This document highlights the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's investments and impacts in the state of Louisiana.

An analysis of how barium and radium-laced fluid seeps affect the climate and habitats of the Gulf of Mexico offshore Louisiana.

How does it feel to be creative? Such a question, when approached from a phenomenological perspective, reveals new understandings about the embodied experience of creativity, and how it feels as it is being lived. This investigation begins with a provocative contrast of two environments where creativity is thought to manifest itself: school art classrooms, where creativity is often legislated from an authority figure, and New Orleans Second Line parades, where creativity is organically and kinetically expressed. A thorough review of the literature on creativity focuses on education, arts education, creative economies, psychology, and critical theorists, collectively revealing a cognitive bias and striking lack of consideration for community, freedom, and the lived experience of being creative. Further discussions in the literature also neglect sites of creativity, and the impact that place (such as a school classroom) can have upon creativity. The phenomenological perspectives of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Bachelard, and Trigg support a methodological lens to grasp embodied knowledge, perceptions of placedness on creativity, and the interdependent frictions between freedom, authenticity, movement and belonging. The research method includes investigations in New Orleans in archives, examination of visual and material culture, participation in cultural practice, and formal and informal interviews. Further, the phenomena of …

This report discusses federal evacuation policy and analyzes potential lessons learned from the evacuations of individuals in response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. It also highlights several issue areas that might arise concerning potential lawmaking and oversight on evacuation policy.

Interview with BJ Austin, a former KERA radio reporter in which she discusses her 40-year broadcast journalism career. She particularly comments on the treatment of women in the newsroom and her personal experiences.

Report on the study of groundwater in Texas, nearby states, and in Mexico.

This report is about the composition of biofouling communities for three different offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Research methods included a video survey, high resolution photography, scrape samples, and settling plates.

Using portraiture methodology and social practice theory, this study examined the identity work of young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans. This research asked four interrelated questions. Through the lens of a teen arts internship at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans, 1) How do contextual figured worlds influence artist identity work? 2) How does artist identity work manifest through personal narratives? 3) How does artist identity work manifest in activities? 4) What are the consequences of artist identity work? The findings of the study highlight how sociocultural factors influence dis/identification with the visual arts in young people and provoke considerations of in/equity in the arts.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Alan Pilot. Pilot joined the Army in January 1943 and received basic training at Camp Howze. He received further training in Louisiana for the European Theater and then in California for the Pacific Theater. In January he left for Camp Old Gold at La Havre, where he served as a combat medic, supporting Companies E, G, and H of the 343rd Infantry, 86th Division. His unit relieved the 8th Division and fought in Cologne, where he was stationed at the top of the cathedral while it was being shelled. In the Ruhr Pocket a defective shell landed 10 feet away from him. He recalls seeing 100,000 Germans surrender there. He describes the Bavarian people as friendly as he passed through Austria on VE Day. He was then sent to the Pacific as part of Operation Coronet. VJ Day came while he was still crossing the Pacific. He spent the last five months of his service in the Philippines at a quiet outpost while the rest of his unit prepared the Philippines for independence. Pilot returned home and was discharged in January 1946.