Because of its trademark racial diversity, historians have often presented New Orleans as a place transformed by incorporation into the American South following 1804. Assertions that a comparatively relaxed, racially ambiguous Spanish slaveholding regime was converted into a two-caste system of dedicated racial segregation by the advent of American assumption have been posited by scholars like Frank Tannenbaum, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, and a host of others. Citing dependence on patronage, concubinage, and the decline in slave manumissions during the antebellum period, such studies have employed descriptions of the city’s prominent free people of color to suggest that the daily lives of non-whites in New Orleans experienced uniform restriction following 1804, and that the Crescent City’s transformation from Atlantic society with slaves to rigid slave society forced free people of color out of the heart of the city, known as the Vieux Carré, and into “black neighborhoods” on the margins of town. Despite the popularity of such generalized themes in the historiography, however, the extant sources housed in New Orleans’s valuable archival repositories can be used to support a vastly divergent narrative. By focusing on individual free people of color, or libres, rather than the non-white community as a whole, this paper seeks to show that free people of color were self determined in both public and private aspects of daily life, irrespective of governmental regime, and that their physical presence and political agency were not entirely eroded by the change in administration. Through evaluation of the geography of free black-owned properties listed in the city’s notarial archives, as well as baptisms, births, deaths, and marriages listed in archdiocese ledgers, I show that the family and community lives of free people of color in New Orleans’ oldest neighborhood appeared alive and well throughout the territorial period.

No description available.

Le travail décrit d’abord le processus par lequel Aristote a mis les bases d’une logique qui est devenu la norme pour un raisonnement correct, ainsi que les raccourcis qu’il a pris pour faire de la logique une pratique inutile pour l’étude des arguments tels qu’ils apparaissent dans les arguments informels. Par la suite l’étude établit de nouveaux concepts sur lesquels le raisonnement et l’argumentation réelle sont fondées et introduit ce qui est étiqueté comme « carrés rationnel », une structure sur laquelle toute forme de discours peut être analysée. Afin de prouver la validité de la nouvelle théorie, il est appliqué à diverses formes de discours ou de dispositifs littéraires, puis au livre de l’Ecclésiaste, l’un des livres les plus déroutants de la Bible sur lequel aucune explication satisfaisante ou interprétation n’a pas été offerte auparavant. Et enfin, la nouvelle théorie est appliquée pour analyser des ouvrages savants concernant leur cohérence dans ce qu’ils disent ainsi que leur rapport au texte qu’ils prétendent interpréter correctement. / The work outlines first the process by which Aristotle laid the foundations for logic which has become the standard for correct reasoning, as well as the shortcuts which he took and has made logic virtually useless for the study of arguments as they occur in informal arguments. Then the work establishes new concepts on which actual reasoning and argumentation are based and introduces what is labeled as reasoning square, a structure on which any form of discourse can be analyzed. In order to prove the validity of the new theory, it is applied to various forms of discourse or literary devices, then to the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the most confusing books in the Bible for which no satisfactory explanation and interpretation has been offered before. And finally, the new theory is applied to analyzing scholarly works from the point of view of how consistent they are in what they say as well as their relation to the text whose meaning they claim to accurately expose.

The Vieux Carré in New Orleans is the second oldest locally designated historic district and serves as a prominent example of local historic preservation efforts; however, the Vieux Carré has a high vacancy rate. This thesis examines the effects of land use policy, including the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance and the design review process in the Vieux Carré, on attempts to return vacant buildings to commerce. The author examines three cases of redevelopment attempts of vacant properties in the Vieux Carré. In two of the three cases, constrictions from the Zoning Ordinance not the design review process held up the redevelopment process. The other case identified owner negligence as the cause for failure in the redevelopment attempt.

