Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Discontinuous Galerkin Method For 1-D Inviscid Burgers Equation, Kiran Voonna

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of this research work is to apply the discontinuous Galerkin method to a classical partial differential equation to investigate the properties of the numerical solution and compare the numerical solution to the analytical solution by using discontinuous Galerkin method. This scheme is applied to 1-D non-linear conservation equation (Burgers equation) in which the governing differential equation is simplified model of the inviscid Navier-stokes equations. In this work three cases are studied. They are sinusoidal wave profile, initial shock discontinuity and initial linear distribution. A grid and time step refinement is performed. Riemann fluxes at each element interfaces …

Luminescent Semiconductor Quantum Dots (Qds) And Their Nanoassemblies As Bioprobes, Yongfen Chen

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Quantum dots (QDs) CdS and CdSe were synthesized in three different media including reverse micelles, aqueous solution, and trioctylphosphine oxide/trioctylphosphine (TOPO/TOP). Transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-VIS, fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy were used to characterize the QDs and their nanoassemblies. CdS QDs synthesized in reverse micelles showed broad emission spectra. CdSe-CdS QDs with core shell structure synthesized in aqueous solution showed more than 30% emission quantum yield. CdSe-CdS QDs of different emission colors were prepared. CdSe and CdSe-ZnS QDs were also synthesized in TOPO/TOP media. This synthesis route produced highly luminescent CdSe QDs with over 50% emission quantum …

Electrospray Fundamentals And Non-Covalent Peptide-Lipid Interactions As Studied By Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Reonance Mass Spectrometry, Yan Li

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A novel electrochemical probe has been designed, built, and used to characterize the distribution in solution potential within the metal capillary and Taylor cone of the electrospray (ES) device. Results show that the measured potential difference increases as the internal probe travels toward the ES capillary exit, with values rising sharply as the base of the Taylor cone is penetrated. Higher conductivity solutions exhibit potentials of higher magnitude at longer distances away from the counter electrode, but these same solutions show lower potentials near the ES capillary exit. Removal of easily oxidizable species from the solution causes the measured potential …

Developmental Pathways For Children With Disruptive Behavior Disorders, Deborah Phillips

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to incorporate attachment theory and psychopathy into a transactional model to explain the development of disruptive behavior disorders in children. The model tested in this study proposed two broad pathways leading to the development of disruptive behavior disorders. Each pathway was characterized by an atrisk child temperament, negative reactivity and psychopathy, which when embedded in an at-risk environment, would result in conduct problems. Hyperactivity and negative life events were hypothesized to be broad band risk factors for both pathways. The first pathway, characterized by callous-unemotional traits (CU), was hypothesized to be positively associated with …

The Effects Of Telephone Intervention On Arthritis Self-Efficacy, Depression, Pain And Fatigue In Older Adults With Arthritis, David Pariser

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The current study was conducted to examine the effects of telephone intervention on arthritis self-efficacy, depression, pain and fatigue in older adult patients in different clinical settings. Eighty-five subjects from two clinics were randomly assigned to either the control (n = 45) or intervention (n = 40) groups. The study was a mixed quantitative/qualitative design. Each subject completed several pre-tests including the Arthritis Self-Efficacy (ASE) scale, the Geriatric Depression scale (GDS), and numeric rating scales for both pain and fatigue. All subjects received an informational packet on self-management of arthritis and developed an action plan and personal goals for self-management …

New Evidence On Interest Rate And Foreign Exchange Rate Modeling, Haitham Al-Zoubi

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation empirically and theoretically investigates three interrelated issues of market anomalies in interest rates derivatives and foreign exchange rates. The first essay models the spot exchange rate as a decomposition of permanent and transitory components. Unlike extant analysis, the transitory component could be stationary or explosive. The second essay examines the market efficiency hypothesis in the foreign exchange markets and relates the rejection of forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis to the existence of risk premium not to the failure of rational expectation. The third essay examines the behavior of short-term riskless rate and models the risk free rate as a …

Essays On The Dynamics Of Capital Structure, Joseph Farhat

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Tests of the static trade-off theory that posits that firms move towards the optimum capital structure necessitate a joint hypothesis test - whether firms adjust toward target leverage, and whether the proxy used for target leverage is the true target leverage. Prior studies use the time-series mean leverage for each firm, the industry median leverage, an estimated cross-sectional leverage, and a tobit estimated leverage using the factors suggested by the static trade-off theory as proxies for the target leverage. In this dissertation, I examine whether these proxies are equivalent and test the consistency of the proxies with the theorized behavior …

