Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Refocusing Away From Rules Reform And Devoting More Attention To The Deciders, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The issue of judicial competence and integrity is particularly troubling in the wake of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., where the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a state supreme court decision in which a justice—who had received at least $3 million in campaign support from a litigant—cast the deciding vote to relieve the litigant of a liability award of $50 million ($82 million with interest). The Court reached this result, one I view as compelled by common sense, through a 5-4 vote. The dissenters, led by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia, minimized the danger of biased judging presented by …

The Insurance Policy As Statute, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Insurance policies are classified as a subspecies of contract. Although the taxonomy is correct, rigid adherence to this classification system limits the legal system's ability to deal with some of the most problematic and frequently litigated questions of insurance coverage. Restricting conception of insurance policies to the contract model unduly limits analysis of the meaning and function of the policies. In addition, restricting characterization of insurance as a matter of “contract” does not necessarily produce swift, inexpensive, efficient, or uniform decisions (to say nothing about accuracy, justice, or fairness). Within contract law, scholars, and courts differ over the respective primacy …

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 …

Corrosion Behavior Of Copper Thin Films In Organic Hf-Containing Cleaning Solution For Semiconductor Applications, Nabil George Mistkawi, Makarem A. Hussein, Malgorzata Ziomek-Moroz, Shankar B. Rananavare

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

The corrosion behavior of electrochemically deposited copper thin films in deaerated and non-deaerated commercial cleaning solutions containing HF was investigated. Potentiodynamic polarization experiments were carried out to determine active, active–passive, passive, and transpassive regions. Corrosion rates were calculated from Tafel slopes. The addition of hydrogen peroxide to the solution and its influence on corrosion was also investigated by employing inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The ICP-MS and potentiodynamic methods yielded comparable Cu dissolution rates. Surface analysis using atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, performed before and after the cleaning solution treatment, did not reveal …

Study Of Host-Fungus Interactions Between Soybean And Phakopsora Pachyrhizi Using Proteomics, Sunjung Park

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Asian soybean rust, caused by Phakopsora pachyrhizi, is an emerging disease in the continental U. S. and resistant commercial varieties have not been reported. In an effort to understand the interactions during rust infection of soybean, protein profile changes were examined over a 14-day period in soybean leaves of one susceptible commercial line (Pioneer 93M60) with or without soybean rust inoculation using proteomics in this study. Forty protein spots differentially expressed after rust inoculation were identified and fourteen of them were recovered and sequenced. These included proteins involved in plant defense, stress, metabolism, and other biological processes. During the time-course …

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 …

The Potential Contribution Of Adr To An Integrated Curriculum: Preparing Law Students For Real World Lawyering, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

This Article briefly reviews the long history of critiques of legal education that highlight the failure to adequately prepare students for what they will and should do as attorneys. It takes a sober look at the hurdles reformers face when trying to make significant curricular changes and proposes a modest menu of reforms that interested faculty and law schools can largely achieve without investing substantial additional resources. This Article emphasizes the special contributions that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can provide to legal education more generally. ADR instruction is an important corrective to a curriculum that routinely conveys the erroneous implication …

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 …

Understanding The Economic Factors That Impact The Financial Health Of Local Governments, John David Barreca

LSU Master's Theses

The state of Louisiana has been hit by several severe hurricanes in recent years, and these disaster events have placed a financial burden on parish budgets. As such, local governments have been compelled to bear various cleanup and recovery costs in the short and long term. Therefore, this research sought to evaluate the factors that drive the variation in the financial health of local governments in Louisiana. This research made two contributions. The first contribution sought to develop a comprehensive measure of economic activity at the county level, and the second contribution used econometric methods to estimate the effect of …

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.

The Impact Of Overfitting And Overgeneralization On The Classification Accuracy In Data Mining, Huy Nguyen Anh Pham

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Current classification approaches usually do not try to achieve a balance between fitting and generalization when they infer models from training data. Such approaches ignore the possibility of different penalty costs for the false-positive, false-negative, and unclassifiable types. Thus, their performances may not be optimal or may even be coincidental. This dissertation analyzes the above issues in depth. It also proposes two new approaches called the Homogeneity-Based Algorithm (HBA) and the Convexity-Based Algorithm (CBA) to address these issues. These new approaches aim at optimally balancing the data fitting and generalization behaviors of models when some traditional classification approaches are used. …

Edaphic And Vegetative Controls On Mercury Cycling In Oligohaline Wetlands, Jonathan M. Willis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

