Digital Commons Network^™

How States Can Respond To The Ahca: Using The Mccarran-Ferguson Act, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Wringing Wonder From The Arid Landscape Of Law, Robert L. Fischman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Charles Wilkinson’s estimable contribution to public land law scholarship is widely cited but only partly understood. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s he upended the field by elevating the diffuse public interest, displacing creation and adjudication of private property interests as the field’s focus. However, his subsequent scholarship grappled with an even more important challenge that has been far less noted. Beginning in the late 1980s, Wilkinson explored how legal institutions should determine the pluralistic, public interest. In trailblazing articles and books, he rose to the challenge with site-specific details, compelling narratives, and aspirational themes. This work undermined the dominance …

Digital Osteology: 3d Surface Scanning The Os Coxa, Victoria Harrington

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT This research was designed to isolate a standard 3D scanning methodology using a popular 3D scanner (NextEngine®) used in biological anthropology to reproduce research-quality human skeletal remains. Settings using NextEngine® hardware were determined through three successive studies. The first study used minimum settings to create a topography of nine postcranial bones excavated from a Maya archaeological site, Moho Cay, Belize. The research was conducted in Louisiana State University’s (LSU) Digital Imaging and Visualization in Archaeology (DIVA) Lab. The resulting 3D scans were visually compared to the original bone specimens for similarities in five categories. The similarity ratings were used …

Measuring The Costs And Benefits Of Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli, Robert P. Merges

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article addresses a policy question that has challenged scholars and lawmakers since the 1850s: Do the transaction cost benefits of patent pools outweigh their potential for consumer harm? This question has special importance today. Patent pools are on the increase, due to large numbers of patents in critical industries such as software and mobile phones. In this Article, we present the first empirically-based estimate of the transaction costs savings engendered by patent pools. Drawing on interviews with administrators of prominent pools, we document the costs of assembling and administering a functioning pool. We then estimate the transaction costs that …

Distributed Kalman Filters Over Wireless Sensor Networks: Data Fusion, Consensus, And Time-Varying Topologies, Jianming Zhou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Kalman filtering is a widely used recursive algorithm for optimal state estimation of linear stochastic dynamic systems. The recent advances of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide the technology to monitor and control physical processes with a high degree of temporal and spatial granularity. Several important problems concerning Kalman filtering over WSNs are addressed in this dissertation. First we study data fusion Kalman filtering for discrete-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems over WSNs, assuming the existence of a data fusion center that receives observations from distributed sensor nodes and estimates the state of the target system in the presence of data packet …

The Due Process Bona Fides Of Executive Self-Pardons And Blanket Pardons, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

Contrary to much commentary and possibly some seemingly settled law, this essay argues that an American President (or a similarly situated state officer or office) may issue individual and "blanket"-or mass-clemency benefiting classes of named or unnamed individuals, and in addition may pardon himself, but only if doing so comports with the principles of fundamental fairness that define due process of law under the Constitution's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Accordingly, the Constitution permits acts of clemency to foster mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, or to promote the purported best interests of the nation, or even to further an executive's political advantages, …

Deontological Originalism: Moral Truth, Liberty, And, Constitutional Due Process: Part I - Originalism And Deontology, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

This article offers what has been needed but lacking in modern legal commentary: thorough, meticulous and timely proof that, pursuant to principles of Originalism, the Constitution - the highest law of the United States - mandates that any governmental act is unconstitutional if it is immoral.

Specifically, this article returns fundamental constitutional jurisprudence to where it rightly was until roughly a century ago; and, where, recently, it has been returning in the form of Supreme Court substantive due process precedents based on human dignity. The overarching concept, which I call Deontological Originalism, asserts that both the Founders of this Nation …

Deontological Originalism: Moral Truth, Liberty, And, Constitutional Due Process: Part Ii - Deontological Constitutionalism And The Ascendency Of Kantian Due Process, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

This article offers what has been needed but lacking in modern legal commentary: thorough, meticulous and timely proof that, pursuant to principles of Originalism, the Constitution - the highest law of the United States - mandates that any governmental act is unconstitutional if it is immoral.

