Digital Commons Network^™

A Semi-Supervised Information Extraction Framework For Large Redundant Corpora, Eric Normand

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The vast majority of text freely available on the Internet is not available in a form that computers can understand. There have been numerous approaches to automatically extract information from human- readable sources. The most successful attempts rely on vast training sets of data. Others have succeeded in extracting restricted subsets of the available information. These approaches have limited use and require domain knowledge to be coded into the application. The current thesis proposes a novel framework for Information Extraction. From large sets of documents, the system develops statistical models of the data the user wishes to query which generally …

Abrupt Climate Change And Storm Surge Impacts In Coastal Louisiana In 2050, Jay Ratcliff

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The most critical hazards impacting the world today are the affects of climate change and global warming. Scientists have been studying the Earth's climate for centuries and have come to agreement that our climate is changing, and has changed, many times abruptly over the history of our planet. This research focuses on the impacts of global warming related to increased hurricane intensities and their surge responses along the coast of the State of Louisiana. Surge responses are quantified for storms that could potentially occur under present climate but 50 years into the future on a coast subjected to current erosion …

Salinity Transport In A Finite-Volume Sigma-Layer Three-Dimensional Model, Angel Gabriel Retana

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to develop a 3-D model for The Pontchartrain Estuary that was capable of long-term mass conservative simulation of salinities. This was accomplished in a multi-stage approach involving: a physical model of salinity exchange through a pass; a 3-D FVCOM model of the physical experiment; the development and testing of an FVCOM model for an idealized Pontchartrain Basin; and for the entire estuary. The data from the physical model tests were used to validate the performance of the FVCOM model with density-driven flows. These results showed that hydrostatic FVCOM captured the primary internal wave movement. …

Cooperative Jamming In Wireless Networks - Turning Attacks Into Privacy Protection, Jingqi Wu

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Generally, collisions between packets are undesired in wireless networks. We design this scheme, Cooperative Jamming in Wireless Networks (CJWN), to make use of collision to protect secret DATA packets from being sniffed by a nearby eavesdropper. We are intending to greatly increase the Packet Error Rate (PER) at the eavesdropper when the PER at the receiver is maintained at an acceptable level. This scheme is not intended to completely take the place of various encryption/decryption schemes which are working based on successfully received packets. Adding CJWN to the popular CSMA/CA adopted in IEEE 802.11 will add more security even the …

Application Of X-Ray Diffraction Methods And Molecular Mechanics Simulations To Structure Determination And Cotton Fiber Analysis, Zakhia Moore

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The results of three very different studies are presented. X-ray diffraction has been utilized for single-crystal structure determinations, fiber diffraction analyses, and in conjunction with molecular modeling of Cellulose IIII. Although each technique is different in its sampling, data acquisition, data treatment, and identification, the common denominator has been the use of x-rays. The single-crystal structure determination of ethylene glycol bis(tropane-3-carboxylate) is presented as an example of the use of modern single-crystal x-ray instrumentation including the use of coupled charged devices (CCDs) as detectors for accurate data collection and rapid elucidation of crystal structures. The structure determination of Cellulose IIII …

Casa Samba: Twenty-One Years Of Amerizilian Identity In New Orleans1, Lauren E. Lastrapes

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Samba drumming and dance traditions work in New Orleans in ways that they do not elsewhere. Casa Samba, a drumming and dance troupe in the tradition of the Brazilian escolas de samba, shows how it works. Integral to this analysis of Casa Samba are the ways in which the group's identity and the identities of its individual members are processual, mutable, and "unfinished, always being remade" (Gilroy 1993:xi). This thesis examines how Casa Samba has situated itself in the New Orleans music scene. This work seeks, through ethnographic interviews with long term members, to identify what makes Casa Samba attractive …

Essays In Corporate Governance: Issues And Evidence From Equity Carve-Outs, Andrew Mulindwa Kayanga

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the relation between corporate governance and firm performance. The theme of this study is that the widely documented long-term underperformance in equity carve-outs can be partly explained by weak corporate governance. The first essay presented in Chapter 2 explores the effect of shareholder-rights protection on the performance of a sample of firms that initiated a carve-out during the period 1983-2004. Using the Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick (2003) index and Bebchuk, Cohen, and Ferrell (2004) entrenchment index, as proxies for the quality of shareholder-rights protection, I provide evidence that firms with better shareholder rights …

The Capacity Of The Black Protestant Church To Provide Social Ministry In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Marshall Truehill Jr.

