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Becoming Normal: The Social Construction Of Buprenorphine And New Attempts To Medicalize Addiction, Julie C. Netherland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on theories about the social construction of knowledge and the sociology of the body, this dissertation analyzes the social construction of buprenorphine, a medication being used to treat addiction to opioids, to better understand the processes of medicalization. Buprenorphine was central the passage of the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000, a law which overturned an almost one hundred year prohibition preventing physicians from prescribing narcotics for the treatment of addiction in an office-based setting. Buprenorphine is seen by many as central to moving addiction treatment into the medical mainstream. Using documents from government regulators, industry, and addiction researchers, …

Tiebout Sorting And Jurisdictional Homogeneity: Empirical Validity And Ethical Implications, Lee Hachadoorian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a seminal paper, Tiebout (1956) argues that a large number of small local governments will function as a market in local services, leading to efficient allocation of local public goods. This result only obtains if households actually move in response to local fiscal differences. Spatial dependence of socioeconomic variables confounds attempts to infer Tiebout-motivated residential choice from observed socioeconomic homogeneity. I correct for this by focusing on socioeconomic difference across local government borders. In an investigation of socioeconomic sorting in Queens and Nassau Counties, NY, I find strong evidence of income sorting at the level of small suburban municipalities …

Personal Narratives Of Women's Leadership And Community Activism In Cherkasy Oblast, Martha Kichorowska Kebalo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ukraine's women's movement is part of a complex social field characteristic of formerly Soviet countries, but it also emerges from its own specific political history. Post-Soviet period, (neo-) nationalism, feminism and (neo-) socialism are significant forces shaping women's collective behavior. Their activism resonates with the pre-Soviet liberation struggle while it is shaped also by practices from the recent Soviet past. It also is sensitive to external pressures, including the agendas of Western aid and the Ukrainian diaspora.

This study accepts the emergence of non-state women's organizations as indicative of an incipient movement and examines this field of social activism in …

The Interpersonal Foundations Of Anti-Atheist Prejudice, Michael W. Magee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anti-atheist prejudice in the U.S. is socially accepted and rife—and not just because most Americans are religious. This research suggests that hostility toward atheists is related in part to protecting parental relationships. To the extent that they are established within parental relationships, shared reality theory implies that religious beliefs and associated attitudes will be psychologically defended to the extent that the parental relationships engaged are strong, healthy, and vital (Magee & Hardin, 2010; see also Hardin & Higgins, 1996). Three experiments examined the regulation of anti-atheist prejudice in the defense and protection of religious shared realities with parents, as implied …

Holomorphic Motions And Extremal Annuli, Zhe Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Holomorphic motions, soon after they were introduced, became an important subject in complex analysis. It is now an important tool in the study of complex dynamical systems and in the study of Teichmuller theory. This thesis serves on two purposes: an expository of the past developments and a discovery of new theories.

First, I give an expository account of Slodkowski's theorem based on the proof given by Chirka. Then I present a result about infinitesimal holomorphic motions. I prove the |ε log ε| modulus of continuity for any infinitesimal holomorphic motion. This proof is a very well application of Schwarz's …

Oceanic Light Absorption Properties: Assessment And Characterization In The Southeastern Bering Sea Using Field And Satellite Observations, Puneeta Suresh Naik

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent decades the Bering Sea has been subjected to large climatic variability with cascading consequences on its productive marine ecosystem. Long-term as well as short-term monitoring is essential if we are to maintain its capability to supply the resources on which the national and local economy depend. Remote sensing together with in-situ and laboratory measurements of physical, biological and optical properties have considerable potential for monitoring and measuring the effects of climate-driven changes on this ecosystem. A major shortcoming to obtain accurate estimates of optically active components (such as colored dissolved organic matter, non-algal particulate matter, and phytoplankton) from …

From Native To Nation: Copway’S American Indian Newspaper And Formation Of American Nationalism, David Shane Wallace

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the publication of Copway’s American Indian (1851) challenges accepted representations of nineteenth-century American Native peoples by countering popular stereotypes. Interrogating a multiplicity of cultural artifacts at the moment of their meeting and investigating the friction created as they rub against one another within the columns of the periodical, I argue that the texts that contribute to the make-up of Copway’s American Indian are juxtaposed in such a way as to force nineteenth-century readers to reconsider the place of the indigenous inhabitants in the American nation. Seemingly disconnected tidbits of information, presented not individually but as components …