This thesis argues that the espionage fiction of Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and John le Carré published between 1945 and 1979 illustrates a number of discontinuities, disjunctions and paradoxes related to space, sovereignty and national identity in post-war Britain. To this effect, the thesis has three broad aims. Firstly, to approach the representations of space and sovereign power in the work of these authors published during the period 1945-1979, examining the way in which sovereign power produces space, and then how that power is distributed and maintained. Secondly, to analyse the effect that sovereign power has on a variety of social and cultural environments represented within spy fiction and how the exercise of power affects the response of individuals within them. Thirdly, to establish how the intervention of sovereign power within environments relates to the creation, propagation and exclusion of national identities within each author’s work. By mapping the application of sovereign power throughout various environments, the thesis demonstrates that the control of environment is inextricably linked to the sovereign control of British subjects in espionage fiction. Moreover, the role of the spy in the application of sovereign power reveals a paradox integral to the espionage genre, namely that the maintenance of sovereign power exists only through the undermining of its core principles. Sovereignty, in these texts, is maintained only by weakening the sovereign control of other nations.

A 1-D tidal, salinity and water quality model that analyzes the general effects freshwater diversions have on the water quality of the Pontchartrain Estuary over a 17-year period is presented here. Using the modeled live algae concentrations in conjunction with the algal bloom probability model results produces an accurate prediction of algal bloom occurrences between 1990 and 2006. The model predicts that the addition of freshwater diversions into Maurepas swamp and increases to flow in the Bonnet Carré Spillway may cause more intense and frequent algal blooms to occur around the Pontchartrain Estuary. The model also predicts that high nutrient input events that occur earlier in the year (January/February) will not likely have algal blooms associated with them. When nutrient input events (even small events) occur in the late spring or early summer, algal blooms have a high probability of occurring when the salinity, temperature and light levels are sufficient.

This report accounts my time spent as an intern with French Quarter Festivals, Inc. from March 2013 through August 2014. FQFI, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization in New Orleans, Louisiana, began with French Quarter Festival in 1984 and now produces three festivals each year. This paper seeks to discuss how the organization has changed over time, examine the structure of FQFI in its current state, and make recommendations for FQFI as they continue to “promote the Vieux Carré and the City of New Orleans through high quality special events and activities that showcase the culture and heritage of this unique city, contribute to the economic well being of the community, and instill increased pride in the people of New Orleans.”

On expose deux logiciels de traitement de chromatogrammes de gas oils qui permettent l'évaluation des richesses de composants particuliers: les n-paraffines. Le premier permet par des recalages par «moindres carrés» d'estimer ces richesses à partir de deux chromatogrammes: celui du gas oil, mais aussi celui de ce même gas oil, sans les n-paraffines. Le deuxième ne nécessite plus que le seul chromatogramme du gas oil: on remplace l'information manquante par la connaissance théorique acquise sur la forme des n-paraffines. On procède en deux étapes: 1) application de la théorie de l'inf-convolution spline, en vue de séparer au mieux, par un profil de n-paraffine normalisé celle-ci du reste du gas oil; 2) application des méthodes de minimisation à plusieurs variables pour choisir, parmi les formes possibles pour une n-paraffines la forme optimale