With the expansion of the human population and associated industries there is a concomitant increase in both resource utilization and the production of waste and deleterious by-products. Mercury is a naturally-occurring toxic metal with a complicated and unique biogeochemical cycle, and is often a contaminant of ecotoxicological concern in unindustrialized aquatic habitats. The research described herein was designed to elucidate multiple aspects regarding the behavior of mercury in oligohaline wetland habitats, particularly with respect to edaphic and vegetative effects, through a monitoring and characterization study as well as a series of manipulative experiments. The observational study, conducted in the wetlands …

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 …

Cold Looks And Hot Tempers: Individual-Level Effects Of Incivility In The Workplace, Shannon G. Taylor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The deleterious effects of workplace incivility have been widely decried by practitioners and the popular press, but empirical evidence in this regard has only recently begun to accrue in the academic literature. As such, the present study examines the empirical validity of theoretically relevant attitudinal, health-related, and performance outcomes affected by workplace incivility. Hypotheses were tested with data obtained from individuals employed in a diverse range of for-profit and not-for-profit industries, organizations, and occupations and their supervisors. Results demonstrate that experiences of workplace incivility adversely affect employee attitudes and well-being; that workplace incivility experiences may indirectly affect feelings of burnout …

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 …

A Treatment Components Analysis In Positive Peer Reporting For Socially Withdrawn Children, Jeffrey S. Chenier

LSU Master's Theses

Socially withdrawn children who do not receive intervention are at risk for struggling in their coursework and having trouble with future psychological adjustment. In spite of these facts, children who act out in the classroom have traditionally received much more attention from teachers and from researchers in the literature. In recent years, there have been many replications of Positive Peer Reporting (PPR) as a quick, effective, and accepted method to help these children overcome their withdrawn status. The extant literature supports the efficacy of PPR. However, there remain several important unanswered questions with regard to PPR. For example, do children …

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 …

Upland Nesting Waterfowl Population Responses To Predator Reduction In North Dakota, Matthew R. Pieron

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Population growth for mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and presumably other upland nesting ducks, in the Prairie Pothole Region is most sensitive to nest success, and nest success is most strongly influenced by predation. I evaluated the efficacy of reducing predator populations to improve nest success and increase local breeding populations of upland nesting ducks on township-sized (93.2 km2) management units in eastern North Dakota, USA, during 2005−2008. I also examined potential territorial limitations on local population growth for mallards. Trappers annually removed an average of 245 predators per trapped site. I monitored 7,489 nests on 7 trapped and 5 nontrapped sites, …

Sonata No.1 For Violin And Piano, Op. 80,By Sergei Prokofiev: A Guide To Interpretation, Boris Blagoev

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sergei Prokofiev was an extremely prolific composer whose career brought him success throughout Europe and the U. S. as well as Russia and the Soviet Union. He wrote for nearly every genre, and his most popular works today include operas, ballets, symphonies, and concertos. As a pianist, most of the concertos and sonatas that Prokofiev wrote were for the piano. However, his contributions to the violin repertoire are significant. Prokofiev wrote two concertos and two sonatas for solo violin. Of these, Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 80 is unique for many reasons. The piece took Prokofiev eight …

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 …

Modeling Pm Rotary-Linear Motors With Twin-Stator Using 3d Femm, Oleksandr Dobzhanskyi

LSU Master's Theses

A rapid growth of automatization nowadays requires electric machines to be adjusted to any technological process. Therefore, a need in machines with two degrees of mechanical freedom (TDMF), which can operate rotationally and linearly, is relatively large. This thesis is directed on the design and study of performance of PM (permanent magnet) rotary-linear synchronous motors with twin-armature as a new type of electric machines which can perform linear, rotational and helical movements. Three stator versions are considered, namely: stator with rotary and linear armatures, two rotary armatures, and two linear armatures. The rotors have PMs skewed with respect to the …

Stochastic Trends In Crop Yield Density Estimation, David I. Maradiaga

LSU Master's Theses

The search for improved methods of estimating crop yield density functions has been a theme of recurrent research interest in agricultural economics. Crop yield density functions are the statistical instrument that generates probability estimates of yield risk, and risk is an important decision variable in production agriculture. Recent research in crop yield density estimation suggests that yield probability estimates can be sensitive to the way yield data are filtered, and if true, then the search for an “adequate filter” is warranted. Such a quest is pursued in this study. It is proposed that unit-root tests can be used to identify …

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 …