Two-Particle Level Diagrammatic Approaches For Strongly Correlated Systems, Herbert Fotso

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis presents the development of new numerical methods for the treatment of strongly correlated electron systems based on self-consistent approaches at both the one and the two-particle level such as the parquet formalism. The parquet formalism was solved for the first time on a two-dimensional cluster. When the fully irreducible vertex is approximated by the bare vertex, we obtain the parquet approximation. Its validity was investigated by comparing results that it produces to those of other conserving approximations such as the FLuctuation EXchange (FLEX) approximation or the Second Order Perturbation Theory (SOPT). We found that it provides a significant …

The Tick Response To Rickettsial Dissemination During Typical And Atypical Rickettsial Infection, Piyanate Sunyakumthorn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Ticks are the only disease vectors for spotted fever group (SFG) Rickettsia which are obligate intracellular bacteria belonging to the genus Rickettsia. In nature, ticks maintain the infection of SFG Rickettsia via vertical and horizontal transmission. However, the prevalence of rickettsial transmission is limited to certain species of ticks, and this limitation is known as a specific tick/Rickettsia relationship. Due to the continuous increase of tick-borne rickettsial disease cases in the United States, which contrasts with very low prevalence of Rickettsia in tick vectors, the study of vector competence of tick to Rickettsia is needed in order to understand the …

Plasma Nitrite Reserve And Vascular Function Before And After Handgrip Training In Patients With Heart Failure, Daniel Paul Credeur

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

There is a direct relationship between vascular health and physical function. The controllers of this relationship are unclear, but appear to involve biomechanical and biochemical influences on the vascular wall. Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation was twofold: (1) to explore the relationship between vascular health and physical function in three populations (elderly, young and chronic heart failure patients); and (2) to determine the modifying role of physical activity, inactivity and exercise training on controllers of this relationship. Methods: Four projects were designed to address 3 key issues in exercise vascular biology, including the influence of the pattern of blood …

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 …

Numerical Studies Of Flow In Porous Media Using An Unstructured Approach, Nathan Matthew Lane

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Flow and transport in porous media is relevant to many areas of engineering and science including groundwater hydrology and the recovery of oil and gas. Porous materials are characterized by the unique shape and connectivity of the internal void structures which give rise to a large range in macroscopic transport properties. Historically an inability to accurately describe the internal pore-structure has prevented detailed study of the role of pore structure on transport. In recent decades however, the combination of high resolution imaging technologies with computational modeling has seen the development of fundamental pore-scale techniques for studying flow in porous media. …

Hear (No) Evil, See (No) Evil, Speak (No) Evil: Artistic Representations Of Argentina's "Dirty War", Juliana Theresa Reineman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze Argentina’s “Dirty War; in it, I argue that our view of the Other is the key to not repeating the past. Literature has long been accepted as a resource for understanding culture; this dissertation moves beyond literature, and includes photography, art, and film to demonstrate how artists have represented and responded to this period of political oppression. Adopting a psychoanalytic approach for my research, I begin with a literary analysis of multiple texts which exhibit features of what Anne Whitehead calls “trauma fiction,” texts in which the narrative voice displays the repetition …

Capturing Elements In Matroid Minors, Deborah Chun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, we begin with an introduction to a matroid as the natural generalization of independence arising in three different fields of mathematics. In the first chapter, we develop graph theory and matroid theory terminology necessary to the topic of this dissertation. In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, we prove two main results. A result of Ding, Oporowski, Oxley, and Vertigan reveals that a large 3-connected matroid M has unavoidable structure. For every n exceeding two, there is an integer f(n) so that if |E(M)| exceeds f(n), then M has a minor isomorphic to the rank-n wheel or whirl, …

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 …

Formation And Stabilization Of Combustion-Generated Environmentally Persistent Free Radicals On Transition Metal Oxides Supported On Silica, Eric Warren Pimentel Vejerano

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The formation of environmentally persistent free radicals in combustion system was investigated from chemisorptions of chlorine- and hydroxy-substituted benzenes on transition metal oxide surface under post-combustion conditions. This manuscript reports the formation of EPFRs on silica particles containing 5% Fe(III)2O3, Ni(II)O, and Zn(II)O. The EPFRs are formed by the chemisorption of substituted aromatic molecular adsorbates on the metal cation center followed by electron transfer from the adsorbate to the metal ion at temperatures from 150 to 400 oC. Depending on the nature of the adsorbate and the temperature, two organic EPFRs were formed: a phenoxyl-type radical, which has a lower …

