Digital Commons Network^™

The Institutional Determinants Of Property Regime Change In New Democracies: The Russian Federation, Hungary, And Czechoslovakia, R. Vanessa Krasner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Is there a relationship between the design of democratic institutions and optimal collective decisions? Optimum decisions are defined as achieving goals important to the transition such as deep and equitable property reforms. Democratic institutions refer to first-order institutions of governance and the electoral rules for choosing leaders. Overseeing both are the written or "parchment" constitutions. Constitutions are designed to distribute power among actors, generate efficiency, and govern the interactions among actors. My findings showed that constitutional designs intentionally and sometimes with unanticipated consequences can result in highly cooperative, competitive, or conflictual struggles by political actors over high-stakes distributive issues such …

Program Participants' Knowledge And Perceptions Of Effectiveness Of The French Quarter Formosan Termite Program, Alan L. Morgan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine program participants’ knowledge and perceptions of the effectiveness of the French Quarter Formosan Termite Program. The management of the Formosan subterranean termite is critical to the economic well-being of not only Louisiana, but the U.S. Estimates of property damage, repairs, and control measures exceed $1 billion per year in the U.S., of which $500 million is in Louisiana and $300 million is in the New Orleans area. In 1998, the LSU Agricultural Center, a statewide agricultural research and extension campus of Louisiana State University, in cooperation with the Agricultural Research Service, began …

Arterial And Venous Adaptations To Short-Term Handgrip Exercise Training, Mahmoud Awad Alomari

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Four studies on vascular and exercise physiology are presented in this document. The 1st study examined the relationships between measures of fitness and FVF in 55 young [22.6 ± 3.5 years] adults. Estimated VO_2peak correlated with arterial inflow (Ainf) [r=0.54; p=0.012] and resting venous outflow (Vout) [r=0.56; p=0.016]. Lastly, HG strength was associated with Vcap [r=0.57; p=0.007] and Vout [r=0.67; p=0.001]. The 2nd study examined the relationship between FVF and exercise tolerance (ExT) in 20 patients with HF [age: 59 ± 13 years] and 10 age-matched controls [age: 51 ± 16 years. The ExT was measured as the maximum …

From Lime Kilns To Art Galleries: A Historical Anthropogeography Of The Maine Coast City Of Rockland, William Francis Fagan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a historical anthropogeography that focuses on the city of Rockland, Maine from its prehistoric beginnings to the present. Throughout the historic period, a series of single industries have dominated Rockland's economy while its population has remained remarkably stable. Lime production, for mortar and plaster, was first, beginning with the earliest Europeans in the area in the eighteenth century and coming to its end in the 1930s. Shipping and shipbuilding were important outgrowths of the lime industry but shipbuilding ended by the early 1920s with the change from wood to steel as the favored material for shipbuilding. Commercial …

Mechanisms And Control Of Water Inflow To Wells In Gas Reservoirs With Bottom Water Drive, Miguel Armenta

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Water inflow may cease production of gas wells, leaving a significant amount of gas in the reservoir. Conventional technologies of gas well dewatering remove water from inside the wellbore without controlling water at its source. This study addresses mechanisms of water inflow to gas wells and a new completion method to control it. In a vertical oil well, the water cone top is horizontal, but in a gas well, the gas/water interface tends to bend downwards. It could be economically possible to produce gas-water systems without water breakthrough. Non-Darcy flow effect (NDFE), vertical permeability, aquifer size, density of well perforation, …

Design Of Optimal Equalizers And Precoders For Mimo Channels, Lijuan Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Channel equalization has been extensively studied as a method of combating ISI and ICI for high speed MIMO data communication systems. This dissertation focuses on optimal channel equalization in the presence of non-white observation noises with unknown PSD but bounded power-norm. A worst-case approach to optimal design of channel equalizers leads to an equivalent optimal H-infinity filtering problem for the MIMO communication systems. An explicit design algorithm is derived which not only achieves the zero-forcing (ZF) condition, but also minimizes the RMS error between the transmitted symbols and the received symbols. The second part of this dissertation investigates the design …

Career Counseling For College Students: The Influence Of A Computer-Assisted Career Decision-Making Program On The Stability Of College Major Selection At A Research-Extensive University, Mary D. Feduccia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of Career Discovery I, the first module in a computer-assisted program for career decision-making, on the stability of the choice of college majors. This study sought to determine whether any differences existed in the stability of college majors between students who entered a Research-Extensive University with undeclared majors, used Career Discovery I, and declared a major by the end of the first semester of enrollment and students who entered the same University with declared majors and did not use Career Discovery I during the investigation. In addition, the study …

The History Of Russian Vaudeville From 1800 To 1850, Alexander V. Tselebrovski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

