Digital Commons Network^™

Shallow Shear-Wave Seismic Analysis Of Point Bar Deposits Of False River, Louisiana, Martial James Morrison

LSU Master's Theses

Current point-bar complex models do not include subsurface unit bars as a normal feature. This study provides evidence for a potential buried unit bar amongst point-bar sediments of the large-scale, modern-day False River point-bar complex of the Mississippi River. We collect, process and interpret a two-dimensional, 150-m-long CMP seismic reflection profile that cuts perpendicularly across a major discontinuity surface in the False River point bar complex. The seismic source consists of a ground recoil device that fires a shotgun shell horizontally, producing shear waves. Multiple field experiments demonstrated which type of source and receiver provided the least amount of noise, …

Development And Application Of A Modis Inorganic Sediment Model During The 2016 Mississippi River Diversion In Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, Robert Lee Iles Iv

LSU Master's Theses

The Bonnet Carré Spillway (BCS) is a Mississippi River diversion located on the southwestern coastline of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. The discharge of potentially high amounts of Mississippi River nutrients and sediments during BCS diversion events has a noted ecological impact on the Lake Pontchartrain estuary. Projected river flooding prompted the opening of the Spillway from 10 January to 1 February 2016. MODIS satellite images were aerosol-corrected and then compared to in-situ measurements of inorganic sediment concentration (ISC) to derive a predictive algorithm for estimating ISC (in mg L^-1) in Lake Pontchartrain for satellite images in January and February. The …

Estimation Of Rfid Tag Population Size By Gaussian Estimator, Md Mahmudul Hasan

LSU Master's Theses

Radio Frequency IDenti cation (RFID) systems are prevalent in all sorts of daily life endeavors. In this thesis we propose a new method to estimate RFID tag population size. We have named our algorithm "Gaussian Estimation of RFID Tags,"namely, GERT. We present GERT under both {0,1} and {0,1,e} channel models, and in both cases the estimator we use is a well justi ed Gaussian random variable for large enough frame size based on Central Limit Theorem for triangular arrays. The most prominent feature of GERT is the quality with which it estimates a tag population size. We support all the …

Sediment Infilling Of Louisiana Continental-Shelf Dredge Pits: A Record Of Sedimentary Processes In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Meg Cathlin O'Connor

LSU Master's Theses

Sediment cores were collected at continental-shelf sites of the Northern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana to develop a better understanding of post-dredging evolution of mud-capped dredge pits. The two pits studied were Sandy Point (SP) and Raccoon Island (RI) (both with water depths of ~10m and dredged to ~ 15-20 m below water surface), which were dredged in 2012 and 2013 respectively. Vibracores and multicores were collected in 2015. Preliminary radiochemistry analyses identified Beryllium-7 distribution in multicore samples from both sites. SP1, the northwestern site in the Sandy Point dredge pit, showed 26 cm of 7Be penetration. …

The Slow Evolution Of A Chimeric Field: Perceptions Of Chymistry Through Early Learned Journals, 1665-1743, Amanda J. Arceneaux

LSU Master's Theses

Scholars have made the argument that during the eighteenth century “alchemy” came increasingly to be seen as a fraudulent science or a science for charlatans, while chemistry retained its intellectual prestige. Around the same time "alchemy" and "chemistry" began their divergence, the legitimacy of science came increasingly to depend on public demonstrations. The term chymistry has become accepted amongst scholars of the field when discussing this etymologically complicated period when the terms alchemy and chemistry were both used by contemporaries to describe the field of knowledge without the distinctions that are placed on the terms today.

This study examines 1,029 …

Database Plan Quality Impact On Knowledge-Based Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning Of Prostate Cancer, Phillip Douglas Hardenbergh Wall

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: Knowledge-based planning (KBP) leverages plan data from a database of previously treated patients to inform the plan design of a new patient. This work investigated bladder and rectum dose-volume prediction improvements in a common KBP method using a Pareto plan database in VMAT planning for prostate cancer. Methods: We formed an anonymized retrospective patient database of 124 VMAT plans for prostate cancer treated at our institution. From these patient data, two plan databases were compiled. The clinical plan database (CPD) contained planning data from each patient’s clinical plan, which were manually optimized by various planners. The multi-criteria optimization database …

The Relationship Between The Timing Of Hydrocarbon Generation Between The Bristol Bay Depositional Basin And The Port Moller Area And Southern Portion Of The Bristol Bay Basin Of The Alaska Peninsula, Claire Rochelle Jones

