, Isaac Cho, Wenwen Dou, Haopeng Wang, Siliang Lu, Mohamed Khalefa, Yong Tao

Faculty Publications

Building energy simulation plays an increasingly important role in building design and operation. This paper presents an open computing infrastructure, Virtual Information Fabric Infrastructure (VIFI), that allows building designers and engineers to enhance their simulations by combining empirical data with diagnostic or prognostic models. Based on the idea of dynamic data-driven application systems (DDDAS), the VIFI infrastructure complements conventional data-centric sharing strategies and addresses key data-sharing concerns such as the privacy of building occupants. To demonstrate the potential of the VIFI infrastructure, an empirically derived lighting schedule in the US Department of Energy's small office building reference model is simulated. …

Atmospheric Carbon Monoxide Oxidation Is A Widespread Mechanism Supporting Microbial Survival, Paul R.F. Cordero, Katherine Bayly, Pok Man Leung, Cheng Huang, Zahra F. Islam, Ralf B. Schittenhelm, Gary M. King, Chris Greening

Faculty Publications

© 2019, The Author(s). Carbon monoxide (CO) is a ubiquitous atmospheric trace gas produced by natural and anthropogenic sources. Some aerobic bacteria can oxidize atmospheric CO and, collectively, they account for the net loss of ~250 teragrams of CO from the atmosphere each year. However, the physiological role, genetic basis, and ecological distribution of this process remain incompletely resolved. In this work, we addressed these knowledge gaps through culture-based and culture-independent work. We confirmed through shotgun proteomic and transcriptional analysis that the genetically tractable aerobic soil actinobacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis upregulates expression of a form I molydenum–copper carbon monoxide dehydrogenase by …

Bta-Mir-24-3p Controls The Myogenic Differentiation And Proliferation Of Fetal, Bovine, Skeletal Muscle-Derived Progenitor Cells By Targeting Acvr1b, Xin Hu, Yishen Xing, Ling Ren, Yahui Wang, Qian Li, Xing Fu, Qiyuan Yang, Lingyang Xu, Luc Willems, Junya Li, Lupei Zhang

Faculty Publications

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. MicroRNAs modulate a variety of cellular events, including skeletal muscle development, but the molecular basis of their functions in fetal bovine skeletal muscle development is poorly understood. In this study, we report that bta-miR-24-3p promotes the myogenic differentiation of fetal bovine PDGFRα- progenitor cells. The expression of bta-miR-24-3p increased during myogenic differentiation. Overexpression of bta-miR-24-3p significantly promoted myogenic differentiation, but inhibited proliferation. A dual-luciferase assay identified ACVR1B as a direct target of bta-miR-24-3p. Similarly, knocking down ACVR1B by RNA interference also significantly inhibited proliferation and promoted the differentiation of bovine PDGFRα- …

Ruddlesden–Popper Perovskites: Synthesis And Optical Properties For Optoelectronic Applications, Xupeng Gao, Xiangtong Zhang, Wenxu Yin, Hua Wang, Yue Hu, Qingbo Zhang, Zhifeng Shi, Vicki L. Colvin, William W. Yu, Yu Zhang

Faculty Publications

© 2019 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Ruddlesden–Popper perovskites with a formula of (A′)2(A)n−1BnX3n+1 have recently gained widespread interest as candidates for the next generation of optoelectronic devices. The variations of organic cation, metal halide, and the number of layers in the structure lead to the change of crystal structures and properties for different optoelectronic applications. Herein, the different synthetic methods for 2D perovskite crystals and thin films are summarized and compared. The optoelectronic properties and the charge transfer process in the devices are also delved, in particular, for light-emitting diodes and solar cells.

Incubation Recess Behaviors Influence Nest Survival Of Wild Turkeys, Nicholas W. Bakner, Bret A. Collier, Landon R. Schofield

Faculty Publications

In ground nesting upland birds, reproductive activities contribute to elevated predation risk, so females presumably use multiple strategies to ensure nest success. Identification of drivers reducing predation risk has primarily focused on evaluating vegetative conditions at nest sites, but behavioral decisions manifested through movements during incubation may be additional drivers of nest survival. However, our understanding of how movements during incubation impact nest survival is limited for most ground nesting birds. Using GPS data collected from female Eastern Wild Turkeys (n = 206), we evaluated nest survival as it relates to movement behaviors during incubation, including recess frequency, distance traveled …

Detection Of Chalk In Single Kernels Of Long-Grain Milled Rice Using Imaging And Visible/Near-Infrared Instruments, Christopher K. Addison