The Effect Of Exopolymers On The Compressibility And Shear Strength Of Kaolinite, Rick Alton Nugent

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Erosion and subsidence threaten coastal infrastructure and natural habitats throughout the coastal United States, and this threat is especially significant along the Louisiana coastline since wetland clays are generally weak and highly compressible. Hydraulic pumping of dredged sediment is a common method for combating damage caused by erosion and subsidence, but the high water content slurry deposited is very compressible with low shear strength. Although conventional soil amendments are effective for reducing compressibility and increasing shear strength, these stabilizers are often caustic or toxic, making them too risky to use. Exopolymers, however, have the potential to improve sediment stability without …

Redox-Active Liposome Delivery Agents With Highly Controllable Stimuli-Responsive Behavior, Nicole Hollabaugh Carrier

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the last few decades, liposomes have generated a lot of interest as drug delivery vehicles to address the need for providing both increased therapeutic efficacy and decreased systemic exposure, simultaneously. The challenge of increasing drug accumulation at diseased sites, without compromising the integrity and stability of the liposomal carrier during circulation, has been met with two possible solutions: (1) active targeting and (2) active triggering. To achieve selective and site-specific delivery of drugs to tumors, active triggering methods have been developed wherein a responsive element is incorporated into the liposomal bilayer, which causes destabilization of the liposome upon exposure …

Characterization Of Triggerable Quinones For The Development Of Enzyme-Responsive Liposomes, Maria Fabiana Mendoza

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For decades, there has been a lot of focus on the development of new carriers for drug delivery applications. From all of the carriers, stimuli-responsive liposomes have been studied extensively, but only a handful have been enzyme-responsive liposomes. Therefore, the field of endogenous proteins as activators of liposomes is a fertile field worthy of exploration. The research described in this dissertation involves how structural changes on the quinone moiety altered their electronic properties, as well as their behavior toward the human enzyme NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase type-1 (hNQO1, over expressed in certain tumor tissues), thus yielding a series of triggerable quinones to …

Time Of Day Effects On Language Discourse In Healthy Aging And Dementia, Amanda L. Stead

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study’s purpose was to investigate whether language discourse follows a diurnal pattern across one 10-hour day in normal healthy aging individuals (NHA) and individuals with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Ten healthy older adults; and ten older adults clinically labeled with probable Alzheimer’s disease were recruited for this study. Measurements of procedural language, narrative language, and cognition, the Benton Judgment of Line Orientation (BJLO), were collected across one day at 9:00am, 12:00pm, 3:00 pm, and 6:00pm. Language samples were evaluated for linguistic variables to evaluate the quantity and quality of the discourse samples. Results indicated that the two groups …

Guided Modes And Resonant Transmission In Periodic Structures, Hairui Tu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We analyze resonant scattering phenomena of scalar fields in periodic slab and pillar structures that are related to the interaction between guided modes of the structure and plane waves emanating from the exterior. The mechanism for the resonance is the nonrobust nature of the guided modes with respect to perturbations of the wavenumber, which reflects the fact that the frequency of the mode is embedded in the continuous spectrum of the pseudo-periodic Helmholtz equation. We extend previous complex perturbation analysis of transmission anomalies to structures whose coefficients are only required to be measurable and bounded from above and below, and …

In The Ruins Of Zine Pedagogy: A Narrative Study Of Teaching With Zines, Karin H. Degravelles

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study considers the educational significance of zines—small circulation, self-published magazines—by asking how educators who teach with zines encounter and negotiate zine pedagogy. Though the literature on zines and teaching describes many potential benefits, it also describes contradictions and failures, with some researchers even going so far as to claim that “zines do not belong in classrooms” (Guzzetti, Elliott, & Welsch, 2010, p. 71). Through this dissertation, I investigate and complicate these claims by examining the stories and perspectives of teacher/zinesters—educators who teach or have taught with zines in a classroom setting. The project is situated within theories of the …

Symmetric Spaces, Se-Jong Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We first review the basic theory of a general class of symmetric spaces with canonical reflections, midpoints, and displacement groups. We introduce a notion of gyrogroups established by A. A. Ungar and define gyrovector spaces slightly different from Ungar's setting. We see the categorical equivalence of symmetric spaces and gyrovector spaces with respect to their corresponding operations. In a smooth manifold with spray we define weighted means using the exponential map and develop the Lie-Trotter formula with respect to midpoint operation. Via the idea that we associate a spray with a Loos symmetric space, we construct an analytic scalar multiplication …

