Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Synthesis And Evaluation Of Biologically Active Phosphorous Heterocycles And Lipid A Antagonist Compounds, Saroj Kafle

Dissertations

Cyclophostin and cyclipostins are naturally occurring organophosphates with common structural core units and different phosphate ester substituents. Cyclophostin is a cyclic phosphate triester with a chiral center at phosphorous and C-3a carbon atom while the cyclipostins have characteristic alkyl substituents with varying chain lengths at the phosphate center. Long-chain substituted monocyclic phosphate (2b) and phosphonate (2a) analogs of cyclophostin and cyclipostin are promising inhibitors against serine hydrolases acetylcholinesterase with an IC₅₀ in the nanomolar range.

Biologically active β-lactones and lactams owe their activity, in part, to ring strain. The ring opening of β-lactones and lactams …

What's In A Name? The Politics Of Commemoration From The Un-Naming Of The Alexander Graham Bell Dorm At Rit To The Samuel Schmucker Controversy At Wcu, Brent Ruswick

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

Professor Brent Ruswick, History - What's in a Name? The Politics of Commemoration from the un-naming of the Alexander Graham Bell dorm at RIT to the Samuel Schmucker controversy at WCU

Additivity Of Diene Substituent Gibbs Free Energy Contributions For Diels–Alder Reactions Between Me2c=Cme2 And Substituted Cyclopentadienes, Thomas M. Gilbert, Austin S. Flemming, Brendan C. Dutmer

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Systematic computational studies of pericyclic Diels–Alder reactions between (H3C)2C═C(CH3)2, 1, and all permutations of substituted cyclopentadienes c-C5R1R2R3R4R5aR5b (R = H, CH3, CF3, F) allowed isolation of substitutional effects on Gibbs free energy barrier heights and reaction Gibbs free energies. “Average Substitution Gibbs Free Energy Correction” ΔGASC#‡/ΔGASC# values for each substituent in each position appeared to be additive. Substituent effects on barriers showed interesting contrasts. Methyl substitution at positions 5a and 5b increased barriers significantly, while substitution at all other positions had essentially no impact. In contrast, fluoro substitution at positions 5a and 5b lowered barriers more than substitution at other …

Evaluating Fungal Population Response To The Miocene Climatic Optimum: High-Resolution Palynological Insights From The South China Sea And Mcmurdo Sound, Antarctica, Mallory Pilie

LSU Master's Theses

Fungi play key and specific roles in ecosystems, specifically as many have restricted geographic distributions, known host/substrate preferences, and are important local environmental indicators due to their short dispersal distances. This study of fossil fungi from a time interval of pronounced global warming, the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO), allows analysis of fungal response to an analogue for future climate change scenarios. The research presented herein is part of a larger project, Fungi in a Warmer World (FiaWW), which is using globally-distributed sediment samples to provide foundational information on fungal community distribution patterns and will provide the first fungi-based climatological reconstructions …

An Analysis Of Hurricane Laura's Storm Surge In Cameron Parish Using Synthetic Storm Tracks, Climatology, And Statistics, Cameron Goff

LSU Master's Theses

Cameron Parish is a large coastal parish in southwest Louisiana that has been impacted by several powerful tropical cyclones. In 2020, the strongest hurricane in recorded history to ever hit this region, Hurricane Laura, set a state record for the highest storm surge measurement at 6.34 meters. I examine the climatology of tropical cyclone landfalls in this parish, looking for trends in intensity and frequency with time. I then compare the extreme surge of Hurricane Laura with a dataset of 645 synthetic tropical cyclones generated and used by the Coastal Hazards System for Louisiana. Plots comparing various meteorological statistics to …

20-Year Assessment Of Total Suspended Sediment (Tss) Variability In Barataria Bay From Modis Ocean Color Using A Combination Of Adaptive Semi-Analytical And Neural Network Algorithms, Bijaylaxmi Sahoo

