Digital Commons Network^™

Interrelationships Between Mitochondrial Function, Maximal Oxygen Consumption, Running Economy, And Diet In Elite Male And Female Runners, Ryan Peyton Mcmillan

LSU Master's Theses

The relationships between maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max), mitochondrial function and running economy were investigated in a population of twenty-one endurance trained males and females (range=18-54 yrs). The purposes of this study were: 1) to determine whether mitochondrial oxidative capacity, as defined by the maximal activities of citrate synthase (CS), cytochrome c oxidase (COX), and beta-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase (BHAD), is a significant determinant of maximal oxygen consumption in endurance trained men and women, and 2) to observe the relationship between maximal oxygen uptake and running economy in the same population. Muscle biopsy samples were taken from the vastus lateralis prior to a …

Mimo-Ofdm Communication Systems: Channel Estimation And Wireless Location, Zhongshan Wu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this new information age, high data rate and strong reliability features our wireless communication systems and is becoming the dominant factor for a successful deployment of commercial networks. MIMO-OFDM (multiple input multiple output-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), a new wireless broadband technology, has gained great popularity for its capability of high rate transmission and its robustness against multi-path fading and other channel impairments. A major challenge to MIMO-OFDM systems is how to obtain the channel state information accurately and promptly for coherent detection of information symbols and channel synchronization. In the first part, this dissertation formulates the channel estimation problem …

Mothers Grimm And Other House Held Tales, Holly Kay Streekstra

LSU Master's Theses

Mothers Grimm and Other House Held Tales is a body of work that uses fairy tale archetypes and narrative traditions to comment upon tensions and conflicts in sexual self-understanding. This is achieved through a reflection on attitudes that women adopt regarding their own sexuality. Such a reflection is instigated through a presentation of prominent cultural archetypes that exist, no longer as received ideas, but as a bold and entertaining expression of how sex can change our attitude towards those ideas that we often take for granted. Through an assemblage of objects and video, this body of work evokes a domestic …

Lock'em Up And Throw Away The Key: Racial Attitudes And The Structural Determinants Of Support For Crime Policy Among White Americans, Amanda J. Abraham

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates support for the death penalty and federal crime spending among white Americans. Data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) series (1992-2000) are matched with census tract level indicators of demographic and community characteristics from the 1990 and 2000 Census Bureau Summary File Tape 3A and county level crime data supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation�s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Ordered logistic regression is used to investigate five general research questions: (1) Are racial attitudes the most salient individual level predictors of support for crime policy among whites as suggested by prior research? (2) Are whites� …

The Other Side Of The Tracks: Railroads, Race, And The Performance Of Unity In Nineteenth-Century American Entertainment, Elissa Sartwell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nineteenth-century Americans took great pride in the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. This pride was not solely grounded in the knowledge that a grand, technological feat had been accomplished. When placed in its historical context, the celebration surrounding the completion of the railroad suggests a clear and visible statement of unity following a bitter and divisive civil war. The transcontinental railroad of 1869 undeniably unified the States. But any railroad simultaneously unites and divides, for while the tracks serve to link distant locations, they also produce a literal and metaphorical division in the communities through which they …

Retention And Transport Of Arsenic In Soils, Hua Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Arsenic transport in soils and aquifers is highly dependent on the adsorption-desorption reactions in the solid phase. Results from our kinetic batch experiments indicated that adsorption of arsenate [As(V)] was highly nonlinear and strongly kinetic. Desorption of As(V) were hysteretic in nature and a significant amount of As(V) was irreversibly adsorbed on all soils. Results from column experiments indicated strong As(V) retardation followed by slow release or extensive tailing of the breakthrough curves (BTCs). Sharp decrease in As(V) concentration during flow interruption verified the extensive non-equilibrium condition which was likely due to the dominance of kinetic retention processes. We evaluated …

Cultivar, Juice Extraction, Ultra Violet Irradiation And Storage Influence The Stilbene Content Of Muscadine Grapes (Vitis Rotundifolia Michx.), Mark Rene' Leblanc