LSU Master's Theses

The Alaska Peninsula has been the target of oil and gas exploration throughout much of the 20th century. Although most exploration efforts have focused on the Cook Inlet area, the geological setting of the Alaskan Peninsula suggests that economically viable resources may be located further south on the northern side bordering Bristol Bay (Port Moller area). This study investigates the relation of petroleum system elements between the northern and southern section of the Alaskan Peninsula with a particular focus on the potential for petroleum accumulation on the southern section close to Herendeen Bay. The analysis included the integration of a …

Development Of A Low-Energy Monoenergetic Electron Separator, Sergio Martín López Cáceres

LSU Master's Theses

The aim of this project is to build a prototype device that can select electrons of certain energy in order to have a monoenergetic beam suitable for the characterization of radiation detectors. Current options for sources of electrons are either from radioisotopes or accelerator facilities. Radioisotope sources are not tunable in energy since they depend on the nuclear and atomic structures of the daughter nucleus. On the other hand, even though accelerators offer the feature of a variable energy beam, they have limited availability and are not typically run at low intensities. Therefore, the motivation for this thesis is the …

Analyzing User Comments On Youtube Coding Tutorial Videos, Elizabeth Heidi Poche

LSU Master's Theses

Video coding tutorials enable expert and novice programmers to visually observe real developers write, debug, and execute code. Previous research in this domain has focused on helping programmers find relevant content in coding tutorial videos as well as understanding the motivation and needs of content creators. In this thesis, we focus on the link connecting programmers creating coding videos with their audience. More specifically, we analyze user comments on YouTube coding tutorial videos. Our main objective is to help content creators to effectively understand the needs and concerns of their viewers, thus respond faster to these concerns and deliver higher-quality …

Louisiana Birds Act As Reservoirs For Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, Collin T. Brown

LSU Master's Theses

Wild birds carry diverse microbial communities, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB). With the ever-increasing use of antibiotics in agricultural and clinical settings, genes that code for antibiotic resistance in bacteria have been selected for. These bacteria persist in the environment in a culturable state, but little is understood about communities of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment. Birds with predictable behaviors may serve as useful indicators of these communities, and provide insights into how bacterial communities spread and evolve in the environment. To understand the utility of birds as indicators of the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment, we collected bacterial …

Coasteering, Adam James Meistrell

LSU Master's Theses

Coasteering: (noun) An adventure sport tasked with defining and exploring boundaries and coastlines. Adam Meistrell’s artwork is an invitation to interpret evidence and inspiration through making, investigation, and utility. He utilizes a variety of working methods to interpret evidence and share his understanding.

Modelling And Observational Evidence For The Igneous Evolution Of The Elysium Volcanic Province On Mars, David Andrew Susko

LSU Master's Theses

A major knowledge gap exists on how eruptive compositions of a single martian volcanic province change over time. The Elysium Volcanic Province is a location of great geologic interest on Mars. Its predominantly Amazonian surface age (beginning 3.3 Ga), and its isolation in the northern hemisphere of Mars away from other volcano-tectonic regions, make it an ideal locale to investigate igneous compositions erupted during the most recent geologic period on Mars. Here, this work seeks to fill that gap by assessing the compositional evolution of Elysium as a major martian volcanic province in two related projects. The first project seeks …

Grace's Inheritance, James Noble, Andrew P. Black, Kim B. Bruce, Michael Homer, Timothy Jones

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article is an apologia for the design of inheritance in the Grace educational programming language: it explains how the design of Grace’s inheritance draws from inheritance mechanisms in predecessor languages, and defends that design as the best of the available alternatives. For simplicity, Grace objects are generated from object constructors, like those of Emerald, Lua, and Javascript; for familiarity, the language also provides classes and inheritance, like Simula, Smalltalk and Java. The design question we address is whether or not object constructors can provide an inheritance semantics similar to classes.

Proving Non-Deterministic Computations In Agda, Sergio Antoy, Michael Hanus, Steven Libby

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We investigate proving properties of Curry programs using Agda. First, we address the functional correctness of Curry functions that, apart from some syntactic and semantic differences, are in the intersection of the two languages. Second, we use Agda to model non-deterministic functions with two distinct and competitive approaches incorporating the non-determinism. The first approach eliminates non-determinism by considering the set of all non-deterministic values produced by an application. The second approach encodes every non-deterministic choice that the application could perform. We consider our initial experiment a success. Although proving properties of programs is a notoriously difficult task, the functional logic …

Medical Student Burnout: A Social Cognitive Learning Perspective On Medical Student Mental Health And Wellness, Robert Lubin, Michael Hamlin

