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Challenges Of Dementia Management Within Primary Care, Kathyrn Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Ar Trebui Femeile Să Fie Hirotonite Ca Pastori? Considerații Asupra Vechiului Testament - Partea A Iv-A, Richard M. Davidson

Faculty Publications

This is the last part of a four-part series of studies published in the previous issues of TheoRhēma on women ordination from an Old Testament perspective, including the eschatological future envisaged by the same. It has been argued that the OT witness regarding male-female relations in the covenant community indicates that despite the patriarchal culture and divine condescension to the hardness of human hearts, the way back to the Edenic ideal for equality in gender relations was upheld in that all the various kinds or positions of leadership according to God’s ideal were open to, and filled by, women: priest, …

Confronting Totalitarianism At Home: The Roots Of European Privacy Protections, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

In the last several years, a consensus has developed that a wide gulf exists between European and American privacy law, although division still exists on whether European law is “more protective” or simply “home to different intuitive sensibilities” than American law. Existing research on the development of European privacy law has focused on two areas: nineteenth-century traditions of honor and dueling, which gave rise to a concept of privacy linked to dignity, and the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century, in reaction to which privacy protected liberty. This Article offers a contrasting view by showing that European privacy law in …

Biological Evolution In Canadian Science Curricula, Anila Ashgar, Sarah Bean, Wendi O'Neill, Brian Alters

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"The social controversy around biological evolution and creationism continues to persist throughout North America (Alters and Nelson 2002; Berkman and Plutzer 2011; Moore and Cotner 2009; Wiles and Alters 2011; Winslow and others 2011; Rissler and others 2014). This fierce debate has been quite visible in the United States, but seems to be relatively muted in Canada, which may lead many to believe that the dispute does not exist north of the border. While this issue has been researched and documented thoroughly in the US, relatively little is known about its dynamics in Canada, despite the powerful presence of such …

Wrestling With Expectations: An Examination Of How Asian American College Students Negotiate Personal, Parental, And Societal Expectations, Michelle Samura

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This research draws on a broader study that situates Asian American college students within larger sociohistorical and political contexts. I examined Asian American college students’ experiences and what it means to be “Asian American” in and through these experiences. Two types of expectations emerged from the data: students’ internal expectations—the expectations that they have for themselves as well as their college and postcollege experiences, and external expectations from family and society. The various ways that students negotiate internal and external expectations translate into particular understandings of freedom and possibility they carry into college. I also discuss students’ precollege racial awareness …

An Integral Perspective Of Peace Leadership, Whitney Mcintyre Miller, Zachary Gabriel Green

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Peace leadership is the mobilization of action for just change. When people are motivated to act individually and function collectively for the benefit of humanity and the planet, peace leadership is present. Central to peace leadership is a desire for inclusion and cohesion whereby individuals are enabled to live in liberty to their fullest potential, free from the oppression of powers who seek to wield dominance. Peace leadership therefore is focused on creating a positive peace, while including essential elements working against forces for violence and aggression, or negative peace (Galtung, 3). It is an integral process to understand individual …

A Factor Analytic Validation Study Of The Scale Of Teachers' Attitudes Towards Inclusive Classrooms (Static)), Trisha Sugita Nishimura, Randy T. Busse

Education Faculty Articles and Research

General and special education teachers (N = 125) completed the Scale of Teachers’ Attitudes towards Inclusive Classrooms (STATIC). The internal consistency of the instrument was strong with an alpha of .89. The measure demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (r = .99) and a dependent t-test was non-significant, indicating mean group temporal stability. An exploratory factor analysis resulted in a five-factor scale accounting for 61.6% of the variance versus the original four factors identified by the author of the instrument. Future research and potential use of the instrument are discussed.

Compliance To The Consort Statement On Participant Flow Diagrams In Infectious Disease Randomized Clinical Trials, Onyeka P. Godwin, Brandon Dyson, Paul S. Lee, Soon Park, Euni Lee

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Background: The Consolidated Standard of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Guidelines were developed to support adequate reporting of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Method: A systematic review was conducted including RCTs of infectious diseases published in the top general medical and infectious disease journals in 2010. The level of compliance to flow diagram and its association with the CONSORT endorsement by the journals were evaluated.