As Runs The Deer, Mignon Fahr

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

These eleven chapters comprise Part One of a novel of thirty-seven chapters, entitled As Runs the Deer. It is a dialectic play on the processes of Time, as well as a play with evolving dialects. Nominally set in the 19th c., in an Appalachian-like terrain, it shows the difficulties James Ian Pierson meets when emerging out of his wilderness to re-enter his former life. Opening his own story by means of his sycamore cane, the 19- yr.-old amnesiac must soon reconcile his past with the invading "Now!" He evades the intrusion of a drunken hunter, is overcome by the wintry …

Asking To See The Soul: A Video Documentary Exploring The 'Coming Out' Experiences Of Men Identifying With A Gay Subculture, Barth Cox

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis details the production process of a video documentary that describes the coming out processes of gay men who identify with the Bear subculture of the gay community and some of the conflicts and consequences that they face due to this action. The aim of this production was to portray with dignity and compassion the recorded feelings and personal histories of the subjects interviewed. Chapters are devoted to the development, pre-production, production and post-production phased of this documentary. A detailed script, transcripts, shot list, and other examples and illustrations are included to give a better understanding of the entire …

Preparation Of Pyridinium And Diaminocarbonium Barbituric Acid Ylides, Frederic Douelle

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through NMR experiments of the reaction of barbituric acid with carbodiimide, a general synthetic procedure for the preparation of 5-diaminomethylenebarbiturates (DABA) was developed. This procedure is very simple and applicable to the preparation of large quantities of DABA derivatives. Through the X-ray structural study of one of the DABA derivatives it was established that these compounds have a ylide-type structure with strong charge separation inside the molecule. 5-Ylide-pyridinium-methyl barbituric acid derivatives were investigated with the isolation of 4-dimethylamino-1-(2,4,6-trioxohexahydro- pyrimidin-5-ylide-methyl)-pyridinium as well as its corresponding 1,3- dimethylbarbituric acid derivative with quantitative yields. An alternative approach was attempted in order to prepare …

The Association Between Callous-Unemotional Traits And Emotional Processing Within Individuals And Across Generations, Eva Kimonis

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

There is evidence to suggest that an impaired ability to process distressing and threatening emotional stimuli may result in a callous-unemotional (CU) and thrill-andadventure- seeking (TAS) personality. In this study we examined emotional processing in fifty community children, each with one parent, using the emotional pictures dot-probe task, which is a computerized task measuring attention to emotional pictures in the form of a facilitation score. The relationship between emotional processing, CU traits, and TAS were examined to determine whether individuals high on CU traits would also be more TAS, and show a lack of facilitation to emotional pictures. The results …

Image Compression Using Cascaded Neural Networks, Chigozie Obiegbu

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Images are forming an increasingly large part of modern communications, bringing the need for efficient and effective compression. Many techniques developed for this purpose include transform coding, vector quantization and neural networks. In this thesis, a new neural network method is used to achieve image compression. This work extends the use of 2-layer neural networks to a combination of cascaded networks with one node in the hidden layer. A redistribution of the gray levels in the training phase is implemented in a random fashion to make the minimization of the mean square error applicable to a broad range of images. …

An Automated Data Warehouse, Sudhindra Sharathkumar

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

An increasing number of organizations are implementing data warehouses to strengthen their decision support systems. This comes with the challenges of the population and the periodic update of data warehouses. In this thesis, we present a tool that provides users with features to create a warehouse database and transform structures of the source database into structures for the warehouse database. It is highly interactive, easy to use, and hides the underlying complexity of manual SQL code generation from its users. Attributes from source tables can be mapped into new attributes in the warehouse database tables using aggregate functions. Then, relevant …

Water Quality Modeling Of A Storm Water Channel, Sivaramakrishnan Sangameswaran

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The fate of nutrients and their relationships in the London Avenue Canal is very complex. This study was undertaken to assess the water quality of the canal in wet and dry weather conditions, and to develop a 2 "“ layer model to predict the response of the canal to storm water discharges. Samples were collected at specific locations and at five different depths during wet and dry weather periods. These were used as background values in the model and for comparing the model output with the actual field results to verify the validity of the model. A 2-layer model has …

Vnc Service On Bluetooth Wireless Network, Rui Xia

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

With characteristics such as small size, low weight and low power consumption, Bluetooth wireless technology provides efficient communication ability for pocket size devices, for which power consumption is critical. Built-in security features may serve as substitute for application level security. Bluetooth Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) provides information of availability and characteristics of services in the RF proximity. In this work, a VNC service is set up for Bluetooth wireless network and performance tests are made. A VNC server provides virtual consoles for VNC clients across different platforms. VNC has little computing power requirement on client side, fitting the profiles of …

