Digital Commons Network^™

Characterization Of Rock/Fluids Interactions At Reservoir Conditions, Dayanand Saini

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, interfacial phenomena of spreading, wettability, and rock/oil adhesion interactions in complex rock/oil/water systems were characterized at reservoir conditions of elevated pressures and temperatures. Capabilities of both ambient and reservoir condition optical cells were used for measuring the oil/water interfacial tension and dynamic (the water-receding and the water-advancing) contact angles for various complex rock/oil/water systems. Well known sessile oil drop volume alteration method was successfully used in this study for evaluating the applicability of the modified Young’s equation for characterizing the line tension in complex rock/oil/water systems at reservoir conditions. This appears to be first time when rock/fluids …

German Enemy Aliens And The Decine Of British Liberalism In World War I, Ansley L. Macenczak

LSU Master's Theses

After the start of World War I in 1914, the British government began internment of enemy alien men, disrupting the large German population settled in the country. This move seemed to be in complete contrast in comparison to the lax immigration laws during the long nineteenth century, when Great Britain had one of the most liberal immigration laws of any country in Europe. The British public was proud of this tradition and Britain’s image as an open haven for refugees and individuals seeking a better life. Foreigners were attracted to Britain by its liberal traditions, most clearly exemplified by the …

The Legal Challenge Of Protecting Animal Migrations As Phenomena Of Abundance, Robert L. Fischman, Jeffrey B. Hyman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Animal migrations are as familiar as geese in the sky on a fall afternoon and as mysterious as the peregrinations of sea turtles across thousands of miles of open ocean. This article discusses the distinguishing attributes of animal migrations, why they are important to biodiversity conservation, and the legal challenges posed by migration conservation. In particular, the article focuses on those aspects of migration conservation that existing law, dominated by imperiled species protection, fails to address. It consequently suggests law reforms that would better conserve animal migrations. A step toward serious legal efforts to protect the process and function of …

Where Cultures And Sovereigns Collide: Balancing Federalism, Tribal Self-Determination, And Individual Rights In The Adoption Of Indian Children By Gays And Lesbians, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article analyzes the complex interplay between adoption (traditionally a matter reserved to state family law) and the federal Indian Child Welfare Act in the context of adoptions by gays and lesbians.

As a federal statute that partially preempts state law for the benefit of Native Americans, ICWA implicates three sovereigns: the United States, the state where the adoption petition is brought, and the tribe whose child is the focus of the proceeding. This interplay of sovereigns in itself makes Indian child welfare law complicated and interesting. Beyond these sovereign interests, also to be considered are the interests and rights …

Impeach Brent Benjamin Now!? Giving Adequate Attention To Failings Of Judicial Impartiality, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2252 (2009), the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote vacated and remanded a decision of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in which Justice Brent Benjamin cast the deciding vote in favor of Massey, a company run by Don Blankenship, who had provided $3 million in support to Benjamin during his 2004 election campaign.

Despite the unsavory taste of the entire episode, the Court was excessively careful not to criticize Justice Benjamin. Overlooked because of this undue judicial civility and controversy about the constitutional aspects of the decision …

Completing Caperton And Clarifying Common Sense Through Using The Right Standard For Constitutional Judicial Recusal, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a state supreme court decision in which a justice who had received $3 million in campaign support from a litigant cast the deciding vote to relieve the litigant of a $50 million liability. The Court reached this result, one I view as compelled by common sense, through a 5-4 vote, with the dissenters, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, minimizing the danger of biased judging presented by the situation and questioning the practical feasibility of the Court's approach as well as the wisdom of …

Surfactant-Induced Flow Behavior Effects In Gas Condensate Reservoirs, Bikash Deep. Saikia

LSU Master's Theses

Natural gas, which accounts for a quarter of world’s energy, has been a major energy source because of its abundance and less impact on environment. With explorations at higher depth, pressure and temperature, the share of gas condensate reservoirs to global gas production is increasing. A unique production challenge associated with these reservoirs is the condensate blockage problem, which is the buildup of condensate liquid saturation around wellbore as a result of drawdown below dew point pressure. Mitigation of this problem requires in depth understanding of the multiphase flow of liquid and gas. Surfactants are well known in the literature …