 There is no significant scholarly work on the history of the Russian vaudeville. The author of the dissertation makes an attempt to explore the history of vaudeville in Russia from 1812, when the first original vaudeville was written by A. Shakhovskoi, to the 1850s, when vaudeville as a genre was finalized as a form and brought to its classic completion. Two phases of the history of vaudeville in Russia, aristocratic and democratic-raznochinnyi, are considered in close connection with the political, social, and cultural events of Russian society of the time. The first phase embraces the period from 1812, when …

Massively Parallel Molecular Dynamics Simulations Of Crack-Front Dynamics And Morphology In Amorphous Nanostructured Silica, Cindy Lynn Rountree

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Atomistic aspects of dynamic fracture in amorphous and nanostructured silica are herein studied via Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, ranging from a million to 113 million atom system. The MD simulations were performed on massivelly parallel computers using highly efficient multi-resolution algorithms. Crack propagation in these systems is accompanied by nucleation and growth of nanometer scale cavities up to 20 nm ahead of the crack front. Cavities coalesce and merge with the advancing crack to cause mechanical failure. Recent AFM studies in silica glasses confirm this scenario of fracture [1]. The morphology of the fracture surfaces is studied by calculating the …

On Implementing Dynamically Reconfigurable Architectures, Hatem Mahmoud El-Sayed El-Boghdadi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Dynamically reconfigurable architectures have the ability to change their structure at each step of a computation. This dissertation studies various aspects of implementing dynamic reconfiguration, ranging from hardware building blocks and low-level architectures to modeling issues and high-level algorithm design. First we derive conditions under which classes of communication sets can be optimally scheduled on the circuit-switched tree (CST). Then we present a method to configure the CST to perform in constant time all communications scheduled for a step. This results in a constant time implementation of a step of a segmentable bus, a fundamental dynamically reconfigurable structure. We introduce …

Block-Level Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficients For Autonomic Face Recognition, Willie L. Scott, Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a novel method of autonomic face recognition based on the recently proposed biologically plausible network of networks (NoN) model of information processing. The NoN model is based on locally parallel and globally coordinated transformations. In the NoN architecture, the neurons or computational units form distributed networks, which themselves link to form larger networks. In the general case, an n-level hierarchy of nested distributed networks is constructed. This models the structures in the cerebral cortex described by Mountcastle and the architecture based on that proposed for information processing by Sutton. In the implementation proposed in the dissertation, the …

Active Sites And The Effects Of Water And Temperature On The Photocatalytic Oxidation Of Formic Acid And Acetic Acid On Tio₂ Catalyst, Michael John Backes

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Analysis And Development Of A Vibration Isolation System For The Agicultural Camera : (Agcam) Remote Sensing Camera System, Adam L. Webster

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Presentation At The American Library Association Annual Conference, Jackie Shane

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Is The Emotional Contagion Scale A Predictor Of Contagious Depression In Dating Couples, Joni E. Kraft

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Multibeam Crosschecks Using Automated Methods, Susan Sebastian, Dave Wells

Hydrographic Science Research Center

The widespread use of multibeam sonar systems has brought to the forefront many developments to handle the tremendous amounts of data collected. One of the valuable quality assurance tools available for hydrographic data is that of analyzing depths where two tracklines cross. In contrast to the single-beam echosounding case, where crossing tracks result in single overlapping footprints, multibeam sonar crossing tracks involve the analysis of a multitude of redundant data points. The earliest (pre-GPS) multibeam crossing track analysis tools were used to improve georeferencing, shifting tracks to achieve spatial correlation at all intersections. Now, with georeferencing handled by GPS and …

Short-Term Shoreline And Volume Changes For The Beaches South Of Sebastian Inlet, Fl From August 21, 2000 Tonovember 23, 2002, Donald Evan Cresitello

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the short-term mean high water (MHW) shoreline and sand volume changes for 4.3-miles of coastline in Northern Indian River County, Florida. Eighteen surveys covering 47 profile lines surveyed from the dune to wading depth were performed from 8/21/00 to 11/23/02. Wind, wave, and water level data were used to determine the effects of individual storm events. The primary objective was to analyze the profile line changes for the study region. Shoreline and sand volume changes were computed and compared to the proximity to Sebastian Inlet, the location and width of the nearshore reef, and the differing directions …

A Retrospective On Lucas V. South Carolina Coastal Council: Public Policy Implications For The 21st Century, Kim Diana Connolly

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Small Town Trash: A Model Comprehensive Solid Waste Ordinance For Rural Areas Of The United States, Kim Diana Connolly

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Elucidating The Elephant: Interdisciplinary Law School Classes, Kim Diana Connolly

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Triptych: Three Meditations On How Law Rules After Globalization, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Phosphorus Contamination And Storage In Bottom Sediments Of The James River Arm Of Table Rock Lake, Southwest Missouri, Marc R. Owen