Adaptive Predictive Handoff Scheme With Channel Borrowing In Cellular Network, Lei Yu

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Previously, we presented an extension of predictive channel reservation (PCR) scheme, called HPCR_CB, for handoff motivated by the rapid evolving technology of mobile positioning. In this thesis, the author proposes a new scheme, called adaptive PCR_CB (APCR_CB), which is an extension of HPCR_CB by incorporating the concept of adaptive guard channels. In APCR_CB, the number of guard channel(s) is adjusted automatically based on the average handoff blocking rate measured in the past certain time period. The handoff blocking rate is controlled under the designated threshold and the new call blocking rate is minimized. The performance evaluation of the APCR_CB scheme …

Development Of Novel Nicotinic Receptor Mediated Therapeutic Agents: Synthesis And Biological Evaluation Of Novel Epibatidine Analogs And The First Total Synthesis Of Anabasamine And Related Analogs, Stassi Dimaggio

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to search for a more selective, less toxic neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor analgesic agent in comparison to epibatidine, a series of analogs with hybrid structures of epibatidine and ABT-594 were designed and synthesized. The 1-(pyridyloxymethyl)-7-azabicyclo[2.2.1]heptane ring systems were furnished via an intramolecular cyclization from a trans 1, 4 disubstitituted amino-cyclohexane derivative. The functionalized cyclohexane ring was formed via a [4+2] Diels-Alder cyclization reaction between the acetamidoacrylate and Danishefsky's diene. These 1- (pyridyloxymethyl)-7-azabicyclo[2.2.1]heptane ring systems were then tested in vitro as potential á4â2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor ligands with high potency and selectivity. In addition, a series of rigid …

Facultative Bioreactor Landfill: An Environmental And Geotechnical Study, Ricardo Deabreu

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A relatively new concept of Municipal Solid Waste treatment is known as bioreactor landfill technology. Bioreactor landfills are sanitary landfills that use microbiological processes purposefully to transform and stabilize the biodegradable organic waste constituents in a shorter period of time. One of the most popular types of bioreactor landfills is the landfill with leachate recirculation. However, it is observed that ammonia rapidly accumulates in landfills that recirculate leachate and may be the component that limits the potential to discharge excess leachate to the environment. In the facultative landfill, leachate is nitrified biologically using an on-site treatment plant and converted by …

Relational And Overt Aggression In Youth: Same Aggressive Tendency, Different Manifestations?, Monica Marsee

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research was to determine whether relational aggression in girls was similar to overt aggression in boys in terms of social-psychological adjustment. A total of 199 fifth through ninth grade children (86 boys, 113 girls) participated in this study. Relational and overt aggression scores were used to form groups of children who varied on the two types of aggression. Results indicated that overtly aggressive boys did not differ from relationally aggressive girls in terms of depression, anxiety, psychopathy, sensation seeking, ADHD, delinquency, and drug use. Further, boys in the aggressive groups scored consistently higher than boys in …

Red, Right, Returning, Peter Geye

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Ubitour: A 3g/Wlan Architecture To Support E-Tourism, Vivek Chinta

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Electronic tourism is a new type of application that provides information, often location-based, to tourists. The information includes route guidance, listings of nearby points of interest, guided tours with multimedia presentations and experiences shared by visitors. E-tourism applications can also include storing sound and images recorded by visitors. An architecture to support e-tourism called 'UbiTour' is presented in this dissertation. UbiTour provides different services to visitors such as location-based information, route-guidance, announcements and visitor collaboration.

UbiTour aims at using 3G for ubiquitous connectivity and WLAN for high-speed, local information, running on a PDA. WLAN, specifically 802.11, provides a high-bandwidth, broadcast-based …

An Overview Of Tourmaline Mineralogy From Gem Tourmaline Producing Pegmatite Districts In Africa, Brian Giller

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Suites of gem-quality faceted tourmaline, slices and fragments from Nigeria Namibia, Mali, Tanzania, Congo and Mozambique were quantitatively analyzed to determine mineralogy and minor elementChemistry. The specimens range in color from colorless to pink, red, yellowish-brown, green, bluish-gray, blue, brown and black. The results show that these tourmalines are elbaite, liddicoatite, rossmanite and schorl. Fe, Mn and Ti are the principal chromophores of the studied tourmaline. Fe is the most dominant and causes green, blue, dark-brown and black colors. Mn imparts pink and red hues. Correlations between Mn content and pink color intensity were not found. The Mn2+¡êTi4+ charge transfer …