Specifically, this article returns fundamental constitutional jurisprudence to where it rightly was until roughly a century ago; and, where, recently, it has been returning in the form of Supreme Court substantive due process precedents based on human dignity. The overarching concept, which I call Deontological Originalism, asserts that both the Founders of this Nation …

Private Vs. Public: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Student Experiences And The Influence Of Anti-Discrimination Policies With Respect To Religion, Shalonda Michelle Skidmore

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For a vast majority of Americans, religion is an integral part of life. In fact, 10:30am on Sundays is considered the most holy time in the United States as most persons have just left, are currently attending, or are on their way to their various places of worship. Believing in organized religion comes with challenges, as religion has often been the basis and justification for discriminatory practices. These challenges can cause emotional tension, especially to those who identify with teachings that religions have traditionally condemned. This document sought to determine if religion matters to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) …

Empirically Tuning Hpc Kernels With Ifko, Md Majedul Haque Sujon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

iFKO (iterative Floating point Kernel Optimizer) is an open-source iterative empirical compilation framework which can be used to tune high performance computing (HPC) kernels. The goal of our research is to advance iterative empirical compilation to the degree that the performance it can achieve is comparable to that delivered by painstaking hand tuning in assembly. This will allow many HPC researchers to spend precious development time on higher level aspects of tuning such as parallelization, as well as enabling computational scientists to develop new algorithms that demand new high performance kernels. At present, algorithms that cannot use hand-tuned performance libraries …

Judicial Power, The Judicial Power Project And The Uk, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

It is axiomatic that all power requires justification, and that is equally true for judicial power as for other species thereof. This article is primarily concerned with judicial power in the UK. The subject will be approached through consideration of the Judicial Power Project, which has been critical of the courts, much of this being sharp-edged, and fierce. There is repeated talk of judicial overreach and consequent legitimacy crisis, as the courts are said to encroach on terrain that is properly the preserve of the political branch of government.

It is by the same token important that the critics are …

Predictive Analytics' Punishment Mismatch, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Quaternary River Erosion, Provenance, And Climate Variability In The Nw Himalaya And Vietnam, Tara Nicole Jonell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The influence of Quaternary climate variation on sediment generation, storage, and transport in two mountainous Asian river basin was examined in the largest tributary to the upper Indus River in the Himalayan rain shadow, the Zanskar River basin (~15,000 km²), and the smaller, subtropical Song Gianh basin (<3,500 km²) of central Vietnam. Spatial patterns of erosion in the Zanskar River Basin were established to quantify the dominant controls on Quaternary sedimentation in the Himalayan rain shadow on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Glacial erosion and precipitation along the High Himalaya together dominate sediment production and transport …

Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics Of Victorian Education Reform, Vicki Jean Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics of Victorian Education Reform arose from my observation that, historically speaking, Anglo-American schools have always been “in crisis.” I argue that the crisis of the “failing school” is a rhetorical problem rather than an economic problem as most scholarship suggests. Much like the cultural myth of “the One True Love,” education reform debates tend to position the school as an institution that can rescue the nation from all perceived social ills. Not only is this unrealistic, the patterns of language are inconsistent as ideas about the purpose of school are translated into policy. This causes further …

Aging Injunctions And The Legacy Of Institutional Reform Litigation, Jason Parkin

Vanderbilt Law Review

Institutional reform litigation has been an enduring feature of the American legal system since the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The resulting injunctions have transformed countless bureaucracies notorious for resisting change, including public school systems, housing authorities, social services agencies, correctional facilities, and police departments. But these injunctions face an uncertain future. The Supreme Court has held that institutional reform injunctions must be easier to terminate than all other injunctions issued by the federal courts. Some institutional reform injunctions go unenforced or are forgotten entirely. Others expire due to sunset provisions. At the same time, doctrinal …

Effects Of Silicon And Nitrogen Fertilization On Growth, Yield, And Leaf Rust Disease Development In Wheat, Maryamossadat Shahrtash

LSU Master's Theses

There are so many people who have helped me throughout my graduate studies and for whom I am grateful. I would like to take this opportunity to first and foremost thank God for his always guidance throughout my life and giving me the wisdom and the patience I needed to finish my thesis. I would like to thank Dr. Brenda Tubana for taking me in and providing me with guidance and knowledge. I also would like to thank my committee members, Prof. Brian D. LeBlanc who guided me, encouraged me and provided me with knowledge about sustainable agriculture and Dr. …

Terrible Telegrams, Cara Lindsay Reid

LSU Master's Theses

In compliance to the curriculum at Louisiana State University and Swine Palace’s Actor Training Program, M.F.A. Acting candidates are required to create and develop a one-person show. The objective is to foster the actor’s creative virtuosity and to give them the confidence, capability, and skill set to continue to create their own work after graduation. My play is about Lucy James, a recent college graduate, who moves to New York to follow her dreams of becoming an actress. Lucy's love for the craft is challenged when she takes a demoralizing job and her life begins to spiral out of control. …

Crime Analysis In The City Of Baton Rouge And Brec Park Based On Crime Location Quotient And Hotspot Method, Anliu Jiang

