Louisiana State University

About: Louisiana State University is a education organization based out in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 40206 authors who have published 76587 publications receiving 2566076 citations. The organization is also known as: LSU & Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.

Impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep-water coral community in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract: To assess the potential impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on offshore ecosystems, 11 sites hosting deep-water coral communities were examined 3 to 4 mo after the well was capped. Healthy coral communities were observed at all sites >20 km from the Macondo well, including seven sites previously visited in September 2009, where the corals and communities appeared unchanged. However, at one site 11 km southwest of the Macondo well, coral colonies presented widespread signs of stress, including varying degrees of tissue loss, sclerite enlargement, excess mucous production, bleached commensal ophiuroids, and covering by brown flocculent material (floc). On the basis of these criteria the level of impact to individual colonies was ranked from 0 (least impact) to 4 (greatest impact). Of the 43 corals imaged at that site, 46% exhibited evidence of impact on more than half of the colony, whereas nearly a quarter of all of the corals showed impact to >90% of the colony. Additionally, 53% of these corals’ ophiuroid associates displayed abnormal color and/or attachment posture. Analysis of hopanoid petroleum biomarkers isolated from the floc provides strong evidence that this material contained oil from the Macondo well. The presence of recently damaged and deceased corals beneath the path of a previously documented plume emanating from the Macondo well provides compelling evidence that the oil impacted deep-water ecosystems. Our findings underscore the unprecedented nature of the spill in terms of its magnitude, release at depth, and impact to deep-water ecosystems.

Template bank for gravitational waveforms from coalescing binary black holes: Nonspinning binaries

Abstract: Gravitational waveforms from the inspiral and ring-down stages of the binary black-hole coalescences can be modeled accurately by approximation/perturbation techniques in general relativity. Recent progress in numerical relativity has enabled us to model also the nonperturbative merger phase of the binary black-hole coalescence problem. This enables us to coherently search for all three stages of the coalescence of nonspinning binary black holes using a single template bank. Taking our motivation from these results, we propose a family of template waveforms which can model the inspiral, merger, and ring-down stages of the coalescence of nonspinning binary black holes that follow quasicircular inspiral. This two-dimensional template family is explicitly parametrized by the physical parameters of the binary. We show that the template family is not only effectual in detecting the signals from black-hole coalescences, but also faithful in estimating the parameters of the binary. We compare the sensitivity of a search (in the context of different ground-based interferometers) using all three stages of the black-hole coalescence with other template-based searches which look for individual stages separately. We find that the proposed search is significantly more sensitive than other template-based searches for a substantial mass range, potentially bringing about remarkable improvement in the event rate of ground-based interferometers. As part of this work, we also prescribe a general procedure to construct interpolated template banks using nonspinning black-hole waveforms produced by numerical relativity.

Consumer Generalization of Nutrient Content Claims in Advertising

Abstract: Although considerable research exists on consumer processing of nutrition labeling and package claims, less is known about consumer interpretation of nutrient content claims in advertising. This is...