Fate Of Mississippi River Diverted Nitrate On Vegetated And Non-Vegetated Coastal Marshes Of Breton Sound Estuary, Christine M. Vanzomeren

LSU Master's Theses

The Caernarvon Diversion meters Mississippi River water into coastal marshes of Breton Sound. Elevated levels of nitrogen in river water have sparked concerns that nutrient loading may affect marsh resilience and belowground biomass, as evidence from several marsh fertilization studies. These concerns resulted from observation that fresh and brackish Breton Sound marshes suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Katrina. The goal of this study is to determine the fate of nitrate (the dominant inorganic nitrogen form in the Mississippi River) in Breton Sound Estuary marshes. We hypothesized that most nitrate would be removed by denitrification and that nitrate loading would not …

Temporal Changes In Quality Of Life And Environment In New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina, Danielle Johanna Larock

LSU Master's Theses

Understanding and assessing the spatial and temporal changes of quality of life and environment of a community is critical to its sustainable development, especially after a disaster strikes. This study explores an approach that integrates remote sensing with socioeconomic data to assess the temporal changes in quality of life and environment (QOL) using Orleans Parish as an example. Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005, has had vast implications economically, socially, and environmentally for this city and the surrounding area. Empirically quantifying these concepts will help to rebuild the city more sustainably. This study investigated change in environmental quality …

Advanced Management Of The Mexican Rice Borer (Eoreuma Loftini) In Sugarcane, Blake Emerson Wilson

LSU Master's Theses

Insecticide, greenhouse and varietal resistance experiments were conducted in Texas to develop management tactics for the Mexican rice borer, Eoreuma loftini (Dyar), sugarcane. A 3-treatment, large plot aerial application study was set up in 5 commercial sugarcane fields (35-84 acres) to evaluate the utilization of pheromone traps to improve chemical control strategies for E. loftini during 2009 and 2010 growing seasons. A threshold of 20-25 moths/trap/wk was used as an indicator to initiate monitoring for E. loftini larval infestations. Larval infestations were directly related to the no. of moths/trap/wk (R2=0.71). Reductions in borer injury and adult emergence (60% and 40% …

Evaluation Of The Pencil Beam Algorithm And Pencil Beam Redefinition Algorithm For Bolus Electron Conformal Therapy Dose Computation, James Kavanaugh

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: This study aimed (1) to demonstrate the ability of mixed beam (MB) therapy, intensity modulated x-ray therapy (IMXT) optimized on top of a bolus electron conformal therapy (ECT) plan, to deliver a uniform dose to the planning target volume (PTV) in a homogenous phantom and (2) to evaluate the accuracy of the pencil beam algorithm (PBA) and pencil beam redefinition algorithm (PBRA) in calculating the dose distributions for the bolus ECT and MB plans. Methods: PTVs and critical structures from parotid and post-mastectomy chest wall patients were modeled in a 27cm ö polystyrene phantom. Bolus ECT treatment plans using …

Into The Vault Of The Saints: The Exterior Crypts Of Saint-Denis In Paris And Saint-Germain In Auxerre, Matthew Ryan Reed

LSU Master's Theses

Historians have held the Carolingian rule of Western Europe as a brief strike of light against the dark backdrop of the Medieval period. In this period two structures emerged for the first time in church architecture: the westwork and the exterior crypt. These two structures did not follow models found in Early Christian architecture: they accommodated functions specific to developments and needs that emerged in the context of the Carolingian Empire. Although both hold many opportunities for scholarship, the exterior crypt offers significant insights into developments at the heart of Carolingian liturgy, society, and architectural design. Two of these exterior …

Parallel Surrogate Detection In Large-Scale Simulations, Lei Jiang

LSU Master's Theses

Simulation has become a useful approach in scientific computing and engineering for its ability to model real natural or human systems. In particular, for complex systems such as hurricanes, wildfire disasters, and real-time road traffic, simulation methods are able to provide researchers, engineers and decision makers predicted values in order to help them to take appropriate actions. For large-scale problems, the simulations usually take a lot of time on supercomputers, thus making real-time predictions more difficult. Approximation models that mimic the behavior of simulation models but are computationally cheaper, namely "surrogate models", are desired in such scenarios. In the thesis, …