Digital Commons Network^™

Variability In Red Snapper Otolith Microchemistry Among Gulf Of Mexico Regions, Michelle Zapp Sluis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus, has been an economically important reef fish in the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) for over 150 years and is currently overfished. Catch statistics and demographic differences have lead to the population being categorized into eastern and western substocks divided by the Mississippi River, but data is recombined to set a Gulf-wide annual catch limit. The two objectives of this study were to apply otolith nursery chemical signatures to estimate red snapper mixing dynamics in the western Gulf, and to determine if signatures based upon trace metals associated with oil and gas platforms could discriminate between region …

Three Essays On The Labor Allocation Decisions Of The Modern Farm Family, Jeremy Michael D'Antoni

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to address the role of government payments in the allocation of off-farm labor through three essays. Government payments have been a part of agriculture since 1933 and at no time has the government stated a policy objective of decreasing the agricultural labor force. Using time series data and new econometric techniques, the first essay finds agricultural policy may have an unintended impact on labor migration. Specifically, we find that government payments increased labor migration from the farm. From 1939 to 2007, increased direct government payments resulted in greater migration of labor from agriculture. The …

Testing And Improving The Luminosity Relations For Gamma-Ray Bursts, Andrew Collazzi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) have several luminosity relations where a measurable property of a burst light curve or spectrum is correlated with the burst luminosity. These luminosity relations are calibrated for the fraction of bursts with spectroscopic redshifts and hence the known luminosities. GRBs have thus become known as a type of "standard candle"; where standard candle is meant in the usual sense that their luminosities can be derived from measurable properties of the bursts. GRBs can therefore be used for the same cosmology applications as Type Ia supernovae, including the construction of the Hubble Diagram and measuring massive star …

The Role Of Ad-36 And Its E4orf-1 Protein In Modulating Glycemic Control, Emily Jane Dhurandhar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Current treatment strategies for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) include a range of anti-diabetic drugs, supplemented by lifestyle modifications to reduce dietary fat intake and body fat. However, for their anti-diabetic action, most drugs recruit insulin signaling pathways, which are already impaired in T2DM. Also, compliance and success in achieving sustained improvements in diet or obesity over the long term is marginal. Therefore, an agent that improves diabetes independent of insulin signaling or lifestyle changes may be highly useful. Human adenovirus Ad36 offers such a model. Ad36 improves glycemic control in chow-fed mice or rats and attenuates diabetes and hepatic …

Catalytic Process For The Conversion Of Synthesis Gas To Ethanol For Use As An Alternative Fuel, Nitin Kumar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Higher alcohols are increasing as a proportion of the transportation fuel market, and can be used as neat fuels, or as blends with conventional fuels. For a number of reasons, these C2+-alcohols will be of interest in the foreseeable future. Large-scale production of higher alcohols will likely be carried out via syngas, which can be produced from a number of feedstocks, including coal, natural gas and biomass. Rhodium-based catalysts have been found to be the most active/selective for higher alcohols. However, the literature shows that the yields of C2+-alcohols that can be achieved with current catalysts, even the most active/selective, …

Auditor Tenure And Audit Quality, Li Zheng Brooks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

I propose that audit quality is likely to increase with audit firm tenure due to a Learning Effect and decrease with audit firm tenure due to a Bonding Effect. The net impact of these two countervailing forces over audit firm tenure dictates whether the relationship between audit firm tenure and audit quality is a concave, convex, or linear function of audit firm tenure. When the Bonding Effect dominates the Learning Effect in the later (earlier) years of tenure, then audit quality is a concave (convex) function of audit firm tenure. Adopting the quadratic model to empirically estimate the audit firm …

Is Saving An Innocent Man A "Fool's Errand"? The Limitations Of The Antiterrorism And Effective Death Penalty Act On An Original Writ Of Habeas Corpus, Krystal M. Moore

University of Dayton Law Review

No abstract provided.

Applying The Rules Of Discovery To Information Uncovered About Jurors, Thaddeus A. Hoffmeister

School of Law Faculty Publications

As more and more personal information is placed online, attorneys are increasingly turning to the internet to investigate and research jurors. In certain jurisdictions, the practice has become fairly commonplace. One prominent trial consultant has gone so far as to claim, “Anyone who doesn’t make use of [internet searches] is bordering on malpractice.” While this may somewhat overstate the importance of investigating jurors online, it nonetheless demonstrates just how routine the practice has become. Aside from increased acceptance among practitioners, courts have both approved of and encouraged online investigation of jurors.

