Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Can Radiocarbon Dating Fit A Biblical Timescale?, Marshall Jordan

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Abstract

The trace amounts of C14 in ancient human bones imply that these people died up to 50 thousand years ago. This assumes that the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere has remained constant at today's concentration. Such ages are incompatible with the record of Genesis which places Noah’s Flood about 4500 years ago, less than one half-life for C14. The trace amounts of C14 in coals buried by the Flood show that the atmospheric concentration of C14 at the time of the Flood was about 1% of today’s concentration. So C14 can be used to date ancient carbon using …

Unresolved Issues In Hypothetical Fish-To-Amphibian Evolution, David Prentice

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

This is a poster presentation bringing together multiple problems with the idea that some ancestral fish evolved into some ancestral amphibian.

The Lamarckian idea that "form follows function" has been thoroughly falsified. The only explanation for characteristics of an organism's phenotype is the content of its genotype rather than its need for new features.

The new creatures would have to undergo random mutations in their DNA to produce at least thirteen major changes. They would have to (1) leave the water and come onto land, (2) acquire two radically different types of vertebrae (rhachitomous and lepospondylous); (3) acquire segmented backbones …

Quantum Computing In Creation Geoscience, Mark Mcguire, Kathryn Mcguire

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Quantum computing has great potential in speeding up many problems. Rather than stepping “down” from a classical Newtonian realm into the more complicated quantum realm we use the same processes as the phenomena being researched.

In geoscience, quantum computing has many potential applications. For example, quantum computing can be used for simulations of radiometric dating. By simulating the decomposition of atoms, a better idea of how these decompose can be created. Simulating typical, unaccelerated decomposition would be the first step in this area of research. This can be done by creating a qbit (quantum bit) for each atom and connecting …

Gastropod Evolutionary Phylogeny, Priscilla Doran, Neal A. Doran

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

This research seeks to investigate a correlation between the first appearance order date (FAD) and predicted evolutionary phylogeny of gastropods. Using a Spearman Correlation, 17 data sets of gastropods were analyzed, with a no significant correlation found between the first appearance date and predicted evolutionary date for the fossils.

Icr (2013-2023): A Decade Of Advancing The Flood-Ice Age Model, Leo (Jake) Hebert Iii

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

I am proposing a poster that summarizes the last decade of paleoclimate research conducted at the Institute for Creation Research, and the ways this research has strengthened the case for the Flood-Ice Age model. The poster also discusses two research projects that I have started but as yet have not been able to finish. Here is the poster abstract:

In 1990 the Institute for Creation Research published Michael Oard’s monograph An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, which showed that warm post-Flood oceans and residual post-Flood volcanism provide the necessary conditions for an Ice Age. ICR then published additional …

Re-Evaluating The Measurements Of Radioactive Decay, Charles A. Wolcott Jr.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Studies investigating the validity of radiometric dating methods have raised many questions with results of methods showing ages of samples well outside the mainstream story line and a prospect of accelerated decay rates during the Flood. However, the measurements of the rates themselves have not been analyzed. This study examines a mathematical analysis of how the half-life of isotopes U-238, K-40, Rb-87, and C-14 have been measured and calls for a closer inspection of the process. The primary tool for measuring the half-life is the Geiger Counter, which only has a 20% efficiency rate, [1] while observation times of individual …

Physical Evidence For A Post-Flood Lacustrine Depositional Environment For Hopi/Bidahochi Lake, Nate Loper

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Geologists both within and outside the creation community have long proposed a breached dam and lake spillover hypothesis for the formation of Grand Canyon in whole or in part. One major lake system pointed to has been dubbed Hopi Lake or Lake Bidahochi, with supporting evidence found within the Bidahochi Formation. The Bidahochi Formation in eastern Arizona overlies the Chinle Formation in many places and is described as a Miocene-Pliocene lacustrine deposit. As such, several creation geologists assign this to a depositional environment during the post-Flood Ice Age. Yet, there is a small group within the creation community who tend …

A Creationist Model Of Impacts Throughout The Solar System, Trevor Holt

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

The Biblical Creationist movement has been scant in attempts to explain features throughout the Solar System such as craters, water ice and other ices, possible flowing water, icy satellites, planet rings, and the asteroids and comets. It has been assumed that much of this was part of the initial Creation. I maintain that the initial Creation was considered “very good” and would not have included destructive items and hence would not show the results of impacts. A model has been developed which can explain all these features being caused by impacts over a short time period The Biblical foundations are …

Fe Analysis Of Tsunami Generation During The Genesis Flood, Tim Lewis, John Baumgardner

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Within the framework of catastrophic plate tectonics, large tsunamis are a plausible mechanism for producing fossil-bearing sediments of the Flood rock record. The focus of this research is to model the behavior of an overriding slab in response to a rapidly subducting plate with the aim of understanding in more detail the tsunami generation process. Key to this process is the locking and unlocking of the overriding and subducting slabs. The unlocking results in the rapid rise of the sea bottom and generation of a tsunami. Several key questions arise in this context that the model seeks to answer. What …

The Regression Of The Flood In Virginia, James C. Rakestraw, Jim Melnick

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

The geology, tectonics, and hydraulics of the regression of the Flood formed much of the geomorphology of Virginia. Opportunities to view and study geology and geomorphology are available through visiting parks, traveling on public roads, and viewing geographic information system (GIS) resources.

