Digital Commons Network^™

Discovery Of A Novel Regulatory Mechanism Of Tnk1 By 14-3-3 And Its Ubiquitin Association Domain Provides A Potential Therapeutic Targeting Opportunity In Cancer, Tsz Yin Chan

Theses and Dissertations

While a relatively limited number of known oncogenes underlie a large percentage of cancers, a variety of new genes have emerged as low-frequency cancer drivers. Each of these new oncogenes represents a frontier for targeted therapy. However, the discovery of low-frequency targetable oncogenic drivers is challenging. This study focuses on the poorly understood Tyrosine kinase non-receptor-1 (TNK1), which has been reported to have both oncogenic and tumor suppressive functions. TNK1 has been identified to promote cancer cells survival and promote chemoresistance in multiple independent studies. On the other hand, whole-body constitutive deletion of TNK1 in mice caused an increase in …

Aerobic Exercise Alters Opioid Receptors Following Chronic Alcohol Exposure, James N. Brundage

Theses and Dissertations

Opioid receptors have been a target of pharmacological manipulation in alcohol use disorder (AUD) recovery protocols for many years. Aerobic exercise, a common adjunct in AUD recovery, is known to modulate opioid receptors (ORs) both during both acute and long term exposure. The three subtypes of ORs: mu (MOR), delta (DOR), and kappa (KOR) are all expressed on neurons in the mesocorticolimbic circuitry. Kappa-opioid receptors are expressed directly on dopamine (DA) neuron terminals in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Mu and Delta ORs are expressed on cholinergic interneurons (CINs) and GABA neurons in the NAc. In alcohol dependent rodents, KORs are …

Analyzing Metacommunity Models With Statistical Variance Partitioning: A Review And Meta-Analysis, Kevin Vieira Lamb

Theses and Dissertations

The relative importance of deterministic processes versus chance is one of the most important questions in science. We analyze the success of variance partitioning methods used to explain variation in β-diversity and partition it into environmental, spatial, and spatially structured environmental components. We test the hypotheses that 1) the number of environmental descriptors in a study would be positively correlated with the percentage of β-diversity explained by the environment, and that the environment would explain more variation in β-diversity than spatial or shared factors in VP analyses, 2) increasing the complexity of environmental descriptors would help account for more of …

Alzheimer's Disease And Immune Cell Dysfunction, David Hansen

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Louisiana Purchase And Its Borderlands: The Lewis And Clark, Hunter And Dunbar, Zebulon Pike, And Freeman And Custis Expeditions In Perspective [Part 1], Jay H. Buckley

Faculty Publications

When Americans contemplate the exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the names Meriwether Lewis and William Clark quickly come to mind. Their historic journey was well conceived, well executed, and well documented. It was one of the first and longest U.S. government-backed explorations of the American West. The name Zebulon Pike, for some, conjures up notions of a lost explorer who was arrested by the Spanish as an alleged American spy. Fewer still have heard of the names William Dunbar, George Hunter, Thomas Freeman, and Peter Custis. Even those who have heard of these men may be hard-pressed to identify any …

The Invisible Message, Andrew S. Gibbons Iii, Elizabeth Boling

Faculty Publications

The number and variety of messages conveyed by an instructional experience is astonishing, but most designers are unaware of their number, subtlety, and impact. Many of those messages they would not choose to send if they recognized their existence in practice. The design of invisible and abstract message structures receives less attention from designers today than those parts of the design given to more vivid, colorful, and showy surface structures. Invisible message structures work behind the scenes to produce the smooth surface performances in front of the curtain; they are seldom seen directly, but their power is indisputable. The purpose …

The Categorization Of Ideophone-Gesture Composites In Quichua Narratives, Maria Graciela Cano

