Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of A Proton Pencil Bean Algorithm For Dose Calculations In Heterogenous Media, Nels C. Knutson

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: To develop an improved nuclear halo dose model of a pencil beam algorithm (PBA) for dose calculation of proton beams in heterogeneous media. Methods: The proton PBA consisted of a central axis term and an off axis term. The central axis term was determined from a central axis depth dose profile of a Monte Carlo simulated proton beam in water and was scaled by a mass stopping power ratio to account for other materials. The off axis term was determined from Fermi-Eyges scattering theory with material-dependent scattering powers to calculate the lateral spread of the proton beam in heterogeneous …

The Return To The World: Precís Of A Defense Of Heideggerian Realism, Graham Charles Bounds

LSU Master's Theses

I defend Martin Heidegger’s philosophy from Lee Braver’s contention that it espouses or entails anti-realism, and instead contend that it strongly supports a robust realism. Realism is, in essence, the metaphysical position which states that human beings are aware—or are capable of being aware—of entities that exist independently of us. The counter-position, anti-realism, sometimes equated with idealism, holds that this is not the case. Braver breaks down these simplistic definitions into several more technical propositions, or “matrices,” and attempts to show how Heidegger rejects the realism matrices in favor of their anti-realist counterparts. I will likewise examine the matrices, arguing …

An Experimental And Theoretical Critique Of Flow Model Accuracy, Shannon Ray Chollett

LSU Master's Theses

In today’s exploration and production environment it is required that engineers must collect and use vast amounts of data for flow model construction and calibra- tion, as well as reservoir estimation and optimization. With modern technology, the data volume can be overwhelming. It is necessary that data monitoring and calibration are highly efficient. It is also essential that physical and mathematical models can be tested in repeatable, inexpensive experiments. The experiments described in this thesis will develop and perform verification of algorithms and can generate prior geomodels, collect and process seismic refraction data, collect and process production data, and calibrate …

Insights From A National Conference: "Conflicts Of Interest In The Practice Of Medicine", David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Focus Question Effect On Dynamic Thinking In A Concept Map, Blake John Orgeron

LSU Master's Theses

A concept map is an educational tool designed to help identify, represent, and categorize relationships between different ideas relating to an overall concept. Relationships or transitions between the ideas are created by students and can either be static or dynamic. Static transitions help to describe, define, and organize knowledge for a given domain. Dynamic transitions show how a change in quantity, quality, or state in one concept causes change in quantity, quality, or state in the other concept. The focus question of the map directs student input of the concepts and ultimately determines what types of transitions are used. The …

A Study Of Children's Musical Play At The Little Gym, Alison Elaine Alexander

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways music is used in classes at the Little Gym. It also attempted to uncover the benefits of the use of music in the classes as identified by the participants. This investigation of music at the Little Gym required the use of standard qualitative data collection strategies performed over the course of four months of fieldwork. Approximately sixty hours of observations were completed, both as an observer and a participant observer, and twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents and teachers. Data analysis entailed transcribing and coding interviews, examining observations field …

Comparing Extinction And Noncontingent Reinforcement Under Challenging Conditions: The Discriminative Effects Of Reinforcement Delivery, Jessica Pearl Alvarez

LSU Master's Theses

Extinction (EXT) and noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) procedures are commonly used to reduce problem behavior maintained by operant reinforcement. Both procedures reduce behavior by eliminating the contingency between that behavior and reinforcement; however, EXT procedures may leave the discriminative effects of the reinforcer intact. The discriminative effects of reinforcement following EXT compared to NCR were investigated using an arbitrary response within three participants. Results indicate that following EXT, re-emergent responding is not more likely to occur in the presence of reinforcement compared to control trials. Moreover, re-emergent responding was overall unlikely to occur following EXT and NCR procedures.

Morphology Controlled Coating Of Catalytically Active Gold Structures Within Flow-Focused Millifluidic Reactor, Chelliah V. Navin

LSU Master's Theses

Synthesis of micro/nanomaterials within confined flow-based systems such as microfluidics has always been a promising research. However, the inability to scale up reagent volumes due to geometric constraints and pressure development within the channels at higher flow rates has limited their usage. In recent times, millifluidics has emerged as a useful technique where, apart from the synthesis, the in situ characterization of materials becomes easier. In this study, formation of morphology-controlled gold structures at different time intervals (viz. 1, 5, and 9 h) within a millifluidic chip reactor was investigated using gold chloride and dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) as precursor reagents …