What Content Makes People Want To Use Sports Websites?, Cara Francesca De Carlo

LSU Master's Theses

This study looked at sports websites to see how the variables information, humor, entertainment, community, and credibility affected sports website users’ intentions to use and re-use sports websites. Three groups of 25 and one group of 30 participants each completed a website viewing activity and corresponding survey. There were four website viewing activities (one for each group). The activities led participants on tours of ESPN.com, Deadspin.com, Football Outsiders, and Yahoo! Sports. Furthermore, the tours were designed to expose participants to the variables (as defined under disposition theory and uses and gratifications). Likewise, the corresponding survey assessed participants’ intentions to use …

A Performance Guide To Lori Laitman's Living In The Body, Kathryn Mary Drake

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this document is to provide a complete performer’s guide to American composer Lori Laitman’s Living in the Body, a song cycle consisting of six songs for soprano and saxophone set to the poetry of Joyce Sutphen. Living in the Body is one of very few cycles written for soprano and saxophone, and the combination is both unusual and interesting to investigate. The cycle explores letting go of the past and focusing on what will happen in the second half of life. The text is set expertly for soprano, bringing important words to the listener’s attention while keeping …

Friction And Wear At Elevated Velocities, Adam Lodygowski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Severe contact stress problems generate high temperature and create thermomechanical gouging and wear due to high velocity sliding between contacting materials. The major consideration is to develop an experimental and theoretical model for the material constitutive behavior in order to better characterize and predict the internal failure surroundings the gouging and wear events and understand the physical behavior of high speed contact environment. An enhancement of an existing tribometer device developed by Philippon et al. [2004] is made up of a dynamometer ring and a load sensor that allows to apply an apparent normal force on specimens and measure frictional …

Hamilton-Jacobi Theory For Optimal Control Problems On Stratified Domains, Richard Charles Barnard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis studies optimal control problems on stratified domains. We first establish a known proximal Hamilton-Jacobi characterization of the value function for problems with Lipschitz dynamics. This background gives the motivation for our results for systems over stratified domains, which is a system with non-Lipschitz dynamics that were introduced by Bressan and Hong. We provide an example that shows their attempt to derive a Hamilton-Jacobi characterization of the value function is incorrect, and discuss the nature of their error. A new construction of a multifunction is introduced that possesses properties similar to those of a Lipschitz multifunction, and is used …

Post-Diaster Family Resilience: The Use Of Humor As A Coping Strategy, Bridgette Boe O'Connor

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of humor as a coping strategy among Hurricane Katrina survivors. The data for this study were collected in the first wave of a larger project on families and disasters. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by combining Census data with storm damage estimates and purposive sampling, 50 participants affected by Hurricane Katrina from a single suburban community in Southern Louisiana in early spring 2006 were recruited and interviewed. When the interviews were qualitatively analyzed with a focus on humor, it became clear that families used humor even at such a devastating …

The Feminization Of Private Investigation: A Sociological Analysis, Jessica Simpson Pearce

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation outlines the occupation of private investigation and the role that females play within that profession. The difficulties women experience in male-oriented occupations remains noteworthy in sociological research today. Progress has been made, yet many barriers still exist for women. These include structural, social, and cultural factors that influence women and/or the jobs that they hold. With the completion of interviews with twenty-six female private investigators, I was able to analyze the existing structural, interactional, and gender barriers which moderate the number of women that work as private investigators. Few studies have examined this occupation and this gap may …

Panel Ii: The Global Contours Of Ip Protection For Trade Dress, Industrial Design, Applied Art, And Project Configuration, Mark D. Janis, Susan Scafidi, Orit Fischman Afori, Wendy J. Gordon, Jonathan Moskin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Stereotype And Representation Of Near And Middle Eastern Peoples In La Bande Dessinee, Brandon Matthew Thomas

LSU Master's Theses

Representation of social groups in the comics is serious. In 2006, a series of twelve cartoons published in a Danish newspaper sparked a controversy that precipitated the deaths of hundreds of people. The images depicted Mohammed and other images that supposedly mocked Islam. All across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa protesters paraded through the streets, some calling for the death of the cartoonists. Trials in Europe over the publication of these cartoons resulted in several firings. Counter protests have also arisen. These protesters found grievance with the firings, claiming that the freedom of the press was being violated …

Low Co-Cultivation Temperature At 20oc Improved Agrobacterium Tumefaciens-Mediated Transformation Of Tobacco Leaf Disks, Guiying Su

