Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Ultrafast And Nonlinear Spectroscopy Of Colloidal Nanomaterials, Tony Eugene Karam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the first part of this dissertation, the adsorption isotherms, resonance coupling, and fluorescence of molecular dyes on the surface of plasmonic nanoparticles are investigates. SHG is also used to investigate the growth of a silver shell on the surface of gold nanoparticles in real time. Additionally, gold-silver-gold core-shell-shell nanoparticles possess extinction peak wavelengths that can be controlled over the visible and near-infrared regions and enhanced photothermal effect. Transient absorption measurements determine that the phonon-phonon scattering lifetime is considerably faster in the core-shell-shell nanoparticles than in the gold nanospheres and gold nanorods, which contributes to the higher photothermal efficiencies. Transient …

Biomass Gasification For Electricity Generation: An Integrated Approach For Development Of Forest Residue-Based Projects In Rural India, Anand Mishra

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Biomass gasification is generally regarded as a promising technology for various advanced application in energy production. Biomass is the only carbon-based sustainable option among the renewable energy sources. This study is focused on fostering biomass gasification for electricity generation sector in India. The study addresses four broad aspects of biomass gasification for electricity generation - feedstock properties and gasification technology, policy and regulatory framework governing the sector, financial evaluation of electricity generation from biomass gasification, and feedstock supply. The study is divided in four chapters, each of which addresses one aspect of electricity generation through biomass gasification. Based on literature, …

Synthesis Of Functional Polypeptides And Development Of New Synthetic Strategies Toward Polypeptides, Jinbao Cao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of this work is to develop a new synthetic strategy for synthesizing advanced functional polypeptides or polypeptides in general. Polypeptides are amino acids based polymers with appealing properties for different applications. One of the key challenges in polypeptide research is the synthesis of functional polypeptides under mild conditions. We developed a system based on ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of N-thiocarboxyanhydrosulfides (NTAs) to synthesize polypeptides with wide range of molecular weights under mild conditions. Owing to NTAs’ good stability, our system serves as an excellent alternative to the traditional ROP of N-carboxyanhydrides (NCA). In Chapter 1, the fundamental knowledge and …

A Direct Study Of 20ne(Alpha,P)23na With The Helical Orbit Spectrometer (Helios), Jianping Lai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Type Ia Supernovae are thermonuclear explosions that occur on CO white dwarfs in binary systems, completely disrupting the system. While the exact progenitor of these events is unclear, there have been several studies exploring the nucleosynthesis that drives these stellar explosions. These studies have shown that a handful of reactions have a significant effect on Type Ia Supernova nucleosynthesis, specifically 12C(alpha, gamma), 12C+12C, 20Ne(alpha, p), 20Ne(alpha, gamma), and 30Si(p, gamma). While the 20Ne(alpha,p)23Na reaction has been shown to be one of the five most influential reactions, it has not been directly been measured at astrophysically relevant energies. We performed direct …

Study Of An Active-State Cb1 Receptor Model And Jwh Compound Interactions To Predict New Emerging Synthetic Cannabinoids, Kelsey Leigh Pettus

Honors Theses

In recent years, a new class of compounds, called synthetic cannabinoids, have made their appearance in the market as a substitute for illegal marijuana or its constituent natural cannabinoids. These compounds, which are active at the same G- protein coupled receptors (GPCRS) as cannabinoids, are continuing to gain popularity because of the same cannabinoid-like effects they create. Though two cannabinoid receptors have been identified in humans, known as CB1 and CB2, synthetic cannabinoid activity at the CB1 receptor has been the focus of much research regarding synthetic cannabinoid ligand binding. In this study, the structure of the CB1 receptor is …

Tessellations: An Artistic And Mathematical Look At The Work Of Maurits Cornelis Escher, Emily E. Bachmeier

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study was to learn more about the mathematics of tessellations and their artistic potential. Whenever I have seen tessellations, I always admire them. It is baffling how such complicated shapes can be repeated infinitely on the plane. This research aimed to increase the amount of tessellation information and activities available to secondary mathematics teachers by connecting the tessellations of Maurits Cornelis Escher with their underlying mathematics in order to use them for teaching secondary mathematics. The overarching premise of this study was to create something that would also be beneficial in my career as a secondary …

