Digital Commons Network^™

Comparison Between Brief Acceptance And Cognitive Interventions: Assessing Public Speaking Performance In Socially-Anxious Individuals, Soultana Mpoulkoura

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Social anxiety disorder is one of the most prevalent psychological disorder to date and it is associated with impairments in multiple domains, such as in occupational and academic settings. Although, traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), aims to reduce distress by altering maladaptive schemas, this approach is not always successful. Recent research has shown ambiguous support for cognitive restructuring as a mechanism of change. Therefore, further research is needed to discover effective treatments. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), emphasizes psychological flexibility and values rather controlling negative thoughts. The current study compared brief acceptance and cognitive control based interventions for increasing performance …

Teaching Homer’S Odyssey Through Charles Darwin’S The Descent Of Man: An Ancient Version Of Evolution, Lois A. Cuddy

New England Classical Journal

This paper argues that Homer’s Odyssey was the world’s introduction to ideas about human evolution popularized by Darwin and that these ideas are recognizable in the individuals and communities that the hero and his son encounter on their journeys. Homer represents the stages of human evolution through the characteristics of various social groups described in the Odyssey , such as the Cyclopses, Lastrygonians, Ithacans, Kikones, and Phaeacians, as well as through the characteristics of noteworthy individuals such as Helen and Penelope. This comparison of different communities and individuals seems to mirror Darwin’s hierarchy of evolution in The Descent of Man. …

Jesse Weiner, Benjamin Eldon Stevens, And Brett M. Rogers, Eds. Frankenstein And Its Classics: The Modern Prometheus From Antiquity To Science Fiction., Debbie Felton

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Medically Applied Artificial Intelligence:From Bench To Bedside, Nicholas Chedid

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

The intent of this thesis was to develop several medically applied artificial intel-ligence programs, which can be considered either clinical decision support tools or pro-grams which make the development of such tools more feasible. The first two projectsare more basic or "bench" in focus, while the final project is more translational. The firstprogram involves the creation of a residual neural network to automatically detect thepresence of pericardial effusions in point-of-care echocardiography and currently hasan accuracy of 71%. The second program involves the development of a sub-type ofgenerative adverserial network to create synthetic x-rays of fractures for several pur-poses including data …

Accidents Happen: Exposing Fallacies In Child Protection Abuse Cases And Reuniting Families Through Aggressive Litigation, Jessica Horan-Block, Elizabeth Tuttle Newman

City University of New York Law Review

The mere existence of a fracture, head trauma, or other serious injury in a young child or infant that cannot be explained, even without additional evidence of an intentional act, can trigger civil child abuse allegations, tear apart a family, and stigmatize a parent as an “abuser.” This article explores litigation strategies within serious physical abuse cases, the proportionally smaller category of child protective cases in which ACS is often seen to be most justified in removing and separating children from their families. Though these cases often seem daunting, effective litigation exposes that even unexplained serious injuries are often not …

Greater Uniformity And Centralization: The Regulatory Development Of Chinese Food And Product Safety Under The Wto, Nga Kit (Christy) Tang

Washington International Law Journal

The WTO Agreements emphasize free trade, which links with diversity, deregulation, and decentralization. China, on the other hand, emphasizes uniformity and centralization, especially regarding the political control and the one-party system of “democratic dictatorship.” China’s joining the WTO, therefore, may be considered as a development that changes the regulatory structure to become more diverse, deregulated, and decentralized. This paper, however, finds the opposite. Under the WTO law, China is encouraged to move towards greater uniformity and centralization with its decentralized and non-uniform settings under the market policy. Moreover, the WTO’s uniform and centralized encouragements can be integrated into the rule-by-man …

Louisiana Agriculture Winter, 2019, Lsu Agcenter

Louisiana Agriculture

No abstract provided.

Normal Tissue Damage: Its Importance, History And Challenges For The Future, Jacqueline P. Williams, Wayne Newhauser

Faculty Publications

Sir Oliver Scott, a philanthropist and radiation biologist and, therefore, the epitome of a gentleman and a scholar, was an early Director of the BECC Radiobiology Research Unit at Mount Vernon. His tenure preceded that of Jack Fowler, with both contributing to basic, translational and clinical thought and application in radiation across the globe. With respect to this review, Fowler's name in particular has remained synonymous with the use of models, both animal and mathematical, that assess and quantify the biological mechanisms that underlie radiation-associated normal tissue toxicities. An understanding of these effects is critical to the optimal use of …

