Digital Commons Network^™

Safer To Steal Than Score : Press Coverage Of Financial And Sexual Scandals, And Electoral Outcomes, Chance York

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines communication processes surrounding political scandal. It demonstrates that scandal coverage is improperly calibrated to the severity of scandal accusations, with trivial but salacious sex scandals tending to receive inordinate amounts of press attention while deeper forms of financial corruption go unreported or underreported. Patterns of scandal coverage, in turn, result in real-world effects on public perceptions and electoral outcomes. Specifically, sex scandals generate such intense media scrutiny that accused officials often resign their offices rather than generate unwanted publicity. Financial scandals are often downplayed, resulting in little or no ramifications for the accused. Recognizing basic differences in …

Accounting For Travel Time Reliability, Trip Purpose And Departure Time Choice In An Agent-Based Dynamic Feedback-Control Toll Pricing Approach, Wan Li

LSU Master's Theses

The primary goal of this study is to modify the original strategy developed by Cheng and Ishak (2013) into an agent-based dynamic feedback-control toll pricing strategy that accounts for the trip purpose, travel time reliability, departure time choice and level of income such that the toll revenue is maximized while maintaining a minimum desired level of service on the managed lanes. An external module was developed to execute the modified strategy. An agent-based modeling was applied to simulate drivers’ learning process based on their previous commuting experience. The study also analyzed how driver’s heterogeneity in value of time, value of …

Liberty Against Itself: British Freedoms In North America, Matthew Charles Connell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation explores the theoretical foundations of what I refer to as the Canadian liberal ethos. Taking the British parliamentary revolution of 1688 as pivotal event I examine the development of political liberty in its English incarnations and trace its development as it was expressed in colonial British North America. This dissertation hopes to provide an explanatory analysis the of the liberal ethos that can: (a) contribute to understanding the pre-suppositions of liberty in a liberal democratic order, (b) contribute to an understanding of diversity and competing philosophical principles that informed the settlement of British North America and the institutionalization …

During And After Event Analysis Of Cell Phone Talking And Texting-A Driving Simulator Study, Raju Thapa

LSU Master's Theses

A number of studies have been done in the field of driver distraction, specifically on the use of cell phone for either conversation or texting while driving. However, till now, researchers have focused on the driving performance of drivers when they were actually engaged in the task, i.e. during the texting or phone conversation event. The primary objective of this study is to analyze the post event effect of cell phone usage in order to verify whether the distracting effect lingers on after the actual event had ceased. The research utilizes a driving simulator study of thirty-six participants to test …

"Mais, You Talk Like Me? /Ju Ra:/": Kindergarteners' Use Of Five Cajun English Phonological Features, Hannah Joy Smitherman

LSU Master's Theses

Cajun English (CE) is an understudied dialect that is spoken in and around the Acadian triangle of Louisiana. Of the studies that exist, almost all have been completed with adults. The purpose of the current study was to determine if children whose parents have identified their family as Cajun use five phonological features of CE (/t, d/ for /θ, ð/, nonaspirated /p, t, k/, heavy vowel nasalization, monophthongization, and glide weakening on vowels) more frequently than those identified as non-Cajun. The participants were 11 kindergarteners who were identified as Cajun or non-Cajun and who resided in Assumption Parish in rural …

Challenging Behaviors In Children With Comorbid Autism Spectrum Disorder And Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Katherine Margaret Macmillan

LSU Master's Theses

Challenging behaviors, such as aggression, destruction, self-injurious behaviors, or stereotypic movements, affect the majority of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. One factor that is known to influence the frequency at which challenging behaviors occur is the presence of a comorbid disorder. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is thought to be one such disorder. This study aimed to compare the prevalence rates of challenging behaviors, according to the Autism Spectrum Disorder-Behavior Problems, Child Version (ASD-BPC), in children ages 6-16 with parent reported symptoms of ASD, ADHD, comorbid ASD/ADHD, and no diagnosis. Differences existing overall were examined as well as differences on the ASD-BPC’s …

Advanced Statistical Signal Processing Methods In Sensing, Detection, And Estimation For Communication Applications, Hongting Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The applications of wireless communications and digital signal processing have dramatically changed the way we live, work, and learn over decades. The requirement of higher throughput and ubiquitous connectivity for wireless communication systems has become prevalent nowadays. Signal sensing, detection and estimation have been prevalent in signal processing and communications for many years. The relevant studies deal with the processing of information-bearing signals for the purpose of information extraction. Nevertheless, new robust and efficient signal sensing, detection and estimation techniques are still in demand since there emerge more and more practical applications which rely on them. In this dissertation work, …

Electrical Resistivity Employed At The Livonia Mound Site (16pc1), Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, Jennifer Patricia Gardner

