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Fractional Integrals, Potentials, and Radon Transforms
No full textFractional Integrals, Potentials, and Radon Transforms, Second Edition presents recent developments in the fractional calculus of functions of one and several real variables, and shows the relation of this field to a variety of areas in pure and applied mathematics. In this thoroughly revised new edition, the book aims to explore how fractional integrals occur in the study of diverse Radon type transforms in integral geometry.Beyond some basic properties of fractional integrals in one and many dimensions, this book also contains a mathematical theory of certain important weakly singular integral equations of the first kind arising in mechanics, diffraction theory and other areas of mathematical physics. The author focuses on explicit inversion formulae that can be obtained by making use of the classical Marchaud\u27s approach and its generalization, leading to wavelet type representations.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1613/thumbnail.jp
A Case for the Original Setting of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36
Get PDFThis document aims to examine both the original 1913 and revised 1931 settings of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 36, and to present a case in favor of the lesser-known 1913 rendition of the piece as the more definitive setting of the work. The study begins with historical background information on the work and shows how the piece originated from a mature composer at the most productive period in his life and contrasts this to the historical background of the work’s revision. In a deeper analysis of form and content, the positives and negative qualities of each version of the Sonata are compared and contrasted. This document is meant to shed light on the original setting of this wonderful work and to bring awareness of a more developed, complete setting of a work that is increasingly popular in academia
The Metaphysics of Frank Herbert\u27s Dune and God Emperor of Dune: On Time and Language
Get PDFThis dissertation studies the metaphysics of time and rhetoric in the science fiction novels Dune (1963) and God Emperor of Dune (1981) by Frank Herbert. The first chapter critiques the protagonist’s sense of temporality, an ideology in which the future consists of multiple possible choices while each decision of one forecloses a still larger set. Jean-Pierre Dupuy calls this a “supermarket” model of temporality, as if the future were a contingent-free menu of possibilities a subject is free to pick between. My assertion is that this sense of temporality—the Western norm—matches the protagonist’s, Paul Atreides’s, rhetoric. In disclosing Paul’s sense of temporality, we gain a way to immanently critique Paul’s ethics, discovering both his sensual preponderance for, rhetorical failure of, and potential solution in, the ancient Greek notion of kairos: “the opportune time,” or a rhetorical device signifying the timeliness of an intervention. Paul’s rhetoric, in other words, contains a pattern of metaphors indicative of how he senses time, and this sense of time helps determine his tragic actions. A critique of temporality leads to a disclosure of Paul’s ethics and, more importantly, a critique of a dangerous cultural norm. The dissertation’s next part, covering God Emperor of Dune, concerns representation and its limits. It seeks a rhetorical thread or pattern connecting these two novels and finds it in Paul’s refusal to face truth his son, Leto II, knows about language. This project deconstructs the novel through close reading, discovering it pivots around Frank Herbert’s neologism “Siaynoq,” connoting mystery, prestige, and power. My thesis in this chapter is that Leto II, Paul’s son turned emperor, puts forth a Hamletian diatribe against argumentation, hoping to deconstruct reason (logos) itself while lamenting his long life. Upon reaching the apogee of human language’s potentiality in this term “Siaynoq,” however, I contend that the melodrama can only end with his death. Finally, in my third chapter, I investigate the oath as a social bond capable of both warding off and instigating the worst of disasters, primarily as a response to Giorgio Agamben’s The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath (2010)
Ocean Bluffs: A Novel
No full textOcean Bluffs: A Novel tells the story of a beautiful and grotesque community built on a foundation of control, artifice, and absurd expectations of physical ability. In particular, the novel focuses on one resident, Clem, who is angry, frustrated, and obsessed with finding her mother—or her mother’s body. What exactly, she must know, did the town do with her mother after she failed one of its many tests? The novel follows Clem as she investigates her mother’s disappearance, participates in the town’s grueling rituals, reckons with her body’s strange and unbelievable abilities, and discovers a burgeoning romantic relationship with a rebellious local woman. The ending collapses these threads into one earth-shattering event while also revealing secrets about the town and its future as a coastal community that is sinking into the ocean.
