Digital Commons Network^™

On The Degradation Of Lubricating Grease, Asghar Rezasoltani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A comprehensive literature review on physical and chemical degradation monitoring and life estimation models for lubricating greases is presented in chapter one. Degradation mechanisms for lubricating grease are categorized and described, and an extensive survey of the available empirical and analytical grease life estimation models including degradation monitoring standards and methods are presented. In chapter two, irreversible thermodynamic theory is employed to study the mechanical degradation of lubricating grease. A correlation between the mechanical degradation and entropy generation is established and the results are verified experimentally using a rheometer, a journal bearing test rig, and a modified grease worker machine. …

A Novel Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network For Ocean And Weather Forecasting, Robert James Firth

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Numerical weather prediction is a computationally expensive task that requires not only the numerical solution to a complex set of non-linear partial differential equations, but also the creation of a parameterization scheme to estimate sub-grid scale phenomenon. The proposed method is an alternative approach to developing a mesoscale meteorological model – a modified recurrent convolutional neural network that learns to simulate the solution to these equations. Along with an appropriate time integration scheme and learning algorithm, this method can be used to create multi-day forecasts for a large region. The learning method presented is an extended form of Backpropagation Through …

Essays On Empirical Asset Pricing, Mu-Shu Yun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work contains three essays on empirical pricing. In the first essay, I propose to re-examine the evidence on mutual fund managers' illiquidity and volatility timing ability by using a holdings-based approach, which is free from the artificial timing bias occurred in the traditional return-based timing method. Through testing the timing evidence by the holdings approach, I am able to know to what degree the results in the literature are biased by no-information reasons. In the second essay, I investigate mutual fund managers' skills from their reactions to the observable market condition, which is a relatively overlooked dimension in the …

Paying For Infrastructure In An Urban Environment: Roles Of Ideological Beliefs And Self-Interest In Support For Two Funding Mechanisms, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Lenahan O'Connell, Khairul A. Anuar, Kaitrin Mahar

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

This study examines public preferences for two revenue options—fuel taxes and tolls—to finance transportation infrastructure in an urban area with the use of the results of a survey of residents of the Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia. Specifically, the study addresses two related research questions: (a) To what extent do residents support instituting tolls, increasing the fuel tax, or both? (b) What roles do self-interest and ideological beliefs play in support of increasing the fuel tax, imposing tolls, or doing both? The study finds that 50% of respondents expressed a willingness to support fuel taxes or tolls for infrastructure, …

Managing For Performance: Measurement And Monitoring Of Contracts In The Transit Industry, Olga Smirnova, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Suzanne Leland

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Public agencies contract out to pursue a variety of goals. But, these goals cannot be realized if the performance of contractors is not assessed and monitored. This study examines the state of performance measurement and contract monitoring in the U.S. transit agencies. We focus on three research questions: (1) What monitoring capacity exists within transit agencies? (2) What monitoring methods are used by transit agencies? (3) What performance measures are tracked by transit agencies? We find monitoring units are common in a third of agencies in the study. Service and customer complaints are the most common performance measures, while penalties …

Spectral Properties Of Photonic Crystals: Bloch Waves And Band Gaps, Robert Paul Viator Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The author of this dissertation studies the spectral properties of high-contrast photonic crystals, i.e. periodic electromagnetic waveguides made of two materials (a connected phase and included phase) whose electromagnetic material properties are in large contrast. A spectral analysis of 2nd-order divergence-form partial differential operators (with a coupling constant k) is provided. A result of this analysis is a uniformly convergent power series representation of Bloch-wave eigenvalues in terms of the coupling constant k in the high-contrast limit k -> infinity. An explicit radius of convergence for this power series is obtained, and can be written explicitly in terms of the …

Student Internalizing Behavior Screener And Student Externalizing Behavior Screener: An Analysis Of Reliability, Validity, And Usability In Elementary School Populations, Kelsey Lynn Hartman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Universal screening for emotional and behavioral risk in schools facilitates early identification and intervention for students as part of multitiered systems of support. Because early intervention has the potential to mitigate adverse outcomes of emotional and behavioral disorders and schools are prime locations to reach at-risk youth, research on the technical adequacy and usability of universal screeners to identify students for available school-based supports is vital. The purpose of this study was to extend existing research by Cook et al. (2011) and Cook, Volpe, and Gresham (2012) on the technical adequacy and usability of two universal screening measures, the Student …