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Stilbene concentration was analyzed in juice and tissue of muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia Michx.) and bunch grape (Vitis labrusca L.) from fresh fruit, after processing and after postharvest treatments. Five filter types were evaluated for percent resveratrol recovery when filtering standard and spiked juice samples in preparation for HPLC analysis. Only two (polycarbonate and Anopore) of the five filter types had more than 90 percent recovery. Polycarbonate was chosen for sample preparation since it was more durable during handling. Eight muscadine grape cultivars and three bunch grape cultivars were evaluated. Skin tissue had approximately 100 times higher stilbene concentration than …

Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose: A Performance Genealogy Of The Fiction, Justin Thomas Trudeau

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study analyzes Jack Kerouac’s writing method of spontaneous prose and articulates how the method can be understood as performative writing. Kerouac’s “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” On the Road, Visions of Cody, and Doctor Sax are explored to evaluate both the successes and failures of the author’s attempts to break literary boundaries and create a new writing method based upon spontaneous tenets. These three novels, which were written in succession from 1950 to 1953 when Kerouac was in his most productive period, represent both the emergence and dissent of the author’s use of performative writing. To explicate the cultural genesis …

The Bioturbation Transport Of Chemicals In Surface Soils, Maria D. Rodriguez

LSU Master's Theses

Large quantities of chemicals, such as pesticides, fertilizers, and industrial wastes, have been found throughout the environment raising concerns due to their ecological impacts and implications to human health. Soil is the most important repository of many organic chemicals in the environment. The objective of the present study was to determine the importance of the soil solid phase in the transport of chemicals in soils, and yield quantitative information to better describe bioturbation and its role in the movement of soil particles. Vertical movement of chemicals in the soil solid phase occurs by mixing mechanisms, such as bioturbation, cryoturbation, and …

Assessment Of Interactions Amoung Viruses Infecting Sweetpotato, Charalambos D. Kokkinos

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Viral diseases, especially those caused by mixed infections, are among the economically most important diseases of sweetpotato. Real-time PCR assays were developed for the detection and quantification of the potyviruses Sweet potato feathery mottle virus (SPFMV), Sweet potato virus G (SPVG), Ipomoea vein mosaic virus (IVMV); the crinivirus Sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus (SPCSV), and the begomovirus Sweet potato leaf curl virus (SPLCV) directly from infected sweetpotato plants. Titers of SPFMV, IVMV, and SPVG were lower in singly-infected sweetpotato plants compared to singly-infected plants of the standard indicator host Brazilian morning-glory (Ipomoea setosa) and the standard propagation host I. nil …

How African-American And Hispanics Perceive Their Racial Equality In American Advertising, Denise Michele Pallais

LSU Master's Theses

This study focuses on how African-Americans and Hispanics perceive their racial equality in American advertising. A survey was conducted to find out the African-American and the Hispanic perceptions about how these ethnic groups saw themselves depicted, and the way they are stereotyped by the U.S. media. Overall, the study found that there was no difference between race and the level of perception between these two ethnic groups. However, age appears to be the only demographic variable that affects the African-American and Hispanic perception of discrimination. In addition, the study also exposed that African-Americans are mostly portrayed in the athletic advertising …

Whose Input Counts And Which Paradigm Prevails?: A Content Analysis Of Mass-Mediated Debate On U.S.-China Relations In 1990'S And A Policy Critique On Republican Virtue Of The Policy Tradeoff, Xiaowei Chen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the public opinion-public policy nexus with regard to the making of U.S.-China policy during the Clinton administration (1992-2000). The researcher investigates how the mass media discourse on U.S.-China relations relates to the policy tradeoff between economic interdependence and confrontation on human rights. Particularly, the quantitative study of the media discourse is placed within a Communitarian perspective to determine: (1) whether the policy tradeoff can claim to have the support of public opinion; (2) whether the media discourse originated from the active civic participation; and (3) how the policy tradeoff broke its promise. As a result, the researcher …

Regarding Pained Sympathy And Sympathy Pains: Morality, And Empathy In The Civil Adjudication Of Pain, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay considers the legal propriety of the empathic responses of jurors to suffering plaintiffs. To that end, Part II first explicates the legal contours of a tension between what is experiential or physical (objective) and what is expressionistic or non-physical (subjective). This tension is a foundational jurisprudential concern in personal injury litigation because the subjective is seen to threaten the rule of law: the perceived primacy of reason and logic. Thus, this tension is also what the parties' attorneys seek to exploit and what the court seeks to constrain. Part III explores why an empathic identification is indeed a …

Towards A Cosmopolitan Vision Of International Law: Identifying And Defining Cil Post Sosa V. Alvarez-Machain, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, future Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) litigants seemingly will be asked to demonstrate that the norms giving rise to their actions are violations of clearly established Customary International Law (CIL). Given the mutable character of CIL, especially in the area of human rights, this will surely fuel the already voluminous literature on the content of the CIL of human rights.