LSU Master's Theses

Electrical resistivity was used at the Livonia Mound site (16PC1) to identify construction breaks, possible human burials, and other cultural activity below the surface. Resistivity transects traveled across the mound and the level surface directly south of the mound; this latter section was called Area A. Four transects stretched across the north, south, west, and east slopes of the mound; as a result, four vertical profiles were created from the apparent resistivity (ƒâa) values. The standard deviation of each transect was computed using the ƒâa values from the four pseudo-sections to establish the base-line for analysis. ƒâa values for Area …

Teaching Complex Numbers In High School, Esperanza Gotoman Chavez

LSU Master's Theses

One of the mathematics standards for high schools stated in the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS, 2010 Appendix A, p. 60) is the understanding of the Complex Number system, performing arithmetic operations with complex numbers, representing complex numbers and their operations on the complex plane, and using complex numbers in polynomial identities and equations. In this thesis, we trace back the history of complex numbers and formulate a set of problems based on the history. The thesis gives a description of the Common Core standards and goals. The exercises based on the history of complex numbers are shown to …

Scheduling In Transactional Memory Systems: Models, Algorithms, And Evaluations, Gokarna Sharma

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Transactional memory provides an alternative synchronization mechanism that removes many limitations of traditional lock-based synchronization so that concurrent program writing is easier than lock-based code in modern multicore architectures. The fundamental module in a transactional memory system is the transaction which represents a sequence of read and write operations that are performed atomically to a set of shared resources; transactions may conflict if they access the same shared resources. A transaction scheduling algorithm is used to handle these transaction conflicts and schedule appropriately the transactions. In this dissertation, we study transaction scheduling problem in several systems that differ through the …

Painful Conversions: Reading And Writing Education Reform In Louisiana, Thomas George Sowders

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In January 2013, the superintendent of a rural Louisiana school system initiated a plan to increase school choice in his district through the implementation of a new virtual magnet school and the conversion of an existing elementary school into a magnet school. Both plans were set into action in April 2013. This study uses performative writing to document the better part of a year spent engaged in this project as a contracted educational consultant. Melding William Blake’s theories of apocalypse and social metonymy with experimental modes of scholarly production as praxis, I theorize education reform as an interactive performance. By …

Professional Development For Geometry Teachers Under Common Core State Standards In Mathematics, Ellen Fort

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis offers a model professional development workshop to high school geometry teachers, with a focus on the Common Core State Standards in geometry, including a description of the workshop, materials to assist in the presentation, and follow-up materials. This workshop, which is based upon curriculum written for EngageNY under the direction of Common Core, Inc., has been presented by the author on four separate occasions to a total of approximately two hundred teachers and other school and district personnel over the past few months. Feedback obtained from attendees has been uniformly positive, indicating that the information and understanding obtained …

Chemistry And Application Of Pulses As Value-Added Ingredients In Processed Foods, Darryl Holliday

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Chemical characterization of pulses allows for varying rates of water absorption, least gelation capacity, and retrogradation depending on species. Nutritionally, pulses are good sources of protein while being low in fat. Pulses deliver a readily bioavailable food form of several key minerals. Additionally, they deliver fiber. The insoluble fiber components are both natural and formed resistant starch in addition to the oligosaccharide content. Therefore, pulses can serve both a nutritional and functional role when used as a value-added ingredient. Meat patties were produced from beef and 23 different pulses at 35%, 42.5%, and 50% ratios. Each patty was tested for …

Mental Mapping The Transformation Of Social Space In Rio's Oldest Favela: Morro Da Providência, Jamie Lauren Worms

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Amid the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, strategic policy reforms at the federal, state, and municipal levels have reordered and re-purposed the social space of Rio’s favelas through the implementation of social and physical infrastructure. This research project contributes a geographical perspective to the ways in which fast-paced urbanization transforms and produces social space in Rio’s oldest favela, Morro da Providência. Based on Henri Lefebvre’s conceptual triad concerning the production of social space, this research uses mental mapping to understand the disparity between representations of conceived space and representational lived space. It also contributes to perceived …

Report And Recommendations Of The Balance Of Crop Research Working Group Of The National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education And Economics (Nareee) Advisory Board, Mark Mclellan, Leo Holt, Twilya L'Ecuyer, Robert Taylor, Julia Sabin, Milo Shult, Anne Marie Thro, Paul Heisey

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In December of 2012, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST) issued a report to the President on Agricultural Preparedness and the Agriculture Research Enterprise. The PCAST report recognizes the long-term history of public investment in agricultural research. The report also recognized significant private investment into agricultural research. Significantly, the report is adamant that the agricultural research enterprise is not prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The report cited two reasons:

1. too little competitive research and
2. an imbalance of research priorities between private and public funding sources.

This report addresses the latter issue.