An Investigation Of How Accountability Systems Influence The Design And Development Of Student Centered Learning Environments, Peter James Mathis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The research reported in this dissertation investigates the impact that accountability systems have on the design and development of student centered learning environments. The nature of student-centered learning environments (SCLEs) in this study is framed theoretically by cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). The investigation itself occurred within a specific practice context: an urban charter school serving elementary-aged children. The efforts to design and develop SCLEs in the school focused on the use of improvement inquiry by groups of stakeholders organized into a developing human ecology in educational contexts called networked improvement communities. The research sought to determine (1) how accountability …

What Must There Be To Account For Being?, Dillon T. Mccrea

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this essay is to identify what I consider to be core philosophical arguments supporting the thesis that being subsists. The design of the thesis is as follows: First, I will attempt to identify arguments supporting the claim that we posit the universe and all of its content in relation to the question of being. Second, I will identify arguments supporting the claim that it is incoherent to claim that being is merely a function of the existence of individual entities, and that all entities share being in common. Third, I will identify arguments supporting the claim that …

The Effect Of Therapeutic Horseback Riding On Balance And Self-Efficacy In Children With Developmental Disabilities, Alexandra Smola, Lauren Hurley

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Therapeutic horseback riding (THR) has positive health related outcomes in children with developmental disabilities. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a 10-week THR intervention on balance and task-specific self-efficacy in children with developmental disabilities. Bandura’s social cognitive theory and the physical stress theory guided the quasi-experimental study. A pre-test post-test design (N=20) was implemented with a 10-week THR class at a riding center in Midwest United States. The first research question was: In children with developmental disabilities ages 5 to 18, does one 10-week session of THR affect balance? With time 1 balance mean at …

Suicide Prevention: The Professional And Moral Responsibilities Of The Speech-Language Pathologist, Madelyn Anderson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible connection between suicide and stuttering, identify warning signs and risk factors of suicide as they apply to our clients, and examine the moral implications and professional responsibilities of speech-language pathologists as they pertain to suicide prevention. From the research I conducted, I found that, as a whole, the national community of speech-language pathologists does not recognize any correlation between stuttering and suicide. However, as dictated by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA) Code of Ethics, we as speech-language pathologists are obligated to make referrals outside of our profession as the need …

The Effect Of School Based Nursing On Health Related Outcomes In Children: A Review Of Literature, Alexandra M. Pianalto, Mitchell C. Wall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Background: School nursing staff deal with acute, chronic, screening, and education issues in the school based clinic. It is the school nursing staff’s role to provide care and treatment to children during school hours.

Purpose: Conduct a systematic review of the literature comparing disposition outcomes of children seen by school nursing staff to answer the PICO question: How does implementation of school based nursing affect health related outcomes in children within and outside the school environment?

Methods: Integrative literature review

Description of Evidence: Twenty research articles chosen from the database CINAHL, articles published within past nine years

Critical Appraisal: …

Calculators In High School Classrooms, Adam P. Rohrabaugh, Clay M. Cooper

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In today’s mathematics classrooms, calculators are becoming incredibly well known and used almost daily. However, there has been a common question about the use of these calculators: Is too much exposure to calculators causing students to become dependent on them and consequently start to forget basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, leading into confusion on other mathematics topics because the most basic foundation of mathematics is not there? The purpose of this paper is to discuss both sides of this question by looking at different studies as well as provide our own experiences with this subject while working in different …

Protein Sequence-Structure-Function Relationship: Testing Ke-50 Modification On Recombinant Green Fluorescent Protein (Acgfp), Anna E. Burkey

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Protein modification shows promise for improving the effectiveness of protein therapy, including the use of Interferon-beta-1b for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. The addition of a chain of 50 lysine and glutamic acid residues (also called a KE50 modification) was tested on green fluorescent protein (AcGFP) to determine its effect on the bioactivity of the protein. Standard transformation protocol was used to grow the normal and modified proteins in E.Coli, and the bioactivity of the protein was measured using quantum yield and extinction coefficients to determine the reduction in brightness from the native form to the modified form. The …

The Takeover Of Standardized Tests, Karlie M. Lieberth

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Diane Ravitch once said, “Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent students do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds”. Standardized testing is a very controversial issue occurring in our school systems today. Standards hold schools and teachers accountable for properly progressing our youth through school. However, is administering the same exact test to every child in every school district the best way to measure growth? There are many factors that makes up a school and student body such as poverty, cultural beliefs etc. These factors are not addressed in the standardized tests that our students …

Lipid-Protein Interactions Via Fluorescence Quenching In Small Unilamellar Vesicles, Talia Kordahi