Touro University Worldwide Publications and Research

Medical students' mental health is a topic of great interest as it has implications not only for medical students but also for the patients of these future doctors. Medical students face many academic pressures and burnout is one possible consequence of these stressors with some studies suggesting that burnout affects up to 50% of medical students. Our own study of American students in a medical programme located outside of the U.S. showed that student perceptions of the medical learning environment were linked with burnout suggesting that reducing burnout requires a pedagogical approach that addresses academically related stress factors. This chapter …

A Biological Comparison Of Two Sites: An Ecological Approach Using Community Ecology Metrics Based On Insect Faunal Composition, Kennedy J. Martin

University Honors Theses

Two natural sites in the Portland urban area, River View Natural Area (RVNA) and Powers Marine Park (PMP), were sampled to assess their insect faunal composition with the intention of determining whether the areas are sufficiently similar ecologically that they could potentially be managed as a single unit. The two areas were compared using community ecology metrics based on their respective invertebrate fauna. The results suggested that RVNA and PMP had statistically different ecological communities. The Shannon Diversity Index for PMP was 0.303, and 0.819 for RVNA. The Horn Index of Community Overlap suggested a 93.46% overlap based on these …

Predictive Policing On Portland State University's Campus, Kiley D. Enger

University Honors Theses

Although many want to believe that campuses are safe and free of crime acts, there is a reason for the campus public safety department. Reed College, Lewis and Clark College, and University of Portland all rank as safer schools than Portland State University (PSU) (Niche, 2017). The parking garages and lots in particular have a large number of crimes (Enger, 2016). Using predictive analytics to forecast crime is becoming very popular with large police departments within the last few years. It emphasizes the importance of collecting crime data and created a use for past incident reports. The goal of the …

Cooperative Learning Through Storytelling And The Plant World, Emma Hathaway

University Honors Theses

At a time when young people are disengaging in school, how do we begin to acknowledge that we, as a nation have failed them and how might we look at storytelling and the plant world to establish more inclusive practices in education? Data from a 2015 American Community Survey suggests that in the state of Hawai'i, 40% of public school 8^th graders do not meet the Department of Education (DOE) standards in mathematics. This fall, the National Center for Educational Statistics noted that over half of the country’s public schools reported incidents of criminal activity. As a way to …

Bulk Viscous Corrections To Screening And Damping In Qcd At High Temperatures, Qianqian Du, Adrian Dumitru, Yun Guo, Michael Strickland

Publications and Research

Non-equilibrium corrections to the distribution functions of quarks and gluons in a hot and dense QCD medium modify the “hard thermal loops” (HTL). The HTLs determine the retarded, advanced, and symmetric (time-ordered) propagators for gluons with soft momenta as well as the Debye screening and Landau damping mass scales. We compute such corrections to a thermal as well as to a non-thermal fixed point. The screening and damping mass scales are sensitive to the bulk pressure and hence to (pseudo-) critical dynamical scaling of the bulk viscosity in the vicinity of a second-order critical point. This could be reflected in …

Schrödinger Theory Of Electrons In Electromagnetic Fields: New Perspectives, Viraht Sahni, Xiao-Yin Pan

Publications and Research

The Schrödinger theory of electrons in an external electromagnetic field is described from the new perspective of the individual electron. The perspective is arrived at via the time-dependent "Quantal Newtonian" law (or differential virial theorem). (The time-independent law, a special case, provides a similar description of stationary-state theory). These laws are in terms of "classical" fields whose sources are quantal expectations of Hermitian operators taken with respect to the wave function. The laws reveal the following physics: (a) in addition to the external field, each electron experiences an internal field whose components are representative of a specific property of the …

Rules And Mechanisms For Efficient Two-Stage Learning In Neural Circuits, Tiberiu Teşileanu, Bence Ölveczky, Vijay Balasubramanian

Publications and Research

Trial-and-error learning requires evaluating variable actions and reinforcing successful variants. In songbirds, vocal exploration is induced by LMAN, the output of a basal ganglia-related circuit that also contributes a corrective bias to the vocal output. This bias is gradually consolidated in RA, a motor cortex analogue downstream of LMAN. We develop a new model of such two-stage learning. Using stochastic gradient descent, we derive how the activity in ‘tutor’ circuits (e.g., LMAN) should match plasticity mechanisms in ‘student’ circuits (e.g., RA) to achieve efficient learning. We further describe a reinforcement learning framework through which the tutor can build its teaching …

Consequences Of Job Stress For The Psychological Well-Being Of Teachers, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Renzo Bianchi, Peter Luehring-Jones

Publications and Research

This chapter examines research on the relationship between job stressors and mental health (depressive symptoms, burnout, and mental disorders such as depression) in teachers. Teachers are exposed daily to job stressors (e.g., student disruptiveness) that have been linked to adverse mental health effects. Epidemiologic research indicates that when compared to members of other groups, teachers experience higher rates of mental disorder, although some studies question that conclusion. Large-scale studies indicate when compared to members of other occupational groups, teachers are at higher risk for exposure to workplace violence, with its adverse mental health consequences. Longitudinal research has linked teaching-related stressors …

