Digital Commons Network^™

Landscape Patterns Of Community Structure, Biomass And Net Primary Productivity Of Mangrove Forests In The Florida Coastal Everglades As A Function Of Resource, Regulators, Hydroperiod, And Hurricane Distrubance, Edward Castaneda

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Spatial and temporal patterns of mangrove vegetation in the Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) reflect a major interplay of resources, regulators and hydroperiod gradients. I investigated landscape patterns of community structure, biomass and NPP of mangroves along two FCE estuaries: Shark River and Taylor River. I also evaluated whether pulsing events such as Hurricane Wilma are significant to soil nutrient inventories and vertical accretion of mangroves in FCE. There was a higher forest structural complexity of mangroves in Shark River relative to Taylor River. The biomass root:shoot ratio was 17 times higher in Taylor River relative to Shark River, indicating that …

Power Series Expansions For Waves In High-Contrast Plasmonic Crystals, Santiago Prado Parentes Fortes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this thesis, a method is developed for obtaining convergent power series expansions for dispersion relations in two-dimensional periodic media with frequency dependent constitutive relations. The method is based on high-contrast expansions in the parameter _x0011_ = 2_x0019_d=_x0015_, where d is the period of the crystal cell and _x0015_ is the wavelength. The radii of convergence obtained are not too small, on the order of _x0011_ _x0019_ 10􀀀2. That the method applies to frequency dependent media is an important fact, since the majority of the methods available in the literature are restricted to frequency independent constitutive relations. The convergent series …

A Study Of The Interactions Of Lipid Bilayers And Dendrimers Using Small Angle X-Ray Scattering And Freeze Fracture Transmission Electron Microscopy, Derek R. Dorman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lipids are fundamental to all life forms, a key component of cell walls, and essential to proper respiratory function. They are amphiphilic molecules and readily form bilayers. Dendrimers are designer molecules that can be tailored to provide a variety of endgroup moieties, sizes, and charges. The interaction of liposomes and dendrimers can provide information on how medicine interacts with cells and an array of unique structures can be imagined from their assembly into superstructures. Polypropylenimine tetraamine (DAB-Am) and 1-directional arborol dendrimers have been studied in different molar concentrations with 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) bilayers. One-directional arborols are amphiphilic dendrimers with a hydrophilic …

Dynamic Model Of Ecological Factors Impacting The Gulf Of Mexico Dead Zone, Jimmie Arnold Brumfield Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The industrial agriculture complex of the Mississippi River Drainage Basin has the positive effect of feeding more individuals with less land via the use of chemical nutrients, pesticides and drainage. The negative effects of the agricultural nutrient load are carried by the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. After the flood of 1927 the Flood Control Act of 1928 began changing the Mississippi River into a navigation and flood control project. While successful, the river was turned into a channel where nutrient input was discharged into the Gulf of Mexico. Nitrogen compounds discharged from the Mississippi are claimed to …

Athens And Byzantium: Platonic Political Philosophy In Religious Empire, Jeremiah Heath Russell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

It is traditionally understood that there is a gap, which spans well over one thousand years, between Plato’s own political philosophy and its successor in medieval Islamic philosophy. A most likely bridge between Plato and these later philosophers is Neoplatonism. However, scholars argue that this philosophic school abandoned its predecessor’s emphasis on political philosophy. This dissertation challenges the traditional interpretation by reconstructing a political philosophy based on a Neoplatonic commentary on Plato’s Gorgias. The first two chapters place this commentary within its historical context, as well as its place within the larger Neoplatonic pedagogy. The remainder of the dissertation reconstructs …

The Effects Of Aging And Unilateral Vestibular Disorders On The Kinematic Performance Of Vestibular Rehabilitation Exercises And Physical Function, Micah Leslie Bradshaw Klumpp