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Eutrophic conditions in the upper James River Arm (JRA) of Table Rock Lake have been linked to phosphorus (P) inputs by wastewater treatment facilities and increasing urban development in the upper James River Basin (3,770 km2). Since the majority of P in aquatic environments is bound to sediments, bottom sediment can function as both a source and sink of P in lake systems. This study evaluates the spatial distribution, physical and chemical characteristics, and storage of sediment-P in the active layer ( < 5cm) of bottom sediments in the JRA. The JRA makes up about 20% of Table Rock Lake’s surface area, contributes about 30% of the inflow, and has the poorest water quality of the entire lake. For this study, grab samples were collected in the main arm and tributary coves at the deepest part of the lake and at several shallow sites along the main arm. Concentrations increase in a down-lake direction in the main arm ranging from 5 to >2000 ppm P. However, water-column P concentrations show a decrease down-lake, indicating that sedimentation is removing P from …

Stare Decisis And Due Process, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

In this Article, I argue that the preclusive effect of precedent raises due-process concerns, and, on occasion, slides into unconstitutionality. The Due Process Clause requires that a court give a person notice and an opportunity for a hearing before depriving her of life, liberty or property. Because of this requirement, courts have held in the context of issue preclusion that as a general rule, judicial determinations can bind only parties. The preclusion literature asserts that this parties only requirement does not apply to stare decisis because stare decisis, in contrast to issue preclusion, is a flexible doctrine. Yet stare decisis …

Biodiversity And Mom, John Copeland Nagle

Journal Articles

In December 1973, Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The law was the latest, and greatest, federal effort to prevent wildlife from becoming extinct. The members of Congress who voted for the law always mentioned bald eagles, grizzly bears, whooping cranes, alligators, and whales—the animals, in short, that today are most likely to be memorialized as Beanie Babies. They were also aware of the species that had already disappeared from the earth, such as the passenger pigeon and the great auk. Such images yielded an overwhelming vote in favor of the law. President Nixon signed it on December 28, …

Transient Photocatalytic Oxidation Study Of Organics On Titanium Dioxide Using Mass Spectrometry And Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Adrienne Claire Lukaski

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Crisis Of Caring: A Catholic Critique Of American Welfare Reform, Vincent D. Rougeau

Journal Articles

The current deterioration of the American economy is bringing new attention to the problem of poverty in the United States. After falling over the last few years, the number of Americans living in poverty has begun to rise once again. Notwithstanding the achievements of recent "welfare reforms," the American poor continue to be numerous by any measure.

Unfortunately, decades of affluence have exacerbated American tendencies to view liberal concepts such as freedom, autonomy, tolerance, and choice in ways that accentuate personal autonomy over community integration. These liberal values have been increasingly unhinged from strong countervailing principles like duty and responsibility, …

Rapid Measurement Of Indoor Mass-Transfer Coefficients, Glenn Morrison, Zhao Ping, Deborah J. Wiseman, Maneerat Ongwandee, Hong Chang, Julie Portman, Shekhar Regmi

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Indoor air pollutant concentrations can be influenced by how rapidly species are transported to and from surfaces. Consequently, a greater understanding of indoor transport phenomena to surfaces improves estimates of human exposure to indoor air pollutants. Here, we introduce two methods of rapidly and directly measuring species fluxes at indoor surfaces, allowing us to evaluate the transport-limited deposition velocity, v_t (a mass-transfer coefficient). The deposition velocity sensor (DeVS) method employs a small microbalance coated with a pure hydrocarbon, preferably octadecane. We quantify flux (or evaporation rate) of the hydrocarbon into a room by observing the rate of mass loss …

Us Nuclear Security Cooperation With Russia And Transparency, David W. Hafemeister

Physics

This chapter reviews the efforts of Russia and the United States to conclude agreements on the control or reduction of their inventories of nuclear warheads and military fissile materials. While some of the negotiations attempted to codify arms limitation and reduction measures, others were aimed at constraining the spread of fissile materials and technologies to the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). A number of the negotiations had elements of both arms control and non-proliferation.

Most of the monitoring provisions contained in nuclear agreements between Russia and the USA are in the category of transparency measures—those that give confidence that a …

The Andrea Yates Trial: What Is Wrong With This Picture?, Marie Galanti

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critically examines the Andrea Yates trial, arguing that it highlights significant flaws in the legal system, media coverage, and societal attitudes toward mental illness and gender roles. The trial underscores the ambiguity in legal definitions of insanity, the unequal treatment of mothers who commit infanticide, and the problematic intersection of law and media, which can undermine justice and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. The case serves as a cautionary tale about the failure of the legal system to address mental health adequately and the media's role in sensationalizing tragedy for public consumption.