Results: A total of 67 studies were included in the analysis and a half of the studies were HIV/AIDS RCTs. About 78% of the studies included the flow diagram and 66% of the studies described …

The Motivation To Express Prejudice, Patrick S. Forscher, William T.L. Cox, Nicholas Graetz, Patricia G. Devine

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Contemporary prejudice research focuses primarily on people who are motivated to respond without prejudice and the ways in which unintentional bias can cause these people to act inconsistent with this motivation. However, some real-world phenomena (e.g., hate speech, hate crimes) and experimental findings (e.g., Plant & Devine, 2001; 2009) suggest that some expressions of prejudice are intentional. These phenomena and findings are difficult to explain solely from the motivations to respond without prejudice. We argue that some people are motivated to express prejudice, and we develop the motivation to express prejudice (MP) scale to measure this motivation. In seven studies …

Sparse Coding Based Dense Feature Representation Model For Hyperspectral Image Classification, Ender Oguslu, Guoqing Zhou, Zezhong Zheng, Khan Iftekharuddin, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a sparse coding based dense feature representation model (a preliminary version of the paper was presented at the SPIE Remote Sensing Conference, Dresden, Germany, 2013) for hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. The proposed method learns a new representation for each pixel in HSI through the following four steps: sub-band construction, dictionary learning, encoding, and feature selection. The new representation usually has a very high dimensionality requiring a large amount of computational resources. We applied the l₁/l_q regularized multiclass logistic regression technique to reduce the size of the new representation. We integrated the method with a linear …

A Comparative Study Of Two Prediction Models For Brain Tumor Progression, Deqi Zhou, Loc Tran, Jihong Wang, Jiang Li, Karen O. Egiazarian (Ed.), Sos S. Agaian (Ed.), Atanas P. Gotchev (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

MR diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) technique together with traditional T1 or T2 weighted MRI scans supplies rich information sources for brain cancer diagnoses. These images form large-scale, high-dimensional data sets. Due to the fact that significant correlations exist among these images, we assume low-dimensional geometry data structures (manifolds) are embedded in the high-dimensional space. Those manifolds might be hidden from radiologists because it is challenging for human experts to interpret high-dimensional data. Identification of the manifold is a critical step for successfully analyzing multimodal MR images.

We have developed various manifold learning algorithms (Tran et al. 2011; Tran et al. …

Application And Histology-Driven Refinement Of Active Contour Models To Functional Region And Nerve Delineation: Towards A Digital Brainstem Atlas, Nimal Patel, Sharmin Sultana, Tanweer Rashid, Dean Krusienski, Michel A. Audette

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents a methodology for the digital formatting of a printed atlas of the brainstem and the delineation of cranial nerves from this digital atlas. It also describes on-going work on the 3D resampling and refinement of the 2D functional regions and nerve contours. In MRI-based anatomical modeling for neurosurgery planning and simulation, the complexity of the functional anatomy entails a digital atlas approach, rather than less descriptive voxel or surface-based approaches. However, there is an insufficiency of descriptive digital atlases, in particular of the brainstem. Our approach proceeds from a series of numbered, contour-based sketches coinciding with slices …

A Robust Deep Model For Improved Classification Of Ad/Mci Patients, Feng Li, Loc Tran, Kim-Han Thung, Shuiwang Ji, Dinggang Shen, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Accurate classification of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its prodromal stage, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), plays a critical role in possibly preventing progression of memory impairment and improving quality of life for AD patients. Among many research tasks, it is of a particular interest to identify noninvasive imaging biomarkers for AD diagnosis. In this paper, we present a robust deep learning system to identify different progression stages of AD patients based on MRI and PET scans. We utilized the dropout technique to improve classical deep learning by preventing its weight coadaptation, which is a typical cause of overfitting in deep learning. …

Temporary Bonding With Polydimethylglutarimide Based Lift Off Resist As A Layer Transfer Platform, T. Matsumae, A. D. Koehler, J. D. Greenlee, T. J. Anderson, H. Baumgart, G. G. Jernigan, K. D. Hobart, F. J. Kub

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Bonding of lift off resist (LOR) was performed to realize temporary wafer bonding without residue. Bonding process conditions such as spin speed, pre-bake temperature, and bonding temperature were optimized to obtain a large bonded area with high bond strength. Under optimized process conditions, a bonded area covering over 98% of the wafer surface, with a room temperature bond strength of nearly 5 J/m² is achieved. During razor blade testing, fracture often occurs at the Si wafer. Moreover, debonding using an N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)-based solvent left the wafer surface extremely small amount of residue. Thus, the optimized bonding processed developed in …

Some Results For The Hodge Decomposition Theorem In Euclidean Three-Space, Paul Bracken

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

The Hodge Decomposition Theorem plays a significant role in the study of partial differential equations. Several interrelated propositions which are required for the proof of the Hodge theorem in Euclidean three-space are introduced and proved in a novel way.