LSU Master's Theses

Barataria Bay, a hydrologically dynamic basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico, exhibits a distinct spatio-temporal distribution of total suspended sediment (TSS). However, studies on sediment distribution are limited by availability of in-situ data as well as the limitation of ocean color algorithms for suspended sediments in shallow optically complex waters. Barataria Bay TSS concentration profile is complex, influenced in the upper basin by fresh water sources such as the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion, and in the lower bay by the river plume and marine influence near the mouth of the bay. To efficiently study the sediment dynamics in the …

Wallaby Pre-Pilot Survey: Radio Continuum Properties Of The Eridanus Supergroup, J. A. Grundy, O. I. Wong, K. Lee-Waddell, N. Seymour, B. -Q. For, C. Murugeshan, B. S. Koribalski, Juan P. Madrid, J. Rhee, T. Westmeier

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

We present the highest resolution and sensitivity ∼ 1.4 GHz continuum observations of the Eridanus supergroup obtained as a part of the Widefield Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) pre-pilot observations using the ASKAP. We detect 9461 sources at 1.37 GHz down to a flux density limit of ∼ 0.1 mJy at 6.1′′×7.9′′ resolution with a median root mean square of 0.05 mJy beam −1 . We find that the flux scale is accurate to within 5 % (compared to NVSS at 1.4 GHz). We then determine the global properties of eight Eridanus supergroup …

Domain Specific Analysis Of Privacy Practices And Concerns In The Mobile Application Market, Fahimeh Ebrahimi Meymand

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Mobile applications (apps) constantly demand access to sensitive user information in exchange for more personalized services. These-mostly unjustified-data collection tactics have raised major privacy concerns among mobile app users. Existing research on mobile app privacy aims to identify these concerns, expose apps with malicious data collection practices, assess the quality of apps' privacy policies, and propose automated solutions for privacy leak detection and prevention. However, existing solutions are generic, frequently missing the contextual characteristics of different application domains. To address these limitations, in this dissertation, we study privacy in the app store at a domain level. Our objective is to …

Nanosecond Infrared Laser Ablation Dynamics, Achala Priyadarshani Deenamulla Kankanamalage

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Laser ablation dynamics encompasses studies of fundamental physical processes of mid infrared laser ablation. Understanding the mechanisms of IR laser desorption and ionization can lead to improvements in laser ablation-based techniques and expansion of their applications. Control of material removal ensures both accuracy and precision of the laser ablation-based techniques. The laser ablation mechanism in the studied wavelength region, is a process of water vaporization and photothermal disruption of tissue. Glycerol was used as the ablation target to establish the methods. Experiments were first aimed at developing methods to monitor material removal during ablation using a 2.94 µm wavelength mid-IR …

Varying Genesis And Landfall Locations For North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones In A Warmer Climate, Mackenzie M. Weaver, Andra J. Garner

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most dangerous hazards that threaten U.S. coastlines. They can be particularly damaging when they occur in densely populated areas, such as the U.S. Northeast. Here, we investigate seasonal-scale variations in TC genesis and subsequent first landfall locations of > 37,000 synthetic TCs that impact the U.S. Northeast from the pre-industrial era (prior to 1800) through a very high emissions future (RCP8.5; 2080–2100). TC genesis in the Main Development Region decreases across all parts of the season from the pre-industrial to the future, with the greatest decreases in the proportion of genesis (up to 80.49%) …

Arma Model Development And Analysis For Global Temperature Uncertainty, Mahmud Hasan, Gauree Wathodkar, Mathias Muia

Faculty and Student Publications

Temperature uncertainty models for land and sea surfaces can be developed based on statistical methods. In this paper, we developed a novel time-series temperature uncertainty model, which is the autoregressive moving average (ARMA) (1,1) model. The model was developed for an observed annual mean temperature anomaly X(t), which is a combination of a true (latent) global anomaly Y(t) for a year (t) and normal variable w(t). The uncertainty is taken as the variance of w(t), which was divided into land surface temperature (LST) uncertainty, sea surface temperature (SST) uncertainty, and the corresponding source of uncertainty. The ARMA …