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The overall purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of unilateral vestibular disorders and aging on functional performances of activities of daily living and vestibular rehabilitation exercises by examining the correlations among actual and perceived functional measures, the kinematic measurement differences among young healthy adults, older healthy adults, and older adults with unilateral vestibular deficits, and the correlations between kinematic and functional measures. Perceived and actual functional abilities and kinematic variables were compared for young controls, older healthy controls, and patients with unilateral vestibular hypofunction with no previous vestibular rehabilitation. In older adults, better strength, balance, coordination, and …

Dimer Models For Knot Polynomials, Moshe Cohen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A dimer model consists of all perfect matchings on a (bipartite) weighted signed graph, where the product of the signed weights of each perfect matching is summed to obtain an invariant. In this paper, the construction of such a graph from a knot diagram is given to obtain the Alexander polynomial. This is further extended to a more complicated graph to obtain the twisted Alexander polynomial, which involved "twisting" by a representation. The space of all representations of a given knot complement into the general linear group of a fixed size can be described by the same graph. This work …

Experimental And Analytical Study Of The Surface Texturing Enhanced Lubrication Elements, Yifan Qiu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Surface texturing is a method that modifies the frictional surface of a nominally flat tribocomponent by shallow patterns. It is found that with added patterns to the surface of a mechanical face seal or thrust bearing, their tribological performance improves, i.e. both friction and wear rate decrease. The current research concentrates on the analysis of hydrodynamic effect responsible for the performance enhancement of the spiral groove patterns and dimples on mechanical seal-like structures and the experimental evaluation of the tribological behavior of these structures. Surface textures considered are: dimple texture and spiral groove pattern. In the research on the dimple …

Maladies Of Modernity: Scientism In Politics, David Nathan Whitney

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the complex relationship between science and politics. More specifically, it focuses on the problem of scientism. Features of scientism include the dogmatic faith in the methods of the natural sciences (and the accompanying assumption that those methods can be successfully imported into the social sciences), a materialistic worldview, the rejection of the bios theoretikos, the prohibition of philosophical questions, and an emphasis on immanent fulfillment through the power of science. I seek to demonstrate that scientism is intellectually impoverishing and politically dangerous. Given the lack of full-length studies on the subject, I trace the development of scientism …

Integration Of Paleotempestology With Coastal Risk And Vulnerability Assessment: Case Studies From The Dominican Republic And Nicaragua, Devyani Kar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hurricanes account for a significant portion of damages, injuries, and fatalities in the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic has had 3 major hurricane strikes in this century resulting in loss of lives for thousands of people and billions of US $ in economic loss. Major hurricanes had been relatively infrequent in north-eastern Nicaragua’s modern history until Hurricane Felix, a Category 5 storm, made landfall in the north-east in 2007. It caused 130 confirmed deaths and brought devastation to many villages. These events highlight a need for re-evaluation of hurricane risk based on a more comprehensive and long-term hurricane history. Using paleotempestological …

Data Transfer Scheduling With Advance Reservation And Provisioning, Mehmet Balman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the years, scientific applications have become more complex and more data intensive. Although through the use of distributed resources the institutions and organizations gain access to the resources needed for their large-scale applications, complex middleware is required to orchestrate the use of these storage and network resources between collaborating parties, and to manage the end-to-end processing of data. We present a new data scheduling paradigm with advance reservation and provisioning. Our methodology provides a basis for provisioning end-to-end high performance data transfers which require integration between system, storage and network resources, and coordination between reservation managers and data transfer …

Augmented Breast Tumor Classification By Perfusion Analysis, Bruce Yu-Sun Lin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Magnetic resonance and computed tomography imaging aid in the diagnosis and analysis of pathologic conditions. Blood flow, or perfusion, through a region of tissue can be computed from a time series of contrast-enhanced images. Perfusion is an important set of physiological parameters that reflect angiogenesis. In cancer, heightened angiogenesis is a key process in the growth and spread of tumorous masses. An automatic classification technique using recovered perfusion may prove to be a highly accurate diagnostic tool. Such a classification system would supplement existing histopathological tests, and help physicians to choose the most optimal treatment protocol. Perfusion is obtained through …