While many view this practice as a benefit to …

Stories Of The Proterozoic Earth: Paleoproterozoic Chuanlinggou Arcitarchs And Neoproterozoic ¹⁷O-Depleted Barite, Yongbo Peng

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two independent topics, both critical to understanding Earth history during the Proterozoic Eon. (1) Paleoproterozoic Chuanlinggou Acritarchs: The eukaryotic affinity of acritarchs from the Chuanlinggou Formation has been questioned because of lack of indisputable morphological evidence. In this study, Chuanlinggou acritarchs were examined by jointly using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. In most cases, an ovoidal group of acritarchs represents a half-vesicle following a complete longitudinal rupture, which is a morphological model different from a whole envelope with medial splits, as proposed by earlier studies. This ovoidal group displays a bipolar morphology, …

Sensor-Based Autonomous Pipeline Monitoring Robotic System, Jong-Hoon Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The field of robotics applications continues to advance. This dissertation addresses the computational challenges of robotic applications and translations of actions using sensors. One of the most challenging fields for robotics applications is pipeline-based applications which have become an indispensable part of life. Proactive monitoring and frequent inspections are critical in maintaining pipeline health. However, these tasks are highly expensive using traditional maintenance systems, knowing that pipeline systems can be largely deployed in an inaccessible and hazardous environment. Thus, we propose a novel cost effective, scalable, customizable, and autonomous sensor-based robotic system, called SPRAM System (Sensor-based Autonomous Pipeline Monitoring Robotic …

Integrating Multiple Clusters For Compute-Intensive Applications, Zhifeng Yun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Multicluster grids provide one promising solution to satisfying the growing computational demands of compute-intensive applications. However, it is challenging to seamlessly integrate all participating clusters in different domains into a single virtual computational platform. In order to fully utilize the capabilities of multicluster grids, computer scientists need to deal with the issue of joining together participating autonomic systems practically and efficiently to execute grid-enabled applications. Driven by several compute-intensive applications, this theses develops a multicluster grid management toolkit called Pelecanus to bridge the gap between user's needs and the system's heterogeneity. Application scientists will be able to conduct very large-scale …

Symptom Profiles And Rates Of Diagnosis In Autistic And Other Atypically Developing Infants And Toddlers, Timothy Michael Dempsey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Although there are many assessment scales that aid in the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), very few instruments are designed specifically to identify the condition in the population of infants and toddlers. The primary purpose of this study is to systematically examine the differences between scores on the Baby and Infant Screen for Children with aUtIsm Traits (BISCUIT)-Part 1 in a sample of at risk atypically developing children. Participants are children enrolled in Louisiana’s EarlySteps Program, which provides support services (e.g., speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, behavior psychology) to infants/toddlers and their families from birth to 36 months …

Fragmentation Sensitivity And Its Consequences On Demography And Host-Ectoparasite Dynamics In Amazonian Birds, Erik I. Johnson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Amazon rainforest is experiencing rapid deforestation due to ranching, agriculture, and urban development, which often leads to remnant patches serving as refugia for forest organisms. By mist-netting passerines in 11 forest fragments (1-, 10-, and 100-ha patches) and nearby continuous forest at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragmentation Project near Manaus, Brazil, I conducted a series of studies to identify mechanisms that drive population changes in fragmented landscapes. First, I examined the age structure of bird populations from six ecological guilds in fragments and continuous forest. Immatures are the dispersing age group in birds, and their relative abundance in …

Reducing Complexity Of Processor Front Ends With Static Analysis And Selective Preloading, Santhosh Verma

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

General purpose processors were once designed with the major goal of maximizing performance. As power consumption has grown, with the advent of multi-core processors and the rising importance of embedded and mobile devices, the importance of designing efficient and low cost architectures has increased. This dissertation focuses on reducing the complexity of the front end of the processor, mainly branch predictors. Branch predictors have also been designed with a focus on improving prediction accuracy so that performance is maximized. To accomplish this, the predictors proposed in the literature and used in real systems have become increasingly complex and larger, a …

A Comparison Of Career Goals And Educational Values Between Hispanic Immigrant And Caucasian United States Citizen Employees Of Louisiana Crawfish Farm Operations, Richard Dean Johnson Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hispanic immigrants come to the United States with hopes to obtain a better life for their families through perceived better wages and educational opportunities. One source of income for Hispanic immigrants is through employment in crawfish farm operations. Crawfish farm operations benefit from the employment of Hispanic immigrants through government programs that supply workers to the industry. Therefore, many crawfish farm operations in Louisiana employ both Caucasian U.S. citizen and Hispanic immigrant labor to operate efficiently. The purpose of this study was to compare selected characteristics of crawfish farm workers as well as to explore values related to education, monetary …