Magnetic Properties Of Polymeric Framework Materials With Cobalt, Cassara Higgins

Honors Program Theses

Single molecule magnets (SMM) are a new class of materials that have not been well studied. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) created with cobalt(II) metal centers have unpaired 3d electrons, which gives the frameworks interesting magnetic properties. Cobalt(II) nitrate centers can be linked together by varying numbers of 4,4´-bipyridine (bpy) ligands to create six different framework structures: four-coordinate 1D chain, five-coordinate 1D ladder, 2D bilayer, and 3D brick wall, and six-coordinate 2D square grid and 2D rhombic grid. The effects of framework structure and Co(II)-Co(II) distance on Weiss temperatures and μeff were investigated. By understanding which parameters of a framework has the …

Statistical Modeling Of Earthquake Damage, Allison Nicole Waters

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study was to build a statistical model of the economic damage that arises from earthquakes in order to better predict losses from future earthquakes. Though earthquakes are essentially a random event and cannot be fully anticipated, analyzing historical data and creating a statistical model can provide researchers with a more accurate estimate of future losses. The data set from which this model was built incorporated earthquakes occurring worldwide from 1915-2015 in which the total damage was recorded. The final model was a multiple linear regression model explaining total damage resulting from an earthquake through four independent …

Band Gap Engineering Of N-Alloyed Ga2o3 Thin Films, Dongyu Song, Li Li, Bingsheng Li, Yu Sui, Aidong Shen

Publications and Research

The authors report the tuning of band gap of GaON ternary alloy in a wide range of 2.75 eV. The samples were prepared by a two-step nitridation method. First, the samples were deposited on 2-inch fused silica substrates by megnetron sputtering with NH3 and Ar gas for 60 minutes. Then they were annealed in NH3 ambience at different temperatures. The optical band gap energies are calculated from transmittance measurements. With the increase of nitridation temperature, the band gap gradually decreases from 4.8 eV to 2.05 eV. X-ray diffraction results indicate that as-deposited amorphous samples can crystallize into monoclinic and hexagonal …

A Cloud-Based Framework For Smart Permit System For Buildings, Magdalini Eirinaki, Subhankar Dhar, Shishir Mathur

Faculty Publications

In this paper we propose a novel cloud-based platform for building permit system that is efficient, user-friendly, transparent, and has quick turn-around time for homeowners. Compared to the existing permit systems, the proposed smart city permit framework provides a pre-permitting decision workflow, and incorporates a data analytics and mining module that enables the continuous improvement of a) the end user experience, by analyzing explicit and implicit user feedback, and b) the permitting and urban planning process, allowing a gleaning of key insights for real estate development and city planning purposes, by analyzing how users interact with the system depending on …

Pro-Fit: Exercise With Friends, Saumil Dharia, Vijesh Jain, Jvalant Patel, Jainikkumar Vora, Rizen Yamauchi, Magdalini Eirinaki, Iraklis Varlamis

Faculty Publications

The advancements in wearable technology, where embedded accelerometers, gyroscopes and other sensors enable the users to actively monitor their activity have made it easier for individuals to pursue a healthy lifestyle. However, most of the existing applications expect continuous commitment from the end users, who need to proactively interact with the application in order to connect with friends and attain their goals. These applications fail to engage and motivate users who have busy schedules, or are not as committed and self-motivated. In this work, we present PRO-Fit, a personalized fitness assistant application that employs machine learning and recommendation algorithms in …

Threshold-Bounded Influence Dominating Sets For Recommendations In Social Networks, Magdalini Eirinaki, Nuno Moniz, Katerina Potika

Faculty Publications

The process of decision making in humans involves a combination of the genuine information held by the individual, and the external influence from their social network connections. This helps individuals to make decisions or adopt behaviors, opinions or products. In this work, we seek to investigate under which conditions and with what cost we can form neighborhoods of influence within a social network, in order to assist individuals with little or no prior genuine information through a two-phase recommendation process. Most of the existing approaches regard the problem of identifying influentials as a long-term, network diffusion process, where information cascading …