Test Beam Performance Of A Cbc3-Based Mini-Module For The Phase-2 Cms Outer Tracker Before And After Neutron Irradiation, Cms Collaboration

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will undergo major upgrades to increase the instantaneous luminosity up to 5–7.5 × 10³⁴ cm^-2s^-1. This High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC (HL-LHC) will deliver a total of 3000–4000 fb^-1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13–14 TeV. To cope with these challenging environmental conditions, the strip tracker of the CMS experiment will be upgraded using modules with two closely-spaced silicon sensors to provide information to include tracking in the Level-1 trigger selection. This paper describes the performance, in a test beam experiment, of the …

New U–Pb Geochronology For The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, Critical Reevaluation Of High-Precision Ages And Their Impact On The End-Triassic Extinction Event, Alisson L. Oliveira, Mark D. Schmitz, Corey J. Wall, James L. Crowley, Antomat A. Macêdo Filho, Maria Helena B. M. Hollanda

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The end-Triassic extinction (ETE) event represents one of the ‘big five’ episodes of mass extinction. The leading hypothesis for the cause of the ETE is the intrusion of voluminous magmas of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) into carbon-rich sediments of two South American sedimentary basins, around 201.5 Ma. The timing of dikes and sills emplacement, however, must be considered in light of age models from CAMP rocks occurring in North America. In this work, we present new high-precision ages for critical samples in NE Brazil (201.579 ± 0.057 Ma) and Canada (201.464 ± 0.017 Ma), in order to evaluate …

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning For Enhanced Cybersecurity: A Proposal To Defeat Malware, Emmanuel Boateng

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Cybersecurity is very crucial in the digital age in order to safeguard the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of data and systems. Mitigation techniques used in the industry include Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), Incident Response Planning (IRP), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), and Signature-based and Heuristic Detection.

MFA is employed as an additional layer of protection in several sectors to help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. IRP is a plan in place to address cybersecurity problems efficiently and expeditiously. SIEM offers real-time analysis and alerts the system of threats and vulnerabilities. Heuristic-based detection relies on detecting anomalies when it comes …

Nash Blowups Of Toric Varieties In Prime Characteristic, Daniel Duarte, Jack Jeffries, Luis Núñez-Betancourt

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

We initiate the study of the resolution of singularities properties of Nash blowups over fields of prime characteristic. We prove that the iteration of normalized Nash blowups desingularizes normal toric surfaces. We also introduce a prime characteristic version of the logarithmic Jacobian ideal of a toric variety and prove that its blowup coincides with the Nash blowup of the variety. As a consequence, the Nash blowup of a, not necessarily normal, toric variety of arbitrary dimension in prime characteristic can be described combinatorially.

Twitter Database Health Visualization, Tor Qureshi

2023 IDIR Data Visualization Challenges-Archive

By utilizing the Twitter IDs and their corresponding posts in the database, we were able to create a UI that generates a graph that demonstrates a word or phrases' usage over time based on the number of times mentioned within the time span of the database (2011-2023). In the future, this could be improved by combining it with the Twitter API to monitor live trends and associations.

Geophysical Characterization Of Underground Storage In Salt Domes During The Clean Energy Transition, Joses B. Omojola

LSU Master's Theses

Safely transforming geological formations into cost-effective underground storage is critical for the US energy security and global energy transition. Seasonal energy demand requires relatively cheap, impermeable, non-reactive materials for storing vast amounts of natural gas and hydrogen. Due to their low risk of fracturing and leakage, salt formations are ideal for these purposes however, pressure variations during drawdown, differential salt creep, and reactivation of pre-existing fractures along boundary shear zone(s) (BSZ) can be detrimental to salt cavern safety and long-term cavern operations. Several environmental disasters at storage facilities in the US and Europe, have created a need to understand how …

Quantifying Mud Settling Velocity As A Function Of Turbulence And Salinity In A Deltaic Estuary, Michael W. Mcdonell