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This research is an ethnography which investigates the effects of Hurricane Katrina upon the capacity of African American Protestant churches in New Orleans to provide spiritual and social ministry to the city's underprivileged. More than three years after Hurricane Katrina unleashed its fury upon the city, fifty per cent of the churches remain as the hurricane left them. Pre-Katrina, fifty per cent of the population lived at or below the poverty line and depended upon faith-based programs as part of their support network and ladder toward selfsufficiency. Because of the disaster, there was substantive loss of parishioners, financial resources, and …

Development Of The Distributed Points Method With Application To Cavitating Flow, David M. Bourg

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A mesh-less method for solving incompressible, multi-phase flow problems has been developed and is discussed along with the presentation of benchmark results showing good agreement with theoretical and experimental results. Results of a systematic, parametric study of the single phase flow around a 2D circular cylinder at Reynolds numbers up to 1000 are presented and discussed. Simulation results show good agreement with experimental results. Extension of the method to deal with multiphase flow including liquid-to-vapor phase transition along with applications to cavitating flow are discussed. Insight gleaned from numerical experiments of the cavity closure problem are discussed along with recommendations …

Methylation-Sensitive Linking Libraries Enhance Gene-Enriched Sequencing Of Complex Genomes And Map Dna Methylation Domains, William Nelson, Meizhong Luo, Jianxin Ma, Matt Estep, James Estill, Ruifeng He, Jayson Talag, Nicholas Sisneros, David Kudrna, Hyeran Kim, Jetty Ss Ammiraju, Kristi Collura, Arvind K. Bharti, Joachim Messing, Rod A. Wing, Phillip Sanmiguel, Jeffrey L. Bennetzen, Carol Soderlund

Department of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture Faculty Publications

Background

Many plant genomes are resistant to whole-genome assembly due to an abundance of repetitive sequence, leading to the development of gene-rich sequencing techniques. Two such techniques are hypomethylated partial restriction (HMPR) and methylation spanning linker libraries (MSLL). These libraries differ from other gene-rich datasets in having larger insert sizes, and the MSLL clones are designed to provide reads localized to "epigenetic boundaries" where methylation begins or ends.

Results

A large-scale study in maize generated 40,299 HMPR sequences and 80,723 MSLL sequences, including MSLL clones exceeding 100 kb. The paired end reads of MSLL and HMPR clones were shown to …

Developing Writing Fluency Through Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication, Rossana Camacho

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing from sociocultural theory, this research investigated the effects of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in the development of writing fluency. Likewise, the study aimed at confirming previously cited affective benefits linked to SCMC. Measuring fluency in words per 30 minutes, the study compared pre and post-test essay scores of two groups of ESL learners (a control group and a SCMC group) in two intermediate levels. Two evaluation questionnaires were also administered to the SCMC group in order to obtain students' opinions of this technology-based medium, and to analyze change in their perceptions. The SCMC group outperformed the control group in …

Search For The Standard Model Higgs Boson In The Missing Energy And Acoplanar B-Jet Topology At √S = 1.96 Tev, V. M. Abazov, Kenneth A. Bloom, Gregory R. Snow, D0 Collaboration

Kenneth Bloom Publications

We report a search for the standard model Higgs boson in the missing energy and acoplanar b-jet topology, using an integrated luminosity of 0.93 fb^-1 recorded by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron pp Collider. The analysis includes signal contributions from pp → ZH → ννbb, as well as from WH production in which the charged lepton from the W boson decay is undetected. Neural networks are used to separate signal from background. In the absence of a signal, we set limits on σ (pp → VH) x B(H → bb) at the 95% …

Text Mining In Radiology Reports, Tianxia Gong, Chew Lim Tan, Tze-Yun Leong, Cheng Kiang Lee, Boon Chuan Pang, C. C. Tchoyoson Lim, Qi Tian, Suisheng Tang, Zhuo Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Medical text mining has gained increasing interest in recent years. Radiology reports contain rich information describing radiologist's observations on the patient's medical conditions in the associated medical images. However as most reports are in free text format, the valuable information contained in those reports cannot be easily accessed and used, unless proper text mining has been applied. In this paper we propose a text mining system to extract and use the information in radiology reports. The system consists of three main modules: a medical finding extractor a report and image retriever and a text-assisted image feature extractor In evaluation, the …

Military Base Closure And Community Transformation: The Case Of England Air Force Base In Central Louisiana, Phyllis E. Mayo

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Closing England Air Force Base (AFB) emerged as a possibility following the first Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round in 1988. The central Louisiana community responded with a dual strategy: defense, implemented by a highly visible group of mostly elected officials who fought to save the base; and offense, implemented by a small group of professionals working in the background to develop a contingency plan. Together, they managed both sides of the change equation, political and technical, and produced a military to civilian conversion. This thesis focuses on policy issues of base closure and ingredients for success and failure among …

Utilitizing And Moving Beyond A Constructionist Approach To Trace The Emergence Of Racial And Ethnic Identities Among Pre-Mexican, Mexican And Americans Of Mexican Descent, Owen Williamson

