Digital Commons Network^™

Pile Capacity Utilization For Bridge Bents Designed Using Simplified Procedures, Md Rubiat Ferdous

LSU Master's Theses

Bent substructure systems are being used increasingly in bridge construction. Among the various bent systems, pile bents are considered a popular choice due to their effectiveness in reducing time and cost. They are constructed by first driving piles to a specified elevation above the ground surface. Then, a cast-in-place reinforced concrete bent cap ties the piles together at their top end. The current Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Bridge Design Manual provides guidelines for the structural analysis and construction details for general use in the preparation of plans for pile bents. The manual allows the use of a simplified …

University Of Pennsylvania Ms Codex 436: A Description And Analysis Of Contents, Jeannette Di Bernardo Jones

LSU Master's Theses

The University of Pennsylvania Ms. Codex 436, an Italian manuscript dated 1682, is a handbook containing alphabets, linguistic treatises, a computus for calculating the date of Easter, mathematical tables, and rules for music theory and singing the liturgy. The manuscript's contents make it possible to identify the compiler as a student; the contents, along with their mode of presentation and the manuscript's general appearance, make it possible to situate him within the culture of humanism and more specifically within book culture in the transition from manuscript to print. The contents indicate who the compiler is in terms of his social …

Passive Alignment Of Micro-Fluidic Chips Using The Principle Of Elastic Averaging, Sitanshu Gurung

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis presents a novel design for a passive alignment feature for vertically stacking chips in a micro fluidic device. Each chip is the size of a standard microscopic slide (75mm—25mm) and is a highly specialized functional unit designed and fabricated to process fluidic samples. The fluidic samples in the device flows from one chip to another using inter connecting holes 500μm-100μm in diameter. Hence an alignment of better than 100μm between chips is necessary to allow for the interconnecting holes to overlap so as to provide with a path for the fluid to flow. The feature to be used …

Technology Adoption Of Indian Garment Manufacturing Firms, Venu Varukolu

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to investigate the status and the effect of organizational factors on the level of technology adoption within the context of the Indian garment industry. Specifically, this study focuses on the effect of firm size, export orientation, top management’s commitment, cost of capital, technical skills, and competitive advantage. An online survey using a structured questionnaire was prepared through an online research service. A multiple regression analysis (MRA) was used to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that firm size positively influences and export orientation negatively influences the technology adoption level of a firm. The effect …

Transcendental Eigenvalue Problems Associated With Vibration, Buckling And Control, Jayaram Subramanian

LSU Master's Theses

The static and dynamic analysis of structures requires us to obtain solutions of their espective governing differential equations subject to appropriate boundary conditions. The dynamic analysis of non-uniform continuous structures is of primary interest, as most traditional methods take the help of discrete models to analyze them. Well established discrete model methods lead to an algebraic eigenvalue problem, the characteristic equation associated with which is a polynomial. The spectral characteristics of a continuous system nevertheless are represented by transcendental functions and cannot be approximated by polynomials efficiently. Hence finite dimensional discrete models are not capable of predicting the response of …

Predictive Data Compression Using Adaptive Arithmetic Coding, Claudio Jose Iombo

LSU Master's Theses

The commonly used data compression techniques do not necessarily provide maximal compression and neither do they define the most efficient framework for transmission of data. In this thesis we investigate variants of the standard compression algorithms that use the strategy of partitioning of the data to be compressed. Doing so not only increases the compression ratio in many instances, it also reduces the maximum data block size for transmission. The partitioning of the data is made using a Markov model to predict if doing so would result in increased compression ratio. Experiments have been performed on text files comparing the …

The Art Of Perception: Robert Irwin's Central Garden At The J. Paul Getty Center, Jennifer Kay Zell

LSU Master's Theses

In this study of The Central Garden at the J. Paul Getty Center was found evidence that the Central Garden designed by Robert Irwin is a postmodern garden. Beginning with an evaluation and description of the individual elements and conditions of the garden, the study then explores the larger body of artistic work produced by Irwin. This investigation also extrapolates how the ideas of modernism and postmodernism have been applied to past works of landscape architecture. The precedents provide a basis for interpretation and analysis of the Central Garden. Direct observation of visitors at the Central Garden provided evidence of …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 35, 2006-2007, Department Of Geography-Geology

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography-Geology

Effects Of Aversive Conditioning On Behavior Of Nuisance Louisiana Black Bears, Jennifer Leigh

LSU Master's Theses

Consistent habitat loss and fragmentation are contributing factors to the rise of human-bear conflicts in south Louisiana. Complaints associated with nuisance activities of Louisiana black bears (Ursus americanus luteolus) experienced in this region have steadily increased since 2000, requiring intervention by state and federal agencies. As a threatened species, Louisiana black bears require non-lethal management referred to as aversive conditioning. We used rubber buckshot and dogs to test the effectiveness of management techniques used by the state to deter nuisance activity by black bears. Eleven bears, representing approximately 15% of the estimated population in this region, were captured in residential …

