Digital Commons Network^™

Measuring The Effect Of Weighted Devices On Exercise Enjoyment, Nicholas Kruse

Theses and Dissertations

Physical activity provides an important health benefit for both males and females. Seven out of every ten U.S. deaths are from chronic disease and many of those deaths could have been preventable. With a lack of physical activity and poor diet, chronic illnesses such as obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type II diabetes were reported, (CDC, 2004). There is a steep decline in exercise from high school to college, which indicates that exercise adherence in college students is an issue. In this study, three conditions were examined with students at the University of North Dakota going through a plyometric protocol …

A Foundational Methodology For Determining System Static Complexity Using Notional Lunar Oxygen Production Processes, Nicholas J. Long

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis serves to develop a preliminary foundational methodology for evaluating the static complexity of future lunar oxygen production systems when extensive information is not yet available about the various systems under consideration. Evaluating static complexity, as part of a overall system complexity analysis, is an important consideration in ultimately selecting a process to be used in a lunar base. When system complexity is higher, there is generally an overall increase in risk which could impact the safety of astronauts and the economic performance of the mission. To evaluate static complexity in lunar oxygen production, static complexity is simplified and …

Restoring Constitutional Equilibrium, Adam Lamparello

University of Dayton Law Review

No abstract provided.

Observations Of Terrestrial Gamma Flashes With Tetra And Lago, Rebecca Ringuette

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Terrestrial Gamma ray Flashes (TGFs) -- very short, intense bursts of electrons, positrons, and energetic photons originating from terrestrial thunderstorms -- have been detected with satellite instruments. The TGF and Energetic Thunderstorm Rooftop Array (TETRA), an array of NaI(Tl) scintillators at Louisiana State University, has now been used to detect similar bursts of 50 keV to over 2 MeV gamma rays at ground level. After 3.3 years of observation, twenty-eight events with durations 0.02 - 4.2 msec have been detected associated with nearby lightning, three of them coincident events observed by detectors separated by ~1000 m. Nine of the events …

Has Time Expired For Time-Out Rooms?, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

An issue that continues to raise serious concerns for education leaders surrounds the treatment of students with disabilities who behave unacceptably. In Honig v. Doe (1988), the Supreme Court acknowledged that in such cases, among the procedures available to educators is “the use of study carrels, timeouts, detention, or the restriction of privileges” (p. 325). Time-out rooms—typically small rooms where students who misbehave are sent until they can safely regain their composure—continue to be used in most jurisdictions, subject to state oversight via statutes and regulations (U.S. Department of Education 2010).

Vocabulary Matching : Potential For A Diagnostic Performance Indicator, Jodie Schraven

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Predictive validity was explored between vocabulary matching (VM) probe scores and the integrated Louisiana Education Assessment Program (iLEAP) social studies standardized subtest score for 224 sixth-grade students across demographic categories from one rural southeastern Louisiana school district. Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) conducted in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, 2007) produced Pearson correlations between .51 and .70 for five benchmark probes for the entire sample. Predictive cutscores created using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analyses and a diagnostic accuracy application software program illustrated that VM cutscores did not correctly predict which students would pass or fail with enough …

Gravitational Waves And Stalled Satellites From Massive Galaxy Mergers At Z ⩽ 1, Sean T. Mcwilliams, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Frans Pretorius

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Green Bank Telescope Observations Of Low Column Density H I Around Ngc 2997 And Ngc 6946, D. J. Pisano

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Characterization Of A Water Soluble, Non-Ionic, Helical Poly(Α-Amino Acid), Wayne Huberty

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A water soluble, non-ionic, rodlike polymer, PEGL, was synthesized and characterized in efforts to synthesize a novel model polymer to study stiff polymers in solution. The rodlike system is likely stiff due to a high relative percent helicity in water up to 50 °C, measured by circular dichroism, the observation of liquid crystalline domains in water, and from the slope measured from conformation plots supplied by GPC/MALS; however, it also apparent the system is aggregating in both a 2 mM azide solution and a buffer (200 mM NaNO3 + 20 mM NaH2PO4 + 2 mM NaN3), in corroboration of negative …