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Studying peptide interactions with model membranes have aided in understanding protein-lipid interactions more clearly. In this report, fluorescent small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs) of a known composition were made. Two peptides, RND1 and MARCKS, were also fluorescently labeled and added to a solution of SUVs. The interactions between these were observed via fluorescence quenching, read out with a spectrofluorimeter. In addition, two environments of buffer were tested: 1X PBS and 0.1X PBS. After obtaining data, it was concluded that MARCKS quenched the SUVs more than RND1. This could be due to the presence of more lysine amino acids in MARCKS, which …

Practical Implications Of Learning From Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts, Ann C. Rossmiller, James R. Houston

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Recent findings suggest that retesting oneself facilitates better learning than studying alone. Building off previous experiments where correcting participants has significantly increased correctness, the current study furthers our understanding about learning from unsuccessful retrieval attempts by manipulating the frequency of correction. Using a set of 42 associated word pairings, each participant was exposed to two blocks where they would memorize the word pairs. This was followed by two quizzing blocks and a final exam block where participants were asked to write down the associate to the stimulus presented on screen. Frequency of correction was manipulated during the quizzing blocks where …

A Review Of Secondary Mathematics Textbooks On Families Of Functions, Emily Nyszczy

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In 2008, twelve commonly used textbooks were studied for their use of technology and content across 5 families of functions: polynomial, rational, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric. Since 2008, the Common Core State Standards have been released and many textbook companies have used this as an opportunity to change their textbook content. This study reevaluates new high school algebra and precalculus textbooks across many of the same criterion studied in 2008. Some topics such as increasing and decreasing functions significantly increased their presence in the mathematics textbooks while topics such as sketching graphs has decreased. The reason for this shift in …

Young Adult Fiction Writing In The Classroom: Emily’S Investigation And Insights, Emily Westfall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project explores the field of young adult literature, while also discovering the creative writing process required to develop a young adult novel. The project is organized into three separate parts. Part One focuses on young adult writers and the literature they create, along with the benefits of using these novels in a high school classroom. To benefit my future career as a future writing teacher, I researched the process required to write a fiction novel, specifically one in the young adult genre. Within this section, sources are cited such as experienced teachers and the scholarship on young adult literature. …

The Association Between Cognitive Function And Objective Adherence To Dietary Sodium Guidelines In Patients With Heart Failure., Mary A Dolansky, Julie T Schaefer, Misty Aw Hawkins, John Gunstad, Anup Basuray, Joseph D Redle, James C Fang, Richard A Josephson, Shirley M Moore, Joel W Hughes

Heart and Vascular Articles

BACKGROUND: Although cognitive impairment is common in heart failure (HF) patients, its effects on sodium adherence recommendations are unknown.

PURPOSE: Our aim is to examine if cognitive function is associated with patient sodium adherence.

METHODS: Sodium collection/excretion and cognitive function were assessed for 339 HF patients over a 5-8-week period. Neuropsychological testing was performed at baseline (Visit 1), whereas two 24-hour urine samples were collected within 7 weeks postbaseline. The ability to collect two 24-hour urine samples and the estimation of sodium excretion levels from these samples were used to estimate sodium adherence recommendations.

RESULTS: Nearly half (47%) of the …

Operational And Water Quality Analysis For The City Of Akron's Water Treatment Plant And Distribution System, Chelsea James

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Chlorination is one of the most common methods of treating pathogens and ensuring microbial water quality in water treatment and distribution. As chlorinated water leaves the source and travels through the water distribution system, the chlorine reacts with both the organic compounds (dissolved organic carbon, DOC) in the source water and the corrosion or biofilm of the pipe walls. The chlorine concentration, or chlorine residuals, at any point in the water distribution system is a good measure of water quality. At the same time, chlorination produces disinfection byproducts as the chlorine also reacts with other naturally-occurring materials in the water. …

Diversification And Market Neutral Portfolios In S&P500, Alan S. Agnew

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Our goal is to investigate strategies to deal with the risks associated with holding asset in the stock market. We first deal with risk of holding a specific stock, by the use of diversification. Later, we’ll attempt to deal with the market risk, which is the risk of entire market going up and down. Data used in this project comes from daily adjusted closing price of stocks listed in the S&P500 index ranging from January 3^rd, 2000 to December 31^st, 2015 and the data is processed using statistical software R.