LSU Master's Theses

City parks provide intrinsic environmental, aesthetic, and recreation benefits to our cities and their inhabitants. Some researchers indicate that City parks serve as places of reduced crime and actually increase the safety of the surrounding area. Other researchers claim that city parks have been seen as contested space. The purpose of this thesis research is to study the relationship between parks and crime or comparing crime types between parks and their cities. First, this thesis research address the difference between crimes in city parks compared to crimes in the entire city. The second research question addresses the impact that parks …

The Ontological Nature Of Theology: On Heidegger's "Phenomenology And Theology", Casey Garrett Spinks

LSU Master's Theses

Following his newfound celebrity upon publication of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger delivered a lecture in 1927 and 1928, titled “Phenomenology and Theology,” where he discussed how his recent groundbreaking work in existential phenomenology relates to Christian theology. Far from offering his philosophy as a method for theology, he instead attempted to utterly separate the two, setting the former as fundamental ontology and the latter as a positive science more akin to history, with the Christian faith as its positive object of study. The lecture was left unpublished until 1969, when Heidegger added an appendix, a piece exemplary of the …

Spatial Variability Of The Depth To The Magma Reservoir Beneath The Yellowstone Caldera Inferred From Observations Of Seiche Loading Induced Strain, Kevin James Gryger

LSU Master's Theses

Seiche waves in Yellowstone Lake at ~78, ~51, and ~25 minute periods and heights <10 cm can cause measurable strain (< 40 ns) as observed on borehole strainmeters both near (<300 m) and far (~20 km) from the lake. Observations of the correlation between the seiche waves and the associated strain response can be used to constrain the rigidity of the upper crust, the depth to magma bodies in the subsurface, and the viscosity (related to melt percentage) of the magma bodies in place. Lake level was directly measured with campaign absolute pressure gauges deployed in the West Thumb basin, Breeze Channel, and central basin of Yellowstone Lake, and 13 large seiche events (¡Ý7 cm) were identified from these observations. Periodic strain transients were measured on borehole strainmeters in the caldera during the 13 large seiche events. The peak-to-trough amplitude and phase of the seiche wave and strain response were estimated by fitting a multi-frequency sinusoid to the time series over a 4-hour window during each seiche event. It was found that the relationship between an applied seiche load and the associated strain response is self-consistent and linearly proportional at each borehole strainmeter in the caldera. Over multiple seiche events the observed strain response is consistent with a modeled strain-field produced by a seiche load on a two-layered viscoelastic model defined by free parameters Young¡¯s modulus (E1), plate thickness (H), and shear modulus ratio (¦Ì2/¦Ì1). The two-layered viscoelastic model represents a solid upper crust overlying a partially molten body which may be small pockets of melt (<1 km thickness) or a larger magma reservoir. Results suggest crystallizing melt beneath Yellowstone caldera at depths (H) of ~4¨C8 km in the south-southeast and ~3-5 km in the north-northwest sections of the caldera. Temporal observations between strain meters, coupled with constraints of Young¡¯s and shear moduli suggest that melt in the shallow crust has a viscosity ¡Ü1013 Pa s.

Louisiana State University During World War I: A Military Tradition, Angela Michelli Fleming

LSU Master's Theses

When the United States first joined World War I it had long been without a large standing army, it soon became apparent that there was a need for soldiers and training facilities. To solve this problem, the United States utilized colleges and universities as training camps. Because of its strong military tradition, Louisiana State University (LSU) was mobilized for this purpose. Although this mobilization was a serious turning point in the school’s development, not many scholars have written histories of the changes during this time. LSU began as the Seminary of Learning of the State of Louisiana in 1860, but …

Evaluation Of The Microbial Quality Of Cantaloupe Fruit Produced On Raised Or Flat Beds Following A Flooding Event, Isaack Kikway

LSU Master's Theses

Floodwater can contain microbial contaminants such as plant and foodborne pathogens and can compromise the quality of fresh fruit and vegetables produced in Louisiana. The goal of this research was to determine the impact of flooding on microbial quality (foodborne and plant pathogens) of cantaloupe fruit produced on raised or flat beds. Cantaloupe fruit produced on 30 cm raised beds or flat ground, were flooded with a mixture of surface and well water spiked with three generic Escherichia coli strains (ATCC 23716, 25922, 11775). Mean baseline generic Escherichia coli and total coliform populations in flood water (mixture of spiked well …

Pronoun Marking In African American English-Speaking Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment, Gayatri Ramamoorthy Brown

LSU Master's Theses

The present study was designed to describe and quantify patterns of pronoun use by African American English (AAE)-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) relative to their AAE-speaking typically developing (TD) peers. Pronouns were of interest because: they are produced frequently in everyday speech, they are often targeted when a child’s language abilities are evaluated by a speech-language pathologist, and limited pronoun data exists for AAE-speaking children. The data were language samples that had been elicited from 96 children (35 SLI, 61 TD) enrolled in kindergarten. The samples were searched for 11 different pronoun forms, and these were coded as …