Exploring The Impacts Of Wiki Collaborative Technologies Within The English Writing Environment, Valarie D. Dufrene

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The use of technology in the writing classroom has been a staple since the early-1990’s when the personal computer made its way onto the desks of teachers and students across America. Since that time, the challenge has been for educators to incorporate the most recent technologies in an effort to stimulate student writing. This study examined the effects the use of a web-based wiki technology can have on the writings of high school students. The primary goal of this study was to explore how the web-based collaborative technology in Google Docs and used in a secondary English IV classroom can …

Reflections On Teaching: Dwelling In A Third Space, Sean William Buckreis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

What does it mean to teach well? What does it mean to be a good teacher? These are questions that have been asked for hundreds if not thousands of years; yet, an unequivocal answer has not been reached. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s (1962/1996) concept of a paradigm, it is easy to see that the field of curriculum is anything but paradigmatic. Competing philosophical, psychological, and sociological schools of thought, for example, all support differing ideas of what “good teaching” looks like, and teacher education programs often reflect this diversity of thought. The situation does not end at the borders of …

The Development Of Primary And Secondary Memory And Their Relationship To Fluid Intelligence, Sharon Diane Eaves

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers have been able to link working memory to many important cognitive abilities throughout the life span. Two of the unanswered questions about working memory are what cognitive processes function during working memory task performance and how do these processes directly relate to intelligence? A recent model (Unsworth & Engle, 2006) suggested that performance on working memory tasks was determined by two abilities: the capacity of primary memory and the ability to efficiently retrieve information from secondary memory. In the current study, we extended Unsworth and Engle’s (2006) methodology to include two groups of children (ages 8-9 and 10-11). Our …

The Theoretical Learning Impact Of A Summer Engineering Program Curriculum For Underrepresented Middle School Students, Vaneshette Teshawn Henderson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This mixed methods, exploratory and confirmatory study was designed to evaluate the theoretical learning impact of a innovative summer engineering program curriculum would have on its audience, middle school minority students. Several theories were used to develop the innovative curriculum including Human Constructivism, cultural learning styles of African Americans, visual spatial learning and graphic design learning. This study was completed in two phases: evaluation of existing middle school summer engineering program curriculum for best practices and development of innovative curriculum and expert evaluation of the innovative curriculum. Three existing programs from across the country participated in this study. Five engineering …

Sonata No.1 For Violin And Piano, Op. 80,By Sergei Prokofiev: A Guide To Interpretation, Boris Blagoev

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sergei Prokofiev was an extremely prolific composer whose career brought him success throughout Europe and the U. S. as well as Russia and the Soviet Union. He wrote for nearly every genre, and his most popular works today include operas, ballets, symphonies, and concertos. As a pianist, most of the concertos and sonatas that Prokofiev wrote were for the piano. However, his contributions to the violin repertoire are significant. Prokofiev wrote two concertos and two sonatas for solo violin. Of these, Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 80 is unique for many reasons. The piece took Prokofiev eight …

Joep Franssens' Harmony Of The Spheres: A Conductor's Analysis, David Andrew Hobson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Harmony of the Spheres is Dutch composer Joep Franssens’ most extensive choral work to date, exhibiting a substantial possibility to enter the international repertoire as a complete work; however, several of the movements can stand alone effectively. Presented in five symmetrically conceived movements, Franssens scores the piece for SSAATTBB chorus with only the addition of full string orchestra for Movement III. The composition seeks to explore profound connections between science, music, philosophy, religion, and human relationships, intertwining excerpts from Benedict de Spinoza’s magnum opus, Ethica, allusions to the ancient idea of the music of the spheres, and European minimalism. Franssens …

Characterization Of Rock/Fluids Interactions At Reservoir Conditions, Dayanand Saini

