Digital Commons Network^™

Treatment Efficacy Of Manual Therapy On Speech Outcomes In Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A Single-Subject Experimental Design, Chantelle B. Varnado

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Objective – The present study aimed to determine if a treatment effect is present on speech outcomes in children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) given 5 sessions of a manual therapy treatment protocol. Methods – A single-subject experimental design (ABAB) study was devised to establish the treatment efficacy of a manual therapy protocol on speech outcomes in children with spastic CP. The protocol was administered to 5 participants, 4-6 years old. It included five intercostal stretches administered in 15-minute sessions for five sessions. During the withdrawal phase, a sham treatment was administered that included an equal dosage of treatment. …

On The Role Of Surface Roughness In Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication Of Tribological Components, Mohammad Masjedi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The present dissertation investigates the effect of surface roughness in the elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL). Since many essential components of the machinery such as gears, rolling element bearings, cam-followers, and heavily loaded journal bearings operate under the mixed EHL condition, and given the fact that nearly all engineering surfaces are rough to some extent, there is a need for an extensive research which can realistically quantify the effect of the surface roughness in such applications. We thus seek to develop an applied engineering approach for the treatment of the mixed EHL for prediction of the performance of machinery. Both line-contact and …

White Manhood In Louisiana During Reconstruction, 1865-1877, Arthur Wendel Stout

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Economic, political, and social landscapes changed for white men in Louisiana after the Civil War. Suffering displacement, business interruption, property confiscation, and lower social and political standing vis-à-vis the former slaves, white men’s standing in every realm seemed diminished, including their core identity as men. It was important to them and to their families for white men to regain a sense of competence as men. Using letters, diaries, and court cases involving white people with strong connections to Louisiana during the Reconstruction era, this dissertation analyzes the gendered problems that white men and their families sought to resolve. Newspaper articles, …

The Gaze-Cueing Effect In The United States And Japan: Influence Of Cultural Differences In Cognitive Strategies On Control Of Attention, Saki Takao, Yusuke Yamani, Atsunori Ariga

Psychology Faculty Publications

The direction of seen gaze automatically and exogenously guides visual spatial attention, a phenomenon termed as the gaze-cueing effect. Although this effect arises when the duration of stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between a non-predictive gaze cue and the target is relatively long, no empirical research examined the factors underlying this extended cueing effect. Two experiments compared the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs (700 ms) in Japanese and American participants. Cross-cultural studies on cognition suggest that Westerners tend to use a context-independent analytical strategy to process visual environments, whereas Asians use a context-dependent holistic approach. We hypothesized that Japanese participants would …

Three Essays On Food Demand, Land Use Intensity, And Food Crop Portfolio Choice Under Weather Risk, Aditya Raj Khanal

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Food security and adaptation to climate change has been an important research and development agenda in most of the development organizations and in the national policy of developing countries. The most vulnerable population from climate change and food security problems are rural and agricultural households in the developing and low income countries. Weather and climatic factors and food security has a direct link with poverty because a large majority of poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The primary focus of this dissertation is to analyze consumption and production aspects of the rural agricultural households. …

Clarifying Observed Relationships Between Protective Behavioral Strategies And Alcohol Outcomes: The Importance Of Response Options, Abby L. Braitman, James M. Henson, Kate B. Carey

Psychology Faculty Publications

Protective behavioral strategies (PBS), or harm-reduction behaviors that can potentially reduce alcohol consumption or associated problems, have been assessed in varied ways throughout the literature. Existing scales vary in focus (i.e., broad vs. narrow), and importantly, in response options (i.e., absolute frequency vs. contingent frequency). Absolute frequency conflates PBS use with number of drinking occasions, resulting in inconsistencies in the relationship between PBS use and alcohol outcomes, whereas contingent frequency is less precise, which could reduce power. The current study proposes the use of absolute frequencies to maximize precision, with an adjustment for number of drinking days to extricate PBS …