Yield Efficiency Using A Stochastic Frontier Approach For Corn, Soybeans, And Hard Red Spring Wheat In North Dakota, Bayarbat Badarch

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

Agriculture is a keystone for the North Dakota economy. The research focused on three selected crops’ yield: corn, soybeans and HRS wheat. The research provides a direct and indirect cumulative elasticity measure for North Dakota for each of the three crops’ yields using stochastic yield frontier models. In addition, the research provides the technical efficiency frontiers for nine different regions in North Dakota as well as across the 22 years (1994 to 2015). The results revealed that each of the three crops’ yields have a stronger relationship with weather variables than input cost and quantity variables. The mean level of …

Minimum Cost Beef Backgrounding Ration Utilizing Alternative Feedstuffs And Stochastic Prices, Levi Helmuth

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

Cattle producers on the Northern Great Plains have many feedstuffs available. Feedstuffs comprise a large portion of direct costs producers face, and to be profit maximizing producers they look to minimize this cost. This is often done through linear programming utilizing average prices. However, price data for alternative feedstuffs can be scarce, and both conventional and alternative feedstuff prices can be volatile. This thesis seeks to identify a least cost ration that captures the volatility of feedstuff prices.

Optimization Of Soybean Buying Strategies Using Derivatives, Nathaniel David Moody

Agribusiness and Applied Economics

The portfolio model of hedging framework, based off Markowitz (1952), is used to determine the best mix of futures, basis, and option contracts to hedge a soybean purchase from PNW 28 weeks in to the future. Eighteen options are incorporated including in-the-money, at-the-money, and out-of-the-money call and puts with different expiration dates. Futures and option pricing data is extracted from ProphetX from November of 2013 to December of 2016. Expected utility objectives including mean-variance, CVaR, Mean-CVaR, and Mean-CVaR with copula are maximized using linear programming optimization methods. A two stage model is built to simulate hedging scenarios while measuring various …

Justified True Belief: Plato, Gettier, And Turing, Rohit Parikh, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

We examine the relationship between the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge and Plato’s theory about it as expounded in the Theaetetus. Considering Socrates’ remarks in the Theaetetus brings us to some concerns raised by Turing and to Wittgenstein’s famous comment explanations come to an end somewhere. We present two simple technical results which bear on the question. Finally, we look at the pragmatic aspects of knowledge attributions. In an Appendix we say a few words about Indian epistemology and Gettier problems.

Identifying Clouds With Convolutional Neural Networks, Jeff Mullins, Sean Richardson, Peter Drake

Portland Institute for Computational Science Publications

The greatest source of uncertainty in model estimates of projected climate change involve clouds and aerosols. Photographic images of clouds in the sky are simple to acquire and archive, but climate scientists need an automated process for identifying clouds in these images. We bring machine learning to bear on this problem. Specifically, we use convolutional neural networks, which to our knowledge have not previously been applied to this task. We trained a network to identify clear sky, thin cloud, thick cloud, and non-sky pixels in photos taken by the Total Sky Imager. The trained network is capable of classifying 91.9% …

In The Shadow Of The 2016 Election: Immigration Debates In Oregon And Beyond, Kim Williams, Andrea Williams, Phil Carrasco

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this record of the lunchtime panel discussion moderated by Daniel J. Tichenor of the University of Oregon Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, panelists discussed the issue of immigration following the 2016 presidential election. Touching on the importance of discussions about immigration leading up to the election, demographics in the electorate, and how immigration advocates are mobilizing following the election, the panelists also engaged the audience with a question and answer session.

Recommending Sustainable Design Practices By Characterizing Activities And Mindsets, Jeremy Faludi

Dartmouth Scholarship

How do designers, engineers, and managers choose the best sustainable design method for their work? How can different design practices combine to complement each other? This study makes recommendations by deconstructing 14 design methods, guides, certifications, and other practices into their constituent activities and mindsets, then characterizing those activities and mindsets. For example, some of the seven activity categories are analysis, ideation, and goal-setting; some of the eight mindset categories are priorities, abstract versus concrete goals, and environmental versus social goals. Recommendations are given for matching sustainable design practices to different usage contexts by their constituent activities and mindsets. It …

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Partnering with Daimler Trucks is giving students experience and jobs; inspiring the next generation of women leaders; what Antarctica is telling us about our warming planet; Robert Mercer has helped countless students navigate their way to a PSU degree; and more.