Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Polytopes Arising From Binary Multi-Way Contingency Tables And Characteristic Imsets For Bayesian Networks, Jing Xi

Theses and Dissertations--Statistics

The main theme of this dissertation is the study of polytopes arising from binary multi-way contingency tables and characteristic imsets for Bayesian networks.

Firstly, we study on three-way tables whose entries are independent Bernoulli ran- dom variables with canonical parameters under no three-way interaction generalized linear models. Here, we use the sequential importance sampling (SIS) method with the conditional Poisson (CP) distribution to sample binary three-way tables with the sufficient statistics, i.e., all two-way marginal sums, fixed. Compared with Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) approach with a Markov basis (MB), SIS procedure has the advantage that it does not require …

Effect Of Sample History On Dissolution Rates Of Gypsum {010} Surfaces, Dennis Stefan Renier Lennaerts

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Mineral dissolution plays a significant role in geochemical processes such as carbon sequestration and isotope geochemistry. While factors such as temperature, pressure, and solution chemistry have been widely studied, the effects of sample history and surface morphology on dissolution rates have been studied to a lesser extent. This research focuses on the dissolution of cleaved, polished, and reacted samples of the atomically flat natural {010} cleavage plane of gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O) to further investigate upon the effect of sample history. Gypsum was chosen as the mineral of interest because of its planar crystal surface and relatively fast dissolution rate. Chemical dissolution …

Cyclic Voltammetric And Square Wave Anodic Stripping Voltammetric Analysis Of Lead And Cadmium Utilizing The Novel Titanium Dioxide/ Zirconium Dioxide/ Tween 80 Carbon Paste Composite Electrode, Phuong Khanh Quoc Nguyen

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Heavy metals, particularly Lead (Pb) and Cadmium (Cd), had been long identified as hazardous pollutants in the environment. Joining the continuous effort to alleviate this dilemma, a new electro-chemical sensor has been developed to assess the level of Pb and Cd in aqueous environment. The current work describes the utilization of two different electro-analytical techniques, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and square wave anodic stripping voltammetry (SWASV), in conjunction with the novel Titanium Dioxide/ Zirconium Dioxide/ Tween 80 (TiO2/ ZrO2/ Tween 80) carbon paste composite electrode to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze Pb and Cd. In this dissertation, along with a comprehensive literature …

A Large Scale Distributed Syntactic, Semantic And Lexical Language Model For Machine Translation, Ming Tan

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The n-gram model is the most widely used language model (LM) in statistical machine translation system, due to its simplicity and scalability. However, it only encodes the local lexical relation between adjacent words and clearly ignores the rich syntactic and semantic structures of the natural languages. Attempting to increase the order of an n-gram to describe longer range dependencies in natural language immediately runs into the curse of dimensionality. Although previous researches tried to increase the order of n-gram on a large corpus, they did not see obvious improvement beyond 6-gram. Meanwhile, other LMs, such as syntactic language models and …

Post-Emplacement Leaching Behaviors Of Nano Zero Valent Iron Modified With Carboxymethylcellulose Under Simulated Aquifer Conditions, Leslie Lavinia Williams

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Nanoscale particles of zero valent iron stabilized with carboxymethylcellulose (CMC-nZVI) have been shown to degrade chlorinated hydrocarbons efficiently in bench-scale investigations. The remediation of contaminated sites by subsurface injection of stabilized nZVI in a slurry form has been investigated at pilot scale and field scale with conflicting results concerning transport of stabilized nZVI and its long-term stability for in situ degradation of chlorinated hydrocarbons. Changes in the hydraulic conductivity in porous media have also been reported following injection of stabilized nZVI slurry in both large tank experiments and in field studies. This study investigated the leaching behavior of CMC-nZVI post-emplacement …

Adaptive Semantic Annotation Of Entity And Concept Mentions In Text, Pablo N. Mendes

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The recent years have seen an increase in interest for knowledge repositories that are useful across applications, in contrast to the creation of ad hoc or application-specific databases.