The Impact Of Time Perspective Latent Profiles On College Drinking: A Multidimensional Approach, Abby L. Braitman, James M. Henson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background- Zimbardo and Boyd's¹ time perspective, or the temporal framework individuals use to process information, has been shown to predict health behaviors such as alcohol use. Previous studies supported the predictive validity of individual dimensions of time perspective, with some dimensions acting as protective factors and others as risk factors. However, some studies produced findings contrary to the general body of literature. In addition, time perspective is a multidimensional construct, and the combination of perspectives may be more predictive than individual dimensions in isolation; consequently, multidimensional profiles are a more accurate measure of individual differences and more appropriate for …

Five Facets Of Mindfulness And Psychological Health: Evaluating A Psychological Model Of The Mechanisms Of Mindfulness, David B. Brown, Adrian J. Bravo, Corey R. Roos, Matthew R. Pearson

Psychology Faculty Publications

There has been an increasing focus on determining the psychological mechanisms underlying the broad effects of mindfulness on psychological health. Mindfulness has been posited to be related to the construct of reperceiving or decentering, defined as a shift in perspective associated with decreased attachment to one's thoughts and emotions. Decentering is proposed to be a meta-mechanism that mobilizes four psychological mechanisms (cognitive flexibility, values clarification, self-regulation, and exposure), which in turn are associated with positive health outcomes. Despite preliminary support for this model, extant studies testing this model have not examined distinct facets of mindfulness. The present study used a …

Mindfulness And Emotional Outcomes: Identifying Subgroups Of College Students Using Latent Profile Analysis, Matthew R. Pearson, Adrienne K. Lawless, David B. Brown, Adrian J. Bravo

Psychology Faculty Publications

In non-meditating samples, distinct facets of mindfulness are found to be negatively correlated, preventing the meaningful creation of a total mindfulness score. The present study used person-centered analyses to distinguish subgroups of college students based on their mindfulness scores, which allows the examination of individuals who are high (or low) on all facets of mindfulness. Using the Lo-Mendell-Rubin Adjusted LRT test, we settled on a 4-class solution that included a high mindfulness group (high on all 5 facets, N = 245), low mindfulness group (moderately low on all 5 facets, N = 563), judgmentally observing group (high on observing, but …

Modeling Risk For Child Abuse And Harsh Parenting In Families With Depressed And Substance-Abusing Parents, Michelle L. Kelley, Hannah R. Lawrence, Robert J. Milletich, Brittany F. Hollis, James M. Henson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Children with substance abusing parents are at considerable risk for child maltreatment. The current study applied an actor–partner interdependence model to examine how father only (n=52) and dual couple (n=33) substance use disorder, as well as their depressive symptomology influenced parents’ own (actor effects) and the partner's (partner effects) overreactivity in disciplinary interactions with their children, as well as their risk for child maltreatment. Parents completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977), the overreactivity subscale from the Parenting Scale (Arnold, O’Leary, Wolff, & Acker, 1993), and the Brief Child Abuse Potential Inventory (Ondersma, Chaffin, Mullins, & …

Minority Stress, Depression, Relationship Quality, And Alcohol Use: Associations With Overweight And Obesity Among Partnered Young Adult Lesbians, Tyler B. Mason, Robin J. Lewis

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose: Although lesbian women are more likely to be obese compared to heterosexual women, relatively little research has examined correlates of overweight and obesity among lesbians. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of minority stress and depression, relationship quality, and alcohol-use variables to overweight and obesity among lesbians in relationships.

Method: Self-identified lesbians (n = 737) in current relationships completed measures of demographics, minority stress, depressive symptoms, relationship variables, and alcohol use.

Results: Overweight and obesity were associated with more public identification as a lesbian, more depressive symptoms, increased heavy drinking, longer relationship length, and lower …

Testing A Model Of Caffeinated Alcohol-Specific Expectancies, Ashley N. Linden-Carmichael, Cathy Lau-Barraco, Amy L. Stamates

Psychology Faculty Publications

Introduction- The present study sought to further understand the association between caffeinated alcoholic beverage (CAB) use and alcohol-related risks. In particular, we focused on the role of two identified expectancies specific to CAB use: intoxication enhancement and avoidance of negative consequences. Although outcome expectancies are consistent predictors of substance use, limited research has examined expectancies related to CAB use and their association with alcohol-related behaviors, such as protecting themselves from alcohol-related harms. Consequently, the present study examined CAB-specific expectancies and protective behavioral strategies (PBS) as mediators of CAB use and negative consequences.