Ecogeographical Rules And The Macroecology Of Food Webs, Benjamin Baiser, Dominique Gravel, Alyssa R. Cirtwill, Jennifer A. Dunne, Ashkaan K. Fahimipour, Luis J. Gilarranz, Joshua A. Grochow, Daijiang Li, Neo D. Martinez, Alicia Mcgrew, Timothée Poisot, Tamara N. Romanuk, Daniel B. Stouffer, Lauren B. Trotta, Fernanda S. Valdovinos, Richard J. Williams, Spencer A. Wood, Justin D. Yeakel

Faculty Publications

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aim: How do factors such as space, time, climate and other ecological drivers influence food web structure and dynamics? Collections of well-studied food webs and replicate food webs from the same system that span biogeographical and ecological gradients now enable detailed, quantitative investigation of such questions and help integrate food web ecology and macroecology. Here, we integrate macroecology and food web ecology by focusing on how ecogeographical rules [the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), Bergmann's rule, the island rule and Rapoport's rule] are associated with the architecture of food webs. Location: Global. Time period: …

Examining Public Opinion About Lgbtq-Related Issues In The United States And Across Multiple Nations, Amy Adamczyk, Yen-Chiao Liao

Publications and Research

Over the last three decades many countries across the world, including the United States, have experienced major increases in support for LGBTQ individuals and related issues. In part related to these changes a number of studies have examined the factors shaping public opinion. In this review we focus on four major areas of research on public opinion in this field of study. We first assess the terms that scholars typically use when examining attitudes and highlight the areas of public opinion research that have received the most attention. We then focus on the data and measurement challenges related to examining …

Impacts Of Experimental Flooding On Microbial Communities And Methane Fluxes In An Urban Meadow, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Gary M. King, Katherine Henry

Faculty Publications

© 2019 King and Henry. The impacts of extended flooding on microbial communities and their activities in natural and agricultural wetlands have been well-documented, but there is little basis for predicting the responses of urban soil microbial communities to infrequent, short-term flooding. To assess these responses, surface soil samples (0–1 cm) and intact soil cores (10 cm depth) were collected from an urban meadow in Baton Rouge, LA subsequent to an unprecedented flood during August 2016. During the flood, a topographically low region of the meadow (LM) was inundated for at least several days, while an elevated area (upper meadow …

A Taxonomic Synopsis Of Virola (Myristicaceae) In Mesoamerica, Including Six New Species, Daniel Santamaría-Aguilar, Reinaldo Aguilar, Laura P. Lagomarsino

Faculty Publications

© Daniel Santamaría-Aguilar et al. A taxonomic synopsis of Virola (Myristicaceae) is presented for Mesoamerica. Fourteen species are recognised, amongst them six are described and published as new, based on morphology: V. allenii D.Santam. & Aguilar, sp. nov. from Costa Rica, V. otobifolia D.Santam., sp. nov. from Panama and V. amistadensis D.Santam., sp. nov., V. chrysocarpa D.Santam. & Aguilar, sp. nov., V. fosteri D.Santam., sp. nov. and V. montana D.Santam., sp. nov. from both Costa Rica and Panama. Additionally, a lectotype is designated for V. koschnyi, accompanied by an epitype in view of the fragmentary material. Finally, we recognise V. …

Population Expansion Of An Antarctic King Crab?, Michael E. Hellberg, Richard B. Aronson, Kathryn E. Smith, Mark I. Duhon, Shane T. Ahyong, Gustavo A. Lovrich, Sven Thatje, James B. Mcclintock

Faculty Publications

© 2019, the authors. Benthic assemblages of the Antarctic continental shelf are dominated by sessile and slow-moving, epifaunal invertebrates. This community structure persists because shell-crushing (durophagous) predators are absent or ecologically insignificant in shelf habitats. Durophagous teleosts, elasmobranchs, and crustaceans have been excluded by cold waters over the Antarctic shelf for millions of years. Now, as shallow waters warm rapidly, predatory king crabs (Lithodidae) living in the upper bathyal zone could emerge onto the shelf and into nearshore habitats. To assess the potential for a bathymetric expansion, we genetically inferred the historical demography of a population of the most abundant …

Role Of Type I Interferon (Ifn) In The Respiratory Syncytial Virus (Rsv) Immune Response And Disease Severity, Diego R. Hijano, Luan D. Vu, Lawrence M. Kauvar, Ralph A. Tripp, Fernando P. Polack, Stephania A. Cormier

Faculty Publications

© 2019 Hijano, Vu, Kauvar, Tripp, Polack and Cormier. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the most common cause of lower respiratory tract disease in children patients, such as premature infants, patients with cardiac …

Local Adaptation Drives The Diversification Of Effectors In The Fungal Wheat Pathogen Parastagonospora Nodorum In The United States, Jonathan K. Richards, Eva H. Stukenbrock, Jessica Carpenter, Zhaohui Liu, Christina Cowger, Justin D. Faris, Timothy L. Friesen