Theses and Dissertations

Ideophones are “marked words that vividly depict sensory events” (Dingemanse, 2009, p. 1). They often occur with gesture, but the link between the two is not yet fully understood. McNeill (1992) and Streeck (2008) have proposed classification schemas for gesture, and Nuckolls (2019) is developing a framework for the categorization of ideophones. This thesis categorizes ideophone-gesture composites using a combination of all three of these frameworks. I used data from Quechua RealWords, an online video corpus of 221 ideophones of Pastaza Quichua elicited by students and faculty at the Andes and Amazon Field School in Ecuador. I analyzed video clips …

A Comprehensive Comparison Of Teratogenic Compounds Known To Induce Neural Tube Defects In The Chicken Embryo, Micah Marie Ross

Theses and Dissertations

One of the first embryonic structures generated during early human development is the neural tube. The embryonic process of neurulation, including neural tube closure, is necessary for proper brain and spinal cord development, whereas improper closure leads to neural tube defects including anencephaly, spina bifida, and craniorachischisis. The mechanism by which these defects occur is unknown, but some evidence suggest that redox disruption may play a role. Cellular redox state is important in regulating key processes during neural tube closure, including differentiation, proliferation, gene expression, and apoptosis. This study aims to determine whether redox potential shifts and these key processes …

Activity, Stability, And Binding Capacity Of Β-Galactosidase Immobilized On Electrospun Nylon-6 Fiber Membrane, Deborah Ann Hutchins

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores various immobilized enzyme support materials, including the novel nylon-6 fiber membrane (NFM), observing the increase of surface area and what effect that has on enzyme binding potential. This study also manipulates incubation and reaction conditions and observes what affect that has on activity and stability of β-galactosidase comparing various solid support materials and free enzyme. Nylon-6 fiber membranes were created using the process of electrospinning and were compared with other materials as solid support materials for enzyme binding. The other materials included polyvinylidene fluoride 5 kD nanofiltration dairy membranes, nylon-6 pellets, silica glass beads, and free—dissolved—enzyme. Scanning …

Age-Suitability Prediction For Literature Using Deep Neural Networks, Eric Robert Brewer

Theses and Dissertations

Digital media holds a strong presence in society today. Providers of digital media may choose to obtain a content rating for a given media item by submitting that item to a content rating authority. That authority will then issue a content rating that denotes to which age groups that media item is appropriate. Content rating authorities serve publishers in many countries for different forms of media such as television, music, video games, and mobile applications. Content ratings allow consumers to quickly determine whether or not a given media item is suitable to their age or preference. Literature, on the other …

Making Meaning In The Classroom: Developing An Oer For Equitable Teaching, Brenton Jackson

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

The cultural aspects of teacher-child interactions are emerging as key factors in K-6 learning, especially as the diversity of US classroom increases year to year. While there is growing evidence that culturally-connected classroom interactions can enrich development and improve classroom experience, finding accessible ways to teach, measure and improve those cultural aspects of teaching has been challenging, especially because of cost and access barriers.

The purpose of this project was to turn an existing cultural teaching observation protocol (the Classroom Assessment of Sociocultural Interactions, or CASI) into an instructional experience that would be accessible to all teachers. A team of …

Ethical Branding, Lane Gibbons

Marriott Student Review

In this article, BYU senior Lane Gibbons outlines the details of ethical branding and emphasizes the importance of corporate social responsibility in the modern era.

Overcoming Sibling Rivalry In Families, Rylie Mcbride

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Variable Uptake Of Selenium: Exposing Bryophytes In-Situ To A Se-Gradient Watershed, Del Wayne R. Nimmo, Scott J. Herrmann, James S. Carsella, Igor V. Melnykov

Western North American Naturalist

We investigated the uptake of selenium (Se) at 14 sites in a Se-rich watershed, using an aquatic bryophyte (Hygrohypnum ochraceum). We expressed uptake using the symbol K_d to underscore the relationships between Se in water and Se in plants as “partitioning coefficients” related to the bases of aquatic food chains. A 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed with K_d as the dependent variable and season and stream segment (location) as main effects. Selenium concentrations, measured as dissolved Se, total Se, and pore water Se, were also examined. There were significant differences in K_d values …