Effects Of Ecotourist Pre-Purchase And External Information Search Behaviors And Strategies On Forest-Based Ecotourism Travel Decisions In Sri Lanka, Rangika T. Perera

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the 1980s, the term ecotourism emerged as a direct result of acknowledgment and reaction by travelers to global ecological practices. In reality, the concept of ecotourism carries wide applications, particularly for bio-diverse countries with unique natural attractions. Sri Lanka qualified as such a country, presenting a significant tourism resource base, that display natural and cultural phenomena, including forests, waterfalls, mountains, exotic flora and fauna, and a heritage equally as ancient and as rich as the Greeks and Romans. Ecotourism in today’s dynamic global environment demands that ecotourism operators face a keenly competitive market in order to present an appealing …

Next Generation Multi-Scale Quantum Simulations For Strongly Correlated Materials, Shuxiang Yang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis represents our effort to develop the next generation multi-scale quantum simulation methods suitable for strongly-correlated materials, where complicated phase-diagrams prevail, suggesting complicated underlying physics. We first give a detailed description of the parquet formalism. With its help, different approximate methods can be unified and a hierarchy of approximate methods with different accuracies and computational complexity can thus be designed. Next, we present a numerical solution of the parquet approximation. Results on the Hubbard model are compared to those obtained from Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC), FLuctuation EXchange (FLEX), and self-consistent second-order approximation methods. The comparison shows a satisfactory …

The Hegemony Of Language - Literary Writing And The Quest For Subjectivity In The Works Of Michel De Montaigne And Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, Carla Bota Vance

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Starting from the premise that one’s identity is first and foremost construed in language, this dissertation argues that language is the fundamental site of resistance for writers who define themselves through linguistic difference. Recognizing also that language and literary production frequently fall under the control of complex authorities, this thesis examines literature as a site where confrontation is played out aesthetically. Literary writing, in other words, is exposed as a point of intersection between writers whose language draws its sources from a peripheral location and the centers of authority that regulate and dictate what is accepted as artistically and culturally …

Essays On Risk And Volatility, Junyue Xu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this work, we begin with an investigation into the temporal correlation in default risk. We first establish a link between the dynamics of house price changes and the dynamics of default rates in the Gaussian copula framework by specifying a time series model for a common risk factor. We show that the serial correlation propagates from the common risk factor to default rates. In the second essay, we specify a model where the default correlation is stochastic. We find the distribution of expected value of cash flows received by securitized investment vehicles is distorted by the dynamics of default …

Extreme Scale Parallel Nbody Algorithm With Event Driven Constraint Based Execution Model, Chirag Dekate

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Traditional scientific applications such as Computational Fluid Dynamics, Partial Differential Equations based numerical methods (like Finite Difference Methods, Finite Element Methods) achieve sufficient efficiency on state of the art high performance computing systems and have been widely studied / implemented using conventional programming models. For emerging application domains such as Graph applications scalability and efficiency is significantly constrained by the conventional systems and their supporting programming models. Furthermore technology trends like multicore, manycore, heterogeneous system architectures are introducing new challenges and possibilities. Emerging technologies are requiring a rethinking of approaches to more effectively expose the underlying parallelism to the applications …

The Influence Of Selected Demographic And Biographical Characteristics On The Level Of Cultural Intelligence Among Mid-Level Managers Of Home Health Care Systems In The United States, Martha Stuart Williams

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Disparities exist in health care quality among racial and ethnic minority groups. Minority Americans receive lower quality health care than non-minorities even after adjustment for insurance status and income. A leading cause of these disparities is the biases and prejudices of health care providers. The primary purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between levels of cultural intelligence (CQ) and selected demographic and biographical characteristics among mid-level managers of home health care systems throughout the United States. This research provides an understanding of factors influencing cultural intelligence among site directors in home health care. An examination …

Subtle Shifts: Using The Brightest To Darkest Modal Concept To Express Jazz Harmony, John Anthony Madere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this paper, I will outline a method of composition that I believe has been highly under-used in jazz composition. I have studied the work of composers Ron Miller and Maria Schneider, and have used their concept of brighter to darker modes to further my modal exploration. With explanation and musical examples, I will explain two possible ways to achieve 12 modes that progress from bright to dark, and then from dark back to bright. Another purpose of this paper is to provide a compositional aid to other composers interested in this concept and the subtle shades of major and …

