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Not Tea and Crumpets : The 1976 Louisiana Governor\u27s Conference on Women and the Formation of a New Women\u27s Platform, 1972-1982
Get PDFThe success of three Louisiana feminists in the 1970s, Fran Bussie, Clarence Marie Collier, and Pat Evans stemmed from their professional expertise in labor rights, education, and politics, respectively. By joining and maintaining memberships in a variety of social, civic, and activists groups, these feminist leaders via the 1976 Louisiana Governor’s Conference on Women created a unique network that allowed for the formation of a new women’s platform. This conference advanced women’s rights, established a working platform for reform, and helped usher in second-wave feminism in Louisiana. Using conference booklets, archived video and audio interviews, and newspaper articles, this thesis argues that when women came together in their professional positions to advocate for women’s rights, the results were clearly positive
General Nonlinear-Material Elasticity in Classical One-Dimensional Solid Mechanics
Get PDFWe will create a class of generalized ellipses and explore their ability to define a distance on a space and generate continuous, periodic functions. Connections between these continuous, periodic functions and the generalizations of trigonometric functions known in the literature shall be established along with connections between these generalized ellipses and some spectrahedral projections onto the plane, more specifically the well-known multifocal ellipses. The superellipse, or Lam\\u27{e} curve, will be a special case of the generalized ellipse. Applications of these generalized ellipses shall be explored with regards to some one-dimensional systems of classical mechanics. We will adopt the Ramberg-Osgood relation for stress and strain ubiquitous in engineering mechanics and define a general internal bending moment for which this expression, and several others, are special cases. We will then apply this general bending moment to some one-dimensional Euler beam-columns along with the continuous, periodic functions we developed with regard to the generalized ellipse. This will allow us to construct new solutions for critical buckling loads of Euler columns and deflections of beam-columns under very general engineering material requirements without some of the usual assumptions associated with the Ramberg-Osgood relation
Design and Analysis of Modular Axial Flux Switched Reluctance Motor
Get PDFThis thesis presents a new modular structure of the axial flux Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM). The design consists of four stator disks with each adjacent disk rotated 30 degrees apart and four rotor disks connected to a common shaft. The proposed design aims to reduce the unwanted radial force, mitigate the torque ripple, and improve the efficiency. The modular structure distributes the radial force and torque strokes along the axial length of the motor, potentially damping the torque pulsation. In addition, the modular structure would deliver the rating power at a lower current level, reducing the overall ohmic loss. Moreover, if a fault occurs on a motor disk or its control unit, the motor would still operate through other disks, increasing the reliability of the system. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed design, the magneto-static and transient performance of the motor are compared with the conventional single layer structure using 3-D Finite-Element (FE) software tool to see that the proposed motor performs better with lower torque ripple and lower radial force than a conventional single layer structure
A New Real-Time Ocean Observing Station on Ship Shoal on Louisiana Shelf
Get PDFOne of the major challenges that we are facing in the northern Gulf of Mexico coastal area is the need of a better and reliable offshore met-ocean real time data collection system that supports the mission of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and other federal and local agencies for coastal management, protection, and restoration, especially along the Louisiana coast. This area has a suite of environmental problems that require the acquisition of real time data for immediate assessment or model-based assessment and predictions that rely on this kind of data. One such system providing this kind of data is managed by the Wave-Current-Surge Information System at LSU
The Roles of the Chaperone-like Protein CpeZ and the Phycoerythrobilin Lyase CpeY in Phycoerythrin Biogenesis