Human Perception Of Piano Timbre Variations Relative To The Piano's Dynamic Range, Pitagoras Goncalves

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception of brightness as it relates to loudness variations in piano tone. A single note was recorded with multiple intensities and used as the stimuli. I normalized all recorded notes to be perceived with the same volume and with the same duration. Consequently, the tone quality could be evaluated without the influence of loudness. Professional musicians and music students were invited to participate. I designed a mechanical apparatus, which produced a measured amount of force applied to the piano key. This device was used to record an intensity range of approximately …

Enhancement Of Gulf Killifish, Fundulus Grandis, Fitness And Reproduction, Joshua Thomas Patterson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Gulf killifish, Fundulus grandis, shows promise for commercial development as a marine baitfish species. Significant markets for F. grandis already exist throughout the Gulf Coast, with the vast majority of supply coming from wild-harvests, which can be hampered by seasonal availability and inconsistent fish health and size. The genus Fundulus also represents an important group of model vertebrates for biological study. A recent review paper described this genus as the premier teleost model for environmental biology. New information generated as a result of the work contained in this dissertation may be more broadly applicable to sister species of F. grandis, …

More Than Met The Eye: Industry In The Antebellum Gulf South, Michael Sean Frawley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

1860 was a census year. Census marshals spread out across the United States to record many different aspects of American society, including information on population, agriculture and, most importantly for this study, manufacturing. The antebellum Gulf South has traditionally been viewed as a region with little industrial development. But, both contemporaries and historians based their view of industry in the Gulf South on what was recorded in the census schedules. Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas were portrayed in the census as areas with little industrial development. But, as many historians have discovered, there were errors in the 1860 census, especially errors …

Detector Response Function Of An Energy-Resolved Cdte Single Photon Counting Detector, Xin Liu, Hyoung Koo Lee

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

BACKGROUND: While spectral CT using single photon counting detector has shown a number of advantages in diagnostic imaging, knowledge of the detector response function of an energy-resolved detector is needed to correct the signal bias and reconstruct the image more accurately.

Structural And Kinetic Investigations Of 15-Lipoxygenase-2, Matthew James Kobe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Evidence suggests that 15-lipoxygenase-2 (15-LOX-2) plays an important role in the progression of atherosclerosis. Due to the medical need to discover isoform specific inhibitors of 15-LOX-2, a novel human enzyme, our goal was to determine the 3-dimensional structure. Using bacterial expression, we were able to obtain a usable quantity of enzyme with a sufficient amount of the catalytic iron bound to the enzyme, however it was sensitive to cleavage by proteases. This led to a ratio of roughly 1:1 of cleaved and uncleaved protein after the final step of purification. Solving the crystal structure revealed the reason for the protease …

The Pulpit And The Nation: Clergymen, Political Culture, And The Creation Of An American National Identity, Spencer W. Mcbride

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the politicization of clergymen during the American Revolution and explains the direct impact this process had on the development of a national polity and a distinct American national identity in the early republic. Both during and after the Revolution, clergymen utilized providential rhetoric and biblical symbolism to assign greater religious and moral significance to political events. Focusing on the period between 1775 and 1800, this dissertation describes and analyzes the extent to which national political leaders relied on local clergymen when securing independence and thereafter inventing a new nation. Ultimately, it argues that clergymen were essential to …

Essays On Mortgage Securitizations, Hong Lee

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies how the affiliation between different entities in securitization process make different market outcomes, and how this estimation of affiliation effects is susceptible to limitations in securitized residential mortgage data. Three essays constitute the dissertation. The first essay illustrates the limitations and potential bias in the loan-level trustee data. Substantial amounts of loan attributes and risk factors are missing. The patterns of data omissions dramatically vary across different risk factors, sponsors, and trustees, and over the time. Missing of one risk factor is in general positively correlated with missing of the other. Omissions of loan attributes are systematically …