Members …

Has The Fasb And Iasb's Shift Toward An Asset/Liability View Enhanced The Predictive Usefulness Of Roe?, Regina Cavalier Rosa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past several decades, accounting standard setters have been gradually shifting financial reporting toward an asset/liability view, by rewriting the underlying conceptual framework and issuing accounting standards that reflect this view. The asset/liability view enhances comparability of a firm’s investment base to that of its peers, and thus enhances the comparability of a firm’s return of equity (ROE). This, in turn, increases the transparency with which firm-specific performance differs from its peers. Greater transparency would be expected to improve predictive usefulness, but would also place greater pressure on a firm to meet the performance of its peers. In the …

Why Pass On Fashion Viral Message? The Moderating Role Of Consumers’ Fashion Traits, Message Traits And Individual Dynamics Traits In Social Media, Caroline Makena Kobia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Social media is being used as platforms for viral marketing. Although there is some evidence on the usefulness of viral marketing from the marketers’ perspective, little is known about the motivations, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers engaged in this marketing instrument. As the social media platform continues to grow, understanding the characteristics and motivations of key players is invaluable for marketers and communicators who deal with message strategy and media outreach. Fashion companies have noticed this change and want to be present in the social media in different ways. This research represents a comprehensive attempt to examine the factors that …

Music, Action, And Narrative In Film : An Energetic And Gestural Approach To Film Score Analysis, Zachary Hazelwood

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Film music often contains close relationships to filmic and narrative imagery, creating complex relationships that are not always apparent. Many traditional means of musical analysis are not equipped to account for these extramusical associations. Film music analysis may benefit from considering musical gestures a way for understanding these connections to filmic and narrative imagery. Music theorists and philosophers, such as Mark Johnson, Janna Saslaw, Robert Hatten, and Steve Larson, have commented on the value of considering music through one’s embodied experiences. Film and music are inherently energetic, as both contain perceivable energies and forces. Analyzing the common energetic qualities of …

Using A Sleep And Activity Monitor To Operationalize Fatigue Risk Management, Vanessa Bégat Seitz

LSU Master's Theses

When a person continues to work despite being fatigued, an accident may occur or productivity may decrease. Reducing fatigue related accidents is complicated due to the subjective nature and pervasiveness of the feeling of fatigue. Because finding one universal definition or measure of fatigue is problematic, fatigue is typically measured by a combination of factors such as amount of sleep obtained, physical or cognitive work performed, or sleepiness which can then be related back to a measure of performance. Until recently, sleep measurement was restricted to a lab setting; however, with the emergence of actigraph devices, it is now possible …

Chatting About Science : A Qualitative Study On Increasing The Number And Depth Of Science-Based Conversations Among Aquarium Visitor Groups, Erika Kristen Poarch

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Informal science education centers, including aquariums, are often tasked with educating the general public on conservation issues, natural environments, and general science topics. The public tends to see these centers as entertaining leisure destinations in which they have the opportunity to learn something about the presented information. It is widely accepted that learning in informal environments is shaped by the learner’s motivations, interests, background knowledge, and social interactions. However, these impacting factors are rarely studied in depth, particularly across different types of visitors. This qualitative case study project integrates original research on visitor interests, motivations, and self-reported learning into the …

“Gathering Thinglessness”: Samuel Beckett’S Essayistic Approach To Nothing, Dena Marks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, “Gathering Thinglessness”: Samuel Beckett’s Essayistic Approach to Nothing, responds to the dominant strand in Beckett criticism that figures the writer as a philosopher of “nothing” whether of Democritean, existentialist, or deconstructionist voids. In contrast, I argue that Beckett’s literary texts approximate philosophy in their essayistic style, characterized by the incorporation of multiple, contradictory sources in a fragmented form. While philosophical analyses are often designed to demonstrate that the literary texts are the equivalent of philosophical discourse, in the first chapter I argue that they actually serve to re-subordinate literature to philosophy since they depend on the pre-existing philosophical …

Evaluating The Efficacy And Acceptability Of Videoconferencing In School-Based Behavioral Consultation, Aaron Jason Fischer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

School-based behavioral consultation is a way of providing psychological services to students through their teachers. This indirect service delivery model has been shown to be effective for improving academic and behavioral concerns. Typically, school-based behavioral consultation is conducted face-to-face (in-vivo) between consultants (psychologists) and consultee’s (teachers); however, current technologies have provided an alternative medium to communicate, via videoconferencing. Videoconferencing has been shown to be an effective alternative to face-to-face communication across many different practice domains and applications. Videoconferencing in schools, particularly for school-based behavioral consultation, may be a viable alternative. The proposed study evaluated the efficacy and acceptability of videoconferencing …