Faculty Publications

Filamentous fungi rapidly evolve in response to environmental selection pressures in part due to their genomic plasticity. Parastagonospora nodorum, a fungal pathogen of wheat and causal agent of septoria nodorum blotch, responds to selection pressure exerted by its host, influencing the gain, loss, or functional diversification of virulence determinants, known as effector genes. Whole genome resequencing of 197 P. nodorum isolates collected from spring, durum, and winter wheat production regions of the United States enabled the examination of effector diversity and genomic regions under selection specific to geographically discrete populations. 1,026,859 SNPs/InDels were used to identify novel loci, as well …

Larval Pollen Stress Increases Adult Susceptibility To Clothianidin In Honey Bees, Christina L. Mogren, Robert G. Danka, Kristen B. Healy

Faculty Publications

Neonicotinoid insecticides have come under scrutiny for their potential role in honey bee declines. Additionally, reduced access to forage in agricultural areas creates the potential for risk interactions with these pesticides in regions critical for honey production. In this study, we sought to determine whether sufficient access to pollen during larval development could mitigate stress associated with oral clothianidin exposure in honey bee adults. An apiary was established where pollen traps deprived half of the colonies of pollen, which was then supplemented to the others. Adults were fed 0, 10, 40, 200, or 400 µg/L clothianidin in the laboratory, and …

Effector Gene Reshuffling Involves Dispensable Mini-Chromosomes In The Wheat Blast Fungus, Zhao Peng, Ely Oliveira-Garcia, Guifang Lin, Ying Hu, Melinda Dalby, Pierre Migeon, Haibao Tang, Mark Farman, David Cook, Frank F. White, Barbara Valent, Sanzhen Liu

Faculty Publications

Newly emerged wheat blast disease is a serious threat to global wheat production. Wheat blast is caused by a distinct, exceptionally diverse lineage of the fungus causing rice blast disease. Through sequencing a recent field isolate, we report a reference genome that includes seven core chromosomes and mini-chromosome sequences that harbor effector genes normally found on ends of core chromosomes in other strains. No mini-chromosomes were observed in an early field strain, and at least two from another isolate each contain different effector genes and core chromosome end sequences. The mini-chromosome is enriched in transposons occurring most frequently at core …

Lsu General Catalog 2019-2020, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

LSU General Catalog

The LSU General Catalog describes all undergraduate and graduate departments and programs with degree requirements and courses offered for each one. The LSU General Catalog includes information on registration and financial aid as well as academic services offered to all students.

Management Of Economically Important Insect Pests Of Millet, Ruparao T. Gahukar, Gadi V.P. Reddy, Tom Royer

Faculty Publications

Grain of various species of millet is a staple food of rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and China. In addition, millet is used as poultry and cattle feed in the United States, and the foliage is fodder for cattle in India. The crop is damaged by at least 150 insect pests during its growth and development. Although the current status of all of these pests is not known, shoot flies, stem borers, leaf-sucking, and the panicle-attacking insects are considered economically important. Control measures include the application of synthetic pesticides (as both seed treatment and foliar applications) and …

Examining The Interaction Of State And Trait Anxiety On Working Memory Performance, Carly C. Moore

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Dosage Compensation Of The X Chromosomes In Bovine Germline, Early Embryos, And Somatic Tissues, Zongliang Jiang

Faculty Publications

Dosage compensation of the mammalian X chromosome (X) was proposed by Susumu Ohno as a mechanism wherein the inactivation of one X in females would lead to doubling the expression of the other. This would resolve the dosage imbalance between eutherian females (XX) versus male (XY) and between a single active X versus autosome pairs (A). Expression ratio of X- and A-linked genes has been relatively well studied in humans and mice, despite controversial results over the existence of upregulation of X-linked genes. Here we report the first comprehensive test of Ohno's hypothesis in bovine preattachment embryos, germline, and somatic …

Californios, Anglos, And The Performance Of Oligarchy In The U.S. West, Evan Rothera

Civil War Book Review

Andrew Gibb, currently assistant professor of theater history, theory, and criticism at Texas Tech University, offers an important revision of modern understandings of the U.S. West, particularly California. “Despite the individualist ideology that valorizes the working-class Anglos frontiersman,” Gibb asserts, “the truth is that ever since he began to arrive in the West, he had led a life dominated by local oligarchs (1). As Anglos arrived in California, they discovered a uniquely californio (Mexican Californian) system of social organization. This book draws heavily on theory, particularly the idea of performance, to demonstrate how public events both celebrate and proclaim the …

Bibliometrics For Faculty Evaluation: A Statistical Comparison Of H-Indexes Generated Using Google Scholar And Web Of Science Data, David J. Dunaway