Understanding The Gravitational-Wave Hellings And Downs Curve For Pulsar Timing Arrays In Terms Of Sound And Electromagnetic Waves, Fredrick A. Jenet, Joseph D. Romano

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Searches for stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds using pulsar timing arrays look for correlations in the timing residuals induced by the background across the pulsars in the array. The correlation signature of an isotropic, unpolarized gravitational-wave background predicted by general relativity follows the so-called Hellings and Downs curve, which is a relatively simple function of the angle between a pair of Earth-pulsar baselines. In this paper, we give a pedagogical discussion of the Hellings and Downs curve for pulsar timing arrays, considering simpler analogous scenarios involving sound and electromagnetic waves. We calculate Hellings-and-Downs-type functions for these two scenarios and develop a framework …

A Domesticated Idea: British Women Writers And The Victorian Recipe, 1845-1910, Helana E. Brigman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Until recently, critics have devalued the Victorian cookbook as an object of literary inquiry, regularly dismissing it as “Victoriana”—cultural, anthropological histories detailing bland culinary traditions. A Domesticated Idea: British Women Writers and the Victorian Recipe, 1845-1910 seeks to provide a framework by which we can explore the Victorian cookbook as a literary text appropriated by writers responding to and advocating for cultural, educational, and artistic reform during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Looking specifically at how women used recipes to discuss food preparation, dining, and household management, I argue that British women writers participated in a collaborative tradition, borrowing and sharing …

Image-Based Modeling Of Porous Media Using Fem And Lagrangian Particle Tracking, Paula Cysneiros Sanematsu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The study of fundamental flow and transport processes at the pore scale is essential to understanding how the mechanisms affect larger, field-scale, processes that occur in oil and gas recovery, groundwater flow, contaminant transport, and CO2 sequestration. Pore-scale imaging and modeling is one of the techniques used to investigate these fundamental mechanisms. Although extensive development of pore-scale imaging and modeling has occurred recently, some areas still need further advances. In this work, we address two areas: (1) imaging of bulk proppants and proppant-filled fractures under varying loading stress and flow simulation in these systems and (2) nanoparticle (NP) transport modeling …

Design And Application Of Task-Specific Organic Salts For Chemical And Biochemical Sensing, Waduge Indika Subodha Galpothdeniya

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

There is an increasing demand for development of new sensors and sensor strategies for accurate detection and discrimination of various analytes. In this regard, colorimetric and fluorometric sensor approaches have attracted considerable attention, primarily because they represent facile and inexpensive analytical tools. In this dissertation, I discuss the design and application of sensors and sensor arrays using task specific organic salts: ionic liquids (ILs) and a group of uniform materials based on organic salts (GUMBOS). As compared to typical ionic compounds, these two classes of organic salts exhibit relatively lower melting points due to bulky organic cations and/or anions. Interestingly, …

On The Thermally Induced Failure Of Rolling Element Bearings, Jafar Takabi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the investigation of thermally induced seizure of rolling element bearings. A comprehensive thermal model of the rolling element bearings is developed which can predict the operating temperature of the bearing components in a wide range of operating conditions. The validity of this thermal model is verified by comparing the simulation results with a set of experiments. The results of simulations reveal that the rotational speed, oil viscosity and cooling rate of the housing have a significant influence on the operating temperature of the rolling bearings. To provide detailed information about all of the contact forces …

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 …

Investigating Wave Forces On Coastal Bridge Decks, Guoji Xu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Tsunamis and hurricane induced waves are responsible for many coastal bridge failures, especially in the last decade. In the current study, three countermeasures (reducing the entrapped air, elevating the structures and rigidifying the structures) are considered, two wave types (solitary wave theory and Stokes wave theory) are chosen, and two bridge types (single bridge deck and twin bridge decks) are taken into account. Parametric studies are conducted based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS Fluent. This dissertation comprises two broad themes according to the wave types adopted. The first one is to make a great effort to investigate solitary …

I. Synthesis Of Ascarosides For Chemical Biology Studies In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Ii. A Photochemical Approach To Delavayine, And Iii. Remote Hydroxylation By Radical Translocation And Polar Crossover, Kyle Allen Hollister

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The foci of this dissertation are the synthesis of analogs for chemical biology studies, synthetic chemistry method development (with an emphasis on photochemistry), and the application of these methods toward total synthesis. Chapter 1 outlines the synthesis of an array of pheromone analogs that are derivatives of the dideoxy sugar ascarylose. Referred to as ascarosides, such compounds have recently been shown to influence important biological processes in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. C. elegans secretes ascarosides into its environment, where the compounds then act as signaling molecules by providing information on factors like population density. Chapter 2 describes the biological …

Coupled Gradient Enhanced Damage - Viscoplasticity Model Using Phase Field Method, Navid Mozaffari

