Digital Commons Network^™

New Orleans, A City Of Layers Preventing Extinction, William Francis Reinhardt

LSU Master's Theses

Preventing the loss of New Orleans occupies the minds of many designers in Louisiana. Great efforts to preserve the city are targeting the slow return to naturalization of the engineered river to find a new balance determined by plan formulators of the Federal government. Throughout history, many experimental movements have been born from the landscape architecture practice, and may be key to the future of New Orleans. Separate chapters are devoted towards the movements created by William Kent, Fletcher Steele, and Jens Jensen to explore as inspiration to be applied to coastal living. Finally, the future of New Orleans is …

Context Aware Textual Entailment, Soha Arab-Khazaeli

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In conversations, stories, news reporting, and other forms of natural language, understanding requires participants to make assumptions (hypothesis) based on background knowledge, a process called entailment. These assumptions may then be supported, contradicted, or refined as a conversation or story progresses and additional facts become known and context changes. It is often the case that we do not know an aspect of the story with certainty but rather believe it to be the case; i.e., what we know is associated with uncertainty or ambiguity. In this research a method has been developed to identify different contexts of the input raw …

Stochastic Modeling Of Semantic Structures Of Online Movie Reviews, Limeng Pu

LSU Master's Theses

Facing the enormous volumes of data available nowadays, we try to extract useful information from the data by properly modeling and characterizing the data. In this thesis, we focus on one particular type of semantic data --- online movie reviews, which can be found on all major movie websites. Our objective is mining movie review data to seek quantifiable patterns between reviews on the same movie, or reviews from the same reviewer. A novel approach is presented in this thesis to achieve this goal. The key idea is converting a movie review text into a list of tuples, where each …

An Afro-Brazilian Landscape: African Oil Palms And Socioecological Change In Bahia, Brazil, Case Watkins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Palm oil extracted from the African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is the world’s most produced vegetable oil, commanding a roughly 50 billion dollar global industry. In contrast to the agroindustrial firms and monocultures that dominate global production, a biodiverse cultural landscape of African oil palms in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia has for centuries supplied local alimentary and spiritual demands for palm oil—an essential resource in Afro-Brazilian cultures. Drawing on fieldwork, ethnography, archives, GIScience, quantitative analysis, and travelers’, rare, and secondary accounts, this dissertation provides the first comprehensive study of Bahia’s palm oil landscapes, cultures, and economies. Analyzing …

Social Anxiety And Cannabis-Related Impairment: The Roles Of Anxiety Sensitivity And Intolerance Of Uncertainty, Emily Robin Jeffries

LSU Master's Theses

Cannabis use is associated with many negative consequences. Identification of factors associated with cannabis could inform prevention and treatment efforts. Social anxiety appears to be one risk factor for cannabis-related problems. Thus, it is important to identify malleable cognitive vulnerability factors that may play a role in the social anxiety-cannabis problems relationship. Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is the fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations and is composed of three subfacets: physical, cognitive, and social concerns. AS is associated with greater social anxiety and may play a role in cannabis-related impairment. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) refers to a tendency to respond negatively to …

Impact Of Reduced Rates Of Hormonal Herbicides Aon Sweetpotato (Ipomoea Batatas Lam.) Growth And Development, Thomas Michael Batts

LSU Master's Theses

Studies evaluated impact of dicamba, 2,4-D, and glyphosate at reduced rates to sweetpotato at root formation (RF) and development (RD) growth stages. For DGA salt of dicamba at RF, glyphosate plus dicamba at 1/10x reduced storage root number 42%, canner grade yield 33%, and total yield 36%. With choline salt of 2,4-D at RF, storage root number compared to the non-treated (6.5) was reduced with glyphosate alone at 1/100x (5.1), 2,4-D alone at 1/250x (5.1), and glyphosate plus 2,4-D applied at 1/10 (4.2) and 1/1000x (5). Canner yield was reduced 32% with glyphosate alone 1/10x, 26 and 27% with 2,4-D …

Disaggregating Student Outcomes By Race And Income: Educational Equity In Oregon, Anne Sinkey, Ann Curry-Stevens