Faculty Publications

Background and objectives To maintain the competitiveness of U.S. long-grain rice in U.S. and foreign markets, having translucent whole milled grain is critical. An objective technique to detect grain chalk, opaque areas in the grain, will provide breeders and industry with an effective tool for developing low-chalk varieties or agronomic practices that reduce chalk occurrence. Two instruments developed at the Center for Grain and Animal Health Research, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), a single-kernel near-infrared (SKNIR) tube instrument and a silicon-based light-emitting diode (SiLED) high-speed sorter, were compared with two commercially available imaging instruments, WinSEEDLE and SeedCount used …

Integrating Geochronologic And Instrumental Approaches Across The Bengal Basin, Carol Wilson

Faculty Publications

Constraining time is of critical importance to evaluating the rates and relative contributions of processes driving landscape change in sedimentary basins. The geomorphic character of the field setting guides the application of geochronologic or instrumental tools to this problem, because the viability of methods can be highly influenced by geomorphic attributes. For example, sediment yield and the linked potential for organic preservation may govern the usefulness of radiocarbon dating. Similarly, the rate of sediment transport from source to sink may determine the maturity and/or light exposure of mineral grains arriving in the delta and thus the feasibility of luminescence dating. …

Diversification History In The Dendrocincla Fuliginosa Complex (Aves: Dendrocolaptidae): Insights From Broad Geographic Sampling, Eduardo D. Schultz, Jorge Pérez-Emán, Alexandre Aleixo, Cristina Y. Miyaki, Robb T. Brumfield, Joel Cracraft, Camila C. Ribas

Faculty Publications

© 2019 Dendrocincla woodcreepers are ant-following birds widespread throughout tropical America. Species in the genus are widely distributed and show little phenotypic variation. Notwithstanding, several subspecies have been described, but the validity of some of these taxa and the boundaries among them have been discussed for decades. Recent genetic evidence based on limited sampling has pointed to the paraphyly of D. fuliginosa, showing that its subspecies constitute a complex that also includes D. anabatina and D. turdina. In this study we sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial markers for over two hundred individuals belonging to the D. fuliginosa complex to recover phylogenetic …

Quantum Reading Capacity: General Definition And Bounds, Siddhartha Das, Mark M. Wilde

Faculty Publications

Quantum reading refers to the task of reading out classical information stored in a read-only memory device. In any such protocol, the transmitter and receiver are in the same physical location, and the goal of such a protocol is to use these devices (modeled by independent quantum channels), coupled with a quantum strategy, to read out as much information as possible from a memory device, such as a CD or DVD. As a consequence of the physical setup of quantum reading, the most natural and general definition for quantum reading capacity should allow for an adaptive operation after each call …

Kelt-24b: A 5mj Planet On A 5.6day Well-Aligned Orbit Around The Young V = 8.3 F-Star Hd 93148, Joseph E. Rodriguez, Jason D. Eastman, George Zhou, Samuel N. Quinn, Thomas G. Beatty, Kaloyan Penev, Marshall C. Johnson, Phillip A. Cargile, David W. Latham, Allyson Bieryla, Karen A. Collins, Courtney D. Dressing, David R. Ciardi, Howard M. Relles, Gabriel Murawski, Taku Nishiumi, Atsunori Yonehara, Ryo Ishimaru, Fumi Yoshida, Joao Gregorio, Michael B. Lund, Daniel J. Stevens, Keivan G. Stassun, B. Scott Gaudi, Knicole D. Colón, Joshua Pepper, Norio Narita, Supachai Awiphan, Pongpichit Chuanraksasat, Paul Benni, Roberto Zambelli, Lehman H. Garrison, Maurice L. Wilson

Faculty Publications

We present the discovery of KELT-24 b, a massive hot Jupiter orbiting a bright (V = 8.3 mag, K = 7.2 mag) young F-star with a period of 5.6 days. The host star, KELT-24 (HD 93148), has a Teff = 6509-+4950 K, a mass of M* = 1.460-+0.0590.055 Me, a radius of R* = 1.506 ± 0.022 Re, and an age of 0.78-+0.420.61 Gyr. Its planetary companion (KELT-24 b) has a radius of RP = 1.272 ± 0.021 RJ and a mass of MP = 5.18-+0.220.21 MJ, and from Doppler tomographic observations, we find that the planet’s orbit is well-aligned …