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is developing a framework to describe damage evolution as a phase transformation in solid materials and couple it to the well-known Perzyna type viscoplastic model to account for inelastic behavior of ductile materials. To accomplish this task, the following steps have been performed. First, a new nonlocal, gradient based damage model is proposed for isotropic elastic damage using the phase field method in order to show the evolution of damage in brittle materials. The general framework of the phase field model (PFM) is discussed and the order parameter is related to the damage variable in …

Development Of Satellite-Assisted Forecasting System For Oyster Norovirus Outbreaks, Jiao Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Norovirus outbreaks can cause the closure of oyster harvesting waters and acute gastroenteritis in humans associated with consumption of contaminated raw oysters. The overall goal of this study was to develop a satellite-assisted forecasting system for oyster norovirus outbreaks. The forecasting system is comprised of three components: (1) satellite algorithms for retrieval of environmental variables, including salinity, temperature, and gage height, (2) an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based model, called NORF model, for predicting relative risk levels of oyster norovirus outbreaks, and (3) a mapping method for visualizing spatial distributions of norovirus outbreak risks in oyster harvest areas along Louisiana …

Excavations And Interpretation Of Two Ancient Maya Salt-Work Mounds, Paynes Creek National Park, Toledo District, Belize, Rachel Mariah Watson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In 2012, excavations were conducted at Witz Nabb’ and Killer Bee the last remaining above sea level features Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Salt is a basic biological necessity that was in limited supply at inland Maya cities. The ancient Maya of coastal Belize produced by fire enhanced evaporation of salt enriched brine. Survey and excavation at inundated salt works in a shallow lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park provide extensive evidence of this technique in the form of briquetage, the remains of pots used in the fire evaporation. Lacking is any evidence that the salinity of seawater was enriched …

Investigations Into Ecogeomorphodynamics Of Coastal Embryo Dunes At Padre Island National Seashore, Texas, Katherine Anne Renken

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is an investigation into the interplay between vegetation and aeolian processes in the coastal embryo dune environment at Padre Island National Seashore, Texas. Vegetation is a geomorphic agent, altering aeolian process dynamics. This research adopted a three-pronged approach to improving our understanding of ecogeomorphodynamics in the coastal environment. The first study analyzed large-scale spatiotemporal trends in the vegetation community of the embryo dune environment in order to contextualize smaller scale aeolian processes. Results of this study demonstrated that there was a clear transition in community assemblage from the seaward edge of the embryo dune zone, where species functioned …

Interorganizational Collaboration And Systemic Change Framework For Building Information Modeling (Bim) Adoption, Rehema Joseph Monko

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

It was found that an integrated framework needs to be developed for the construction industry that allows optimized interorganizational collaboration and systemic change while using Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies. The framework needs to be effective so the industry can adopt BIM through a set of interdependent activities beyond their organizational boundaries. The adoption has been proven difficult because of industry competitiveness and a fragmented work environment. Meanwhile, existing frameworks vary between studies. This research developed an integrated framework, identified critical factors, and provided an evaluation guide for interorganizational collaboration and set of coordinated changes necessary to adopt BIM. This …

High Fedelity Simulation: Its Impact On Self-Confidence And Satisfaction In Learning Among Sophomore And Senior Students, Kim Simoneaux Hurst

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of selected aspects of high fidelity simulation among students enrolled in a baccalaureate nursing program and the influence of these perceptions on students’ satisfaction and self-confidence in learning. In order to collect the necessary data, the Satisfaction and Self-confidence in Learning and Simulation Design Scale instruments were used. These instruments were completed by both sophomore and senior baccalaureate nursing students following simulation lab experiences. The majority of students surveyed was female of the Millennial Generation and averaged a GPA of 3.14. There were approximately equal numbers of sophomore and senior …

Cellulose Nanofibers From Energycane Bagasse And Their Applications In Core-Shell Structured Hydrogels, Yiying Yue

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cellulose fibers (Cellulose I, cellulose II and cellulose I/II Hybrid fibers) were successfully extracted from energycane bagasse by using a combined NaOH and NaClO2 treatment. After the delignification process, most lignin and hemicellulose were removed with a 27.4wt% yield of cellulose fibers, and the mean diameter of cellulose fibers decreased from 137±46 (raw fiber bundles) to 12±5μm (unpacked fibers). The raw bagasse fibers showed a three-step pyrolysis process, while isolated cellulose fibers had a one-step pyrolysis process. NaClO2 treatment caused the reduction of cellulose thermal stability due to its acting on lignin and cellulose. With 10h NaOH treatment, the ribbon …