Rna:Dna As An Indicator Of Nutritional Condition And Growth In Larval Naked Goby, Gobiosoma Bosc, Michelle C. Satterwhite

LSU Master's Theses

Developing organism-based metrics for assessing habitat quality is an important tool in conservation and restoration of aquatic habitats. The use of the RNA:DNA ratio as an early indicator of habitat effects on growth of nekton species has been suggested, but requires species-specific laboratory assessment prior to field application. We used food availability in laboratory treatments to simulate differences in habitat quality. Wild Gobiosoma bosc eggs were collected using nest-traps constructed of PVC pipe. Eggs from several different nests collected in the field were hatched in the lab, yielding larvae that were randomly assigned to three feeding treatments in two replicate …

Experimental Investigation Of An Electronically Collimated Radiation Detector For Location Of Gamma-Ray Sources, William H. Hill Jr.

LSU Master's Theses

A electronically collimated prototype detector was built with commercially available cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) modules and assessed by experiment and simulation. Sensitivity was roughly equivalent to a common hand held 1"x1" NaI(Tl) detector. The maximum useful count rate was 300 counts per second (cps) per module. Overall angular error was less than 7°, which is generally less than source placement uncertainty, and angular resolution was between 20° and 40° for several common isotopes with photon energies between 511 keV and 1333 keV. Prototype data and backprojections were used to verify a simple three dimensional model of charge induction in pixellated …

The Education Of Princess Mary Tudor, Katherine Lee Pierret Perkins

LSU Master's Theses

Mary Tudor, the first officially crowned queen regnant of England, received a humanist education. A curriculum was recommended for her in multiple writings by Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives. This thesis attempts to synthesize and examine information the nature of this plan for a princess's education and the extent to which it was implemented.

Denitrification Capacity And Denitrifying Bacteria In A Restored Bottomland Hardwood Forest, Mississippi River Alluvial Valley: Hydrological Impacts, Yan Li

LSU Master's Theses

Mississippi River Alluvial Valley (MAV) is one of the most important ecosystems in the United States, and bottomland hardwood forests (BLHs) are a major components of this ecosystem. The ecological and hydrological functions of BLHs can help maintain the diversity of species, groundwater balance, and nutrient removal etc. However, due to the increased human activities in the area, most of the BLHs were converted to agricultural land. Realizing the seriousness of the situation of the ecosystem, a series of programs have been carried out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to …

Investigation Of Superficial Dose From A Static Tomotherapy Beam, Koren Suzette Smith

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract Purpose: The TomoTherapy planning system is capable of creating treatment plans that deliver a homogeneous dose to superficial targets. It is essential that the planning system accurately predicts dose to the surface and superficial depths from beams directed at every angle in the axial plane. This work concentrates on measuring and modeling the dose from a static TomoTherapy beam at normal and oblique incidence. It was hypothesized that superficial doses measured from a static TomoTherapy beam agree with doses calculated by the TomoTherapy planning system to within 5% of the maximum dose for angles of incidence from 0¢ª-83¢ª. Methods: …

Dr. Frankenstein Was A Designer: Methods For Educating Gen H--The Hybrid Design Student, Patricia Ferguson Vining

LSU Master's Theses

Business Week recently launched an innovation and design quarterly entitled In, as well as a Website section specifically dedicated to design and innovation. Fast Company, with its Third Annual Masters of Design issue, and Fortune have also added significant design content to their publications. The business world appears to have discovered design as a vital strategic tool and economic force. Globalization and the Internet knowledge explosion have changed our world in unprecedented ways. Design thinking, which was previously relegated to dealing with issues such as form and function, has become the twenty-first century methodology for the development of new business …

A Directional Algorithm For An Electronically-Collimated Radiation Detector (Ecrd), Adam Lackie

LSU Master's Theses

An electronically-collimated radiation detector (ECRD) is being developed to be used for locating radiation sources, e.g. for intraoperative localization of sentinel lymph nodes, or for public safety applications. The design emphasizes a compact, portable detector with a wide field of view. Typical probes provide either high sensitivity but no directional information when uncollimated, or directional information but poor detection efficiency when collimated. The ECRD design provides high sensitivity to the presence of radiation because it lacks physical collimation, and simultaneously provides directional information using electronic collimation. Intended to be a hand-held device, the ECRD front end comprises an array of …