Virginia is part of the North American Plate. A series of “blocks” of basement rocks within the plate underlie the geomorphological provinces of Virginia. These “blocks” form a series of steps between the Atlantic Ocean Basin and the Blue Ridge. The “Fall Line” found in Virginia is a fault between two blocks of basement rock. The basement rocks …

Modeling The Process Of Rapid Geomagnetic Reversal During The Genesis Flood, Eric T. Katzaman, John Baumgardner

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Remnant magnetization in the Earth’s igneous rocks document that the Earth’s magnetic field reversed its polarity many times during the Genesis Flood. Previous creationist research has argued that strong convective buoyancy within the Earth’s liquid outer core during the Flood can cause the expulsion of magnetic flux outward from the core into the overlying mantle which produces rapid reversals of the Earth’s surface dipolar magnetic field. This poster reports the status of our efforts to model this dynamic process in 3D spherical geometry using a magnetohydrodynamic numerical solver.

Geologic Analysis Of Ice Age Simulation Results, Elizabeth G. Sultan, Steven M. Gollmer

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Ice ages are believed to have occurred at least 5 times in the past, with each glacial period lasting tens of thousands of years and interglacial periods lasting up to 400,000 years. It is hypothesized, however, that the Genesis Flood would have provided the conditions necessary to trigger an ice age within a few hundred years, that could account for the glacial deposits we find worldwide. This research project compared the output data from a 360-year ModelE2.1.2 run of an ice age simulation, to the geologic record of the last glacial maximum (LGM). The simulation was inputted with conditions based …

K-Feldspar Sand Grain Rounding In Eolian And Subaqueous Transportation, Elizabeth G. Sultan, Emma Henze

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

This project’s aim is to compare the rounding of K-feldspar grains in eolian and subaqueous conditions. It was hypothesized that K-feldspar grains in a subaqueous environment are cushioned enough by surrounding water to prevent the rounding observed in eolian environments. The experiment was conducted by use of eolian and subaqueous simulations originally developed by Calvin Anderson for comparing muscovite flakes in these respective environments. It was expected that an eolian environment will produce rounded grains within a few weeks, and an aqueous environment will take a minimum of months to produce fully rounded grains. The resulting data from this project …

Dynamic Recrystallization And Grain Size Effects On Catastrophic Motion Of The Earth’S Mantle During The Flood: Advancement Of Material Models, Heechen Cho, John Baumgardner, Maria Lee, Caleb Miller, Mark Horstemeyer

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

This presentation reports a numerical study to investigate the mechanical effects of dynamic recrystallization (DRX) and the grain size on the speed of flow of rock inside the earth’s solid mantle during the Genesis Flood. The strength, or viscosity, of its constituent minerals is key to understanding and modeling the dynamics of the mantle correctly. A mineral’s strength is strongly influenced by the crystal size, its lattice defects (vacancies and dislocations), and other microscale and crystal-scale phenomena. Since the viscosity difference of the earth’s deep mantle between the present day and during the Flood cataclysm is approximately 10 orders of …

Diverse Assemblage Of Arthropods In Amber From Upper Cretaceous Tarheel Formation Near Goldsboro, North Carolina, Dana J. Goodnight

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

A relatively unexplored Upper Cretaceous (early Campanian) amber-bearing lignite deposit in Goldsboro, North Carolina has yielded a diverse assemblage of arthropods. Preliminary cataloging of approximately 175 biological inclusions obtained from the site include microscopic and macroscopic representatives from two subphyla of arthropoda (Chelicerata and Hexapoda) and at least 9 orders of insects (Blattodea, Coleoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Psocoptera, Thysanoptera, and Archaeognatha). In addition to animal inclusions, the Goldsboro amber often contains abundant plant matter, fungal mycelia, enhydros, and air bubbles. The inclusions depicted by micrographs in this poster presentation have not been formally classified and systematically described. Only an …

The Layered Castile Probably Originated From Salt Magma, Stef J. Heerema, Gert-Jan Van Heugten, Timothy Clarey

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

The Castile Formation is situated in the Delaware Basin in New Mexico and Texas on top of thousands of meters of oil-containing sedimentary rock (the Delaware Mountain Group). The up to 550-meter-thick formation is composed of laminae of mostly anhydrite and calcite (Kirkland, 2003) and contains oil itself as well. The overlying Salado Salt Formation covers a wider area, including the Central Basin Platform and the Midland Basin in Texas, with a thickness up to 600 meters.

