Digital Commons Network^™

Historical Fire Regimes In Southeasern Pine Savannas, Jean Marie Huffman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Southeastern coastal plain pine savannas lack direct evidence of past fire regimes. As a result, uncertainty exists regarding the range of variation in frequency and seasonal timing of past fire regimes and the relative importance of anthropogenic and lightning-ignited fires. Characterization of past fire regimes is needed for effective restoration and management of these high-biodiversity ecosystems. I used dendrochronologically dated fire scars from stumps of old growth longleaf pines in a large coastal, mainland pine savanna and from dead slash pines on a small, coastal barrier island in north Florida to explore past fire regimes. In the mainland savanna, 71 …

"Food For Sight", Ashleigh Milbrath

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Compiler Optimization Techniques For Scheduling And Reducing Overhead, Tong-Chai Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Exploiting parallelism in loops in programs is an important factor in realizing the potential performance of processors today. This dissertation develops and evaluates several compiler optimizations aimed at improving the performance of loops on processors. An important feature of a class of scientific computing problems is the regularity exhibited by their access patterns. Chapter 2 presents an approach of optimizing the address generation of these problems that results in the following: (i) elimination of redundant arithmetic computation by recognizing and exploiting the presence of common sub-expressions across different iterations in stencil codes; and (ii) conversion of as many array references …

Two-Dimensional And High-Throughput Electrophoretic Separation Of Proteins Using Polymeric Microchips, Hamed Shadpour

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A major task in proteomics is to identify proteins from a biological sample using two-dimensional (2-D) separation prior to mass spectrometry of peptides generated via proteolytic digestion of the proteins. For 2-D separations, microfluidic devices are superior to bench top and capillary-based systems since they potentially provide higher separation efficiencies due to the minimal dead volumes produced during peak transfer between the two separation dimensions. In addition, fast separations can be envisioned because the column lengths are typically shorter in microfluidic platforms without scarifying peak capacity. High-throughput capabilities are extremely desirable for many types of bio-analytical analyses, such as understanding …

Magnetic, Thermodynamic And Transport Properties Of The Magnetic Semiconductor Fe₁₋Xcoxs₂ And Superconducting Lasb₂, Song Guo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years magnetic semiconductors have attracted a great deal of attention because it is thought that they can be used to generate spin polarized current in spintronics, an emerging field where the spin degree of freedom of charge carriers is utilized in microelectronic devices. In this dissertation work, we investigate the magnetic, thermodynamic, and transport properties of the magnetic semiconductor Fe_1-XCo_xS₂ for x less than 0.14, the doping range where Insulator-to-Metal and paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic transitions occur. We discovered that the Kondo effect is an important ingredient in the paramagnetic region of magnetic semiconductor Fe_{1-X …}

Spatial Characteristics Of The Remotely-Sensed Surface Urban Heat Island In Baton Rouge, La: 1988-2003, Lynn Copeland Hardegree

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Our understanding of urban effects on local climate remains unsatisfactory due to several difficulties: 1) the inherent complexity of the city-atmosphere system, 2) lack of a clear conceptual theoretical framework for inquiry, and 3) the high expense and enormous difficulties of acquiring a sufficient quantity of high-quality, high-resolution (both spatially and temporally) observations in cities. Using remotely-sensed data, this study analyzes urban heat islands (UHI) that are manifested through an elevation in the surface thermal emissions within urban regions known as surface heat islands (SHI). The study area for this research endeavor is Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Whereas the surface air …

Biopolitics Or The Legislation Of Life: A Foucauldian Analysis, Marina Basu

LSU Master's Theses

Michel Foucault uses the term biopolitics to highlight the focus on life that is at the center of contemporary politics. Biopower or biopolitics is the maximization of life through various regulatory apparatuses that monitor, modify, and control life processes. I elucidate and exemplify Foucault's framework in order to show how the medical discourse exercises a certain kind of power over bodies in the name of health. My argument is that through the mechanisms of biopower, the juridico-medical discourse simultaneously makes pregnancy into an object of study and the pregnant woman into a subject of power. With the help of a …

Green Hydrogen: Site Selection Analysis For Potential Biomass Hydrogen Production Facility In The Texas-Louisiana Coastal Region, Bryan Michael Landry

LSU Master's Theses

Hydrogen and the “Hydrogen Economy” are increasingly becoming buzzwords in discussions regarding future U.S. energy scenarios. Hydrogen energy offers a multitude of economic and environmental advantages over the current world energy structure. Despite this attention, there have been very few geographical studies of a possible transition to a hydrogen system. Even these studies have been limited in scope to demand-side analyses. This thesis attempts to rectify this situation by broadening the scope of geographical studies of hydrogen through the analysis of supply-side scenario. This study is a site selection model for a biomass hydrogen facility in the Gulf Coast of …