Behavioral Response To High Temperatures In A Desert Grassland Bird: Use Of Shrubs As Thermal Refugia, Janet M. Ruth, William A. Talbot, Eric Krabbe Smith

Western North American Naturalist

Birds inhabiting hot, arid ecosystems contend with trade-offs between heat dissipation and water conservation. As temperatures increase, passerines engage in various behaviors to reduce exposure to heat, solar radiation and insolation, and reradiation of heat from the ground. These responses to rising temperatures may result in subordination of reproductive urgency or nutrient acquisition to the need for thermoregulation. During studies on Arizona Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum ammolegus) life history and ecology, we noted that these sparrows abandoned territoriality and foraging behaviors under certain circumstances in favor of cooler microsites. In this paper we document the extreme temperatures to …

Compiler-Based Tools To Aid In Data Transfer Optimization And On-Chip Debug Of Heterogeneous Compute Systems, Matthew B. Ashcraft

Theses and Dissertations

First, we present techniques to efficiently schedule data transfers through compiler analyses. Compared to transferring data immediately before and after the kernel executes, our scheduling results in orders of magnitude improvements in execution time, number of data transfers, and number of bytes transferred. Second, we demonstrate techniques to provide on-chip debugging for heterogeneous systems through recording execution on the software in addition to debugging circuitry in the hardware, and provide a temporal correlation between the hardware and software traces through synchronization. This allows us to follow debug data between the hardware and software trace buffers. Due to the added cost …

Poe Teaching Readers To Solve It Themselves, Grace Cosby

Student Works

Edgar Allan Poe wrote many stories that featured different types of unreliable narrators. These narrators were essential to Poe’s goal of teaching his audience to take more active roles in the stories. Insanity, ulterior motives, and lack of knowledge all contribute to making a narrator unreliable. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are all short stories in which Poe implemented a different unreliable narrator to show readers how to pay more attention to a story. With little guidance from Poe or the narrator, readers must put together what is true and …

New And Everlasting: The Relationship Between Gospel Covenants In History, Kerry Muhlestein, Joshua M. Sears, Avram R. Shannon

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints speak of covenants in general, baptismal covenants, temple covenants, the new and everlasting covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, and the Mosaic or Sinai covenant. But what are these covenants, and how are they related to each other? Students in many settings experience confusion about these questions. Each book of scripture shares aspects of covenants that students may not understand as well as they could. Greater clarity will allow them to draw more power from scriptural and current prophetic teachings about the centrality of the covenant in every dispensation.

Cut Off From The Face And Presence: Alma’S Use Of Hebraistic Idioms To Teach The Fall, Matthew L. Bowen

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Alma’s teaching of the doctrine of the Fall of Adam and Eve to his troubled youngest son, Corianton, brings together and approximates two related Hebraistic idioms: “as they [Adam and Eve] were cut off [Hebrew: nikrātû] from the tree of life they should be cut off from the face of the earth [yikkārētû mēʿal pĕnê hāʾădāmâ]” and “our first parents were cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord [nikrātû . . . mippĕnê yhwh]” (Alma 42:6–7). In this brief article, I will attempt to show how Alma uses the multiple …

The Book Of Mormon And The Academy, Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph M. Spencer

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

It doesn’t take a lot of looking to see that something has changed—potentially for the better—about the scholarly world’s relationship to the Book of Mormon. Over the past twenty years, academic presses with no relationship to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have begun publishing serious and high-quality work on this sacred volume of scripture. Various journals have begun to do so as well. Several different scholarly editions of the Book of Mormon are now in print, and both the manuscripts for the Book of Mormon and the volume’s earliest historical editions are readily accessible. We have witnessed …

Reproduction And Age Structure Of The Plains Killifish Fundulus Zebrinus From Two Tributaries Of The Upper Red River, Texas, David S. Ruppel, Timothy H. Bonner