Time-Based Ensembles For Prediction Of Rare Events In News Streams, Nuno Moniz, Luís Torgo, Magdalini Eirinaki

Faculty Publications

Thousands of news are published everyday reporting worldwide events. Most of these news obtain a low level of popularity and only a small set of events become highly popular in social media platforms. Predicting rare cases of highly popular news is not a trivial task due to shortcomings of standard learning approaches and evaluation metrics. So far, the standard task of predicting the popularity of news items has been tackled by either of two distinct strategies related to the publication time of news. The first strategy, a priori, is focused on predicting the popularity of news upon their publication when …

Properties And Applications Of Self-Assembled Benzophenone Bis-Urea Macrocycles, Arthur Ariston Korous

Theses and Dissertations

Supramolecular chemistry is a vast multidisciplinary field with great potential and application. It is driven by one simple concept, the self-assembly of small building blocks into larger complex architectures without application of external force. This thesis highlights previous applications of supramolecular chemistry in addition to new potential properties and applications. Recently, the Shimizu group reported a self-assembled benzophenone bis-urea macrocycle (host 1) that facilitated the selective oxidation of an encapsulated alkene when UV-irradiated in an oxygen atmosphere to afford products that are typically observed in radical mediated reactions.1 Surprisingly, the host displayed a stable room temperature radical upon UV irradiation. …

Classification Of Natural Phytoplankton Populations With Fluorescence Excitation-Based Imaging Multivariate Optical Computing, Shawna Kathleen Tazik

Theses and Dissertations

Phytoplankton account for the majority of the primary productivity in the ocean and contribute significantly to the global carbon cycle through photosynthesis. A quantitative characterization of phytoplankton cell size and taxonomic composition is essential for understanding marine biogeochemical cycles, quantifying carbon export, and for predicting the ocean’s response to future climate change. Our labs have developed a new instrument for this purpose that combines fluorescence excitation spectroscopy with an all-optical approach to multivariate statistics called multivariate optical computing (MOC). The instrument, known as the Shipboard Streak Imaging Multivariate Optical Computing (SSIMOC) photometer, is a simple filter photometer that images the …

From Model Systems To Real Catalysts: Bridging The Pressure And Materials Gaps, Audrey S. Duke

Theses and Dissertations

For decades a fundamental understanding of heterogeneous catalysts has been pursued for rational catalyst design using model systems under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions; however, there exist stark differences between the simplified models investigated under UHV and the industrial catalysts used at high pressures. To bridge these gaps, it becomes essential to utilize progressively more complex materials and to correlate their surface structure and activity using incrementally higher pressure techniques. In this work, both model Pt-Re catalysts and powdered metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) were studied using a suite of traditional UHV surface science techniques in addition to ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy …

Synthesis And Utility Of Bis-Urea Macrocycles As Nanoreactors And As Ligands For Metal Organic Materials, Sahan R. Salpage

Theses and Dissertations

“Supramolecular chemistry” powered by non-covalent interactive forces forms the crux in the area of host-guest chemistry. Supramolecular assemblies often have different chemical and physical properties than that of its individual molecular entities and are used to develop novel functional materials. Our expertise involves making functional materials from macrocycles, which contain two urea groups and two rigid C shaped spacer groups. These individual macrocyclic components can self-assemble through hydrogen bonding and other non-covalent interactions to form porous supramolecular assemblies that can be used as confined reaction environments and as ligands to synthesize novel metal organic materials.