Exploring The Binding Of Amine And Sulfonamide Ligands In Rhenium(I) Tricarbonyl And Platinum(Ii) Complexes, Anna Maria Christoforou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Platinum is the metal present in various classes of inorganic medicinal agents directed at important diseases such as cancer or viral infections. Several new Pt(II) complexes of polyamine ligands bearing a dansyl moiety linked by a sulfonamide group were prepared; in some cases the sulfonamide nitrogen formed a bond to Pt. The sulfonamido group donates strongly to Pt and places the dansyl group close to a vacant coordination position, allowing it to stack with bound guanine base (G) when G binds. The emission of the fluorophore decreases with decreasing distance to Pt. Metal nuclide radiopharmaceuticals contain a metal core and …

An Empirical Analysis Of Life Tenure: A Response To Professors Calabresi And Lindgren, Ryan W. Scott, David R. Stras

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Opposition to life tenure has been steadily mounting in the legal academy and Professors Steve Calabresi and Jim Lindgren are among those leading the charge. Crucial to their argument that life tenure is fundamentally flawed is an empirical claim that the increases in average tenure among Supreme Court Justices are both dramatic and unprecedented.

In this article, the authors respond to Calabresi and Lindgren by showing that their hypothesis of dramatic and unprecedented growth in average tenure has two fundamental flaws. First, it suffers from a period-selection problem. Rendering the data using longer or shorter periods blunts or eliminates the …

Investigation Of Utility Of Delta-T Theta Probe For Obtaining Surficial Moisture Measurements On Beaches, Phillip P. Schmutz

LSU Master's Theses

Recent studies have reported on the use of a new device to measure beach 'surface' moisture content, the Delta-T Theta Probe. However, the sensor length (6.0 cm) is too long for measurement of true surface moisture conditions. This study investigated the reliability of the Theta Probe as sensor length is reduced to lengths of 1.5, 1.0, and 0.5 cm. Field investigations were conducted at sites in Texas and North Carolina, in order to evaluate the influence of differing sediment sizes on probe output. It was found that calibration R^2 values remained high and only a minimal increase in standard error …

Optimum Energy Allocation For Detection In Wireless Sensor Networks, Krishna Kishore Gunturu

LSU Master's Theses

The problem of binary hypothesis testing in a wireless sensor network is studied in the presence of noisy channels and for non-identical sensors. We have designed a mathematically tractable fusion rule for which optimal energy allocation for individual sensors can be achieved. In this thesis we considered two methods for transmitting the sensor observations; binary modulation and M-ary modulation. In binary modulation we are able to allocate the energy among the sensors and protect the individual quantized bits where as the M-ary modulation provides optimum energy allocation only among the sensors. The goal is to design a fusion rule and …

Tourmalinities In Neoproterzoic Metaevaporitic Deposit Of Duruchas Formation, Damar Belt, Central Namibia, Haiting Sun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Tourmalinites from a well-developed meta-evaporite sequence in the Neoproterozoic Duruchaus Formation of central Namibia contain tourmalines with chemical and textural features that are excellent recorders of their environment of formation. Unlike most other meta-evaporitic deposits, this tourmalinite locality exhibits only minor deformation. The tourmalinites form as finely laminated units ca. 1 m thick within a sequence of quartzites, mica schists, dolomitic marbles, and carbonate breccias. Well-preserved pseudomorphs are considered to replace a variety of evaporitic minerals. The meta-sedimentary rocks of the Duruchaus Formation have been interpreted as representing lacustrine, playa lake, fluvial, and non-marine evaporite deposition in an intracontinental rift …

Chemical Analysis Of Extracts From Port-Orford Cedar Wood And Bark, Heng Gao

LSU Master's Theses

This study investigated a Soxhlet extract procedure to separate chemical components in the wood and bark of Port-Orford cedar (POC) (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana). The bio-activities, antioxidant properties, and decay resistance were evaluated. The heartwood extracts were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Three vitro assays including (1) 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl hydrate (DPPH• ) radical scavenging assay, (2) 2,2-azinobis ( 3-ethylbenzothiszoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) radical cation scavenging ability assay, and (3) metal chelating activity assay were carried out to evaluate the antioxidant activity. The total phenol content of the extracts was determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu method and expressed as Gallic Acid Equivalent …

The Genealogy Of Morals: Contemporary Empirical Accounts, Franklin Donald Worrell

LSU Master's Theses

In the late twentieth century, moral realists began to resurrect a type of argument that emerged during the Enlightenment. These realists appealed to moral progress as evidence for moral facts, and their arguments took the form of inferences to the best explanation. Recently, the argument style has emerged again. This time, the inference to the best explanation is being used by empirically-informed sentimentalists to argue that their theories can provide accounts of moral evolution that have greater explanatory and predictive power than the accounts offered by the moral realists. This thesis examines the arguments to the best explanation of such …