Faculty Publications

The growing need for quantification of research performance for promotion and tenure

and grant funding decisions has lead many to rely on citation metrics. There are many metrics to choose from but one of the most common is the h-index. While the h-index has been criticized by many, the metric itself is not the only concern. The source of the citation information used to calculate the h-index is also important. In this case study the h-index was calculated using citation data from Clarivate’s Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar (GS) for a selection of faculty working at a large …

Quantifying Amphibian Range Fragmentation In The Southeastern United States, Catherine E. Newman, Christopher C. Austin

Faculty Publications

© the authors. An often overlooked component of research on factors that drive amphibian geographic distributions is description of species range shape. Broad-scale range disjunction has implications for phylogeography, ecology, and conservation, but descriptions of fragmentation are usually based on subjective visual assessment of range maps. Here, we describe a method for objectively quantifying range fragmentation and use this method to describe the patterns of amphibian species range shapes in the southeastern United States, home to the highest amphibian species richness in North America. Species ranges varied widely in degree of fragmentation, from completely contiguous to highly fragmented, and degree …

Bottom-Up Trait-Mediated Indirect Effects Decrease Pathogen Transmission In A Tritrophic System, Bret D. Elderd

Faculty Publications

© 2018 by the Ecological Society of America A plant's induction of secondary defenses helps to decrease herbivore damage by changing resource quality. While these chemical or physical defenses may directly decrease herbivory, they can also have indirect consequences. In a tritrophic system consisting of a plant, an insect herbivore, and an insect pathogen, plant based trait-mediated indirect effects (TMIEs) can alter host–pathogen interactions and, thereby, indirectly affect disease transmission. In a series of field experiments, individual soybean plants (Glycine max) were sprayed with either a jasmonic acid (JA) solution to trigger induction of plant defenses or a similar control …

Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Arsenals In Pakistan And India Portend Regional And Global Catastrophe, O.B. Toon, C.G. Bardeen, A. Robock, L. Xia, H. Kristensen, M. Mckinzie, R.J. Peterson, C.S. Harrison, N.S. Lovenduski, R.P. Turco

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sediment Transport And Channel Dynamics Of The Lowermost Mississippi River In Recent Decades, Yijun Xu, Bo Wang, Sanjeev Joshi

Faculty Publications

Sediment transport and channel dynamics of large alluvial rivers in their lower reaches can strongly influence physical, chemical and biological conditions in their deltaic regions. In this paper, we report the latest assessment on sediment transport and riverbed dynamics of the last 500-km reach of the Mississippi River before entering the Gulf of Mexico. This river reach is also termed as the Lowermost Mississippi River (LmMR), which begins downstream of its division node to the Atchafalaya River. Our assessment shows that in the past 2-3 decades, suspended sediment and bed material loads in the LmMR were significantly higher at the …

Dissolved Carbon Transport And Processing In North America's Largest Swamp River Entering The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Emily M. Delduco, Y. Jun Xu

Faculty Publications

Transport and transformation of riverine dissolved carbon is an important component of global carbon cycling. The Atchafalaya River (AR) flows 189 kilometers through the largest bottomland swamp in North America and discharges ~25% of the flow of the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico annually, providing a unique opportunity to study the floodplain/wetland impacts on dissolved carbon. The aim of this study is to determine how dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the AR change spatially and seasonally, and to elucidate which processes control the carbon cycling in this intricate swamp-river system. From May 2015 …

Nest And Brood Site Selection Of Eastern Wild Turkeys, Jeremy D. Wood, Bradley S. Cohen, L. Mike Conner, Bret A. Collier, Michael J. Chamberlain

Faculty Publications

Management of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests relies on frequent prescribed fire to maintain desirable plant communities. Prescribed fire is often applied while female wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are reproductively active and may immediately affect habitat availability and demographic outcomes. We identified covariates affecting selection of areas used by nesting and brooding females and determined if these covariates influenced nest and brood survival in a longleaf pine ecosystem. We captured 63 female wild turkeys and measured vegetation and landscape characteristics surrounding nests, brood roosts, and daytime use sites. We used conditional logistic regression to determine which vegetation and landscape-scale characteristics …

The Role Of Talker Familiarity In Auditory Distraction, Brittan A. Barker, Emily M. Elliott

Faculty Publications

The current research employed a classic irrelevant sound effect paradigm and investigated the talker-specific content of the irrelevant speech. Specifically, we aimed to determine if the participants' familiarity with the irrelevant speech's talker affected the magnitude of the irrelevant sound effect. Experiment 1 was an exploration of talker familiarity established in a natural listening environment (i.e., a university classroom) in which we manipulated the participants' relationships with the talker. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the participants' familiarity with the talker via 4 days of controlled exposure to the target talker's audio recordings. For both Experiments 1 and 2, a robust …