Albert Camus's Meditative Ascent: A Search For Foundations In The Plague, Brian James Blanchard

LSU Master's Theses

Albert Camus's concept of absurdity states that human existence is fundamentally chaotic and meaningless. Despite this appraisal of existence, Camus tirelessly campaigned for human rights at a time when many intellectuals ignored the atrocities perpetrated by ideological compatriots. Scholars admire Camus's courage and foresight, but few have attempted to systematically examine Camus's philosophical development of values. Eric Voegelin argues that Camus's writings take the form of a philosophical meditation in which Camus conducted an analysis of existence through the medium of fictional creation. This meditation, which Voegelin likens to a Platonic periagoge, allowed Camus to establish a foundation of values …

Why Kelo Is Not Good News For Local Planners And Developers, Daniel H. Cole

Articles by Maurer Faculty

When the Supreme Court announced its 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, few legal scholars were surprised at the outcome, which was premised on precedents extending back to the middle of the 19th century. Legal scholars were surprised, however, by the intense political reaction to Kelo (fueled substantially by Justice O'Connor's hyperbolic dissent), as property-rights advocates, legislators (at all levels of government), and media pundits assailed the ruling as a death knell for private property rights in America.

Kelo's combination of relative legal insignificance and high political salience makes it an interesting case study in cross-institutional dynamics, …

Regulating The Mutual Fund Industry, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

With virtually every other household in the United States invested in mutual funds, effective and efficient regulation of the mutual fund industry must be a top national priority. But the creation of a new private regulator - whether along the lines of SROs such as the NASD and NYSE or the recently created PCAOB - would be a step in the wrong direction. Instead, much more can be gained from strengthening the SEC's longstanding role as the principal overseer of mutual funds and improving other aspects of the existing regulatory regime.

Links Between Environmental Mercury, Special Education, And Autism In Louisiana, Jessica Rury

LSU Master's Theses

The number of children born every year with neurological disorders is increasing and some of this increase may be attributed to mercury exposure. Pregnant women ingest contaminated fish, which transfers high mercury concentrations to the unborn fetus. This exposure may result in methyl mercury buildup in the brain of the unborn fetus. Symptoms ranging from minor to severe may be observed as special educational needs in school systems. These include learning disorders, developmental delays, and autism. Louisianans are especially susceptible to mercury contamination because fish and shellfish are a major portion of their cultural diet. This study, through the use …

The Measure Of A Justice: Justice Scalia And The Faltering Of The Property Rights Movement Within The Supreme Court, Richard J. Lazarus

UC Law Journal

The ability of a Supreme Court Justice to craft a majority opinion is the most important and least understood of the skills that distinguish between ordinary and truly extraordinary jurists. The Justice who is able to do so is the one most likely to produce Court opinions that, because of their persuasive force, promote the kind of public respect ultimately necessary for the Court's authority. The publication of the papers of Justice Harry Blackmun (The Blackmun Papers) in 2004 allows an assessment of Justice Antonin Scalia's effectiveness in crafting Supreme Court precedent in the protection of property rights. The Papers …

Population Biology And Disturbance Ecology Of A Native North American Bamboo (Arundinaria Gigantea), Paul R. Gagnon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores effects of windstorm and fire disturbances on the clonal and reproductive biology of cane (Arundinaria gigantea Muhl., Poaceae). In this collection of studies, multiple disturbances interact in complex ways, and some interactions appear only after a substantial lag. One implication of this research is that multiple, interacting disturbances might strongly influence the boundary between monodominant and species-rich plant communities. Cane is the only bamboo native to the United States, and once covered vast areas of bottomlands in the southeastern U.S. in monodominant stands called “canebrakes.” The study took place on the Buckhorn Wildlife Management Area in Tensas …

California's Punitive Damages Law: Continuing To Punish And Deter Despite State Farm V. Campbell, Kathleen S. Kizer

UC Law Journal

In State Farm v. Campbell, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the punitive damages awarded in a particular case must be proportional to the amount of compensatory damages awarded in that case. Although the Court refrained from setting a "bright-line ratio," many courts reviewing awards after State Farm have time and again reduced punitive damages awards, using factors between four and nine in reliance on proclamations made by the Court in State Farm. In addition, State Farm casts doubt on whether a defendant's financial condition is relevant to the issue of punitive damages. Both of these assertions-that punitive damages must …

Beyond Moody: A Re-Examination Of Unreasonably Small Capital, Lee B. Shepard

UC Law Journal

Fraudulent conveyance laws may end up back in the spotlight as the economy slows following a period of sharply increased leveraged buyout activity and aggressive lending tactics. Since participants in leveraged transactions are more sophisticated than in the past, plaintiffs may focus on unreasonably small capital, rather than insolvency, to show that a debtor engaged in a constructively fraudulent conveyance or transfer. Unfortunately, unreasonably small capital is an underdeveloped legal concept, particularly with regard to standards by which courts can determine whether a transaction left a debtor with unreasonably small capital.