Cette thèse étudie les propriétés des copules appartenant à la famille khi-carré. Il s’agit d’une généralisation des copules normales multidimensionnelles obtenue en élevant au carré les composantes d’un vecteur de variables aléatoires normales. Ces copules sont indicées par une matrice de corrélation et par un paramètre de forme. Cette thèse montre comment cette famille de copules peut être utilisée pour faire de l’interpolation spatiale et pour modéliser des données multidimensionnelles. Dans un premier temps, l’utilité de cette classe de structures de dépendance est démontrée par le biais d’une application en statistique spatiale. Un problème important dans ce contexte est de prévoir la valeur d’un champ aléatoire stationnaire en une position où il n’a pas été observé. Cette thèse montre comment construire de telles prévisions à l’aide de modèles spatiaux basés sur les copules. L’accent est mis sur l’utilisation de la famille des copules khi-carré dans ce contexte. Il faut d’abord supposer que la matrice de corrélation a une forme paramétrique standard, telle celle de Matérn, indicée par un paramètre inconnu associé à la force de l’association spatiale. Ce paramètre est d’abord estimé à l’aide d’une pseudo-vraisemblance composite construite à partir des lois bidimensionnelles des données observées. Ensuite, une méthode d’interpolation spatiale utilisant les rangs des observations est suggérée afin d’approximer la meilleure prévision du champ aléatoire à une position non observée. Dans un deuxième temps, les propriétés fondamentales des copules khi-carré sont étudiées en détail. Cette famille de copules permet une grande flexibilité quant à la modélisation de données multidimensionnelles. Dans le cas bivarié, ces copules s’adaptent à de la dépendance autant symétrique qu’asymétrique. En dimension plus grande, le paramètre de forme contrôle le degré d’asymétrie radiale des distributions marginales bidimensionnelles. Des procédures d’estimation de la matrice de corrélation et du paramètre de forme sont comparées dans le cas de répétitions indépendantes et identiquement distribuées. Enfin, des formules de l’espérance conditionnelle pour la meilleure prévision dans un contexte spatiale sont établies. Finalement, des tests d’adéquation basés sur des moments pour la famille des copules khi-carré sont développés. Ces nouveaux tests peuvent être appliqués à un ensemble de données de n’importe quelle dimension. Ces procédures reposent sur deux mesures d’association basées sur les rangs des observations ce qui évite d’avoir à spécifier les lois marginales. Il est démontré que le comportement conjoint de ces deux mesures est asymptotiquement normal. L’efficacité des nouvelles procédures d’adéquation est démontrée via une étude de simulations et est comparée à un test d’adéquation classique basé sur la copule empirique. / This thesis studies the properties of the family of chi-square copulas. This is a generalization of the multidimensional normal copulas obtained by squaring the components of normal random vector. These copulas are indexed by a correlation matrix and by a shape parameter. This thesis shows how this family can be used to perform spatial interpolation and to model multidimensional data. First, the usefulness of this class of dependence structures is demonstrated with an application in spatial statistics. An important problem in that context is to predict the value of a stationary random field at a position where it has not been observed. This thesis shows how to construct such predictions using spatial models based on copulas. One focusses on the use of the family of chi-square copulas in that context. One must first assumes that the correlation matrix has a standard parametric form, such as that of Matérn, indexed by an unknown parameter associated with the force of the spatial association. This parameter is first estimated using a composite pseudo-likelihood constructed from the bivariate distributions of the observed data. Then, a spatial interpolation method using the ranks of the observations is suggested to approximate the best prediction of the random field at an unobserved position under a chi-square copula. In a second work, the fundamental properties of the chi-square copulas are studied in detail. This family allows a lot of flexibility to model multidimensional data. In the bivariate case, this family is adapted to symmetric and asymmetric dependence structures. In larger dimensions, the shape parameter controls the degree of radial asymmetry of the two-dimensional marginal distributions. Parameter estimation procedures of the correlation matrix and of the shape parameter are compared under independent and identically distributed repetitions. Finally, the formulas of the conditional expectation for the best prediction in a spatial context are established. Goodness-of-fit tests for the family of chi-square copulas are then developed. These new tests can be applied to data in any dimension. These procedures are based on two association measures based on the ranks of the observations, which avoids having to specify the marginal distributions. It is shown that the joint behavior of these two measures is asymptotically normal. The efficiency of the new goodness-of-fit procedures is demonstrated through a simulation study and is compared to a classical goodness-of-fit test based on the empirical copula.

On propose quatre contributions à l'étude des fonctions L de formes modulaires. La première montre que le Jacobien d'une courbe modulaire possède un facteur simple sur le corps des rationnels de grande dimension et de rang nul, et un facteur simple de grande dimension et de grand rang. La seconde établit la conjecture de densité de niveau 1 des petits zéros pour de nouvelles familles de fonctions L de formes modulaires. La troisième étudie la distribution de la valeur en 1 de la fonction L de carré symétrique d'une forme modulaire. La dernière établit, en collaboration avec F. Martin, un critère de détermination des formes modulaires par les valeurs spéciales de leurs fonctions L.