While debate will certainly arise over the norms that have been become CIL, significant attention must be also be devoted to the problems inherent in the CIL of …

A Comparative Study Of Household Demand For Meats By U.S. Hispanics, Carlos Ignacio Garcia

LSU Master's Theses

The general objective of this research project was to study the consumption behavior of U.S. Hispanics for meat products. A comprehensive review of literature on the studies of U.S. Hispanic consumers was performed by means of a systematic survey; different sources of information useful in studying Hispanic consumers were documented. The simultaneous increase in population and income of Hispanics in the United States is attractive to food companies, and makes more relevant the study of their consumer behavior patterns for discovering future market opportunities. Censored incomplete demand systems of the LinQuad form were used for recognizing the consumption patterns by …

Heroic Individualism: The Hero As Author In Democratic Culture, Alan I. Baily

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My study focuses on the literature of democratic morality, with specific reference to the question of "heroic individualism." I attempt to elucidate the notion of heroic individualism by examining three modern democratic moralists whose work occupies the space between politics and literature: Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Nietzsche. In brief, I conclude that the central aspiration of heroic individualism is to bridge the gap between writing and action, the Text and the Voice. The dialogue among Rousseau, Carlyle, and Nietzsche reveals that the problem of writing as action is central to heroic-individualist morality. Each of these authors demonstrates …

The Cost And Availability Of The Thrifty Food Plan In Southeast Louisiana, Blair Suzanne Buras

LSU Master's Theses

Low-income individuals in Southeast Louisiana consume poor quality diets and have high rates of nutrition-related health problems such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and obesity. The United States Department of Agriculture created the Thrifty Food Plan to help food stamp recipients consume a minimal cost, nutritious diet. It is unknown whether the food lists designed to support the Thrifty Food Plan are affordable and available to the food stamp reliant population in Southeast Louisiana. In 29 supermarkets and large grocery stores located in East Baton Rouge Parish and seven surrounding parishes, the cost and availability of two weekly …

An Investigation Of Focus: Local, Regional, And National Newspaper Coverage In The Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina, Roxanne Kearns Dill

LSU Master's Theses

This study examined the content in coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by local, regional, and national newspapers. Specifically, six newspapers were examined for a variety of items, including topics covered, frame, types of sources cited, types of authorities quoted, geographic focus, and assignment of blame for the devastation and evacuee distress that followed this historic storm. The analysis covered a two-week period, from August 29, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, to September 11, 2005. The research methods included a content analysis of the 263 articles that appeared on Page 1 of The New York …

Monoclonal And Phage-Displayed Antibodies As Lipopolysaccharide Serotyping Reagents And Their Use In Typing Colony Variants Of Vibrio Vulnificus, Randall M. Schulz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Vibrio vulnificus is a Gram-negative organism that is found in estuarine environments. The bacterium is capable of causing gastroenteritis, wound infections, and septicemia, often resulting in death for susceptible individuals. Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to five lipopolysaccharide (LPS) O-serovars have previously been used as a serotyping system in epidemiological studies. Here is the first report of two additional MAbs capable of recognizing two new LPS serovars (O6 and O7), further increasing the number of V. vulnificus that can be typed. Analysis of V. vulnificus isolates from the United States, Europe, and Asia demonstrated that the O1/O5 serovar is dominate in clinical …

The Influence Of Tobacco Merchant Education And Enforcement Activities On The Rate Of Tobacco Use Among Youth In Louisiana, Leslie Hope Brougham

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is two-fold: 1) to determine whether a relationship exists between the self-reported tobacco use by secondary students in Louisiana and the tobacco sale rate to persons under the age of 18 in those parishes; and 2) to investigate the relationship between merchant education in a parish and the parish tobacco sale rate to persons under the age of 18 in those parishes. Multiple data sources were utilized to include tobacco use among secondary students, education provided to merchants, and tobacco sales to minors compliance checks. Aggregated parish data for each of the data sources were …