These knowledge repositories figure as a central provider of unambiguous identifiers and semantic relationships between entities. As such, these shared entity descriptions serve as a common vocabulary to exchange and organize information in different formats and for different purposes. Therefore, there has been remarkable interest in systems that are able to automatically tag textual documents with identifiers from shared knowledge repositories so that the content in those documents is described in a …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Graphene Oxide/Sulfur Nanocomposite For Lithium-Ion Batteries, Aaron Joseph Blake

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The growing need for clean and efficient energy storage systems has recently peaked due to concerns of climate change and increased global energy consumption. However, efficiently integrating renewable resources such as solar and wind energy into society will require a complex electrical energy storage (EES) system capable of storing and expending significant amounts of energy. A battery based on the lithium/sulfur couple can yield a theoretical specific energy of 2600Wh/kg, which is about five times higher than that offered by present Li-ion batteries, and hence, is a promising and attractive technology. Despite recent developments in addressing various issues inherent to …

A Geophysical Investigation To Locate Missing Graves Utilizing Ground Penetrating Radar, Electromagnetic, And Magnetic Methods, Jared Wyatt Shank

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Old cemeteries often have graves that are unmarked because gravestones are missing or degraded and the graves are in areas for which maps or other historical documents are incomplete. This is the case for one cemetery in southwestern Ohio, known as Stevenson Cemetery, which contains graves of Revolutionary War and War of 1812 veterans. The immediate goal of this study is to locate unmarked graves in this cemetery using geophysical techniques. The broader goal is to evaluate three geophysical techniques to determine the effectiveness of each.

The three geophysical techniques evaluated in this study are magnetics, electro-magnetics, and ground-penetrating radar. …

Evaluating Abiotic Influences On Soil Salinity Of Inland Managed Wetlands And Agricultural Fields In A Semi-Arid Environment, Drew Nathan Fowler

LSU Master's Theses

Agriculture and moist-soil management are important management techniques used on wildlife refuges to provide adequate energy for migrant and wintering waterbirds. However, in arid systems, the presence and accumulation of soluble salts throughout the soil profile can limit total biomass production of wetland plants and agronomic crops and thus jeopardize meeting waterbird energy needs. It is unknown how moist-soil management and traditional agriculture practices influence the accumulation and distribution of soluble salts of soil profiles. In this study of an arid wetland ecosystem, I determine: 1) the effect of long-term, distinct surface hydrologic regimes associated with moist-soil management and agricultural …

Evaluating Quaternary Glacial Till Sheet Volume And Duration Of Grounding Events Using Sediment Flux Calculations In The Eastern Basin Paleotroughs, Ross Sea, Anarctica, Logan Gregory Kirst

LSU Master's Theses

A sequence of three seismically-resolvable, back-stepping grounding zone wedges (GZWs) within the Glomar-Challenger Basin paleo-ice-stream trough is conventionally interpreted to have been deposited by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). For this to be true, there would have to have been voluminous GZW deposition via fast moving ice streams with high sediment flux during the short timeframe since the WAIS retreat began at 11 Ka 14C BP and when the WAIS moved south of Roosevelt Island at 3.2 Ka BP. In contrast to this interpretation of how the near-surface stratigraphy relates …

Energy Spectra Comparisons For Matched Clinical Electron Beams On Elekta Linear Accelerators Using A Permanent Magnet Spectrometer, David Mclaughlin

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this work was to use a permanent magnet electron energy spectrometer to measure and compare electron beam energy spectra from matched electron beams on Elekta radiotherapy accelerators at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center

Methods: Electron beamcollimation, X-ray background collimation, and irradiation geometry were developed to produce suitable latent images in computed radiography (CR) strips at the exit side of a 0.5-Tesla permanent magnet spectrometer.An analytical technique transformed CR strip images into energy spectra on central axis at 95-cm source-to-collimator distance.Electron energy spectra at 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, and 20 MeV for four accelerators, whose …