This book explores many personal obsessions—beach towns, sisters, mothers, the bottom of the ocean, the inner workings of cults, femme women in love—while blending genres, from literary fiction to speculative fiction to dystopia to horror and beyond. Further, the book seeks to engage thoughtfully with the realities of the forthcoming climate crisis, the role of queer relationships and bodies in reckoning with these challenges, and more.
Perhaps the most essential questions at the book’s core relate to the absurdities and cruelties of ableism under capitalism. The tasks individuals must complete to be “able-bodied” in Ocean Bluffs may seem ridiculous and arbitrary, but are they any more ridiculous than, for example, office jobs requiring that applicants be able to lift and move fifty pounds to be hired? How do these requirements, in a sense, produce disabilities where they may not have existed in more reasonable, humane, or compassionate worlds? And, in the face of disabling events like pandemics and genocides, as the able-bodied among us are only temporarily so, how do our definitions of ability and disability warp and shift to suit the needs of those in power
Wind-Resilient Solar: Harnessing CFD for Enhanced Load Estimation
Get PDFSolar panels are a cornerstone of renewable energy infrastructure, playing a pivotal role in global sustainability efforts. To ensure their resilience and long-term viability, accurate wind load estimations are essential for designing supporting structures, which account for nearly 50% of their total cost. However, traditional building codes lack comprehensive guidance for solar panels, resulting in inconsistent estimations due to discrepancies in scaled wall-bounded wind tunnel testing methodologies. These inaccuracies pose safety risks, increase costs, and hinder adoption. Emerging technologies like computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations offer a promising alternative by enabling full-scale analysis under realistic conditions of complete turbulence. This paper explores the impact of geometric scale and inflow turbulence on wind load estimation, providing actionable insights to standardize testing protocols, improve reliability, and advance codification efforts for engineers, policymakers, renewable energy stakeholders, and the public
“An Enemy in War, Still a Brother”: The Commemoration of John Elliot Hart’s Burial Truce
No full textIn June 1863, at the height of the American Civil War, Lieutenant Commander John Elliot Hart of the USS Albatross received a Masonic funeral with the assistance of Confederate Freemasons in the cemetery of Grace Episcopal Church. Every year since 1997, the town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, where the event occurred, has reenacted the burial truce. Now remembered in St. Francisville’s history as “The Day the War Stopped,” the unusual circumstances surrounding Hart’s burial gave rise to a romantic legend about the event, leading the Grand Lodge of Louisiana to commemorate the occasion with a memorial gravestone in 1955. Today, townspeople continue to observe Hart’s burial truce through their annual historical performance. The story of Hart’s burial serves as an ideal case to examine how historical events and figures are memorialized, commemorated, and mythologized in small communities
FIRST DIGITAL BIOPHYSICAL MODEL OF THE ENTIRE HUMAN CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM
No full textCardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. While substantial progress has been made in understanding and managing these diseases, current strategies have not been sufficient to reverse increasing incidence and burden. A potential research solution is the cardiovascular digital twin, a virtual replica of the human circulatory system. However, a digital twin of the entire human vasculature has never been accomplished due to the large computational costs. The goal of this work was to determine the feasibility of a CVDT that includes modeling all vessels in the human body, including physiologically-relevant physical mechanisms. To accomplish this, we used a fractal algorithm to generate all 34 billion blood vessels of the human body, and calculated the time-dependent blood flow using an integrated heart model. We included nitric-oxide-mediated vasodilation, as well as vessel deformation and rupture using peridynamics. To test the computational feasibility, we determined the computational complexity, parallel scalability, and the amount of resources required, including execution time, memory usage, and floating-point operations. We found the CVDT to be computationally feasible. The most computationally expensive task was time-dependent blood flow, which required 500 node-hours, corresponding to a wall-clock time of less than 30 minutes. With further computational optimizations and biophysical improvements, this model has potential to shift the change the paradigm of cardiovascular research and patient care
EXAMINING FAMILY ACCOMMODATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