LSU Master's Theses

I investigated the effect of co-cultivation temperature and binary Ti vectors on the fresh weight yield of leaf disks of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L. cv. Xanthi (nn, Smith) after Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation. I concluded that the temperature at 20ºC during co-cultivation of leaf disks with A. tumefaciens was the most critical factor on the reproducible enhancement of fresh weight yield. The highest fresh weight increase and presumably transformation efficiency was achieved under the following experimental conditions: A. tumefaciens strain LBA4404 containing pLSU binary Ti vector was grown overnight at 28oC in liquid Agrobacterium medium and the concentration was adjusted to …

Influences On Public Support For Green Infrastructure: An Examination Of Urban Wetland Restoration In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Lynette C. Overholser

LSU Master's Theses

The research examines patterns of likely support for urban wetland restoration in the Greater New Orleans area. Through multi-variate statistical analysis of responses derived from an original survey of homeowners in New Orleans, key factors are identified that explain variation in residents’ willingness to accept such areas and their perceptions of ecological benefits associated with a theoretical wetlands restoration design for the Gentilly area. Further, the analysis determines the extent to which direct experience with Hurricane Katrina may influence public support for this and other green infrastructure projects. The results of the data collected show that many people in New …

Creating Brands Online: Third Party Opinions And Their Effect On Consumers' Trust In Brands And Purchase Intentions, Pavel Mrazek

LSU Master's Theses

Consumer lack of trust in online vendors and brands is identified as one of the biggest obstacles in the growth of e-commerce. This study examined how third-party product reviews help in building consumers’ trust, in consumers’ perception of product quality, their brand attitudes and consumers’ purchase intention. The six cell experimental design tested the effect of consumer and expert online product reviews on fictitious web sites for high-involvement and low-involvement products. The findings indicate that online consumer product reviews perform better than online expert product reviews and no product reviews. Online product reviews affected visitors to a web site with …

Paths Of Most Resistance: Navigating The Culture Industry In William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Delmore Schwartz, And Eudora Welty, Jason Dupuy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how four modernist writers of the 1930s and 1940s—William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Delmore Schwartz, and Eudora Welty—used their works to present ways to resist and navigate what they present as the frequently reductive worldview offered by the culture industry. Faulkner tends to show the culture industry as selling easy answers that focus on the end result, which allows his characters to approach the culture industry with a sense of fatalism. To resist this, Faulkner stresses a step-by-step, complex dialectical understanding of the culture industry, one that shows the fissures in its seemingly straightforward narratives and allows the …

Social Shopping For Fashion, Jiyun Kang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In spite of the significance of social shopping in the context of fashion consumption, its definitions, boundaries, and explanations have not yet been systematically established in literature. The purpose of Study 1 was to develop a reliable and valid scale of social shopping for fashion. With the scale, Study 2 aimed to develop and test a structural model of social shopping process. In Study 1, a three-step procedure for scale development was followed: item generation, scale purification, and scale validation. As a result, a five-dimensional scale, along with sixteen behavioral items, was developed representing distinctive dimension of social shopping for …

In Vitro And In Vivo Evaluation Of A Brucella Putative Hemagglutinin, Lauren E. Duhon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Brucellosis, a zoonotic disease caused by Brucella spp., presents both health and economic difficulties for livestock, wildlife, and humans. While brucellosis is nearly eradicated in the United States, the disease remains detrimental in many countries worldwide. Attempts to produce a safe and effective small ruminant vaccine have been met with limited success. The current vaccine for bovine brucellosis in the United States is B. abortus RB51. This strain transiently colonizes the host and induces a cell-mediated immune response. Levels of protection have not been demonstrated in goats and thus it is considered a relatively poor caprine vaccine that probably does …

Revitalizing The Suburban Dream: Disaster, Displacement And Resilience In Eastern Orleans Parish, Meredith Morgan Feike

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hurricane Katrina tested the disaster resiliency of communities throughout the city of New Orleans. More than four years after breaches in levees led to the flooding of one hundred forty square miles of the Crescent City, some residents are still struggling to reclaim their neighborhoods one block at a time. Eastern Orleans Parish is a portion of the local landscape whose long-term sustainability remains uncertain. Rebuilding is extremely slow with only a fraction of residents returning to the area. Development in New Orleans East began after World War II as a result of urban sprawl. Many New Orleanians desired a …

Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This Article applies masculinity theory to explore the aspects Ricci v. Destefano and its political reverberations. Empirical evidence showed that virtually all written tests have a disparate impact on minorities, that a neighboring city had reached less discriminatory results using a different weighting system, and that other fire departments used assessment centers to judge firefighters' qualifications for promotions. While the black male and all female firefighters were made invisible by the case and the testimony, the fact that Ricci's and Vargas' testimony lionized a particularly traditional form of heterosexual masculinity was also invisible. While the command presence required of a …

Dynamic Trip Distribution Models For Hurricane Evacuation, Guangxiang Cheng

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation presents several methods to estimate time-dependent origin-destination (O-D) trip tables for hurricane evacuation using survey data from hurricane Floyd in South Carolina in 1999. A static disaggregate destination choice model in multinomial logit form was developed considering household characteristics, hurricane threats, and destination socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Models were developed for persons evacuating to friends or relatives, and hotels or motels separately. None of the household characteristics of evacuees were found to be significant in distinguishing destination choice but destination characteristics were. The model was tested by comparing the observed destination choices with predicted values via trip length …

Reliability And Validity Study Of The Motiviation For Fear (Motif) Survey, Marie S. Nebel-Schwalm

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this study was to determine psychometric properties of a newly created, 24-item functional measure of fear and anxiety for typically-developing adults (the Motivation for Fear; MOTIF). Participants initially included 1,277 college students ranging in age from 18-35. Participants were asked to complete the MOTIF, the Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF), the Sensation Seeking Scale- Form V, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS). Analyses were conducted on those scoring above a minimum threshold on a well-normed measure of anxiety (the DASS). An exploratory factory analysis, using scree plot and parallel analysis, as well as oblique rotation was …

Community College Success: A Multi-Site Program Evaluation Of Postsecondary Career And Technical Education, Kimberly Tynes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Postsecondary career and technical institutions are required to follow a set list of performance indicators in order to receive federal Carl Perkins funding (Perkins IV Accountability, 2009). Within those indicators includes measuring technical skills attainment, which the state of Mississippi chooses to utilize program-specific standardized assessments known as the MS- CPAS2 assessment. The purpose of this multi-site program evaluation was to determine which programs are meeting the assessment passing requirements and to determine how they are achieving success. The rationale for this study was to evaluate the components inherent in successful programs in order to aid other programs who may …

Depolarization By Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin 4 In Pancreatic Alpha-Cells Regulates Glucagon Secretion, Piper Lynn Nelson

LSU Master's Theses

The Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin 4 protein (TRPM4) is a member of the TRP family of ion channels that is expressed in both electrically excitable and non-excitable cells. Functional studies revealed that TRPM4 significantly impacts Ca2+ signals in both immune and pancreatic β-cells, which is important for cellular processes such as hormone secretion. However, its role in glucagon secreting α-cells has not been reported. Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus is often associated with increased glucagon levels; yet, the exact mechanism controlling its secretion is not known. In pancreatic α-cells, an increase in intracellular Ca2+ concentration causes glucagon secretion. We hypothesize that …

Reading Out Of Doors: How Nature Becomes Text And Vice-Versa, Richmond Minor Eustis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The tensions between city and country, the artificial and the natural, the real and the fake are at the heart of attempts to render nature in writing. In many such texts, nature—especially wilderness—is the realm of the real, authentic, and pure, while the city is the realm of the artificial and corrupt. This placement of value in nature, members of the critical theory camp tend to counter, is misguided. Any effort to render nature in text is by its “nature” artificial—far more about human values embedded in language itself than about some extra-textual world. With an approach derived from theorists …

Social Networking Tools In The Modern Era Of Human Rights Protection, Odessa Balumbu, Richard Fazio, Mera Geis, Michael Karsy

Quill & Scope

Human rights are fundamental liberties that should be guaranteed to all human beings. These include things such as access to education and health care, food security, freedom from persecution and access to shelter, safety and security. Human rights promotion and international development have become popular philanthropic efforts and new technology is helping younger generations participate more easily. Whether through activism, fundraising or volunteering, there are many ways to make a difference. Pro- moting the awareness of and access to human rights is a job everyone can and should be a part of.

Nir Dyes For Bioimaging Applications, Jorge O. Escobedo, Oleksandr Rusin, Soojin Lim, Robert M. Strongin

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Fluorescent dyes based on small organic molecules that function in the near infra red (NIR) region are of great current interest in chemical biology. They allow for imaging with minimal autofluorescence from biological samples, reduced light scattering and high tissue penetration. Herein, examples of ongoing NIR fluorophore design strategies as well as their properties and anticipated applications relevant to the bioimaging are presented.