Local Political Knowledge And Assessments Of Citizen Competence, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article contrasts the national and local political knowledge of a random sample of 993 Philadelphians with the aim of enhancing the scholarly understanding of citizen competence. Empirical study of citizen competence extends back more than fifty years, but the survey data that have been brought to bear upon the topic are almost exclusively focused on national-level politics. Consequently, sweeping conclusions about the competence of the American public rest upon a narrow foundation. The comparisons in this article depict a slew of differences in the distribution of knowledge across national and local politics, many of which challenge established notions of …

Book Review. The Legacy Of The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia Edited By B. Swart, A. Zahar And G. Sluiter, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Samsung Oled Tv Marketing Plan, Baraa Abudawod, Christophe Perrenoud, Chris David, Farshad Madani

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The evolution of television has substantially evolved within the last 2 decades to introduce revolutionary modern technology seen in Plasma, LCD, and LED backlight TV. The changes of television technology will offer thinner, clearer, brighter TV, and reduce energy consumption. After a brief transition of corporate strategy, Samsung has grown into the market as the leading innovative television manufacturer and currently holds 97% market share of AMOLED (Active Matrix OLED) currently seen in mobile devices.

In January of 2012, Samsung introduced a high definition 55 inch prototype OLED TV at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that seemingly will revolutionize the …

After Avandia: The Use Of Antidiabetic Drugs In Patients With Heart Failure, Khaled I Khalaf, Heinrich Taegtmeyer

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Managing diabetes mellitus is an ongoing concern, especially in the presence of heart failure. Recent reports have drawn attention to adverse cardiovascular events associated with the use of thiazolidinediones, including rosiglitazone (Avandia). In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration implemented a stringent “restricted access program” for the prescription of Avandia. Other studies, which have revealed increased mortality rates in association with tight glycemic control, raise serious concerns about managing diabetes in heart-failure patients.

Herein, we provide a perspective on the management of noninsulin-dependent diabetes in patients with heart failure. We point out that thiazolidinediones exert their major effects through …

Hypoplastic Right-Heart Syndrome Presenting As Multiple Miscarriages, Chadi Dib, Philip A Araoz, Norman P Davies, Joseph A Dearani, Naser M Ammash

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Reversible causes of miscarriage are many, but they affect only 1% of women who are trying to conceive. Herein, we describe the case of a 23-year-old woman who presented for evaluation of repeated miscarriages and was found to have hypoxemia and erythrocytosis. Further evaluation revealed hypoplastic right-heart syndrome with an intracardiac shunt. She underwent hybrid repair with pulmonary valve balloon valvuloplasty, followed by surgery to perform atrial septal defect closure and a Glenn anastomosis. The erythrocytosis and hypoxemia resolved, and she was able to conceive and deliver a healthy baby at term 2 years later.

This is a unique case …

Mid-Aortic Syndrome In A 3-Year-Old Girl Successfully Treated By Aorto-Aortic Grafting And Renal Artery Implantation Into The Graft, Tanja Kersnik Levart, Tomislav Klokocovnik

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Mid-aortic syndrome, an uncommon acquired or congenital condition characterized by segmental narrowing of the abdominal or distal descending thoracic aorta, is frequently accompanied by ostial stenosis of the aorta's branches. If left untreated, it can result in life-threatening complications secondary to severe hypertension.

We report the case of a 3-year-old girl with congenital mid-aortic syndrome, who was diagnosed by chance in the course of a viral illness, and whose high blood pressure values were first dismissed as inaccurate. Attempts to achieve medical or endovascular control of her hypertension were unsuccessful. She was thereafter successfully treated by aorto–aortic bypass grafting, resection …

Extreme Thrombocytosis And Cardiovascular Surgery: Risks And Management, Ethan A Natelson

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Extreme thrombocytosis is a major risk factor for excessive bleeding and for thrombosis, either of which can complicate cardiovascular surgical and interventional procedures. Extreme thrombocytosis can also cause an unusual syndrome, erythromelalgia, that results in a type of chronic microvascular occlusive arterial disease. We present the differential diagnosis of conditions that may lead to extreme thrombocytosis, 3 cases (each of which illustrates a different potential complication), and a review of the pertinent medical literature. Correcting excessive thrombocytosis is typically not difficult, whether electively or acutely, and effective therapy usually controls thrombosis and excessive hemorrhage post-procedurally.

Medical Education On The Brink: 62 Years Of Front-Line Observations And Opinions, Herbert L Fred

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

No abstract provided.