Center to Advance Racial Equity Publications and Reports

This research seeks to answer an emerging question in public school debates: whether race is just a proxy for income when it comes to disparities in educational outcomes among Oregon’s K-12 students. This research set out to respond to this question, and draws from public school data records to answer the question. We investigated student test scores across three different environments: elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. We also investigated student graduation rates from high school. The pattern of findings is absolutely clear: regardless of the site or type of disparities, when we compare how low-income students fare, all …

Community Assessment Of African Maternal Health In The Portland Region: Drivers For Community, Health Services And Institutional Change, Marie-Elena Reyes, Ann Curry-Stevens

Center to Advance Racial Equity Publications and Reports

This community needs assessment surfaces a range of health priorities faced by the African community. While the scope of the study is limited by time and resources, and strategically focused on maternal health, there are a wider set of upstream and downstream health challenges that impede the community’s wellbeing. We encourage policy makers to remember these whenever health policies, and in fact all manner of policies and programs tied to the social determinants of health, are being considered.

The main body of this report contains the insights of the 56 African women who participated in six focus groups. Their voices …

Child And Maternal Health In The Slavic Community: Insights On Assets And Priorities, Marie-Elena Reyes, Ann Curry-Stevens

Center to Advance Racial Equity Publications and Reports

The Slavic community’s health is impacted by race and ethnicity, and also by issues that flow from being a newcomer community, and also from their status as refugees. They also bring to the U.S.A. cultural orientation that is collectivist, and shared experiences of persecution and deep distrust of the government. As is detailed in this report, these experiences have an impact on health and wellbeing, and simultaneously have a detrimental effect on the economic stature of the community.

This Community Needs Assessment on the Health of Slavic Children (ages 0-5 years) was conducted to produce a “needs assessment” report outlining …

Writing In The Geometry Classroom, Amy Lynn Rome

LSU Master's Theses

This study sought a time-efficient way to implement writing in ninth-grade Geometry. Students wrote responses to five expository writing prompts spread out over the spring semester of the 2014-2015 school year. Students’ first attempts were graded and returned to them along with feedback in the form of a teacher-written exemplar. Students rewrote assignments to improve their grades. All first and second attempts were collected and evaluated. We found that students were more successful after seeing the exemplar. Moreover, on assignments occurring later in the semester, more students were able to score in the top categories of the writing assignments on …

A Glorious Assemblage: The Rise Of The Know-Nothing Party In Louisiana, Ryan M. Hall

LSU Master's Theses

Between 1853 and 1856, the nativist and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing party became a powerful political force in Louisiana despite the state’s unique religious and political makeup. This thesis studies the rise of the party in three regions of the state: New Orleans, the Sugar Parishes, and North Louisiana and the Florida Parishes to show that the party gained popularity in the state differently in different regions. In New Orleans, the party rejected anti-Catholicism and adopted a stance against political corruption. In the Sugar Parishes, the Know-Nothings were merely a continuation of the Whig Party under a new name. In North Louisiana …

Stress In Allied Healthcare Students, Amy Fitzsimmons

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Education, Oppression, And Democracy : A Philosophical Approach To Educational Inequity, Ben Davis

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

A Vocal Autobiography : Pedagogical Considerations And Personal Review Of Beginning Through Advanced Voice Lessons, Jacy Walker

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Nationalization And Regionalism In 1920s College Football, Bennett Jeffery Koerber

LSU Master's Theses

By illuminating the complexities of 1920s American society, college football serves as a remarkably insightful cultural device. At the commencement of the decade, a national business community – one that had been developing since the late nineteenth century – appeared to have come to fruition. The more connected nature of the country served to homogenize the United States economically, politically, and even socially. Citizens who had once lived autonomously found themselves more interconnected with neighboring regions of the country, and thus increasingly defined by national characteristics. This served as an internal crisis of sorts because regional identity operated as a …

Paraguay As A Holy Land: From The Guarani Indians To Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Ronald J. Brown

New York School for Career and Applied Studies (NYSCAS) Publications and Research

The author details the history of the various groups that settled in Paraguay, including Jesuits, Mennonites, and European refugees. He also discusses the rule of President Francisco Solano Lopez.