Impacts And Recovery Of The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill On Vegetation Structure And Function Of Phragmites Australis, Chad Robert Judy

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract The aim of this study was to determine the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill on the common reed Phragmites australis, and the processes controlling species effects and recovery, via a greenhouse mesocosm study. In the greenhouse DWH source oil, weathered approximately 40% by weight and emulsified, was applied to the aboveground shoots of P. australis growing in marsh sods to produce the following treatment-levels: (1) oil coverage of the lower 30% of shoot-height, (2) the lower 70% of shoot-height, (3) repeated oil coverage of the lower 70% of shoot-height, (4) 100% oil coverage of shoots, (5) …

Quantification Of Total And Oil-Degrading Bacteria In Louisiana Marsh Sediment Following The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Using Cultivation And Real-Time Pcr Assays, Kristopher Nolan Ackoury

LSU Master's Theses

Although the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill on the bacterial communities in several Gulf of Mexico habitats have been described, little if any research has been published evaluating the impacts of the spill on bacterial populations in the most severely oiled salt marsh soils of Barataria Bay, Louisiana. The aim of this study was to define the effects of the spill on the total and oil-degrading bacterial communities in these marshes. Using quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) and traditional cultivation methods bacterial communities from contaminated marsh soils were examined thirteen, twenty-two, and twenty-nine months after the initial oiling …

Evaluation Of An Automated Delivery Verification System For Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy Treatments, John-Paul Grenier

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this work was to evaluate the ability of a treatment delivery verification system to detect clinically significant mechanical errors in VMAT delivery utilizing data contained within a commercial record and verify (RV) system, and to test whether the system can be used to reconstruct dose distributions that agree more closely with measured dose distributions than do the original treatment plans. Methods: VMAT treatment plans from five prostate patients, five head and neck patients, and five post-mastectomy chest wall patients treated at our clinic were selected for this study. Known mechanical errors were introduced into each plan, …

The Development Of An Ac Magneto- Optic Kerr Effect System For The Characterization Of Pulsed Laser Deposited Co₂Mnsi-Xal1-X Heusler Alloy Thin Films, Matthew Stephen Champagne

LSU Master's Theses

The Kerr rotation and Kerr ellipticity of thin films can be measured using an AC magneto-optic Kerr effect (AC-MOKE) system. The longitudinal MOKE measurements were taken for a series of Co2MnSixAl1-x thin films with values of x= 0.00, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.00. The films were fabricated using ultra high vacuum, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) techniques. The PLD targets were made using conventional arc-melting techniques. Using a Jones matrix analysis, it was shown that the Kerr rotation and Kerr ellipticity can be measured separately using two optical setups by taking advantage of a photoelastic modulator and lock-in techniques. Co2MnAl and Co2MnSi …

The Effect Of Teaching Biology Concepts With Animations Compared To Static Cartoons On Content Retention, Rebecca Adams Polk

LSU Master's Theses

This study explores the effect of animations versus static cartoons on students’ content retention in a high school biology classroom. Students were pre-tested prior to the introduction of content in three units of study: cellular transport, protein synthesis, and mitosis. After instruction on the topic via PowerPoint presentations, students were randomly assigned to either the test group or experimental group for each unit. The control group was removed from the room and given a series of static cartoons with captions to view. The experimental group viewed an animation on the topic, accompanied by teacher narration, which consisted of the captions …

The Feasibility Of Using Vanadium And Nickel To Track Oil Spills In Coastal Environments, Sean Patrick Kenny

LSU Master's Theses

Crude oil has been increasing in world demand over the past century. It is known that oil is resistant to weathering processes and if spilled, can cause serious environmental damage to an area, on land or sea. A complementary approach to current methods of tracking oil and identifying spill-impacted sediments may be to measure trace metals associated with crude oil. Trace metals, such a vanadium (V) and nickel (Ni) are known to be elevated in concentration in some oil sources, but little work has been done on this topic. This research explored less expensive and time-consuming methods to track or …