Methods- Participants were 322 (219 women) college drinkers …

Single Or Dual Resources: The Role Of Working Memory In Syntactic Processing, Rebecca Ann Horn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Within the field of psycholinguistics there are those who argue for a close relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and syntactic processing (Just and Carpenter, 1992) and those who argue that there is no such relationship (Waters and Caplan, 1996b; 2004). Despite years of research, empirical data has yet to settle this disagreement, perhaps because a number of methodological differences between studies from each side make direct comparisons of data nearly impossible. The current study was designed to partially replicate three previous studies using their own experimental sentence types in a self-paced word-by-word reading paradigm in order to examine the …

Single Molecule Electrophoresis And Optical Detection Using Thermoplastic Nanofluidic Devices: An Experimental And Simulation Study, Kumuditha Madushanka Weerakoon Ratnayake

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nanofludic devices provide a great platform for single molecular analysis. The unique phenomena in nanoscale gained such interest in investigating the single molecular behavior in nanochannels. Sizes less than 200 nm in one or two-dimensional structures have lead to fascinating observations not accessible in microscale. When a single molecule translocates through a nanotube it interacts with channel walls by adsorption/ desorption, van der Waals interactions and hydrophilic interactions providing a mechanism for separation without any extra additives. Moreover, double layer thickness governed by the background electrolyte plays a vital role. We report single molecular electrophoresis phenomena in nanochannels and nanoslits …

Communicating Sustainability With Visuals: Issue Perception And Issue Engagement, Zeynep Melis Altinay

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Today the list of environmental disasters threatening lives and natural resources has expanded to include many causes. Even though sustainable solutions have never been so urgent, public still issues low priority to many of these serious threats. Many impacts of environmental deprivation, such as coastal land loss, are invisible to the untrained eye, causing individuals to distance themselves psychologically from the risks. The slow pace of environmental degradation constitutes one of the biggest challenges in sustainability communication. The success of sustainable development will require the public to undergo a significant shift in thinking about environmental issues. This dissertation systemically investigates …

Stimulation Of Escherichia Coli Dna Damage Inducible Dna Helicase Ding By The Single-Stranded Dna Binding Protein Ssb, Zishuo Cheng

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We investigate the regulation of an E.coli iron-sulfur protein DNA damage inducible DNA helicase (DinG) by single-stranded DNA binding protein (SSB). We find that SSB can form a stable protein complex with DinG and stimulate the DinG DNA helicase activity. On the other hand, SSB mutant that retains the single-stranded DNA binding activity but fails to form a protein complex with DinG becomes a potent inhibitor for the DinG DNA helicase. The results indicate SSB stimulates the DinG DNA helicase activity via direct protein-protein interaction. The results from these studies suggest that iron-sulfur proteins are regulated not only by intracellular …

Effects Of Encoding Practice On Alphabet, Phonemic Awareness, And Spelling Skills Of Students With Developmental Delays, Laura Nicole Delrose

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Reading instruction has historically been deemphasized for students in special education, and the limited research on this topic reveals that sight word vocabulary is most commonly taught in special education classrooms (Browder, Wakeman, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Algozzine, 2006). However, successful reading instruction must target the five essential components: vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, phonics, and phonemic awareness (National Reading Panel, 2000). The extremely small body of research attempting to teach phonics and phonemic awareness to students with mild to severe disabilities approaches instruction from a decoding framework with mixed success (Browder et al., 2006). Alternatively, this study aims to teach from an encoding …

Anisotropic Spacetimes And Black Hole Interiors In Loop Quantum Gravity, Anton Joe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis deals with understanding quantum gravitational effects in those anisotropic spacetimes which serve as black hole interiors. Two types of spacetime are investigated. Kantowski-Sachs spacetime and Bianchi-III LRS spacetime. The former, in vacuum, is the interor spacetime for Schwarzschild black holes. The latter is the interior for higher genus black holes. These spacetimes are studied in the context of loop quantum cosmology. Using effective dynamics of loop quantum cosmology, the behavior of expansion and shear scalars in different proposed quantizations of the Kantowski-Sachs spacetime with matter is investigated. It is found that out of the various proposed choices, there …