Language Processing And The Artificial Mind: Teaching Code Literacy In The Humanities, Jerry Scott Weltman

LSU Master's Theses

Humanities majors often find themselves in jobs where they either manage programmers or work with them in close collaboration. These interactions often pose difficulties because specialists in literature, history, philosophy, and so on are not usually "code literate." They do not understand what tasks computers are best suited to, or how programmers solve problems. Learning code literacy would be a great benefit to humanities majors, but the traditional computer science curriculum is heavily math oriented, and students outside of science and technology majors are often math averse. Yet they are often interested in language, linguistics, and science fiction. This thesis …

Automated Conversion Of Text Instructions To Human Motion Animation, Ravikumar Vishwanath Chimmalgi

LSU Master's Theses

Text to animation is the conversion of textual instructions to animations following and depicting those instructions. Text to animation is important to fields such as crime scene investigation, military special operations and storytelling where text is utilized. It is also useful for physical therapy where a doctor can factor in disability parameters in the 3D models and determine the safest therapy exercises for patients. It can be used in robotics, where robot assistants can be instructed to perform tasks through text instructions. In this research, a system was created to generate 3D animation of workouts from their textual instructions. An …

A Test Of General Strain Theory: Suicidal Ideation And Attempt Among Adolescents In Istanbul, Turkey, Muhammed Yildiz

LSU Master's Theses

Previous suicidal ideation and attempt are the strongest predictors of subsequent completed suicide, which is the second leading cause of death among youth today. Research shows that the risk factors for adolescent suicidal behaviors can be grouped into demographic, social, and psychological categories, so a broad theoretical framework is needed to examine the range of these factors’ effects. In this study, Agnew’s general strain theory is tested to explain those suicidal behaviors among adolescents in Istanbul, Turkey. Agnew argued that specific strains were more likely to lead to deviance, therefore a corresponding set of strains are selected. He also argued …

Metamorphoses Of The Pygmalion Myth In French Literature 1771 – 1886, Carrie L. O'Connor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Writers have long explored and attempted to portray the visual artist’s challenge of creating the ideal in the real world through art. My thesis asserts that the Pygmalion myth, originally told in written form in Ovid’s 8 A.D. Metamorphoses, is the quintessential model to explore the changing, and sometimes problematic, relationships between the artist, the creation, and the creative process. The three main characters in the Pygmalion myth – the sculptor, the sculpture, and the divine intervention – each appear, albeit in different manifestations, in its later adaptations. Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in French literature, authors explored …

Concerto For Violoncello And Orchestra, Xing Li

LSU Master's Theses

This piece is inspired by three different fable stories, which my parents told to me when I was a child. It has three different characteristic sections. The main tune throughout the piece has Chinese elements, including the use of pentatonic scales and intervals of the second. During each section, I employed the melodious melody of solo cello as the transition to bridge different sections. These transitions are all composed of Chinese folk tunes. The first section uses a story about perseverance. A pony wants to cross a river but it is indecisive and afraid. Some of animals tell the pony …

Investigation Of Potentially Hazardous Particulate Matter In Homes: Designing A Particle Filtration System, John Scott Young

LSU Master's Theses

This research documents the process of designing a technique, materials, and method to filter particulate matter (PM) deposited on surfaces in homes. PM collected from homes in a known industrial corridor, Baton Rouge, was tested for key pollutants sorbed to their surface in an investigation of household air depositions. This research successfully designed a collection method for bulk samples and a filtration apparatus and method for collecting sized laboratory testable samples using porous membrane filtration technology. This research found relatively high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and the presence of some metals. This research also found the presence of …

La Grad Act’S Effects On Developmental Faculty: A Case Study, Patricia Kuhlman Van Brunt

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past 50 years, state legislatures have placed mandates on higher education institutions to lower attrition, thereby increasing student retention and completion. This study investigated and sought to understand the relationship between the Louisiana Granting Resources and Autonomy for Diplomas Act, or the LA GRAD Act (2010), and developmental education. More specifically, it focused on the perceptions of the mandate held by developmental education faculty who are employed at a public, urban Louisiana community college. This study utilized the four-framework approach by Bolman and Deal (2013) to decipher how developmental classrooms, academic departments, and a higher education institution as …