Rights, Needs, And The Creation Of Ethical Community, Natalie Susan Gaines

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite a half-century of dominance by the rights discourse, the supremacy of rights in theories of human obligation has recently come under attack from political theorists. Though scholars have questioned the ability of rights to explain satisfactorily the responsibility we have for the well-being of others, there are few viable alternatives offered. In this dissertation, I argue that a theory of needs provides a better explanation of the intellectual and moral foundations of obligation. Human need is deeply rooted in subjective potentiality, but studies in human psychology have also provided an increasingly universal picture of the needs human beings experience. …

Framing Empire: Victorian Literature, Hollywood International, And Postcolonial Film Adaptation, Jerod Ra'del Hollyfield

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how adaptations of Victorian literature made in Hollywood by postcolonial filmmakers contend with the legacy of British imperialism and Hollywood’s role as a multinational corporate entity. Highlighting the increased number of postcolonial filmmakers adapting Victorian literature in Hollywood, the project demonstrates how film adaptation has become a strategy for, in the words of Salman Rushdie, “writing back” to imperial powers. Placing such adaptations of Victorian literature within the tradition of postcolonial rewritings of classic British texts, I bridge fidelity criticism, the auteur theory, and contrapuntal readings of source texts with studies of political economy in order to …

Brief Interventions For Heavy College Drinkers: Randomized Clinical Trial To Investigate Comparable Efficacy Of Two Active Conditions, Magdalena Kulesza

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Brief interventions for college heavy drinkers have shown promise in reducing drinking and related negative consequences. However, since duration of the intervention, content, method of delivery, and duration of the follow up period vary across studies, we do not know whether length of the intervention has an impact on its effectiveness. In the present study, we conducted a randomized trial systematically evaluating efficacy of two brief interventions aimed at reducing alcohol use and consequences among college student drinkers. In addition, we evaluated treatment mediators and moderators. We randomly assigned 278 heavy drinking students to a 10-minute brief intervention, a 50-minute …

Cointegrating Institutions: The Time-Series Properties Of Country Institutional Measures, Russell S. Sobel, Christopher J. Coyne

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Comprehensive Study Of Dust Formation And Evolution In Core Collape Supernovae, Jennifer Erin Andrews

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Detection of large amounts of dust in high redshift galaxies suggests that core collapse supernovae (CCSNe) may play a critical role in the dust budget of galaxies in the early universe, when galaxies are only a few hundred million years old. At an age of only 1Gyr, asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars may not have had the time to become significant dust contributors, leaving CCSNe as an alternative explanation since they quickly evolve and return their material to the surrounding interstellar medium. For the past three years, I have been observing the CCSNe 2007it and 2007od with Gemini, Hubble Space …

Regarding Westernization In Central Africa: Hybridity In The Works Of Three Chadian Playwrights, Enoch Reounodji

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The second half of the nineteenth century played a determining role in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres of Africa. The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 witnessed European interests bargaining over the territories of Africa and arbitrarily dividing much of the continent into different countries under European control. This historical moment may be regarded as the height of Western influence over Africa, though it only continued the colonial tradition of viewing Africa as a land without culture, theatre, literature, or history (prior to the advent of the white man). The legacy of this outlook has placed African intellectuals and literary …

Exploring The French Flute School In North America: An Examination Of The Pedagogical Materials Of Georges Barrère, Marcel Moyse, And René Le Roy, Sarah Kate Gearheart

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The discussions that surround the topic of the French flute school and its approach to flute playing have yielded many conflicting assessments. Specifically, different opinions regarding who carried on the French school’s tradition of flute playing have produced different ideas about its lasting influence. At the center of this topic is a lack of clarity as to what constitutes the pedagogical approach that Paul Taffanel initiated and passed on to his flute students at the Paris Conservatory. In order to determine what this approach consists of as well as who passed it on, this study presents an examination of the …

Quantitative Mapping Of Cyanobacterial Blooms Using Oceansat-1 Ocm Satellite Data, Padmanava Dash

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cyanobacteria represent a major harmful algal group in fresh to brackish water environments. Lac des Allemands, a freshwater lake of 49 km² southwest of New Orleans, Louisiana, provides a natural laboratory for remote characterization of cyanobacteria blooms because of their seasonal occurrence. This dissertation makes a contribution to research methodology pertaining to atmospheric correction of satellite data and development of remote sensing algorithms to quantify cyanobacterial pigments. The Ocean Color Monitor (OCM) sensor provides radiance measurements similar to Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) but with higher spatial resolution. However, OCM does not have a standard atmospheric correction procedure and …