Essays On Incentives, Economic Conditions, And Educational Choices, Gregory Brian Upton Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer two independent studies that each contribute to the literature on the college choices. The first paper examines the impact of Arizona’s merit based scholarship on college enrollment decisions. I find that both enrollment and tuition and fees increased at Arizona’s three large public institutions after the implementation of the AIMS scholarship. Enrollment effects are strongest among black and hispanic students. The second paper examines the impact of the recent 2009 housing crisis on college enrollment decisions. I find that large reductions in housing wealth lead to increases in public school enrollment and decreases in private …

A Mixed Methods Investigation Of Post-Secondary Students' Long Bone Anatomy Knowledge Retention Through Constructivism And The Works Of Vesalius, Jennifer F. Tynes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding human long bone anatomy is an important concept to master for post-secondary students that major in medical fields since skeletal structures assist in locating a pulse, conducting clinical procedures, and identifying injection sites. Skeletal anatomy is also used to name structures associated with other organ systems like veins, arteries, and nerves. This explanatory mixed methods study explores post-secondary students’ knowledge retention and perception of various constructivist activities that utilize historical approaches based on the works of Vesalius, the Father of Modern Anatomy to teach long bone anatomy. Three treatment groups and one controlled comparison group (n= 92) were provided …

Exploring The Implementation Of Reading Common Core State Standards In An Elementary School Setting, Lacy Alane Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the implementation process of five teachers and two administrators of the Common Core State Standards in Reading. This ethnographic case study investigates one groups’ attitudes and instructional practices. The researcher focused on three questions in order to provide an in-depth analysis of the data collected. These questions include: How do educators implement and develop reading curriculum from the Common Core State Standards? How does the mandated requirements of the CCSS impact the attitudes of reading teachers? How do primary grade teachers approach the CCSS in comparison to upper elementary teachers? The study followed an ethnographic analysis method …

Essays On Poverty And Infant Health, Deokrye Baek

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer three independent studies that each contribute to the literature on poverty and infant health. The first essay examines whether access to public transportation reduces food insecurity in the U.S. Potential endogeneity problem is addressed with instruments of federal transportation funding. I provide new evidence of a negative causal effect of public transportation accessibility on food insecurity, which is more prominent among poor African-American households. The second essay examines the relation between savings of poor households and a welfare program called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Eligibility for SNAP benefits requires households to own limited …

The Effects Of Concurrent Driving And In-Vehicle Tasks: A Multivariate Statistical Analysis Of Driver Distraction In A High-Fidelity Driving Simulator, Julius A. Codjoe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Distracted driving continues to remain a cause of concern for a number of bodies, including government agencies, traffic safety advocacy groups and law enforcement agencies, because of its traffic safety risks. The driving simulator continues to be popular with researchers in collecting data on performance variables that provide scientific knowledge of the effects of distracted driving. Several of these performance variables can be used to quantify a single distracting effect, resulting in a multivariate dataset. A literature review of related studies revealed that researchers overwhelmingly use univariate (single and multiple) tests to analyze the resulting dataset. Performing multiple univariate tests …

Thermodynamics Of Dna Binding By Dna Polymerase I And Reca Recombinase From Deinococcus Radiodurans, Jaycob Dalton Warfel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Deinococcus radiodurans has a significantly more robust DNA repair response than Escherichia coli, which helps it survive high amounts of oxidative stress. D. radiodurans DNA Polymerase I (DrPolI) and RecA protein (DrRecA) play essential parts in this DNA repair capability. Structural stability studies of the DrPolI large fragment (Klendra) and examination of the DNA binding characteristics of Klendra and RecA are presented herein. In the absence of cofactors DrRecA binds to dsDNA more than 20 fold tighter than EcRecA, and binds ssDNA up to 9 fold tighter. Binding to dsDNA in the absence of cofactor presumably monitors DNA end binding. …

Revealing The Jewishness Of Hannah Arendt, Jennifer Richard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hannah Arendt, one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century, passed away before finishing her final statement on politics. Because her political theory is incomplete, scholars have adopted many means for interpreting her work. In this dissertation, I adopt a phenomenological approach to understanding Arendt by engaging with the phenomenological method Arendt, herself, used—narrative. I specifically employ the Passover narrative as a metaphorical framework alongside which Arendt’s political theory is traced. In this approach, four elements of Arendt’s theory emerge to distinguish her thought from the Western political tradition: the role of the mental activities, the definition …