Autism Severity And Comorbid Symptoms In Children With Asd, Jina Jang

LSU Master's Theses

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are reported to evince high rates of comorbid symptoms. Co-occurring disorders among individuals with ASD are often difficult to assess and diagnose accurately. Also, comorbid conditions frequently exacerbate symptoms of ASD. Different treatment regimens may be effective for comorbid symptoms in ASD; however, research looking at comorbid symptoms and ASD is limited. The current study aimed to extend the literature in this area by examining the relationship between ASD and comorbid symptoms. First, the current study assessed how often and how severely comorbid symptoms were endorsed. Further, autism severity was used to predict comorbid …

Research In Biological Control Of The Formosan Subterranean Termite, Cai Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki, is a worldwide distributed pest of wooden structures and living plants that causes huge economic losses. Compared to chemical pesticides, biological control may provide a more environmentally friendly and persistent method for the control of C. formosanus. In this research, a series of studies were conducted to understand the termite-pathogen interaction and to develop a feasible biological control strategy. In the first part of the research, the toxicity of Bt toxins expressed by genetically modified maize to termites was tested. Plant tissues or extracts of three commercially planted Bt maize and two non-Bt …

Phylogenetic And Morphological Community Structure Of North American Desert Bats, Lorelei Elizabeth Patrick

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Patterns of community structure may be examined using phylogenetic and morphological data; these patterns can then be used to infer the processes that gave rise to these patterns. Communities made up of similar species may be structured by habitat filtering, wherein only species with traits necessary to survive in a particular location are found there. Communities made up of dissimilar species may have been structured by competition, which reduces overlap in resource use. I examined the sensitivity of phylogenetic community structure (PCS) metrics to changes in phylogeny and community delimitation method, investigated patterns of PCS and correlation to environmental variables …

Echoes And Artifacts, Molly Elizabeth Miller

LSU Master's Theses

Architecture has many different contexts and meanings, but regardless of time and place, buildings act as a physical container of memory. This body of work explores the use of large facades as residue of a personal memory and uses physical deterioration to parallel the distortion of memory as a result of time and emotion. The work makes use of warping and tearing of materials and is created through the combination of large-scale relief prints, drawing, sewing, and the cutting away of materials. The exhibition includes an installation of fabric-based prints, a series of wall-based altered paper prints, and several artist …

Vocal Fold Analysis From High Speed Videoendoscopic Data, Jing Chen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

High speed videoendoscopy (HSV) of the larynx far surpasses the limits of videostroboscopy in evaluating the vocal fold vibratory behavior by providing much higher frame rate. HSV enables the visualization of vocal fold vibratory pattern within an actual glottic cycle. This very detailed infor-mation on vocal fold vibratory characteristics could provide valuable information for the assessment of vocal fold vibratory function in disordered voices and the treatments effects of the behavioral, medical and surgical treatment procedures. In this work, we aim at addressing the problem of classi-fying voice disorders with varying etiology by following four steps described shortly. Our method-ology …

Analysis Of Hydrodynamic Drag Forces Acting On Suspended Fine Particle In Porous Media, Seyed Amin Mirsaeidi Farahani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

An important class of flow and transport problems occurring in porous media involves the interactions between suspended fine particles and the moving fluid at Stokes limit. Historically, due to the complicated geometries of porous media, researchers have had to resort to simplifying assumptions to conceptualize the underlying physics. However, the advent of high performance computing, in recent decades, has made it possible to vigorously investigate this problem at the streamline scale level. In this work, the flow problem is solved by means of a finite-element model. The simulations results are used to compute the drag forces experienced by suspended fine …

Administrator Perceptions Of Intramural Coed Flag Football Modifications: A Qualitative Analysis, Zacharias Wood

LSU Master's Theses

Coed sport environments can be paradoxical settings where pre-existing gender biases influence participants’ enjoyment and success. Furthermore, gendered messages and stereotypes as well as low expectations for females within coed sports can create participation barriers by reducing feelings of confidence and performance. Within Campus Recreation, intramural sport administrators have a significant role in determining participation opportunities and experiences. This investigation examined administrators’ perspectives about coed intramural flag football gender modifications. Specifically, three research questions guided this study: (a) how do intramural administrators view coed flag football gender modifications?; (b) to what extent do intramural administrators perceive gender modifications to impact …

Rituales De Reciprocidad En Los Carnavales Indígenas Andinos, Liliana Mcguffin-Naranjo

LSU Master's Theses

The rituals acts of reciprocity celebrated during the indigenous carnival in the Andes creates communion within the community, and the sacred. In particular, this work focuses on the symbolic meaning of the rituals offerings; celebrated throughout the Andes during the Carnival season, from November to a movable period between February and March. These rituals of reciprocity are dyadic contracts that aid in the cohesiveness of their indigenous experience functioning as agents of their indigeneity; and are a vital part of maintaining and revitalizing their traditions. Using an interpretative and a historiography approach; it is possible to explore the symbolic meaning …