The leading case on the subject, Moody v. Security …

Reconceptualizing Due Process In Juvenile Justice: Contributions From Law And Social Science, Mark R. Fondacaro, Christopher Slobogin, Tricia Cross

UC Law Journal

This Article challenges the accepted wisdom, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in Gault, that procedures in juvenile delinquency court should mimic the adult criminal process. The legal basis for this challenge is Gault itself, as well as the other Supreme Court cases that triggered the juvenile justice revolution of the past decades, for all of these cases relied on the due process clause, not the provisions of the Constitution that form the foundation for adult criminal procedure. The Court's reliance on due process means that the central goal in juvenile justice is fundamental fairness, which does not have …

Hale's Legacy: Why Private Property Is Not A Synonym For Liberty, Ilana Waxman

UC Law Journal

For anyone interested in critiquing the laissez-faire view of regulation as an illegitimate intrusion on the rights of property owners, it is particularly important to understand the historical fate of progressive critiques during the Lochner era. One such critique came from Robert Hale, a progressive law professor and economist of the 1920s-1940s who has proved to be one of the most enduring of the Lochner-era critics. Although Hale's critique of private property and the free market fell into obscurity after his retirement in 1949, it was revived in the 1970s, and has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest for …

A Semiparametric Assessment Of Export-Led Growth In The Philippines, Lorna E. Amrinto

LSU Master's Theses

This study contributes to the literature on the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis by adopting a semiparametric approach under two levels of temporal aggregation to investigate the ELG hypothesis in the Philippines. To assess the impact of model specification on the ELG hypothesis, parametric and semiparametric ECMs are estimated using Philippine annual and quarterly data on GDP, exports, exchange rates and gross fixed-capital formation, focusing on the role of exchange rates. The causal relationship between exports and economic growth is examined using the Granger-causality procedure. It can be concluded that for the Philippines, the ELG hypothesis is (a) sensitive to model …

Delinquent Or Disabled? Harmonizing The Idea Definition Of "Emotional Disturbance" With The Educational Needs Of Incarcerated Youth, Moira O'Neill

UC Law Journal

Congress enacted the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to meet the special education needs of disabled youth. Yet the Department of Education regulations defining "emotional disturbance," one of the qualifying disabilities under the IDEA, have consistently defined the term to exclude youth diagnosed as "socially maladjusted." Special education scholars and professionals have long criticized this definition of emotional disturbance as imprecise and inconsistent with mental health constructs of emotional and behavioral disorders. Incarcerated youth are particularly affected by this definition of "emotional disturbance," as they demonstrate a higher prevalence of special educational needs than does the public school population. …

Environmental Justice: Access To Clean Drinking Water, Hastings Law Journal

UC Law Journal

Many low-income communities and communities of color are unable to advocate for clean drinking water or oppose rate hikes for drinkable water. Failing infrastructure, industrial pollution, and increasing water scarcity in California disproportionately affect vulnerable, marginalized communities. This Panel focused on community organization and novel legal approaches (such as Title VI Civil Rights complaints) that could be used to advocate for clean drinking water.

Is An Advertisement An Offer? Why It Is, And Why It Matters, Jay M. Feinman, Stephen R. Brill

UC Law Journal

Courts and scholars uniformly recite the rule of contract law familiar to all first-year students: An advertisement is not an offer. The courts and scholars are wrong. An advertisement is an offer. This Article explains why the purported rule is not the law, why the actual rule is that an advertisement is an offer, and what this issue tells us about contract law in particular and legal doctrine in general.

As the Article describes, virtually all of the case law fails to support the purported rule, the rule is inconsistent with national and state unfair trade practices and consumer protection …

The Voting Rights Act And The Racial Gap In Lost Votes, Paul Moke, Richard B. Saphire

UC Law Journal

Recent presidential and gubernatorial elections have exposed serious flaws in the process by which American voters participate in the democratic franchise. Studies have shown that African- Americans who use inferior punch card technology are more likely than non-African-Americans to be disenfranchised because of unintentional errors in the use of voting equipment. Following the disputed 2000 presidential election, several civil rights and civil liberties organizations used section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge state voting technology, arguing that punch card equipment has an adverse impact on racial minorities.