What Makes A Man : From Biology To Society, Jennifer Beneke

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

A Woman's Place : An Authentically Feminist Zone, Elizabeth Anne Blazek

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Design And Evaluation Of Automated, Continuous Culture Techniques For Brachionus Rotundiformis, Zhengzhong Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A 40-L recirculating rotifer turbidostat (RRT) pilot system consisting of a rotifer reactor, biofilter, foam fractionator, feed container, harvester, and two air-lift pumps was designed to produce B. rotundiformis, a small (S-type) rotifer, that is increasingly demanded for production of small-gape marine finfish larvae. The system’s automatic monitoring (turbidity, pH, conductivity and temperature) and controlling (turbidity, pH, feeding and harvesting) were performed by a Rugid™ computer. A 4 (temperature) x 3 (salinity) study indicated that a 30oC/15 ppt treatment is the most favorable to the growth of B. rotundiformis. Under these conditions, the effect of harvest rate on rotifer system …

Hurricane Katrina: A Content Analysis Of Media Framing, Attribute Agenda Setting, And Tone Of Government Response, Brigette Lynn Brunken

LSU Master's Theses

This study content analyzed print media coverage of government response from four newspapers in the five weeks immediately after Hurricane Katrina, looking for common frames, attribute agenda setting, and tone. In addition, it assessed week-to-week differences throughout coverage. Findings indicate that the order of Semetko and Valkenburg's (2000) common frames changed, emphasizing human interest first. Conflict, attribution of responsibility, economic consequences, and morality frames followed. Media's use of attribute agenda setting was evident throughout coverage, primarily emphasizing the issues, relief and rescue, economic, negative timeliness, and rebuilding and repairing. Media's tone of government response was moderately neutral with federal tone …

The Impact Of Masking Of Persuasive Intent On Persuasive Message Effectiveness, Christina Simmers Rodrigue

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The decreased dependency of marketing managers on traditional message forms (i.e., commercials) has increased the use of nontraditional message forms (i.e., product placement) in marketing communication. These newer message forms are unique because their persuasive intent is concealed by the presentation method and, therefore, may be processed differently than the traditional message forms. Consequently, this paper examines three major issues that arise out of the integration of nontraditional message forms into marketing communication, including (1) incorporating nontraditional message forms into the traditional persuasion literature, (2) introducing a new persuasion element (termed masking of persuasive intent) and its role in the …

Vitrification And Dehydration For The Preservation Of Gametes, Allison E. Moisan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Of the 36 species of felines in the world, all except the domestic cat are listed as endangered or threatened. To preserve the genetic diversity of felines and other species, genome resource banks have been established. Due to limited availability of germ cells for research, studies must use models to optimize the techniques before they are applied to endangered species. In this study, preservation of oocytes and spermatozoa was examined using the bovine as a model for felines. In the first series of experiments, bovine and feline oocytes were dehydrated, vitrified, warmed and cultured to assess their ability to undergo …

The Justice Of Recovery: How The State Can Heal The Violence Of Crime, Linda G. Mills

UC Law Journal

A longstanding assumption of the criminal justice system is that victims benefit in some way from the prosecution and punishment of the person who caused them harm. This Article, however, argues that victim healing involves more than punishing the offender, and that by rethinking the roles victims perform in the criminal justice system, we may provide them with a more comprehensive menu of options to facilitate their recovery from crime. The societal goals of punishment and accountability and the individual desire for healing are not mutually exclusive. Incorporating recovery approaches from both the science of victimology and theories of restoration …

Cross-Examining The Brain: A Legal Analysis Of Neural Imaging For Credibility Impeachment, Charles N. W. Keckler

UC Law Journal

The last decade has seen remarkable progress in understanding ongoing psychological processes at the neurobiological level, progress that has been driven technologically by the spread of functional neuroimaging devices, especially magnetic resonance imaging, which have become the research tools of a theoretically sophisticated cognitive neuroscience. As this research turns to specification of the mental processes involved in interpersonal deception, the potential evidentiary use of material produced by devices for detecting deception, long stymied by the conceptual and legal limitations of the polygraph, must be reexamined. Although studies in this area are preliminary, they have not yet satisfied the foundational requirements …

Be Revolutionary : Images Of Women In Soviet And Cuban Political Posters, Rachel Schlegel

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

The Personal Journey Of Solo Performance, Heidi Stenseth

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.