Long-Term Results Of Aortic Banding For Complex Infrarenal Neck Anatomy And Type I Endoleak After Endovascular Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair, Zvonimir Krajcer, Kathryn G Dougherty, Igor D Gregoric

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

For many patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm, unsuitable anatomy of the infrarenal aortic neck precludes endovascular aortic aneurysm repair or causes type I endoleak after the procedure. In an attempt to overcome these challenges, we retrospectively examined the usefulness of aortic banding as an adjunctive procedure to endovascular repair in 8 patients who had an abdominal aortic aneurysm with a complex infrarenal aortic neck. The procedures were performed with the patients under general anesthesia and involved making an 8-cm upper-midline laparotomy incision to expose the aneurysmal aorta. Three patients underwent aortic banding before endovascular repair; the other 5 underwent banding …

Apical Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: Preliminary Attempt At Palliation With Use Of Subselective Alcohol Ablation, Paolo Angelini, Carlo Uribe, Jorge Monge, Jorge M Escobar, Eduardo Hernandez-Vila

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

We report a case of severe apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in order to discuss the nature of this unusual condition and the possibility of using selective alcohol ablation to effectively treat symptomatic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that presents with apical aneurysm. A 73-year-old woman with severe, progressive dyspnea and intermittent chest pain was found to have localized left ventricular apical dyskinesia distal to an obstructive mid-distal muscular ring. The ring caused total systolic obliteration of the apical left ventricular cavity. Apical cavity pressure was extremely high, up to 330 mmHg-200 mmHg above that in the main left ventricular cavity. Because of the danger …

Pig (Sus Scrofa) Exploitation At Hallan Çemi, Southeastern Anatolia: Proposing An Alternative Model, Ximena Lemoine

University Honors Theses

Hallan Çemi presents itself as a unique site to study the transitional period before the onset of agriculture in the Near East. The site fails to fit nicely into demographic or environmental models that have widely been accepted for the region. Hallan Çemi thus represents the potential to study innovative human strategies for subsistence, and to provide insight into the processes that led to the eventual adoption of agriculture only a few millennia later. Richard Redding and Michael Rosenberg presented one such innovative strategy for pig exploitation at this site with their New Guinean model (Redding and Rosenberg 1998; Rosenberg …

Defining Ccl20’S Role In Carcinogenesis, Melanie Schafer

University Honors Theses

It has become widely accepted that chronic inflammation is correlated with cancer. An important aspect in this relationship is the microenvironment established by inflammation and characterized by the production of small molecules known as cytokines and chemokines. One such chemokine, CCLZO, is a Th17 specific chemokine essential for Th17 activation. Although the contribution of Th1 and Th2 in carcinogenesis have been well established, Th17's role in cancer development has yet to be identified. In this study, we provide first experimental evidence regarding the functional role of CCL20 in turmorigenesis that can shed light onto Th17's function in cancer. We generated …

In Vivo Quantification Of Reactive Oxygen Species Demonstrates High Levels Of Oxidative Stress In Base Excision Repair-Deficient Caenorhabditis Elegans: Implications For Associative Metabolic Phenotypes, Travis Lee Hase

University Honors Theses

In this present study, I use C. elegans as a model organism to better characterize the phenotypic response to deficiencies in base excision repair (BER). This will help to elucidate how DNA damage, increased mutagenesis, and exposure to reactive oxygen species (ROS) is related to Metabolic Syndrome. Additionally, this work will establish a starting point for investigation that can further characterize phenotypic responses such as mitochondrial physiology and morphology through measurements of mitochondrial membrane potential and mitochondrial circularity. The overall goal of this research is to better understand the nature of mitochondrial dysfunction with respect to the inactivation of DNA …

Lay Versus Medical Analysis: A Conflict Centered On The Disciplinary And Professional Identity Of Psychoanalysis, Sam Yoder

University Honors Theses

The psychoanalytic conflict surrounding lay and medical analysis was a prominent conflict within both the European and American psychoanalytic communities. This thesis is an analysis of that conflict from the time period of 1900-1940. I argue that this conflict is an expression of two conflicting ideas for the disciplinary identity of psychoanalysis. Lay analysts believed that psychoanalysis should be a distinct discipline and be used in a multidisciplinary context. Medical analysts believed that through aligning psychoanalysis with medicine it would obtain professional legitimacy. This thesis also covers concepts of professionalization in disciplines.