The Business Of Privacy, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Prism And Privacy: Will This Change Everything?, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Notice And Consent In A World Of Big Data, Fred H. Cate, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

Articles by Maurer Faculty

• Nowadays individuals are often presented with long and complex privacy notices routinely written by lawyers for lawyers, and are then requested to either ‘consent’ or abandon the use of the desired service.
• The over-use of notice and consent presents increasing challenges in an age of ‘Big Data’.
• These phenomena are receiving attention particularly in the context of the current review of the OECD Privacy Guidelines.
• In 2012 Microsoft sponsored an initiative designed to engage leading regulators, industry executives, public interest advocates, and academic experts in frank discussions about the role of individual control and notice and consent in data protection …

Spatial Variations In Salinity And Temperature Around The Bay Marchand Salt Dome, Offshore Louisiana, Laurie Richards

LSU Master's Theses

The Bay Marchand field is located about 60 miles south of New Orleans, Louisiana on the continental shelf. The structurally complex field has produced over 960 MMBOE as of 2012 (http://www.eplweb.com), with many of these hydrocarbons being trapped against the massive salt dome and associated faulting present in the area. A study by Bruno and Hanor (2003) documented the presence of a high salinity plume off the southeast flank of the dome that had less saline and less dense pore water below it. The purpose of this study was to investigate the spatial variations in pore water salinity and temperature …

Hydraulic Fracturing And Water Use In Dallas, Texas, Sarah Yates

LSU Master's Theses

Dallas, Texas is located in North Texas and sits above the eastern portion of the Barnett Shale natural gas formation. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, was introduced to the region as a means to access previously inaccessible natural gas within the formation. This fracking concerns many because it requires large amounts of fresh water, an average of over 4 million gallons per well within Dallas Water Utilities’ service area. This thesis examines whether water use for fracking will have a negative effect on the water supply for the city of Dallas and its wholesale water customer cities. The water is typically …

Renewable Energy Across The 50 United States And Related Factors, Cynthia Brit Christenson

LSU Master's Theses

Renewable energy production replaces diminishing non-renewable energy sources including fossil fuels. Major sources of renewable energy include biofuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar thermal and photovoltaic, wind, wood, and biomass. Greater use of renewable energy sources can fill gaps in energy as non-renewable sources are depleted, provide more energy independence at a state and national level, and help address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from combustion of fossil fuels. The research objectives of this thesis are two-fold. First, which U.S. states are leaders in renewable energy production? Second, what factors may account for variation among U.S. states in levels of …

Simple And Fast Reconstruction Of 6 Mv Radiotherapy Doses To The Whole Body, Lydia Joyce Wilson

LSU Master's Theses

Background: State-of-the-art radiotherapy medical records include reliable estimates of the therapeutic radiation but are known to underestimate the stray radiation exposures by 40% away from the treatment field. Most commonly, stray radiation exposures are reconstructed using empirical formulas and/or lookup tables containing machine-specific dose measurements. The purpose of this study was to develop a physics-based model to calculate exposures to the whole body of patients who receive external beam photon radiotherapy. Methods: We developed a physics-based analytic algorithm to predict absorbed dose from therapeutic, scatter, and leakage radiation. The model includes separate terms to characterize photon production, attenuation, and scattering …

Effects Of Physicochemical Properties And Macrohabitat On The Foraging Ecology And Condition Of The Centrarchid Assemblage Of The Atchafalaya River Basin, Louisiana, Brett A. Miller