Space-Efficient Data Structures For String Searching And Retrieval, Sharma Valliyil Thankachan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Let D = {d_1, d_2, ...} be a collection of string documents of n characters in total, which are drawn from an alphabet set Sigma =[sigma] ={1,2,3,...sigma}. The top-k document retrieval problem is to maintain D as a data structure, such that when ever a query Q=(P, k) comes, we can report (the identifiers of) those k documents that are most relevant to the pattern P (of p characters). The relevance of a document d_r with respect to a pattern P is captured by score(P, d_r), which can be any function of the set of locations where P occurs in …

Multivariate Generalizability Of Writing Curriculum-Based Measurement (Cbm): An Examination Of Form, Occasion, And Scoring Method, Katherine Hunter Chenier

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is an assessment technique that has become increasingly popular in schools, gaining importance with the recent national emphasis on school and teacher accountability for student achievement. CBM is used to monitor student performance to provide an indicator of which students are at-risk of not achieving grade level standards and thus are in need of intervention. CBM is easy to administer, utilizes standard procedures, and provides measures indicative of general achievement in various domains. The utility of CBM to measure student ability in writing has been well-established. However, there is a paucity of technical adequacy research for writing …

Presidential Profiles: Race, Leadership Orientation, And Effectiveness, Jerry M. Whitmore Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation study examined racial differences in leadership orientation and effectiveness at United States four year, public colleges and universities as self-perceived and as perceived by presidents, as a means to contribute to the literature on race leadership orientation and effectiveness. The quantitative study design is to determine significant relationships among University or College Presidents or Chancellors (UCPC) pertaining to their leadership frames and effectiveness using (Bolman and Deal 1991a, 1991b, 2003) four-frame leadership theory and Quinn (1988) competing values model. The study attempts to understand any distinct observations that may be present. This study will not be an attempt …

Some Numerical And Phenomenological Studies In Loop Quantum Cosmology, Brajesh Kumar Gupt

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A key feature of the singularity resolution in loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is the occurrence of the quantum bounce when the spacetime curvature becomes comparable to the Planck scale. The presence of quantum bounce greatly modifies the dynamics of the early universe and can have important implications for observational signatures. Although the quantum bounce has been previously studied via numerical methods for initial conditions that correspond to large macroscopic universes at late times, a detailed study of the robustness of the quantum bounce for a generic class of initial condition has so far been missing due to severe computational challenges. …

Energy Dissipation And Entropy Generation During The Fatigue Degradation: Application To Health Monitoring Of Composites, Ali Kahirdeh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, an experimental approach for characterizing energy dissipation and degradation evolution in a woven Epoxy/Glass (G10/FR4) laminate subjected to fully reversed bending fatigue test is presented. Infrared thermography and acoustic emission are utilized to characterize the degradation progression. The results show similar evolutionary response indicating the presence of three degradation stages. The effect of the surface cooling on the fatigue life of the laminates is investigated both experimentally and analytically. The results show that the life of the laminate is highly dependent on the temperature and that surface cooling can significantly increase the fatigue life of the laminate. …

Linking Local Weather To Climate Change: One Year Of Twitter In The Us, Tatiana Molodtsova

Theses and Dissertations

There is a high level of scientific consensus on climate change. Nevertheless for climate change research to have any practical value, to develop public support for climate policies, the climate research results must find the way to general public. That is why it is important to understand how the public perception of climate change forms.

During the last decades there have been a number of studies on the factors affecting the level of public concern on climate change. Two major groups of factors are hypothesized to have the biggest influence on the level of public concern on climate change: extreme …

Correctional Education Programs: Institutional Predictors Of Availability, Shamilya Marielle Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

Being a convicted felon can limit a person's life chances. Adding a lack of education and training to that felony conviction can further limit the ability to find stable employment and transition back into society. Correctional education programs can reduce recidivism rates, but there are a wide variety of programs and not every facility offers them. This study examines the institutional characteristics that predict the availability of vocational training and college course programs in correctional institutions. The data for this study come from the 2000 Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities. Data were collected from 84 federal correctional …