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, interfacial phenomena of spreading, wettability, and rock/oil adhesion interactions in complex rock/oil/water systems were characterized at reservoir conditions of elevated pressures and temperatures. Capabilities of both ambient and reservoir condition optical cells were used for measuring the oil/water interfacial tension and dynamic (the water-receding and the water-advancing) contact angles for various complex rock/oil/water systems. Well known sessile oil drop volume alteration method was successfully used in this study for evaluating the applicability of the modified Young’s equation for characterizing the line tension in complex rock/oil/water systems at reservoir conditions. This appears to be first time when rock/fluids …

Dissolution Of Chitosan In Ionic Liquids For Acylation Chemistry And Formation Of Cellulose-Chitosan Blends, Cristina Stefanescu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Dissolution of chitosan in ionic liquids was accomplished. It has been shown that 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (BMIMAc) is a better solvent than 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (BMIMCl). Dissolution of chitosan in BMIMCl required a prior regeneration of chitosan from 1% acetic acid solution. In the case of BMIMAc, both dried chitosan and regenerated chitosan from acetic acid solution have been dissolved in a relatively short amount of time. While concentrations up to 2 wt% of chitosan in BMIMCl could be obtained, concentrations of 10 wt % of chitosan in BMIMAc were realized. Homogeneous phthalation and benzoylation of chitosan were achieved in these ionic …

Principals' Perceptions Of Meeting Vision And Collaboration Standards In Alternative Schools, Perry Dicarlo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The present research was designed to address principals’ perceptions of meeting vision and collaboration standards in alternative schools. A multiple case study was used to accomplish the goals of this study. The objective and questions of this research pertains to school leaders’ behavior, knowledge, and performance within the context of a school leadership situation. Ecological theory framed this study as it refers to a student’s life within and outside of the school walls. The six research questions were formed and the basis of this exploration of two alternative school principals and contributes to an eventual portrait of the importance of …

Iron (Iii) Oxide And Copper (Ii) Oxide Mediated Formation Of Pcdd/Fs From Thermal Degradation Of 2-Mcp And 1,2-Dcbz, Shadrack Kirwa Nganai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Formation of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) which occurs inexorably from most thermal and combustion processes constitutes a major toxic component of environmental pollutants. Generally, it is well established that transition metal-mediated reactions account for the majority of PCDD/F emissions from combustion sources. Specifically, both copper and iron ions, which occur abundantly in combustion generated particulate matter, are considered probably the most active in promoting PCDD/F formation typically in the low temperature post-combustion zone and flue gas pollution control devices. It has also been demonstrated that chlorinated phenols are key intermediates in essentially all pathways of PCDD/F formation. Chlorinated benzenes …

Ospc In The Pathogenesis Of Borrelia Burgdorferi, Sunita V. Seemanapalli

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lyme disease is a multisystem disorder caused by the tick vector Borrelia burgdorferi. During its life cycle between the tick vector and the mammalian host, Borrelia up- and down-regulates the expression of its surface lipoproteins. Of its many surface lipoproteins, the Outer surface protein C (OspC) is crucial for initial mammalian infection. OspC has a common role shared with other lipoproteins of protection against host innate defences and a unique function in facilitating the dissemination of B. burgdorferi in the murine host. The structure of OspC was solved in 2001 and the lipoprotein was found to be predominantly alpha-helical with …

Exploration Of Ternary Intermetallic Materials Using Tin And Gallium Flux, Edem Kodzo Okudzeto

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is the structure-property relationships of ternary intermetallic stannides and gallides. We are interested in these compounds because of the wide range of physical properties they possess. While investigating the Ln-Co-Sn system (Ln = lanthanide), we have synthesized single crystals that crystallize in the Yb3Rh4Sn13, Ho7Co6Sn23 and the Tb5Rh6Sn18 structure types. We observe the formation of a particular structure type depending on the size of the lanthanide present. The aforementioned compounds all contain CoSn6 trigonal prisms, which create voids occupied by Ln and Sn polyhedral units. We have also investigated the physical properties of these compounds …

Cbod₅ Treatment And Nitrogen Transformations Of The Marshland Upwelling System In Intermediate And Saltwater Marshes, Lorna Anne Putnam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The marshland upwelling system (MUS) was designed to treat domestic wastewater from coastal dwellings where conventional methods are inadequate due to high water tables, poor hydraulic soil conditions, anaerobic soils, and saline groundwater. Currently there is no adequate treatment system available and coastal dwellings are contributing to water quality problems. This study focused on determining the treatment effectiveness of the MUS for organic matter and understanding the specific processes involved in nitrogen treatment.