Unlikely Allies: A Case Study On Cross Class Protest In Guatemala, Daniel B. Bollich

LSU Master's Theses

Cross-class mobilization in developing countries can be a powerful force for precipitating political change, but the literature on cross-class protest movements in developing countries has focused almost exclusively on democratization movements and has not dealt adequately with cross-class protest in other contexts. Additionally, the literature on protest movements typically focuses on the lower classes, while the upper classes are either ignored or assumed to be one-dimensional, uniform, self-interested actors who only protest when it is in their own best economic and political interest. These deficiencies in the literature have been illuminated by the massive protests that occurred in Guatemala in …

Gender Beyond Birth: Gender Non-Conforming Students Lived Experiences Residing On-Campus In The Southeast, Tiffany Marlene Shierling

LSU Master's Theses

In this study, using a qualitative approach, gender non-conforming students lived experience living on campus in the south is being investigated. “Trans* students remain largely invisible through college records as no data is collected consistently on their enrollment” (Nicolazzo, 2016 p. 539). Although this is true of all gender non-conforming students, it is even more relevant to those that attend universities in the Southeast. Gender non-conforming students are attending universities in higher numbers than every reported before and yet, student affairs still does not have a theory that relates to these students when teaching their graduate students. The psychological literature …

New Efficient And Robust Multimedia Archiving Technique Using Quick-Response Codes, Sayani Sarkar

LSU Master's Theses

A Quick Response (QR) code is a two-dimensional bar-code, which is quite popular due to its excellent storage capacity and error resilience. Generally, QR codes are widely used to store text information such as URL links, geographical coordinates, name cards, inventory information, authorship, etc. To reach the current limit of QR codes, in this thesis, we would like to propose an innovative multimedia archiving technique, which is built upon the advanced signal processing scheme to tackle the multiple QR codes all at once. The multimedia data often include texts, images, audio data, special-purpose codes, music files etc. The recently proposed …

Cathartic Ethics In Psychoanalysis, Dylan Timothy O'Brien

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the complex role of ethics within Psychoanalytic theory, finding not a prescriptive ethics, but a reference to ethics in the cathartic methodology that I argue underpinned Psychoanalytic thought from the very beginning. The introduction provides the reader with the necessary background to the material to be covered. The first chapter examines the neglectful attitude found throughout the foundational writings of Psychoanalytic theory in the work of Sigmund Freud, as well as covering two different methods by which ethics are often reduced, and which Freud successfully avoided. The second chapter seeks the origin of an alternative ethics in …

Microseismic Event Characteristics Associated With The Spatial And Temporal Stages Of Hydraulic Fracture Growth In Laboratory Experiments, Abigail Arielle Maxwell

LSU Master's Theses

There are uncertainties in the exact mechanisms that occur during hydraulic fracture growth and the interactions of hydraulic fractures with pre-existing fractures. In some cases fracture growth is seen to be purely tensile and in others a combination of tensile and shear mechanisms. In order to develop a seismic model to explain fracture propagation, there is a need for a complete classification of the microseismic events occurring during fracturing using waveform characteristics such as frequency, duration and magnitude. This classification would allow for more accurate prediction of the behavior of the hydraulic fracture from its initiation to when it intersects …

Measuring Teachers' Perceptions Of Student Behavior Using The Systematic Screening For Behavior Disorders, Megan Ruth Erickson

LSU Master's Theses

As part of school- and district-wide preventative efforts, universal screening serves to identify students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders while their behavior is still amenable to treatment. However, there are few universal screeners available for middle school students, who may be at heightened risk for developing emotional and behavioral difficulties due to major academic and social changes. The Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD), often considered the “gold standard” for behavior screeners, was recently validated for use in middle schools. However, there is little research on the reliability and validity of the SSBD for screening middle school students …

Palynostratigraphy And Environmental Implication Of Organic-Walled Microfossils Recovered From Iodp Site U1435, Mitchell Clifford Gregory

LSU Master's Theses

Extensive studies have examined the syn- and post-rift sediments in the South China Sea and surrounding margins, but pre-rift, Eocene deposits are rare. Here we examine organic-walled microfossils from the South China Sea, recovered at Site U1435 of IODP Expedition 349 to provide palynostratigraphic control and characterize the environmental setting before, and in response to, the initiation of seafloor spreading in the basin ~33 Ma. The well preserved palynological assemblage recovered allow dating of sediments sampled at Site U1435. Units II and III are now subdivided in 4 subzones; Zone 1 is essentially barren, Zones 2 and 3A are assigned …