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Undertow
Get PDFA short story collection that explores themes of culture, history, race, movement, stagnancy, and freedom. All stories are connected by elements of water, swimming, rivers, or wetlands. All contain characters seeking to escape their circumstances, with varying degrees of success. For some characters, the arc of their development lays in their movement; for others, it lays in their learning to live with a lack of movement
How We Live Today and Other Stories
Get PDFHow We Live Today is a collection of stories about family connections and the process of making amends to keep a family whole. The families are not just traditional families, but also arrangements constructed out of necessity, circumstance, or convenience. The title story tells how a man ends a lengthy divide with a stepmother for the sake of her, his son, and ultimately himself. We see adolescents do the right thing in their circumstances at the risk of losing peer standing or to avert future social damage. An older golfer encourages a younger golfer, easing guilt but realizing that respect for the game ties golfers together. A young professional steps outside of his bounds to help a family of necessity, a group of gay men stricken during the first AIDS outbreak. Another man erases anxiety by dismissing the differences he has perceived in his relationship with his son. And finally, a young man sinks irretrievably into self-destruction over broken family ties
Geomorphic and temporal evolution of a Mississippi delta flanking barrier island: Grand Isle, LA
Get PDFOptically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating beach ridge sediments is one method for resolving barrier island growth at intermediate scales (decades-centuries), information that is lacking for Louisiana. This research combines OSL, GPR, aerial imagery, and cores to document temporal and spatial evolution of a Louisiana barrier island.
Grand Isle is composed of beach ridges organized in distinct, unconformable sets that began forming 0.75 ka until 0.575 ka when deposition ceased, the ridges were partially eroded, and deposition resumed in a more eastward direction. The central ridges formed between 370±30 and 170±10 years ago at a rate of one ridge every 11.6 years with sand from the eroding Caminada headland that, with flanking barriers, forms the Bayou Lafourche transgressive depositional system. Grand Isle’s lithosome (92,600,000 cubic meters) requires an annual longshore transport of 128,625 cubic meters. The lithosome thickness (10 meters) and steady sediment supply stabilize the island relative to other Louisiana barriers
LX: A Life in Light
Get PDFThe author looks back over a long career working as a stage lighting technician in the American theatre, sharing personal experiences, and providing an insider’s view of the art, history, and culture of theatrical lighting
Effective Statistical Energy Function Based Protein Un/Structure Prediction
Get PDFProteins are an important component of living organisms, composed of one or more polypeptide chains, each containing hundreds or even thousands of amino acids of 20 standard types. The structure of a protein from the sequence determines crucial functions of proteins such as initiating metabolic reactions, DNA replication, cell signaling, and transporting molecules. In the past, proteins were considered to always have a well-defined stable shape (structured proteins), however, it has recently been shown that there exist intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), which lack a fixed or ordered 3D structure, have dynamic characteristics and therefore, exist in multiple states. Based on this, we extend the mapping of protein sequence not only to a fixed stable structure but also to an ensemble of protein conformations, which help us explain the complex interaction within a cell that was otherwise obscured. The objective of this dissertation is to develop effective ab initio methods and tools for protein un/structure prediction by developing effective statistical energy function, conformational search method, and disulfide connectivity patterns predictor.
The key outcomes of this dissertation research are: i) a sequence and structure-based energy function for structured proteins that includes energetic terms extracted from hydrophobic-hydrophilic properties, accessible surface area, torsion angles, and ubiquitously computed dihedral angles uPhi and uPsi, ii) an ab initio protein structure predictor that combines optimal energy function derived from sequence and structure-based properties of proteins and an effective conformational search method which includes angular rotation and segment translation strategies, iii) an SVM with RBF kernel-based framework to predict disulfide connectivity pattern, iv) a hydrophobic-hydrophilic property based energy function for unstructured proteins, and v) an ab initio conformational ensemble generator that combines energy function and conformational search method for unstructured proteins which can help understand the biological systems involving IDPs and assist in rational drugs design to cure critical diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases caused by challenging states of IDPs
Fair to Middlin’: How the Mediocre White Male Trope as the Exemplar of Human Experience and Universal Truth Fails to Adequately Prepare the Diverse Field of Contemporary Actors and Audiences in Film, Television and Theatre Today
Get PDFNon-traditional casting has been a controversial practice in film, television and theatre that was implemented to offer people of color and women opportunities which had previously been available to white or male performers. The following is a case study documenting the process by which I have discovered that non-traditional casting as a practice contributes to the oppression of people of color as well as supports the status quo of the white patriarchy. This case study is analyzed from the historical, sociological, psychological and philosophical theories and ideologies relevant to the unsuccessful attempt of a female actor of African-American descent at portraying a white, Evangelical, male minister. It concludes with an invitation and an approach to making better people
The Effects of Automated Grading on Computer Science Courses at the University of New Orleans
Get PDFThis is a study of the impacts of the incorporation, into certain points of the Computer Science degree program at the University of New Orleans, of Course Management software with an Autograding component. The software in question, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, is called “Autolab.” We begin by dissecting Autolab in order to gain an understanding of its inner workings. We can then take out understanding of its functionality and apply that to an examination of fundamental changes to courses in the time since they incorporated the software. With that, we then compare Drop, Failure, Withdrawal rate data from before and after the introduction of Autolab. With this collection of data, we can conclude, to a certain extent, that Autolab has had a negligible impact on course outcomes, but a measurable impact on course structure and pedagogy as well as improved quality of life for students and professors, alike
Correlation of Block Design Task Proficiency and Dorsal Pathway White Matter Integrity in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
No full textSuperior performance on block design tasks, an assessment of visuospatial abilities, is reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This proficiency supports the weak central coherence theory (WCC) as a feature of information processing in ASD. The dorsal pathway, commonly referred to as the “where” pathway, is thought to be used to recognize where objects are in space. The purpose of this study was to determine whether proficiencies in the block design tasks correlated with white matter integrity of the dorsal pathway. Twelve right-handed boys with ASD (mean=14.0, SD=1.6) and 12 typically developing right-handed boys (mean=13.6, SD=1.5), 12-16 years old, completed the WISC-III and MRI and DTI scans to evaluate the integrity of the dorsal pathway. We hypothesized that block design performance would be better in the ASD group than controls. We also predicted that better block design performance would be associated with stronger connectivity of the dorsal pathway, particularly in the right hemisphere. Results are pending final analysis