Get PDFPhycoerythrin (PE) present in the distal ends of light-harvesting phycobilisome rods in Fremyella diplosiphon (Tolypothrix sp. PCC 7601) contains five phycoerythrobilin (PEB) chromophores attached to six cysteine residues for efficient green light capture for photosynthesis. Chromophore ligation on PE subunits occurs through bilin lyase catalyzed reactions, but the characterization of the roles of all bilin lyases for phycoerythrin is not yet complete. To gain a more complete understanding about the individual functions of CpeZ and CpeY in PE biogenesis in cyanobacteria, we examined PE and phycobilisomes purified from wild type F. diplosiphon, cpeZ and cpeY knockout mutants. We find that the cpeZ and cpeY mutants accumulate less PE than wild type cells. We show that in the cpeZ mutant, chromophorylation of both PE subunits is affected, especially the Cys-80 and Cys-48/Cys-59 sites of CpeB, the beta-subunit of PE. The cpeY mutant showed reduced chromophorylation at Cys-82 of CpeA. We also show that, in vitro, CpeZ stabilizes PE subunits and assists in refolding of CpeB after denaturation. Taken together, we conclude that CpeZ acts as a chaperone-like protein, assisting in the folding/stability of PE subunits, allowing bilin lyases such as CpeY and CpeS to attach PEB to their PE subunit
The Vezo communities and fisheries of the coral reef ecosystem in the Bay of Ranobe, Madagascar
Get PDFMadagascar, a country whose extraordinary levels of endemism and biodiversity are celebrated globally by scientists and laymen alike, yet historically has received surprisingly little research attention, is the setting of the present dissertation. Here, I contribute to the need for applied research by: 1) focusing on the most intensely fished section of the Toliara Barrier Reef, the Bay of Ranobe; 2) characterizing the marine environment, the human population, and the fisheries; and 3) collecting the longest known time-series of data on fisheries of Madagascar, thereby providing a useful baseline for future analyses. In Chapter 1, the bathymetry of the Bay was characterized following a unique application of the boosted regression tree classifier to the RGB bands of IKONOS imagery. Derivation of water depths, based on DOS-corrected images, following a generic, log-transformed multiple linear regression approach produced a predictive accuracy of 1.28 m, whereas model fitting performed using the boosted regression tree classifier, allowing for interaction effects (tree complexity= 2), provided increased accuracy (RMSE= 1.01 m). Estimates of human population abundance, distribution, and dynamics were obtained following a dwelling-unit enumeration approach, using IKONOS Panchromatic and Google Earth images. Results indicated, in 2016, 31,850 people lived within 1 km of the shore, and 28,046 people lived within the 12 coastal villages of the Bay. Localized population growth rates within the villages, where birth rates and migration are combined, ranged from 2.96% - 6.83%, greatly exceeding official estimates of 2.78%. Annual pirogue counts demonstrated a shift in fishing effort from south to the north. Gear and boat (pirogue) profiles were developed, and the theoretical maximum number of fishermen predicted (n= 4,820), in 2013, from a regression model based on pirogue lengths (R2= 0.49). Spatial fishing effort distribution was mapped following a satellite-based enumeration of fishers-at-sea, resulting in a bay-wide estimate of intensity equaling 33.3 pirogue-meters km-2. Landings and CPUE were characterized, with respect to finfish, by family, species, gear, and village. Expansion of landings to bay-wide fisheries yields indicated 1,885.8 mt year-1 of mixed fisheries productivity, with an estimated wholesale value of 1.64 million USD per annum
Acclimation, long-term repeatability, and phenotypic correlations of aerobic metabolic traits in the Gulf killifish, Fundulus grandis
Get PDFThis research examined the effects of acclimation to lowered salinity, elevated temperature, and hypoxia on aerobic metabolism of the Gulf killifish, Fundulus grandis, a common estuarine resident of the Gulf of Mexico. Standard metabolic rate (SMR), maximum metabolic rate (MMR), absolute aerobic scope (AAS), and critical oxygen tension (Pcrit) were each influenced by one or more acclimation treatments. Assessing the consistency of these traits measured in the same individuals over time, all were found to be significantly repeatable with no indication that the repeatability of any traits was affected by acclimation conditions. Significant correlations were found between SMR and Pcrit (positively correlated), between SMR and AAS (negatively correlated), between MMR and AAS (positive), and between AAS and Pcrit (negative). This study, therefore, documents the effects of acclimation on these traits, their repeatability, and correlations among them. It further suggests that repeatability of these traits is not context dependent