LSU Master's Theses

The Atchafalaya River Basin (ARB), Louisiana supports a diverse centrarchid assemblage, characterized by abundant populations of largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides, black crappie Pomoxis nigromaculatus, warmouth Lepomis gulosus, bluegill Lepomis macrochirus, redspotted sunfish Lepomis miniatus, longear sunfish Lepomis megalotis and redear sunfish Lepomis microlophus. This dynamic floodplain ecosystem is comprised of a mosaic of macrohabitats, including natural bayous, shallow lakes, dead-end and open pipeline canals. I conducted an extensive feeding ecology study to determine the influence of these macrohabitats on foraging activity through stomach content and stable isotope analyses. I collected 2,036 centrarchids with electrofishing efforts in the summers of 2011 …

The Effect Of Frequent Quizzing On Student Learning In A High School Physical Science Classroom, Courtney Bailey Norton

LSU Master's Theses

This research explores the effects of frequent quizzing versus no quizzing in a high school Physical Science class. The study population included two freshman level Physical Science Honors classes. The content in this study included Classifying Matter, States of Matter, Atomic Bonding, Motion and Forces and Motion. For each chapter covered one class served as a control group, getting no quizzes, and the other class served as an experimental group, getting frequent quizzes. Prior to being taught information on the 5 chapters covered in this study, a 15-question pre-test was administered to the students. The information was delivered in the …

Analysis Of The Cyclostratigraphy At The Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary In South-Central Oklahoma, Ryan Michael Todd Ellis

LSU Master's Theses

An outcrop in La Serre, France, was officially ratified by the ICS in 1989, and the IUGS in 1990, as the location of the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Famennian–Tournaisian, and subsequently the Devonian–Carboniferous (D–C) boundary. GSSPs, like this one, are official outcrops that provide physical representations of geologic time boundaries, essentially geological standards that define geologic time, providing a vital framework to model a variety of interpretations of geological phenomena from paleoclimate to paleontological. It has been acknowledged that the GSSP in La Serre, France is in need of revision due to fossil reworking and …

On The Long Duration Of Till Sheet Construction : A Reassessment Of How Quaternary Grounding Line Translations Relate To Near-Surface Seismic-Stratigraphy Of Eastern Ross Sea, Antarctica, Sydney Grace Bowles

LSU Master's Theses

Previously acquired seismic surveys provide strong evidence that the post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) deposited a back-stepping succession of seismically-resolved grounding zone wedges (GZWs) in eastern Ross Sea. However, the chronology of WAIS retreat is debated. The conventional view is that three GZWs (Red, Brown, and Gray Units) were deposited since the LGM. An alternative view, based on recent radiocarbon dates, is that the youngest GZW (the Gray Unit) was deposited during the LGM. If correct, then the older GZWs (Red and Brown Units) were deposited prior to LGM. A recent study (Bart …

An Analysis Of The Influences On Household-Level Adaptations To Environmental Hazards, Tiia Maria Carraway

LSU Master's Theses

Utilizing a randomized phone survey of coastal Louisiana residents, this study will focus on identifying which influences from a resident’s exposure, socio-economic vulnerability and adaptive capacity are the best indicators of an individual’s resilience. Two binary logistic regression models were developed to test the associations of resident response to: 1) acute hazards via household emergency plan adoption and 2) chronic hazards represented by behavior modification in response to daily air quality reporting where adoption of these two risk-reducing behaviors are viewed as increased individual resilience. Bivariate correlation analysis found that a north – south grouping of coastal Louisiana was significantly …

Implementing And Managing Self Assessment Procedures, Terry Leman Armstrong

LSU Master's Theses

This study tests the hypothesis that implementing, managing and enhancing self-assessment procedures may improve learning. One hundred and fifty seven (157) financial math students in a high school with a predominantly at-risk population were divided randomly into an experimental group (self assessment and reflection) and a control group (traditional practice work). The experimental group performed significantly better than the control group (p = 0.02). The experimental group increased their scores from an average of 5.3 out of 18 correct on the pre-test to an average of 11 out of 18 correct on the post-test. The control group increased their scores …