Diversification History In The Dendrocincla Fuliginosa Complex (Aves: Dendrocolaptidae): Insights From Broad Geographic Sampling, E D. Schultz, J Perez-Eman, A Aleixo, C Y. Miyaki, E D. Schultz, J Cracraft, C C. Ribas

Faculty Publications

Dendrocincla woodcreepers are ant-following birds widespread throughout tropical America. Species in the genus are widely distributed and show little phenotypic variation. Notwithstanding, several subspecies have been described, but the validity of some of these taxa and the boundaries among them have been discussed for decades. Recent genetic evidence based on limited sampling has pointed to the paraphyly of D. fuliginosa, showing that its subspecies constitute a complex that also includes D. anabatina and D. turdina. In this study we sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial markers for over two hundred individuals belonging to the D. fuliginosa complex to recover phylogenetic relationships, describe …

Electrospray Photochemical Oxidation Of Proteins, Remilekun O. Lawal, Fabrizio Donnarumma, Kermit K. Murray

Faculty Publications

© 2019, American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Photooxidation of peptides and proteins by pulsed ultraviolet laser irradiation of an electrospray in the ion source of a mass spectrometer was demonstrated. A 193-nm excimer laser at 1.5-mJ pulse energy was focused with a cylindrical lens at the exit of a nanoelectrospray capillary and ions were sampled into a quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer. A solution containing a peptide or protein and hydrogen peroxide was infused into the spray at a flow rate of 1 μL/min using a syringe pump. The laser creates OH radicals directly in the spray which modify biomolecules within …

Effect Of Solution Chemistry On The Iodine Release From Iodoapatite In Aqueous Environments, Zelong Zhang, Léa Gustin, Weiwei Xie, Jie Lian, Kalliat T. Valsaraj, Jianwei Wang

Faculty Publications

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. To ensure the safe disposal of nuclear waste, understanding the release process of radionuclides retained in the nuclear waste forms is of vital importance. Iodoapatite Pb9.85(VO4)6I1.7, a potential waste form for iodine-129, was selected as a model system for ceramic waste forms in this study to understand the effect of aqueous species on iodine release. Semi-dynamic leaching tests were conducted on bulk samples in cap-sealed Teflon vessels with 0.1 mol/L NaCl, Na2CO3, Na3PO4, and Na2SO4 solutions under 90 °C, fixed sample surface area to solution volume ratio of 5/m, and periodic replacement of leaching solutions. The …

Ronald P. Kiene: Major League Pitching Prospect, Avid Sports Fisherman, And Biogeochemist Who Probed The Mysteries Of The Oceanic Organosulfur Cycle, Ronald S. Oremland, Gary King, Pieter Visscher, Douglas G. Capone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Testing Predictability Of Disease Outbreaks With A Simple Model Of Pathogen Biogeography, Tad A. Dallas, Colin J. Carlson, Timothée Poisot

Faculty Publications

© 2019 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. Predicting disease emergence and outbreak events is a critical task for public health professionals and epidemiologists. Advances in global disease surveillance are increasingly generating datasets that are worth more than their component parts for prediction-oriented work. Here, we use a trait-free approach which leverages information on the global community of human infectious diseases to predict the biogeography of pathogens through time. Our approach takes pairwise dissimilarities between countries’ pathogen …

Binding Site Matching In Rational Drug Design: Algorithms And Applications, Misagh Naderi, Jeffrey Mitchell Lemoine, Rajiv Gandhi Govindaraj, Omar Zade Kana, Wei Pan Feinstein, Michal Brylinski

Faculty Publications

© 2018 The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Interactions between proteins and small molecules are critical for biological functions. These interactions often occur in small cavities within protein structures, known as ligand-binding pockets. Understanding the physicochemical qualities of binding pockets is essential to improve not only our basic knowledge of biological systems, but also drug development procedures. In order to quantify similarities among pockets in terms of their geometries and chemical properties, either bound ligands can be compared to one another or binding sites can be matched directly. Both perspectives routinely take advantage of computational …

Les Chimères De Nerval : Le Temps, La Femme, Et Le Poète Lui-Même, Giselle Doucet

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Association Between Perfluoroalkyl Substance Exposure And Renal Function In Children With Ckd Enrolled In H3africa Kidney Disease Research Network, Shefali Sood, Akinlolu O. Ojo, Dwomoa Adu, Kurunthachalam Kannan, Akhgar Ghassabian, Tony Koshy, Suzanne M. Vento, Laura Jane Pehrson, Joseph F. Gilbert, Fatiu A. Arogundade, Adebowale D. Ademola, Babatunde O. Salako, Yami Raji, Charlotte Osafo, Sampson Antwi, Howard Trachtman, Leonardo Trasande, Samuel Ajayi, David Burke, Richard Cooper, Rasheed Gbadegesin, Titi Ilori, Manmak Mamven, Timothy Olanrewaju, Rulan Parekh, Jacob Rhule, Tunde Salako, Bamidele Tayo, Ifeoma Ulasi