Evolutionists claim an origin of the 10,000 km³ Castile Formation by evaporation of salty ocean water in a continental basin over 209,000 …

Hydrogen Bond Activation Of Donor Acceptor Cyclopropanes, Matthew H.J. Pamenter

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Donor acceptor cyclopropanes (DACs) are versatile organic building blocks used in the synthesis of many pharmaceutically relevant heterocycles. The combination of a high ring strain cyclopropane core and vicinal donor and acceptor substituents cause DACs to behave like 1,3-zwitterions. Recently, DACs have been activated by a hydrogen bond donor solvent in place of a Lewis acid catalyst, allowing the elimination of heavy metals commonly used in these transformations. Hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) as a hydrogen bond donor cosolvent was found to cause a downfield shift of the DACs electrophilic carbon in the 13C NMR spectrum. This indicates increased electrophilicity at this position …

Exploring The Impact Of Signal Quality Enhancement On Heart Sound Classification Models, Davoud Shariat Panah, Andrew Hines, Susan Mckeever

Articles

Limited cardiology resources increase the urgency for automated heart disease screening for the general public. Heart sound diagnostic models have been recently employed as a cost-effective solution for the initial screening of heart disease. Noise in heart sound recordings, however, can reduce the performance of such data-driven models. Various quality enhancement approaches have been adopted to alleviate the destructive impact of noise on model performance. One approach is universal noise reduction which applies denoising techniques to recordings, irrespective of their noise level. The second approach is targeted noise reduction, which applies denoising solely to recordings deemed to need it, based …

Development Of An App For The Kalamazoo Nature Center, Ernest Au

Honors Theses

Kalamazoo Nature Center (KNC), which has been recognized by its peers as one of the top nature centers in the country, is home to over 14 miles of hiking trails winding through woods, wetlands, and prairies. There are numerous places/plots in KNC that have an interesting and impressive history besides being home to a variety of animals and hundreds of wildflowers and other plant life. To improve the visitor’s experience at KNC, we will design a software app via the senior capstone project at the department of Computer Science at WMU. As the first step towards establishing a reference model …

Overcoming Foreign Language Anxiety In An Emotionally Intelligent Tutoring System, Daneih Ismail

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Learning a foreign language entails cognitive and emotional obstacles. It involves complicated mental processes that affect learning and emotions. Positive emotions such as motivation, encouragement, and satisfaction increase learning achievement, while negative emotions like anxiety, frustration, and confusion may reduce performance. Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) is a specific type of anxiety accompanying learning a foreign language. It is considered a main impediment that hinders learning, reduces achievements, and diminishes interest in learning.

Detecting FLA is the first step toward reducing and eventually overcoming it. Previously, researchers have been detecting FLA using physical measurements and self-reports. Using physical measures is direct …

Formulation Of Causality-Preserving Quantum Time Of Arrival Theory, Denny Lane B. Sombillo, Neris I. Sombillo

Physics Faculty Publications

We revisit the quantum correction to the classical time of arrival to address the unphysical instantaneous arrival in the limit of zero initial momentum. In this study, we show that the vanishing of arrival time is due to the contamination of the causality-violating component of the initial wave packet. Motivated by this observation, we propose to update the temporal collapse mechanism in Galapon (2009) [18] to incorporate the removal of causality-violating spectra of the arrival time operator. We found that the quantum correction to the classical arrival time is still observed. Thus, our analysis validates that the correction is an …

Game-Theoretic Approaches To Optimal Resource Allocation And Defense Strategies In Herbaceous Plants, Molly R. Creagar

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Empirical evidence suggests that the attractiveness of a plant to herbivores can be affected by the investment in defense by neighboring plants, as well as investment in defense by the focal plant. Thus, allocation to defense may not only be influenced by the frequency and intensity of herbivory but also by defense strategies employed by other plants in the environment. We incorporate a neighborhood defense effect by applying spatial evolutionary game theory to optimal resource allocation in plants where cooperators are plants investing in defense and defectors are plants that do not. We use a stochastic dynamic programming model, along …

The Development And Evolution Of The Soil Health Nutrient Tool (Aka Haney Test) After Ten Years Of Implementation In A Commercial Agricultural Laboratory, Lance Michael Gunderson

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The growing focus on soil health and regenerative agriculture has brought about the need for new integrated approaches for the analysis of soil. Prior, commercial agricultural laboratories relied on methods to measure chemical properties of the soil, such as pH and nutrients. The Soil Health Nutrient Tool (aka. Haney Test) developed by Dr. Rick Haney (USDA-ARS Blackland Research and Extension Station, Temple, TX) integrates chemical and biological properties to provide a more holistic understanding of soil fertility management. Following adoption by commercial laboratories in 2013, criticisms regarding variability in measurements and lack of calibration were apparent. In this research, we …