This dissertation focuses on studying …

Investigating Structure-Activity Relationships Of Sl11 To Develop A Better Prostate Cancer Diagnostic, Rong Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Prostate cancer is now the second leading cause of cancer death in American men. Since many of the diagnostics either have high false results or risky, it’s important to have better diagnostics and earlier diagnosis of prostate cancer. Aberrant glycosylation is a hallmark of cancer. When cancer occurs, aberrant glycosylation occurs, therefore, glycosylation patterns may provide information about different cancer types and metastatic potential. In order to study and use these glycosylation patterns, the boronic acid functionalized synthetic lectins that can interact with glycans have been developed. The work described here focuses on 1) the structure activities of synthetic lectins …

Modeling Of Structural Relaxation By A Variable-Order Fractional Differential Equation, Su Yang

Theses and Dissertations

In physical point of view, relaxation usually describes the return from a perturbed system into equilibrium and each process has its own characteristic relaxation time. In 1946, Tool first formulated the notion of fictive temperature to characterize the structure of a glass-forming melt. Since then, people used to simulate structural relaxation by first order model. Since fractional-based models have not widely applied in modeling the fictive temperature, I want to explore the the possibility of modeling structural relaxation by fractional differential equation.

In this thesis, I will first introduce the definitions of two different kinds of fractional derivatives: Riemann-Liouville fractional …

Crystal Growth And Characterization Of Reduced Early Transition Metal Compounds Grown Via Hydrothermal And Molten Flux Methods, Anthony J. Cortese

Theses and Dissertations

Interest in new and facile ways to prepare early transition metal reduced oxides has recently been increasing. In the past difficult flux techniques involving vacuum furnaces, expensive metal tubing, complicated electrolytic reduction apparatuses, were used to achieve in situ reduction of fully oxidized transition metal precursors. Often times these techniques were coupled with use of a difficult flux, such as boric acid, which is hard to remove due to its insolubility in water at room temperature. These limitations can be circumvented in multiple ways, including carefully choosing a redox neutral flux, using evacuated fused silica tubes for reaction vessels, and …

Chebyshev Inversion Of The Radon Transform, Jared Cameron Szi

Theses and Dissertations

In its two-dimensional form, the Radon transform of an image (function) is a collection of projections of the image which are parameterized by a set of angles (from the positive x-axis) and distances from the origin. Computational methods of the Radon transform are important in many image processing and computer vision problems, such as pattern recognition and the reconstruction of medical images. However, computability requires the construction of a discrete analog to the Radon transform, along with discrete alternatives for its inversion. In this paper, we present discrete analogs using classical methods of Chebyshev polynomial reconstruction, along with a new …

Mass Spectrometry-Based Protein Profiling And Investigations Of Tgf-Ss1-Induced Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition Signatures In Namru Murine Mammary Gland Epithelial Cells, Matsepo Ramaboli

Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is the second-most common cancer and the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. Despite advances in cancer early detection, prevention and treatment, breast cancer is still a major health challenge due to low survival caused by breast cancer metastasis. This warrants critical attention and intervention. From the proteomic standpoint, a protein-based multiplex system that provides large array of informative signals for cancer identification and prognosis is still limited. In this dissertation work, we developed two mass spectrometry-based strategies involving chemical biology tools for rapid protein fingerprinting of breast cancer cell lines, and for probing the O-linked N-acetylglucosamine …

Wide Field Measurements Using A Spatial Heterodyne Raman Spectrometer For Transmission Raman Spectroscopy And Standoff Detection, Kimberly A. Fessler

Theses and Dissertations

Our group recently developed a new type of Fourier transform Raman spectrometer, the spatial heterodyne Raman spectrometer (SHRS), for planetary exploration. The SHRS is a high spectral resolution, high throughput, compact dispersive interferometer, similar in design to a Michelson interferometer, where the mirrors are replaced by stationary diffraction gratings. The SHRS has no moving parts and does not require an entrance slit, making the throughput of the system orders of magnitude larger than a typical dispersive spectrometer. The wide field-of-view (FOV) of the SHRS enables wide area measurements without loss of sensitivity or spectral resolution and offers advantages such as …

On A Constant Associated With The Prouhet-Tarry-Escott Problem, Maria E. Markovich

Theses and Dissertations

For n a positive integer, the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott Problem asks for two different sets of n positive integers for which the sum of the kth powers of the elements of one set is equal to the sum of the kth powers of the elements of the second set for each positive integer k < n. For n > 12, it is not known whether such sets exist. I will give some background on this problem and then show how Newton polygons can be used to determine information on the size of the 2-adic value of a certain constant associated with the problem.