Sections 2 through 4 of this …

Comparison Of Option Price From Black-Scholes Model To Actual Values, Matthew J. Krznaric

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Black-Scholes model is a widely used method for pricing European-style options in a straightforward way, through the use of calculations and ideal market assumptions. Due to certain unrealistic ideal conditions exercised by the model, The Black-Scholes technique of pricing options may not be entirely accurate in implementation. This paper addresses these problems due to the model limitations, determining how The Black-Scholes method compares to the results when using the actual data. Using a mix of historical S&P500 data and generated normal distributions, we first calculated and graphed option prices through the Black-Scholes formulas. With the help of R, we …

Fundamentals For Horn Students, Kierstin Jenkins

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Many band directors find teaching horn to be intimidating. Through extensive research, this project has compiled some of the best exercises to help horn players improve and explains the rationale behind them. The written work contains information and descriptions about the different fundamentals that horn students need in order to be successful and develop good tone quality. The appendix includes examples of these exercises so that an educator has resources to teach his/her horn students. The fundamentals included are: breathing, buzzing, long tones, flow studies, lip slurs, and pitch.

Classroom Management, Summer L. Emich

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project focused its research on how various teachers implement classroom management into their classrooms. The definition of classroom management used for this project is from The Glossary of Education Reform, which says classroom management refers to the “wide variety of skills and techniques that teachers and schools use to keep students organized, orderly, focused, attentive, on task, and academically productive during a class” (Great Schools Partnership, 2014, p. 1). The purpose of this project was to determine how various teachers incorporate classroom management into their classrooms. Two schools were used during this project where two principals were interviewed and …

Pothole Reporting System, Brian G. Simmons Mr., Alissa L. Mcgill Ms., Elizabeth J. Hammell Ms., Sean D. Querry Mr.

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to create a pothole detection device that can be attached to the underside of a commercial vehicle. Potholes cost motorists around 6.4 billion dollars annually, thus demonstrating the need for a system to aid with the detections and reporting of potholes. The four systems we needed to consider for the implementation of this project were the power system, the sensing system, the data processing system, and the reporting and logging system. Power pulled from the vehicle will enable the sensors and data processing module. The data processing module will analyze the readings from the …

Getting Back To Our Roots, Emily J. Jacobs

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Completing this senior honors project afforded the opportunity to develop activities around the topics of basic gardening skills, cooking skills, and the importance of quality nutrition for the students from the Center for Child Development Day Camp. Seven lesson plans were developed in collaboration with Mrs. Kathy Schupp, the director of the Nutrition Center. At the beginning of summer, discussion took place regarding the types of nutrition information that could be learned from working in the Schrank Hall South teaching garden. The Great Garden Detective Adventure was used as a resource in planning lessons for the students. This book was …

Pothole Reporting System, Elizabeth J. Hammell, Alissa L. Mcgill, Brian G. Simmons, Sean D. Querry

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to create a pothole detection device that can be attached to the underside of a commercial vehicle. Potholes cost motorists around 6.4 billion dollars annually, thus demonstrating the need for a system to aid with the detection and reporting of potholes. The four systems we needed to consider for the implementation of this project were the power system, the sensing system, the data processing system, and the reporting and logging system. Power pulled from the vehicle will enable the sensors and data processing module. The data processing module will analyze the readings from the …

Synthesis, Characterization, And In Vitro Anti-Tumor Studies Of Bis Imidazolium Salts With Alkyl Chain Linkers And Naphthylmethyl Substituents, Steven R. Crabtree

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Bis imidazolium salts, with alkyl chain linkers ranging from methylene to dodecyl, were synthesized with naphthylmethyl substituents at the N¹ and N^1’ positions for a structure-activity relationship (SAR) study. All compounds were characterized by ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectroscopy. The cationic portion of 2 as the PF₆ salt, 3, 4, and 5 were also characterized by single-crystal X-ray crystallography. Compounds 1-8, 10, and 12 were tested for their in vitro anti-cancer activity against four NSCLC cell lines via the MTT assay (NCI–H460, NCI–H1975, HCC827, and A549). Compounds 10 and 12 which …

Rep As A Predictor Of Weight Categories Determined By Anthropometric Measurements, Nicholas Mendola

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Obesity has become one of the leading public health issues in the world today. An aspect of this issue that must be addressed in order for it to not persist as a problem in the future is the issue of childhood obesity. One of the most common screening methods to determine if a child is classified as overweight or obese is to utilize anthropometric measurements like body mass index, and waist-to-height ratios. Past studies have shown that children who are categorized as overweight or obese can struggle with physical activity and typically have lower fitness levels as their anthropometric measurements …