Formal Concept Analysis For Image Classification And Machine Learning Models For Anti-Crispr Protein Discovery In Bioinformatics, Minal Khatri

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This study investigates two critical areas in bioinformatics: enhancing transparency in medical image analysis and advancing the discovery of Anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins, which have potential in developing more precise and controlled CRISPR-Cas gene editing tools. While CNN’s are increasingly applied in critical fields like medical diagnosis, understanding their decision-making process remains a challenge. Although visualization techniques like Saliency maps offer insights into CNN’s decision-making for individual images, they do not explicitly establish a relationship between the high-level features learned by CNN’s and the class labels across dataset. To bridge this gap, Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) framework is leveraged as a …

Tiny Drifters Amidst Global Change: Examining Environmental Drivers, Trophic Impacts, And Management Strategies Of Estuarine Plankton Communities In The Anthropocene, Taylor Nicole Dodrill

Dissertations and Theses

Plankton productivity supports estuarine food webs, and has been tied to the success of fisheries, macroinvertebrates, and cultured shellfish yields. Climate change and alterations to nutrient loads are thought to be influencing plankton assemblages, with toxin-producing harmful algal blooms (HABs) on the rise and nutritional quality of plankton declining globally. These shifts in plankton communities may contribute to low biomass yields and toxin-based closures of important fisheries. The objectives of this dissertation are to identify environmental drivers, trophic impacts, and management strategies to understand and respond to changing estuarine plankton communities. To address these objectives, I used a combination of …

Teaching Reproducibility To First Year College Students: Reflections From An Introductory Data Science Course, Brennan L. Bean

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

Modern technology threatens traditional modes of classroom assessment by providing students with automated ways to write essays and take exams. At the same time, modern technology continues to expand the accessibility of computational tools that promise to increase the potential scope and quality of class projects. This paper presents a case study where students are asked to complete a “reproducible” final project in an introductory data science course using the R programming language. A reproducible project is one where an instructor can easily regenerate the results and conclusions from the submitted …

Does The Fossil Record Of Non-Mammalian Synapsid Digits Show An Increasing "Mammal-Ness"?, Emily Anderson, Matthew A. Mclain

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Non-mammalian synapsids (NMS) are a group of extinct amniotes present in the Carboniferous-Cretaceous geologic systems. NMS are recognized by evolutionary scientists as transitional forms between reptile-like animals and mammals, and are thought to increase in mammal-like characteristics as they progress through the fossil record, especially among the six therapsid subtaxa. Given that Scripture is clear that God created many independent kinds of land animals (Genesis 1:20-25), we sought to investigate the currently accepted evidence which is used to support the claim that NMS are transitional forms. In this study we focused on the NMS hands and feet, which have been …

Noah's Arks And Viking Funeral Ships: A Creationist Look At The Biogeographic Patterns Of Tetrapods In The Collisions Of South America/North America And India/Asia, Ryan Frields, Caleb Lepore, Matthew A. Mclain

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

The question of how animals recolonized the earth after the Flood has been of interest to creation scientists for hundreds of years, and this inquiry led to the birth of the field of biogeography. Biogeographers recognize dispersal mechanisms (e.g., rafting) as well as vicariant mechanisms (e.g., continental drift). In biogeography, a continent carrying animals from one place to another is called a “Noah’s Ark.” There are two continents that start the Cenozoic as islands but later collide with other land masses: India with Asia (in the Eocene) and South America with North America (in the Pliocene). The faunal transfer between …

Hypogene Speleogenesis Of Ozark Caves, Jeff Miller

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

This abstract is an update on my continuing study of the origin of north American caves. Since it is difficult to fit carbonic acid dissolution speleogenesis into the timescale of the Creation model, and the Flood model can generate the acidic waters needed for hypogene speleogenesis (HGS), I suggest HGS is the primary mechanism of cave formation. To test this hypothesis, I have been visiting commercial caves to determine what percentage of them show HGS features and are thus likely to have been formed by HGS. This paper offers continuing preliminary results of that test, focusing on the caves of …

Effects Of Hot Post-Flood Groundwater Flow From The Sea Floor, David M. Winsberg

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

This abstract deals with the effects of large amounts (~700 ˣ 10²⁴ Joules) of geothermal heat being slowly transferred across the seafloor for several hundred years. This is enough energy to heat the oceans by 125 °C if it was deposited instantaneously. The mechanism of how this geothermal heat is supplied to the seafloor is a separate topic that is not discussed here.

What makes this different than other “warm ocean” models is that they use a one-time ocean heating event during the Genesis flood. My model uses continuous heating for centuries, while the oceans also simultaneously cool by …