The treatment of organic matter, measured as five-day carbonaceous biological oxygen demand (CBOD₅), was effective in field tests for both saltwater and intermediate marshes. Global …

Essays On The Integration Of Anisotropic Landscapes Within Contemporary Geographic Profiling Models, Joshua D. Kent

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A criminal geographic profile is a tool used by law enforcement professionals for estimating the probable location of a serial offender’s anchor point, or domicile. This estimate is constructed according to the distribution of linked crime scenes. While this approach can utilize a number of different modeling techniques, most fail to account for the inherent irregularities of the physical and cultural landscape. Contemporary methodologies have consistently adopted the a priori assumption that an offender’s crime scenes and anchor point are located across an isotropic surface on which the opportunity to offend is equally distributed around the offender’s residence. Simple introspection …

The Effects Of Being Placed In Special Education Classes Versus General Education Classes And Teacher Certification On Students' High-Stakes Testing Scores, Bethany Ann Porter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The introduction of new laws such as the amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997) and the No Child Left Behind Act have changed education for special education students in the United States. Students with disabilities are now more frequently being held to the same standards as those students without disabilities. These federal laws are designed to help close the achievement gap among all students regardless of race, gender, poverty, or disability status. Special education students are now required to participate in statewide high-stakes testing programs alongside their nondisabled peers. Another movement involves including students with disabilities …

White Noise Methods For Anticipating Stochastic Differential Equations, Julius Esunge

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on linear stochastic differential equations of anticipating type. Owing to the lack of a theory of differentiation for random processes, the said differential equations are appropriately understood and studied as anticipating stochastic integral equations. The unfolding work considers equations in which anticipation arises either from the initial condition or the integrand. In this regard, the techniques of white noise analysis are applied to such equations. In particular, by using the Hitsuda-Skorokhod integral which nicely extends the It integral to anticipating integrands, we then apply the S-transform from white noise analysis to study this new equation.

The Extended Picture Group, With Applications To Line Arrangement Complements, Charles Richard Egedy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We obtain the picture group as the quotient with a torsion subgroup, of an extended picture group, which is isomorphic to the kernel of a precrossed module homomorphism. In addition to expanding the notion of a picture group, the new formulation gives a natural way to construct homomorphisms between picture groups by describing deformations of one-vertex subpictures. The extended picture group thus provides a convenient way to describe generators for the second homotopy group of line arrangement complements as well as homomorphisms between these groups. In particular, we show that the homomorphisms relate to a lattice structure corresponding roughly to …

The Syntheses Of Methyl Jasmonate And Analogs Of Alpha-Methylene-Gamma-Butyrolactone Utilizing Titanium Medicated Cyclocarbonylation, Steve O. Lawrence

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

From its humble beginnings as a novel carbon–carbon bond forming reaction, the Pauson–Khand reaction has lead to the synthetic development of a variety of natural products. One particular variation of the Pauson–Khand reaction was called the hetero Pauson–Khand. This reaction differs from the normal Pauson–Khand reaction because the reaction employs an intramolecular titanium mediated cycloaddition using enal and enones instead of alkenes and alkynes functional groups to prepare a variety of natural products. These natural products usually contain a bicyclic cyclopentenone core. Because the new ring contains a hetero atom, the name hetero Pauson–Khand was coined. Alpha–Methylene–Gamma–Butyrolactones posses a wide …