Evaluation Of Allochthonous And Autochthonous Microbial Populations In The In-Situ Remediation Of Weathered Oil In A Coastal Freshwater Habitat, Kyle Alan Schmidt

LSU Master's Theses

Use of bioremedial technologies has gained popularity in recent decades for application at oil spill sites. While much research has been done on specific case studies along marine shores, such as with the spill of the Exxon Valdez, there still remain questions as to the advantage of active biological treatment vs. natural attenuation in freshwater environments. To examine this question, a comparative study of allochthonous and autochthonous microbial communities ability to degrade weathered oil residuals was implemented at the CITGO Petroleum Refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana following a spill of approximately 40,000 barrels of slop oil on June 19th, 2006 …

Influence Of Temperature On The Performance Of Wetlands Treating Chlorinated Volatile Organic Compounds, Maria G. Murillo

LSU Master's Theses

Various studies have presented models to predict the performance of constructed wetlands at different temperatures focused on the removal of conventional pollutants, and common configuration of constructed wetlands. Investigations on the effect of temperature on the performance of constructed wetlands treating chlorinated volatile organic compounds are limited to microcosm studies. This study is meant to come up with kinetic and energy balance input data for mathematical models that can be used to predict the performance of upflow constructed treatment wetlands treating chlorinated ethenes and ethanes at different ambient temperatures. Bench scale continuous upflow columns will be conducted to investigate the …

Reducing False Alarms In Searches For Gravitational Waves From Coalescing Binary Systems, Andres Rodri­Guez

LSU Master's Theses

LIGO observatories in Livingston, LA and Hanford, WA may detect gravitational waves emitted from coalescing binary systems composed of two compact objects. In order to detect compact binary coalescence (CBC) events, LIGO searches utilize matched filtering techniques. Matched filtering is the optimal detection strategy for stationary, Gaussian noise, however, LIGO noise is often non-stationary, non-Gaussian. Non-stationary noise result in an excess of false candidate events, commonly known as false alarms. This thesis develops the r² test to reduce the false alarm rate for LIGO CBC searches. Results of the search for primordial black hole binary systems (where each object …

Impingement Heat Transfer In The Leading Edge Cavity Of A Gas Turbine Vane, Amar Jeetendra Panchangam Nivarthi

LSU Master's Theses

Jet Impingement Cooling is an internal cooling technique used in the leading edge cavities of Turbine Vanes. This involves a series of jets impinging onto the internal surfaces of a turbine vane/blade through the impingement plate. For the model tested here, the area around the blade/vane leading edge was studied for both heat transfer performance and aerodynamics losses. The performance of an Impingement cooling system depends on parameters like the spent flow effect on the downstream jet, film cooling configuration, and tip flow condition. The present study focuses on analyzing the effect of these parameters on a unique impingement cooling …

An Architecture For Embedded System Communication, Chakradhar Medavarapu

LSU Master's Theses

Time is a major constraint in the development of most embedded systems. In many cases, the development of embedded software is directly dependent on the development of the embedded systems. This calls for a development framework that enables embedded software and hardware to be developed in parallel. In an attempt to solve the problem, a concept prototype hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation methodology has been proposed and implemented at the Ohio State University for the TMS320LF2407A DSP board. We build on top of that HIL system by rewriting the low level device drivers that allow data and control information to be set …

Evaluation Of Compliance With The Long Term 1 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, Racquel Rena Douglas

LSU Master's Theses

Cryptosporidium is a common protozoan parasite that causes cryptosporidiosis, a severe gastrointestinal disease. Currently, there is no antibiotic available to treat the disease. Cryptosporidium has been responsible for several waterborne disease outbreaks in the United States. The largest cryptosporidiosis outbreak in United States history occurred in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in spring 1993. The vulnerability of the United State drinking water supply to waterborne disease outbreak is still prevalent nearly 15 years after the Milwaukee outbreak. In order to effectively control Cryptosporidium, the EPA has strengthened the regulations on turbidity control for filtration performance by implementing the Long Term 1 Enhanced Surface …

Evaluation Of Consolidation Parameters Of Cohesive Soils Using Pcpt Method, Rohit Raj Pant

LSU Master's Theses

The piezocone penetration test (PCPT) has emerged as most widely used in situ method for obtaining soil profile as well as physical properties. The PCPT method provides three independent and nearby continuous measurements with the depth; they are: tip stress (qc), sleeve friction (fs) and pore pressure (u1, u2, or u3). These measurements have been successfully used to correlate various soil properties such as undrained shear strength, unit weight and consolidation parameters. This study presents the evaluation of the PCPT interpretation methods for their capability to reasonably estimate the consolidation parameters namely constrained modulus, overconsolidation ratio and vertical coefficient of …