Theses and Dissertations

Cornell and Hartmann (2007) developed a constructionist framework that can describe the development of racial and ethnic identities. Yet this framework has greater utility than its authors have intended as it also provides the best rubric to date for comprehending the transitions between collective identity group types. This study engages in a thorough investigation of the development of racial and ethnic identities within the context of those that precede it via an ethnohistorical analysis. It also demonstrates that this framework is capable of describing pre-modern religious and national identity types in addition to racial and ethnic identity types. This permits …

Flexible Screw Design For Bone Implant Application, Seule Kabir

Theses and Dissertations

Disruption of the scapholunate ligament can result in significant immediate and long-term disability. Of the available current acute and subacute treatment strategies for this disorder, the use of a solid screw to stabilize the scapholunate relationship has been proposed. However, subsequent carpal bone loss is an inherent risk to this technique. The goal of this study was to design a flexible orthopedic screw that can be placed between the scaphoid and lunate to restore more normal biomechanics without the risk of osteolysis. Several ideas were generated during the course of the study to create a moveable section in a bone …

Bumbling Biddies And Drunken Pats: Anti-Irish Humor In Antebellum New Orleans, Ashley Barckett

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Irish in New Orleans have been a notoriously understudied group. With the third largest Irish population in the country by 1860, New Orleans is crucial when trying to understand the Irish immigrant experience. Viewing the Irish from the public perspective, this study explores the Daily Picayune, New Orleans' largest newspaper, from its inception in 1837 to 1857, to decipher the city's attitudes towards the Irish. Jokes in particular are explored, their function being multifaceted. First, jokes grouped Irish women into three types in an effort to maintain control of a large and unfamiliar group of white women who did …

University Of New Mexico Board Of Regents Minutes For December 18, 2008, University Of New Mexico Board Of Regents

Board of Regents Meeting Minutes

Minutes from the December 18, 2008 Board of Regents Meeting

Sex Expression In A Rainforest Understory Herb, Begonia Urophylla, John Cozza

Open Access Dissertations

Monoecy, the production of distinct male and female flowers on the same plant, is an important, though little studied, sexual strategy in the rainforest understory. This study of a monoecious plant discovered a cue to induce flowering, explored the interplay of gender constraint vs. plasticity in a natural population, and tested possible causes of gender in two laboratory experiments. An experiment in the lab found that reduced photoperiod for three weeks is an unambiguous cue for flowering. The remarkably long inductive period is followed by a long and variable period of floral initiation. This results in only partial synchronization of …

Water Mass Formation And Circulation In The Persian Gulf And Water Exchange With The Indian Ocean, Fengchao Yao

Open Access Dissertations

The Persian Gulf is a shallow, semi-enclosed marginal sea where the Persian Gulf Water (PGW), one of the most saline water masses in the world, is formed due to the arid climate. The PGW flushes out of the Persian Gulf as a deep outflow and induces a surface inflow of the Indian Ocean Surface Water (IOSW), driving an inverse-estuarine type water exchange through the Strait of Hormuz. In this dissertation, the circulation and water mass transformation processes in the Persian Gulf and the water exchange with the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz, in response to the atmospheric forcing, …

Volume 44 - Issue 11 - Thursday, December 18, 2008, Rose Thorn Staff

The Rose Thorn Archive

The Rose Thorn, Rose-Hulman's independent student newspaper.

Council On Academic Affairs Minutes, Dec 18, 2008, Eastern Kentucky University

Council on Academic Affairs

No abstract provided.

Deafdigest: Deaf Sports News December 18, 2008, Barry Strassler

DeafDigest Sports 2008

No abstract provided.

Novas V. Ice

2008 Decisions

USDC for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

State V. Barnes Respondent's Brief Dckt. 33977

Idaho Supreme Court Records & Briefs, All

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of A Research-Based Intervention Program On Kindergarten Student Achievement, Melvin J. Bishop Jr.

Dissertations

The current system for identifying at-risk students, which employs the wait-and-see method, provides teachers no formal way of getting the necessary interventions needed in order for their students to be successful. The purpose of this study was to determine if the implementation of a research-based intervention program, Response To Intervention, would increase the academic performance of kindergarten students identified as at-risk.

Kindergarten students entering school for the first time were tested for basic knowledge of alphabetical letter recognition and letter sound recognition. Children who demonstrated a deficit were given a series of research-based reading interventions by an intervention specialist to …

Vol. Vi, Tab 38 - Ex. 24 - Email From Christopher Klipple, Christopher Klipple

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

The Minutes Of The Marshall University Staff Council Meeting, December 2008, Marshall University Staff Council

Staff Council Minutes

No abstract provided.

The Weekly Challenger, December 18, 2008, The Weekly Challenger, Et Al

Weekly Challenger Newspaper Collection

The December 18, 2008, issue of The Weekly Challenger.

Schmechel V. Dille Respondent's Brief 2 Dckt. 35050

Idaho Supreme Court Records & Briefs, All

No abstract provided.