Alongshore Momentum Balance Over Shoreface-Connected Ridges, Fire Island, Ny, Conor Ofsthun

Theses and Dissertations

Bathymetric variations, such as shoreface-connected ridges (SFCRs), modify inner shelf circulation, altering the significance of and relationships between alongshore momentum balance terms. The inner shelf of Fire Island, NY provides a study site representative of SFCRs around the world. During the winter of 2014, hydrodynamic observations (~12 m depth) from 6 ADCPs, 3 SeaGauge pressure sensors, 2 tide gauges, and 2 meteorological buoys were collected over a region of the inner shelf spanning a full wavelength of one such SFCR. Analysis of the data, under westward wind forcing, revealed a predominantly alongshore circulation with localized offshore (onshore) current veering over …

Three Dimensional Thermobaric Modeling Of A Gas Hydrate System, Amanda Quigley Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Seismic imaging is recognized as the most cost effective method for identifying the presence of gas hydrate resources. The base of the gas hydrate stability zone is recognized by the presence of regionally extensive bottom simulating reflectors (BSR). However, in some areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, regionally extensive BSRs are not found. In such cases, an understanding of the thermobaric conditions may be used to determine the location of gas hydrates and the base of the gas hydrate stability zone. The aim of this research is to combine seismic velocity analysis and thermal modeling to predict the base …

Applications Of Disposable Pipette Technologies With Lc-Ms/Ms For Forensic And Clinical Analyses Of Biological Matrices, Kaylee R. Mastrianni

Theses and Dissertations

Efficiently hydrolyzing glucuronide metabolites is an important step in the analysis of drugs in urine. Amitriptyline and cyclobenzaprine are both tricyclic compounds with tertiary aliphatic amine groups that are subsequently metabolized to a less common form of glucuronide metabolite, quaternary ammonium linked glucuronides (N+- glucuronide). A collaborative study was conducted to investigate discrepancies in recoveries of these two commonly prescribed compounds in patient urine samples when hydrolyzed with different enzyme from four different commercially available β-glucuronidase sources.

Similarly, there is potential for 6-monoacetylmorphine to be converted to morphine during β-glucuronidase hydrolysis of urine samples. 6-monoacetylmorphine is a unique metabolite of …

Registration And Clustering Of Functional Observations, Zizhen Wu

Theses and Dissertations

As an important exploratory analysis, curves of similar shape are often classified into groups, which we call clustering of functional data. Phase variations or time distortions are often encountered in the biological processes, such as growth patterns or gene profiles. As a result of time distortion, curves of similar shape may not be aligned. Regular clustering methods for functional data usually ignore the presence of phase variations, which may result in low clustering accuracy. However, it is difficult to account for phase variation without knowing the cluster structure.

In this dissertation, we first propose a Bayesian method that simultaneously clusters …

Regular Expression Synthesis For Blast Two-Hit Filtering, Jordan Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

Genomic databases are exhibiting a growth rate that is outpacing Moore's Law, which has made database search algorithms a popular application for use on emerging processor technologies. NCBI BLAST is the standard tool for performing searches against these databases, which operates by transforming each database query into a filter that is subsequently applied to the database. This requires a database scan for every query, fundamentally limiting its performance by I/O bandwidth. In this dissertation we present a functionally-equivalent variation on the NCBI BLAST algorithm that maps more suitably to an FPGA implementation. This variation of the algorithm attempts to reduce …

Ligand Engineering For Advanced Functional Composite Materials, Michael H. Bell

Theses and Dissertations

The surface modification of solid inorganic substrates for thermodynamic compatibility with organic polymer media has become an important area of study for the development of advanced functional composite materials. Polymer ligands covalently bound to the substrate surface have been an effective means to achieve said compatibility. Current investigations focus on multifunctional ligand engineering where multiple chemically distinct species, each with specific functionality, can be implemented on the filler surface simultaneously. A combination of matrix compatible polymer brushes and conjugated charge trapping moieties attached to filler surfaces are investigated for enhancements in dielectric properties. Presented herein are the synthesis and characterization …