LSU Master's Theses

Mud settling velocity is controlled by flocculation, which in turn strongly depends on turbulence and on the chemistry and biology of the water-sediment mixture. As a result, mud settling velocity can be poorly constrained in coastal areas and vary in space and time by orders of magnitude. Here we quantified mud settling velocity in Barataria Basin, a deltaic estuary in Louisiana (USA), using three independent methods: eddy covariance (one station for 200 days), floc cameras (4 stations at one time), and Rouse profile inversion (14 stations, replicated 10-30 times each). Eddy covariance indicates that settling velocity increases with turbulence, at …

Snow Distribution And Influence In Taylor Valley, Antarctica, Using Remote Sensing, Katherine Mcnulty, Peter Doran, Mark Salvatore, Suniti Karunatillake

LSU Master's Theses

The McMurdo Dry Valleys is the largest ice-free area in Antarctica, but seasonal snow covers the valley floors sporadically throughout the year. In this study, a model to estimate areal snow coverage from satellite imagery was created. An area-volume model was created to estimate the amount of snow water equivalent (SWE) from the snow area extracted from the imagery. Snow cover influences the total albedo, the hydrologic budget, and the soil moisture and soil temperature in Taylor Valley (TV). Quantifying snow precipitation in TV is challenging because snow redistributes with winds, sublimates, or melts within a short period. Previous estimates …

Gulf Sturgeon Mesohabitat Use And Movement In The Lower Pearl River Louisiana-Mississippi, Amanda Popovich

LSU Master's Theses

After spring migrations to natal rivers Gulf Sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi reside in freshwater holding areas prior to fall emigrations to nearby estuaries. Limited published information on the physical habitat characteristics of these holding areas is available, especially for juvenile fish in the western portion of the Gulf Sturgeon’s distribution. To further investigate freshwater occupancy and movement patterns, 32 acoustic receivers were deployed from late April to October of 2021 and 2022 in 1600-m reaches distributed throughout the lower Pearl River, Louisiana-Mississippi, the westernmost river within their distribution. Generalized linear mixed models and multi-state models were used to determine what …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Humic/Melanin-Like Compounds By Oxidative Polymerization Of Simple Aromatic Precursors, Nastaran Khademimoshgenani, Sarah A. Green

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a complex mixture of naturally occurring organic molecules originating from multiple marine and terrestrial sources. DOM plays a significant role in water quality by affecting the photochemistry, trace metal transport, and acidity in aquatic systems. Understanding the chemical composition of DOM helps interpret the links between its optical properties and molecular structures. Currently, the molecular origins of the optical properties of DOM are not well-defined. In this study, we oxidize and initiate the polymerization of melanin precursors 1,8-dihydroxy naphthalene and 5,6-dihydroxy indole by the addition of hydrogen peroxide and/or with ultraviolet irradiation. Our goal is …

Filter-Based Air Sampler Capable Of Integration Into Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robert M. Eninger, Stepanie A. Ohms, Jeremy M. Slagley

AFIT Patents

A filter-based air sampler, more specifically a filter-based air sampler capable of integration into small unmanned aerial systems is disclosed. The filter-based air sampler may include a filter assembly which has as its component parts: an open faced air intake component, a filter, and a filter support that has a central supporting grid. The filter assembly may joined to the housing of a fan, such as a centrifugal fan, with the supporting grid of the filter support being disposed over the air inlet of the fan.

Biodiversity Of Forage Fishes In The Lower Laguna Madre, Southernmost Texas, David Camarillo Jr., Elizabeth Mogus Garcia, Carlos E. Cintra-Buenrostro

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Coastal estuarine ecosystems serve as nursery habitats for many commercially and recreationally important fishes. Biodiversity is a structural indicator and has been used as a metric for conservation and management. In the hypersaline Lower Laguna Madre of Texas, a variety of organisms makes their living in and around the dominant seagrass vegetation. This study provides a general assessment of forage fishes biodiversity collected seasonally with bag seines in two sites: Holly Beach (HB) and South Bay (SB) within the most southern Texas bay system as part of a broader study on fish biology. A total of 15,880 fishes representing 32 …

Matroid Generalizations Of Some Graph Results, Cameron Crenshaw

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The edges of a graph have natural cyclic orderings. We investigate the matroids for which a similar cyclic ordering of the circuits is possible. A full characterization of the non-binary matroids with this property is given. Evidence of the difficulty of this problem for binary matroids is presented, along with a partial result for binary orderable matroids.