Personal Boundary Issues In Counselor-Client, Professor-Student, And Supervisor-Supervisee Relationships In Counseling, Mark Thornton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to explore the acceptability of social, business, and romantic relationships in counselor-client, professor-student, and supervisor-supervisee relationships. In addition, the study sought to determine whether professors and doctoral students in CACREP-accredited counseling programs responded differently to ethical boundary issues, and whether the differences in relationships between professor-student, supervisor-supervisee, or counselor-client influenced their responses. The study examined and compared the responses of participants to boundary issues on three different surveys. The results of the study revealed that personal relationships between counselors and clients were perceived to be less acceptable than relationships between professors and students and supervisors and …

Analytical Estimation Of Value At Risk Under Thick Tails And Fast Volatility Updating, Ahmad Telfah

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Despite its recent advent, value at risk (VaR) became the most widely used technique for measuring future expected risk for both financial and non-financial institutions. VaR, the measure of the worst expected loss over a given horizon at a given confidence level, depends crucially on the distributional aspects of trading revenues. Existing VaR models do not capture adequately some empirical aspects of financial data such as the tail thickness, which is vital in VaR calculations. Tail thickness in financial variables results basically from stochastic volatility and event risk (jumps). Those two sources are not totally separated; under event risk, volatility …

University Esl Instructors' Perceptions And Use Of Computer Technology In Teaching, Lili Bruess

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This interpretive qualitative study examined university ESL instructors' experiences using technologies and their personal views of technology integration. The study also explored the factors that affected these instructors' decisions for using computer and other technologies in their teaching. The informants in the study were five ESL instructors from five different institutions of higher learning in the southern state. The qualitative data were collected mainly through interviews along with self-report surveys and document materials. Overall positive statements were found in the instructors' experience and perception of their technology use in teaching. Nevertheless, it appears that these instructors' computer use is very …

Matter Of Life And Death, Jessica Goldfinch

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a critical analysis of the processes, concepts and imagery of my artwork. In my art, I intended to explore death anxieties, individuality and the uncanny. I am interested in what we leave behind after we are gone as proof of existing post mortem. My themes include procreation, forensic science, and religion among others. My imagery includes fragmented bodies, reliquaries, and forensic evidence. I use traditional and non-traditional sculpture materials and processes that are intended to conceptually inform the viewer further.

In The Dead Season, Sonja Hansard-Weiner

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the Dead Season is a manuscript of poetry that explores, through family narrative, the tensions between ignorance and truth, between honor and mendacity, between violation and veneration, between love and loss, between grief and transcendence. Set in rural Texas, the poems in this collection describe a harsh and unforgiving landscape seen largely, though not exclusively, through the eyes of a central child narrator. Rattlesnakes, tarantulas, drought, flood, birth, death, the poems present everyday occurrences and suggest that we often experience events before we have the context, knowledge, or emotional maturity to make sense of them in any reasonable manner. …

My Kind Of Music: Two New Orleans Stories, Mary-Louise Ruth

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My Kind of Music: Two New Orleans Stories is written in two parts, a fictional story about Mickey, an eleven year old white girl, growing up in New Orleans in 1954 and a non-fictional story of my experience as a teenager in New Orleans in 1959. Part I is Mickey's personal coming of age story influenced by the forbidden music of rhythm and blues. Since Mickey's story is set in the same year of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, it is also a coming of age story of a new social consciousness. Part II is a non-fiction recounting …

Data Visualization For The Benchmarking Engine, Sudha Joish

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In today's information age, data collection is not the ultimate goal; it is simply the first step in extracting knowledge-rich information to shape future decisions. In this thesis, we present ChartVisio - a simple web-based visual data-mining system that lets users quickly explore databases and transform raw data into processed visuals. It is highly interactive, easy to use and hides the underlying complexity of querying from its users. Data from tables is internally mapped into charts using aggregate functions across tables. The tool thus integrates querying and charting into a single general-purpose application. ChartVisio has been designed as a component …

Comparison Of Sampling-Based Algorithms For Multisensor Distributed Target Tracking, Trang Nguyen

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Nonlinear filtering is certainly very important in estimation since most real-world problems are nonlinear. Recently a considerable progress in the nonlinear filtering theory has been made in the area of the sampling-based methods, including both random (Monte Carlo) and deterministic (quasi-Monte Carlo) sampling, and their combination. This work considers the problem of tracking a maneuvering target in a multisensor environment. A novel scheme for distributed tracking is employed that utilizes a nonlinear target model and estimates from local (sensor-based) estimators. The resulting estimation problem is highly nonlinear and thus quite challenging. In order to evaluate the performance capabilities of the …