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Haplotype Characterization Of The Sd1 Semidwarf Gene In United States Rice, Brijesh Angira, Christopher K. Addison, Tommaso Cerioli, Democrito B. Rebong, Diane R. Wang, Nathan Pumplin, Jong H. Ham, James H. Oard, Steven D. Linscombe, Adam N. Famoso

Faculty Publications

Plant height is an important target in US rice (Oryza sativa L.) breeding programs and the large effect of the sd1 semidwarf gene makes it a suitable target for marker-assisted selection. Although the deletion underlying the semidwarf allele is known and a gel-based DNA marker is available, this marker is not ideal for applied breeding because of throughput and cost constraints. The objectives of this study were to characterize the haplotype diversity at the SD1 locus within US rice germplasm and develop a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assay for breeding applications. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) SNP-Seek database was …

A Bayesian Adaptive Phase Ii Clinical Trial Design Accounting For Spatial Variation, Beibei Guo, Yong Zang

Faculty Publications

Conventional phase II clinical trials evaluate the treatment effects under the assumption of patient homogeneity. However, due to inter-patient heterogeneity, the effect of a treatment may differ remarkably among subgroups of patients. Besides patient’s individual characteristics such as age, gender, and biomarker status, a substantial amount of this heterogeneity could be due to the spatial variation across geographic regions because of unmeasured or unknown spatially varying environmental and social exposures. In this article, we propose a hierarchical Bayesian adaptive design for two-arm randomized phase II clinical trials that accounts for the spatial variation as well as patient’s individual characteristics. We …

Regulation Of Photosynthetic Cyclic Electron Flow Pathways By Adenylate Status In Higher Plant Chloroplasts, Nicholas Fisher, Terry M. Bricker, David M. Kramer

Faculty Publications

© 2019 Cylic electron flow (CEF) around Photosystem I in photosynthetic eukaryotes is likely to be necessary to augment ATP production, rapidly- and precisely balancing the plastid ATP/NADPH energy budget to meet the demands of downstream metabolism. Many regulatory aspects of this process are unclear. Here we demonstrate that the higher plant plastid NADH/Fd:plastoquinone reductase (NDH) and proposed PGR5/PGRL1 ferredoxin:plastoquinone reductase (FQR) pathways of CEF are strongly, rapidly and reversibly inhibited in vitro by ATP with Ki values of 670 μM and 240 μM respectively, within the range of physiological changes in ATP concentrations. Control experiments ruled out effects on …

Gamma Ray Flashes Produced By Lightning Observed At Ground Level By Tetra-Ii, D. J. Pleshinger, S. T. Alnussirat, J. Arias, S. Bai, Y. Banadaki, M. L. Cherry, J. H. Hoffman, E. Khosravi, M. D. Legault, R. Rodriguez, D. Smith, D. Smith, E. Del Toro, J. C. Trepanier, A. Sunda-Meya

Faculty Publications

In its first 2 years of operation, the ground-based Terrestrial gamma ray flash and Energetic Thunderstorm Rooftop Array (TETRA)-II array of gamma ray detectors has recorded 22 bursts of gamma rays of millisecond-scale duration associated with lightning. In this study, we present the TETRA-II observations detected at the three TETRA-II ground-level sites in Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and Panama together with the simultaneous radio frequency signals from the lightning data sets VAISALA Global Lightning Dataset, VAISALA National Lightning Detection Network, Earth Networks Total Lightning Network, and World Wide Lightning Location Network. The relative timing between the gamma ray events and the …

Finite Time Estimation For Time-Varying Systems With Delay In The Measurements, Saeed Ahmed, Michael Malisoff, Frédéric Mazenc

Faculty Publications

We build finite time observers for time-varying nonlinear systems with delays in the outputs, using a dynamic extension that computes fundamental matrices. Our observers achieve finite time convergence when no disturbances are present. When disturbances are present, we provide approximate values for the solutions, which lead to an upper bound on the approximation error after a suitable finite time. We illustrate our work in a class of systems arising in the study of vibrating membranes, where time-varying coefficients can be used to represent intermittent measurements.