The Plagues Of Colonialism: Representations Of Suffering In The Colonial And Postcolonial Francophone Algerian Novel From 1950-1966, Benjamin Jack Sparks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The indigenous Francophone Algerian novel dates from the early 1950s and since then has been a political manifestation of uneasiness. The anticolonial undertones of this literature demonstrate the sufferings and harsh realities of life under an oppressive colonial regime; meanwhile the postcolonial novel continues the representation of this suffering through the residual effects of colonialism and the impact of the bloody decolonization war. This dissertation contributes to the discourse regarding suffering as a result of French colonial oppression in light of François Hollande’s official recognition of the trauma of colonialism and the acceptance of the events from 1954-1962 as a …

A Test Of The Effectiveness Of The Active Learning Technique Think-Pair-Share In A High School Science Classroom, Michael Francis Lowe

LSU Master's Theses

In this study, the active learning technique think-pair-share was tested in an independent high school non-honors chemistry classroom to see if it was more effective than teaching techniques already being used in the chemistry classes. Two classes of tenth grade chemistry students were combined as a test group and a third class of tenth grade chemistry students acted as the control. Learning gains for pre and post-tests from three different chemistry units were analyzed and no significant difference was found between the results of the control and test groups, indicating that think-pair-share was as effective as teaching methods already in …

Expertise And Disbelief: Post-1945 American Attitudes Toward The Authority Of Knowledge, Terry Wagner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“You can’t beat brains,” said President John Kennedy of the intellectuals and technicians he assembled in his cabinet. Kennedy was perhaps the greatest political champion for the virtues of expertise. However, all over America during the 1960s and ‘70s, diverse groups voiced doubts about how much experts, such as social scientists, policy specialists, and others, actually improved life. This dissertation examines how movements on the political left and right, and spiritual ruptures such as the rise of ‘60s counterculture and of evangelicalism, spoke in different language to express a similar point: human mastery over the world is profoundly limited. Many …

The Correlation Between Parental Involvement And Student Academic Achievement, Damien Ramon Antoine

LSU Master's Theses

This study investigates whether or not there is a correlation between parental involvement and student academic achievement. A sample of 103 students at Madison Preparatory Academy and CSAL Middle School (CSAL, Inc) were tested for correlations between the degree with which their parents are engaged in their academic lives and the success that they achieve as a result. Small correlations were found to exist between some of the variables tested. The test group consisted of a group of high school students from Madison Preparatory Academy (MPA) and their siblings who attended CSAL Middle which is the feeder school for MPA. …

The Effectiveness Of Online Homework Tutorials As Compared To Pen And Paper Tutorials, Molly Shuman

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if students learn more from completing web based homework (WBHW) compared to completing homework by traditional means with pen and paper. Determining the efficacy of WBHW is important because many schools are being pressured to implement technology in the classroom. To determine the effectiveness of WBHW, student normalized learning gains were calculated from pre and post-test scores for 62 students. Learning gains were then compared when students completed WBHW, traditional homework, or did not complete homework at all, over four units in a high school chemistry class. No difference in learning gains …

My Choice, My Fraternity, And My Engagement: Experiences Of White Men In Black Greek Letter Organizations (Bglo), Kourtney Prentice Gray

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study grounded in the theoretical framework and research of Alexander Astin’s Student Engagement Theory, with support from Critical Race Theory and Terrell Strayhorn’s work on Sense of Student Belonging, utilizes a methodological case-study approach with multiple units of analysis. In an effort to understand the choice, ownership, and engagement of White men who hold membership in Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLO), this study utilized the counter-narrative tenant presented and supported by Critical Race Theory to examine the racial identity and engagement of fraternity men from a pluralistic experience. Additionally, the researcher hypothesized that there is a special experience …

Evaluation Of Teacher Ratings To Improve Child Language Screenings In Speech-Language Pathology, Kyomi Dana Gregory

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of teacher ratings for screening children’s language skills. Teacher ratings were measured through the use of two tools, the Children’s Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2; Bishop, 2006) and the Teacher Rating of Oral Language and Literacy (TROLL; Dickinson, McCabe, & Sprague, 2001). The data for this study were from 77 kindergarteners who lived in rural Louisiana and spoke a non-mainstream dialect of English; 51 were classified as typically developing and 26 as presenting with Specific Language Impairment. Convergent validity was examined by comparing the two teacher rating tools to each other and …