For a graph G, the ratio of |E(G)| to the minimum degree of G has a natural lower bound. For a matroid M that is representable over a finite field, we generalize this to a lower bound on …

First-Order Algorithms For Nonlinear Structured Optimization, Miao Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nonlinear optimization is a critical branch in applied mathematics and has attracted wide attention due to its popularity in practical applications. In this work, we present two methods which use first-order information to solve two typical classes of nonlinear structured optimization problems.

For a class of unconstrained nonconvex composite optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth but possibly nonconvex function and a convex but possibly nonsmooth function, we propose a unified proximal gradient method with extrapolation, which provides unified treatment to convex and nonconvex problems. The method achieves the best-known convergence rate for first-order methods when …

Multilevel Optimization With Dropout For Neural Networks, Gary Joseph Saavedra

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

Large neural networks have become ubiquitous in machine learning. Despite their widespread use, the optimization process for training a neural network remains com-putationally expensive and does not necessarily create networks that generalize well to unseen data. In addition, the difficulty of training increases as the size of the neural network grows. In this thesis, we introduce the novel MGDrop and SMGDrop algorithms which use a multigrid optimization scheme with a dropout coarsening operator to train neural networks. In contrast to other standard neural network training schemes, MGDrop explicitly utilizes information from smaller sub-networks which act as approximations of the full …

Finite Element Methods For Elliptic Optimal Control Problems With General Tracking, Seonghee Jeong

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation concerns a linear-quadratic elliptic distributed optimal control problem with pointwise state constraints in two spatial dimensions, where the cost function tracks the state at points, curves and regions of a domain.

First we explore the elliptic optimal control problem subject to pointwise control constraints. This problem is reduced into a problem that only involves the control. The solution of the reduced problem is characterized by a variational inequality. Then we introduce the elliptic optimal control problem with general tracking and pointwise state constraints. Here we reformulate the optimal control problem into a problem that only involves the state, …

Mesopause Region Temperature And Na Number Density Between 1990 And 2017, Tao Yuan, Chiao-Yao She

Browse all Datasets

The Colorado State University (CSU) Na lidar performed nocturnal mesopause region Na density and temperature observations between March 1990 and March 2010 at Fort Collins, CO (41.6N, 105W). The lidar was relocated to Utah State University (USU) campus and has continued its regular observation at Logan, Utah (42N, 112W) since September 2010.

Air Quality Analysis With Sensors, Satellites, And Models, Carl Malings

Sustainability Seminar Series

Poor air quality is a major global public health concern, which is only projected to get worse in coming years. A comprehensive understanding of current and potential future air quality and its key drivers spanning from local to global scales is needed to tackle this important problem. This presentation will outline the sources of information that we use to understand air quality (e.g., ground-based measurements, satellites, and models), their strengths and limitations, and how they are being used together to give us a better picture of air quality locally and globally.

Synthesis And Characterization Of Semi-Interpenetrating And Double Networks Of Sulfonimide- And Imidazolium-Containing Poly(Ionic Liquids), Jeremiah Coughlon, Seth Taylor, Jason Bara, Kevin Miller, Sourav Chatterjee

Scholars Week

In recent years, there has been increased research interest in creating electrically conductive polymer membranes with materials that are widely available and environmentally safe. Herein, we report how polymeric membranes comprised of unique combinations of ionenes and poly(ionic liquids), including a recently developed sulfonimide- and imidazolium-containing methacryloxy-based monomer, were produced via UV photopolymerization. These membranes were specifically tailored to exhibit both ionic conductivity and an affinity for carbon dioxide, which are both crucial characteristics in such applications as electron transport in lithium-ion batteries and gas sorbency in separation techniques. Monomers, such as the aforementioned methacryloxy-based ionic liquid (IL) and C4VIm, …