Nuclear Structure Of 26si And 32cl For Astrophysics, Liudmyla Afanasieva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We studied the nuclear structure of two isotopes, 26Si and 32Cl, important for understanding stellar explosions like novae and Type I X-ray bursts. The 31S(p,γ)32Cl reaction rate influences the enrichment of sulfur observed in some nova ejecta, but the uncertainty in the rate spans as much as an order of magnitude and arises from uncertainties in the properties of resonances corresponding to excited states in 32Cl. We populated states in 32Cl via the 10B(24Mg,2n)32Cl reaction using the Argonne Tandem-Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), with a 75 MeV beam of 24Mg bombarding a 200 μg/cm2 10B target. Gamma rays emitted from recoiling …

Insights From Complexity: A Study Of The Implementation Of A District-Wide Literacy Initiative Through The Lens Of Complex Systems Theory, Mary Kathryn Hudson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Complexity Theory provides unique insights into the implementation and operations of a district literacy initiative. The successful and unsuccessful structures of the literacy initiative are examined through a complexity lens in order to gain insight into the relationships between elements of a complex system and its processes operating within a “top-down” educational directive and the resulting “bottom-up” resistance. This qualitative study uses a phenomenological approach to advance complex systems theory. This allows a multi-dimensional exploration of the fundamental attributes of the district initiative, its processes and the relationships within those processes. The literacy initiative in a large urban school district …

The Edible Landscape: Plant Breeding, Farming, And Sustainbility In Northwest Portugal, Joseph Blanchard Powell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is an ethnographic analysis of a participatory plant breeding project in northwest Portugal. Participatory plant breeding (PPB) is a crop enhancement strategy that brings farmers and plant breeders together in the effort to conserve crop genetic resources in-situ, improve yield, and increase the overall agricultural sustainability in agriculture. One strategy in PPB calls for plant breeders to spend considerable time on working farms to understand better farmers’ knowledge and skill, and to survey the existing crop genetic diversity within the existing resource limitations on farms. Although there are clear social implications for PPB, the bulk of PPB evaluative …

Mapping Cropland In Smallholder-Dominated Savannas: Integrating Remote Sensing Techniques And Probabilistic Modeling, Sean Sweeney, Tatyana Ruseva, Lyndon Estes, Tom Evans

Geography

Traditional smallholder farming systems dominate the savanna range countries of sub-Saharan Africa and provide the foundation for the region's food security. Despite continued expansion of smallholder farming into the surrounding savanna landscapes, food insecurity in the region persists. Central to the monitoring of food security in these countries, and to understanding the processes behind it, are reliable, high-quality datasets of cultivated land. Remote sensing has been frequently used for this purpose but distinguishing crops under certain stages of growth from savanna woodlands has remained a major challenge. Yet, crop production in dryland ecosystems is most vulnerable to seasonal climate variability, …

Comment On Loris Caruso/2: Inaudible Politics And The Crisis Of Democracy, Mark Davidson

Geography

The term "post-politics" captures the paradox of contemporary democracy; that a system designed to enable popular social movements access to power has, in fact, closed down that very possibility. We are left with a system, as Caruso [2015] demonstrates, whereby elites manufacture a seemingly "open" democratic process only to assert their control over political institutions when necessary. The challenge for today's social movements is therefore how to navigate a political system that is, at its core, illegitimate. Do they circumvent or ignore post-political regimes? Or do they attempt to re-engage with the democratic state to rediscover its very purpose: To …

Dwelling Poetically, Proceeding Orphically: The Platonic Tradition And The Heideggerian Humanism Of Ernesto Grassi, Geoffrey Alexander Leeves Bain

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Martin Heidegger exerted an immense influence over twentieth century thought by providing profound insights into the nature of Being as well as scathing social critiques, focused on the destructive force of late modern technological reductionism. As part of Heidegger’s project, he elaborated upon a sophisticated history of Being in which two great monsters of Platonism and Humanism are cast as Antichrist and False Prophet. Subsequently, however, his own student Ernesto Grassi argued that Renaissance Humanism was not a stepping stone towards subjectivism and technological thinking, but rather stood in conformity with the fundamental essence of Heidegger’s own project. This study …