Get PDFThe relationship between parent and child anxiety is well established. One factor that may account for this relationship is family accommodation (how family members alter their behavior to alleviate child distress). Family accommodation has been studied in child anxiety for the past decade and has been linked to increased parent and child anxiety. However, little research has focused on a young sample without clinical elevations of anxiety. Acknowledging the impact of family accommodation on child anxiety, the strong link between parent anxiety and accommodation, and the importance of early intervention, this study aimed to expand the literature of family accommodation to a community-based, early childhood population. Data was collected from 98 caregivers of children aged 2.5-6.5. Parent participants were predominantly white (93.9%) and female (89.8%). Parents who were recruited through pediatric clinics, childcare facilities, and online parenting groups completed an online survey that included measures of family accommodation, their own anxiety, and their child’s anxiety. Data was analyzed through a linear multiple regression and tests of indirect effects. It was hypothesized that parent anxiety would account for more variance in family accommodation than child anxiety would. It was also hypothesized that there would be positive relationships between (1) parent anxiety and child anxiety, (2) parent anxiety and family accommodation, and (3) family accommodation and child anxiety and that family accommodation would mediate the effects of parent anxiety on child anxiety. The results supported evidence of significant, positive relationships between (1) parent and child anxiety, (2) parent anxiety and family accommodation, and (3) family accommodation and child anxiety. The results also supported the hypothesis that parent anxiety may have an indirect effect on child anxiety through its effects on family accommodation. However, inconsistent with hypotheses, child anxiety accounted for more variance in family accommodation than parent anxiety did. These findings expand the current literature, giving evidence for significant impacts of family accommodation on child anxiety in an early childhood, community sample and calling for further examination of family accommodation for both causal theories of child anxiety and as a potential target of early intervention to prevent children from developing anxiety disorders
MATE CHOICE AND MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF PLEGADIS IBIS IN LOUISIANA
Get PDFIn 1817, George Ord documented the first North American records of Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus), a species native to the Old World. Over the next 200 years, Glossy Ibis expanded its breeding range to include the Atlantic coast to southernmost Florida and thence up the Gulf coast to eastern Texas. Forty-five to 75 years ago, its range expansion brought it into secondary contact with White-faced Ibis (P. chihi) in Louisiana, a native species whose breeding range includes freshwater wetlands in Louisiana and eastern Texas. Hybridization between the two species resulted in a large hybrid zone in southern Louisiana, providing an opportunity to investigate the roles of reproductive barriers in the early phases of secondary contact. In collaboration with other researchers, we established baseline data on population frequencies of White-faced Ibis, Glossy Ibis, and their hybrids based on morphological characteristics at three rookeries in south Louisiana – Miller’s Lake (Avoyelles Parish), Salvador Wildlife Management Area (St. Charles Parish), and Big Mar in the Caernarvon outflow area (Plaquemines Parish). We found that White-faced Ibis were most common (65.5%), followed by hybrids (25.6%) and Glossy Ibis (8.9%). We tested for premating reproductive barriers by examining whether the phenotypes of mated ibis pairs deviated from random expectations. Pearson’s X 2 tests of mated pairs failed to reject the null hypothesis of random mating on rookeries, suggesting an absence of premating reproductive barriers. We evaluated the extent to which ibis nest at multiple rookeries, either within or between breeding seasons. Movement data from six GPS-tagged birds showed that ibis can change rookeries between clutches within a breeding season (one bird moved approximately 38 km). Ibis tend to nest in the same rookery within and across breeding seasons. vi Our study demonstrated that premating reproductive barriers are either absent or weak between White-faced and Glossy Ibis, and that ibis are capable of long dispersal distances. Future work should focus on testing for postmating reproductive barriers, such as reduced viability or infertility of hybrids. In the absence of reproductive barriers, we predict extensive hybridization will eventually lead to reticulation of the White-faced and Glossy Ibis into a single recombinant species
Exploring Sport Employees\u27 Conceptualizations of Meaningful Work
No full textModern sport management scholars have paired the fields of positive organizational behavior and human resource development with sport management to enhance the productivity of sport organizations through their employees. One area of study receiving increased attention is meaningful work, an emerging employee well-being metric whose definition is debated. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which sport employees conceptualize meaningful work. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 32 sport employees. The following themes were identified: meaningful work is work that serves, meaning gained from sport organizations, and individual meaningful work experiences. Discussion offers valuable implications for practitioners of sport management, as well as the emerging scholarly field of human resource development in sport management, and the evolving discourse surrounding meaningful work