This Article examines the empirical evidence on voting technology, residual votes, …

Lawful To The World: Protecting The Integrity Of The Inevitable Discovery Doctrine, Jason Liljestrom

UC Law Journal

In the 1984 case of Nix v. Williams, the Supreme Court adopted the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule, which admits illegally-obtained evidence if the prosecution can establish that the evidence would have been discovered by lawful means. Despite ongoing criticism and divided application of the nuances of the inevitable discovery doctrine, the requirement that the hypothetical independent source be "lawful" is one element that appears straightforward. Nevertheless, a pair of recent cases involving multiple parties has created yet another inter-circuit conflict, and has thrust the lawful means requirement to the forefront of the inevitable discovery debate.

The First …

Treaty Obligations And National Law: Emerging Conflicts In International Arbitration, William W. Park, Alexander A. Yanos

UC Law Journal

Invoking either forum non conveniens or the absence of personal jurisdiction, several federal courts have refused to enforce foreign arbitral awards. The authors explore the impact of these cases, suggesting that the decisions may put the United States in breach of duties under the New York Arbitration Convention. The resulting damage to reliability in cross-border dispute resolution will inhibit the type of international economic cooperation that benefits both the United States and the larger world community.

With a view to reconciling domestic law and treaty obligations, the Article suggests that enforcement of foreign awards should include a two-step process. Pursuant …

Instantaneously Trained Neural Networks With Complex And Quaternion Inputs, Adityan V. Rishiyur

LSU Master's Theses

Neural network architectures such as backpropagation networks, perceptrons or generalized Hopfield networks can handle complex inputs but they require a large amount of time and resources for the training process. This thesis investigates instantaneously trained feedforward neural networks that can handle complex and quaternion inputs. The performance of the basic algorithm has been analyzed and shown how it provides a plausible model of human perception and understanding of images. The motivation for studying quaternion inputs is their use in representing spatial rotations that find applications in computer graphics, robotics, global navigation, computer vision and the spatial orientation of instruments. The …

Ignoring The Supreme Court: State V. White, The Civil Commitment Of Sexually Violent Predators, And Majoritarian Judicial Pressures, Eric W. Buetzow

UC Law Journal

In Kansas v. Hendricks, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state statutes that allow for the civil commitment of "sexually violent predators" after completion of their criminal sentences. But the Court in Hendricks left uncertain the precise requirements demanded by substantive due process in this context. Specifically, questions remained regarding whether, and to what degree, a defendant must suffer from volitional inability for the commitment to pass constitutional muster. The Supreme Court responded five years later in Kansas v. Crane, where it held that "there must be proof of serious difficulty in controlling behavior." This could have been considered …

Racial Disparities, Birth Outcomes, And Changing Demographics Of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, Misty D. Richard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Racial and socioeconomic disparities persist throughout the country regardless of which specific disparity is studied; however, some geographic regions experience more significant racial disparities. East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana has a large racial disparity among birth outcomes. Many factors impact the degree of racial disparities, some of which include racial segregation, isolation, or centralization, access to and quality of medical care, and factors of the neighborhood environment. EBRP has undergone dramatic shifts in the demographics of its residents. The purpose of this dissertation was to study the demographic changes in the population; as well as to study the disparities among …

Ontology-Based Methodology For Error Detection In Software Design, Allyson M. Hoss

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Improving the quality of a software design with the goal of producing a high quality software product continues to grow in importance due to the costs that result from poorly designed software. It is commonly accepted that multiple design views are required in order to clearly specify the required functionality of software. There is universal agreement as to the importance of identifying inconsistencies early in the software design process, but the challenge is how to reconcile the representations of the diverse views to ensure consistency. To address the problem of inconsistencies that occur across multiple design views, this research introduces …

Enhanced Degradation Of Phenanthrene And Benzo(A)Pyrene In A Field-Contaminated Sediment Inhabited By Ilyodrilus Templetoni: A Microcosm Study, Marilou Montevirgen Nabatilan

LSU Master's Theses

The influence of the oligochaete Ilyodrilus templetoni on the degradation of phenanthrene and benzo(a)pyrene present in a field-contaminated sediment was studied in microcosm experiments. Results indicate an enhanced degradation of phenanthrene and benzo(a)pyrene in microcosms inhabited by I. templetoni. Total phenanthrene reduction was observed at an average of 9.78 % in worm microcosms, while no reduction was observed in the control microcosms. Benzo(a)pyrene reduction, on the other hand, was determined at 78.60 % and 30.04 % in worm and control microcosms, respectively. The lowest concentrations of these PAHs at the end of 97-day study were observed well below the surface …