Visionary Nonconformity: Miltonic Resonances And The Poetics Of Religious Dissent In The Long Eighteenth Century, Matthew Vickless

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of three decades of critical recovery work, which has restored poems by women and working-class poets to the British canon, critic Joseph Wittreich's groundbreaking critical model about visionary poetics now may be enhanced in order to reveal a more expansive and fluid Miltonic presence, particularly within much eighteenth-century visionary verse. This dissertation applies and at times refocuses Wittreich to achieve a clearer picture of how visionary poetry developed in Britain after Milton, accounting for key poetic visions by several women poets who wrote during the long eighteenth century. The visionary poetics of Jane Barker, Elizabeth Rowe, Mary …

Bioplastic Production In Cyanobacteria And Consensus Degenerate Pcr Probe Design, Courtney Edward Lane

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cyanobacteria show much promise in reducing biodegradable thermoplastic production costs; however, most currently characterized strains are ill-equipped to do so. The result of Objective I produced a high-throughput assay designed to discover existing cyanobacterial strains and rapidly characterize them as PHA-producers or potential PHA-producers. This assay will play an instrumental role in the attainment of a novel cyanobacteria environmental isolate capable of accumulating high levels of PHA naturally. Objective II produced an open source computer program which dramatically speeds the design of similar assays for any arbitrary genetic screening purpose. The program is not limited to this implementation alone. In …

The Measurement Of Counselors' Emotional Intelligence And Client Treatment Outcomes In Addiction Treatment Settings, Vonzell Wade

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Residential adult drug and alcohol treatment centers have yet to investigate the relationship between counselors' emotional intelligence and client success. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between the emotional intelligence as well as the personal and professional characteristics of counselors working in residential drug and alcohol treatment centers and client success in treatment. Suggestions for future research include clarifying the relevance of emotional intelligence for a larger sample size, and developing a greater knowledge of risk factors that can contribute towards unsuccessful client treatment stays.

Regulation Of The Chloride Store In The Retinal Amacrine Cells, Vijai Krishnan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nitric Oxide (NO) is a key gaseous messenger that has been shown to be produced by multiple cell types in the vertebrate retina. Research in our lab is aimed at unlocking critical synaptic functions of NO. A major finding from our lab is that NO affects synaptic responses in amacrine cells by altering the plasma membrane gradient for Cl-. This is due to release of Cl- from an internal store and this in turn dependent on a decrease in cytosolic pH. Determining the factors regulating cytosolic Cl- in neurons is fundamental to our understanding of the function of GABAergic and …

Hybrid Electronic Materials: Characterization And Thin-Film Deposition, Kalyan Chakravarthy Kanakamedala

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hybrid Electronic Materials (HEMs), as defined for this dissertation, are combinations of organic and inorganic materials as may be used to fabricate active device components in “beyond the transistor” electronics. However, the use of organics is often limited by issues such as thermal stability, compatibility with traditional (semiconductor) materials, and current processing technology. Thus, we began our exploration of HEMs with a “new” class of materials called GUMBOS (Group of Uniform Materials Based on Organic Salts) as derived from ionic liquids. For this first segment of our work, we investigated selected species of GUMBOS and nanoGUMBOS via their current-voltage characteristics, …

Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study Of Single Dna Nucleotides Transport Through Nanoslits, Kai Xia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

There is potential for flight time based DNA sequencing involving disassembly into individual nucleotides which would pass through a nanochannel with 2 or more detectors. Molecular dynamics simulation of electrophoretic motion of single DNA nucleotides through 3 nm wide hydrophobic slits was performed. Electric field strength (E) varied from 0.0 to 0.6 V/nm. Slit walls were smooth or had a roughness similar to nucleotide size. Multiple nucleotide-wall adsorptions occurred. The electric field did not influence the nucleotide adsorption and desorption mechanism for E ¡Ü 0.1 V/nm, but influenced nucleotide orientation relative to the field direction. The nucleotide-wall interactions differed due …