Hyphens For Disambiguating Phrases: Effectiveness For Young And Older Adults, Inge Anema, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether hyphens that disambiguate phrasing in ambiguous sentences influence reading rate and reading comprehension for younger and older adults. Moreover, as working memory (WM) has been implicated in age-related changes in sentence comprehension for both auditory and written materials, we asked if it contributed to comprehension of our sentences with hyphenated and non-hyphenated ambiguous noun phrases (NPs), predicting that the hyphens would reduce WM load. Twenty younger (M = 24 years) and 20 older (M = 73 years) adults read sentences with either ambiguous or non-ambiguous NPs that were either hyphenated or …

History, Interactive Technology And Pedagogy: Past Successes And Future Directions, Stephen Brier

Publications and Research

Based on a keynote presentation at the 2012 Canadian Historical Association conference, this paper surveys the state of digital technology and its impact on academic publication and teaching in the contemporary university. Focusing on the dramatic rise of the Digital Humanities in the last few years, the paper examines alternative forms of peer review, academic scholarship and publication, and classroom teaching as they have been reshaped by the adoption of a variety of digital technologies and formats, including open-access, online peer reviewing, use of data- bases and visualization techniques in humanities work, online journal publication, and the use of blogs …

Digital Video: Engaging Students In Critical Media Literacy And Community Activism, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

This article presents a strategy for teaching health communication that fosters critical media literacy through the strategic combination of digital video, documentary film, video worksheets, and peer-reviewed journal articles. Given the media-saturated environment in which notions of health are shaped, critical media literacy skills are crucial to students in health-related fields. Cases of key concepts illustrated through documentary films and the peer-reviewed literature are presented. The article then explores how one class took the lead in designing a community event that critically engaged both a YouTube video and a documentary film about police brutality as a public health issue.

Electric Lamp: Virtual Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification, Nelson R. Salinas, Damon P. Little

Publications and Research

We present eLAMP, a PERL script, with Tk graphical interface, that electronically simulates Loop-mediated AMPlification (LAMP) allowing users to efficiently test putative LAMP primers on a set of target sequences. eLAMP can match primers to templates using either exact (via builtin PERL regular expressions) or approximate matching (via the tre-agrep library). Performance was tested on 40 whole genome sequences of Staphylococcus. eLAMP correctly predicted that the two tested primer sets would amplify from S. aureus genomes and not amplify from other Staphylococcus species. Open source (GNU Public License) PERL scripts are available for download from the New York Botanical Garden’s …

Variability In The Mass Flux Of The Ross Sea Ice Streams, Antarctica, Over The Last Millennium, Ginny Catania, Christina L. Hulbe, Howard Conway, Ted A. Scambos, C. F. Raymond

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We synthesize previously published remote-sensing observations, radar data and model output to obtain a ~1000 year ice flow history for the Siple Coast ice-stream system in West Antarctica to investigate the timing and magnitude of changes in mass flux. The synthesized history shows significant short-term variability in ice-stream shear margin and grounding line position due to internal variability of the coupled system. The chronology highlights the interplay between adjacent ice streams, which implies that the behavior of any individual ice stream should not be examined in isolation. Furthermore, individual events cannot be fully interpreted without an understanding of the broad-scale, …

A Study On Factors Affecting U.S. Bilateral Trade With Her Major Trading Partners, Won Joo Cho

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

The objective of this study is to analyze factors affecting U.S. bilateral trade with her major trading partners, including exchange rate, GDP, economic structure, market openness, and free trade agreements. Six commodity groups included in this study are agriculture, low technology, mid-low technology, mid-high technology, high technology, and overall trade. This research employs Bayesian econometric procedure to solve cross-sectional heterogeneity problem in estimating the bilateral trade model with the U.S. major trading partners for six commodity groups. Estimation results show that capital-labor ratio is more influential in U.S. bilateral trade with her major trading partners than exchange rate. In addition, …

The Relationship Between Water Pollution And Economic Growth Using The Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Case Study In South Korea, Jaesung Choi

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

This thesis reviews relationships between economic growth and water pollution in South Korea using the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Both national perspective (pooled data) and regional perspective (each river) are used to reveal the EKC theory. Given that the small sample covers four rivers and the period of 1985-2009, Fixed-effects model with a robust standard error is chosen for removing econometric problems. Empirical results demonstrate that the EKC theory explains water quality change in South Korea, depending on the types of water pollutants and their generated regional characteristics. The Han River does not show inverted-U shapes for BOD (Biochemical Oxygen …

Effects Of Winter Weather Risk On The Profitability Of Beef Feedlots In North Dakota, Billiejo Mae Armbrust Shae

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

This study examines the effects of management decisions, animal performance, weather risk, and economic variables on the profitability of the beef feedlot in North Dakota using data from the Dakota Feeder Calf Show and feed trials at North Dakota State University's Carrington Research and Extension Center. The effects of these variables were studied using an ordinary least squares analysis. Results demonstrated that severe cold stress reduced the profits of the feedlot in North Dakota. Results suggest that steers placed during the fall in North Dakota with placement weights > 600 pounds are more profitable to feed than lighter weight steers.