Western North American Naturalist

Plains Killifish Fundulus zebrinus (subgenus Plancterus) is native to river basins in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. Original descriptions of Plains Killifish life history information are now applicable to the sister taxon Northern Plains Killifish Fundulus kansae following recognition of the 2 species in 2001. Study objectives were to quantify (1) length of the reproductive season, using the gonadosomatic index and categories of gonadal maturation, (2) batch fecundity, and (3) number of age groups for Plains Killifish taken from 2 rivers within the upper Red River basin of Texas. Reproductive season was from March through September, with the production …

Groundwater Level Mapping Tool: An Open Source Web Application For Assessing Groundwater Sustainability, Steven W. Evans, Norman L. Jones, Gustavious P. Williams, Daniel P. Ames, E. James Nelson

Faculty Publications

Decision makers need an accurate understanding of aquifer storage trends to effectively manage groundwater resources. Groundwater is difficult to monitor and quantify since the data collected from monitoring wells are often available only at irregular and infrequent intervals. We present an open-source web application (app) to visualize groundwater data over time and automatically calculate changes in aquifer storage volume to help managers assess aquifer sustainability. This app uses a novel multi-linear regression (MLR) algorithm to impute missing data for infrequently sampled wells, using correlated data from other wells in the same aquifer. The app uses this MLR-imputed data to spatially …

A Night To Remember: An Exploration Of High School Dance Culture In Utah, Emmie Tolman

Final Projects

This collection explores the customs and practices surrounding high school dances throughout Utah. This paper explores how school dances appear to build friendships and memories rather than developing romances.

Occurrence Of North American Porcupine (Erethizon Dorsatum) In The Black Hills, South Dakota, Lenora M. Dombro, Earl Perez-Foust, Daniel Roddy, Daryl E. Mergen, Robert A. Gitzen

Western North American Naturalist

During the twentieth century, the North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) was common in the Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming. However, the low number of recent observations in the region has led to concern that porcupine populations have declined. We conducted systematic surveys to assess porcupine occurrence at two hundred and sixty-three 1-ha sites in the Black Hills National Forest, Custer State Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, and Wind Cave National Park during 2016–2017. We observed no porcupines or recent feeding sign. We also noted few recent observations in information compiled …

Life History Variation In Two Populations Of California Newt, Taricha Torosa, Michael P. Marchetti, Abigail Hayes

Western North American Naturalist

California Newts (Taricha torosa) are common amphibians throughout much of California, yet their life history has been little studied. We examined T. torosa in 2 physically separated breeding locations, a farm pond and a nearby stream, between February and June 2015. We synoptically collected physical measurements on adults as well as tissue samples from a subset of the newts present in both locations throughout the time period. Stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen were used to characterize the trophic niche space among newts of different locations and ages. Our results suggest differentiated breeding phenologies as well as unique …

Contradictory Selves: An Investigation Of Identity Performance In A Dance Leisure Space, Bayleigh Cragun

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Identity is a constantly shifting performance of self, occasionally complicated when outward appearance of the self-performer doesn’t match the manner (behavior). This contradictory performance of self is most obvious when connected to a racial group identity, such as in dance leisure spaces. However, previous research on identity performance and critical race studies in dance leisure spaces has not investigated contradictory identities. As a participant-researcher in a black dance space at a predominantly white institution (PWI), the BYU Step Team, I investigated how non-black participants navigate contradictory identities. Using a dramaturgical perspective to analyze individual identity performance and a critical race …

Multi-Objective Intent-Based Path Planning For Robots For Static And Dynamic Environments, Meher Talat Shaikh

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation models human intent for a robot navigation task, managed by a human and undertaken by a robot in a dynamic, multi-objective environment. Intent is expressed by a human through a user interface and then translated into a robot trajectory that satisfies a set of human-specified objectives and constraints. For a goal-based robot navigation task in a dynamic environment, intent includes expectations about a path in terms of objectives and constraints to be met. If the planned path drifts from the human's intent as the environment changes, a new path needs to be planned. The intent framework has four …

An Inventory Of Springsnails (Pyrgulopsis Spp.) In And Adjacent To The Spring Mountains, Nevada, Kevin S. Mckelvey, Corey Kallstrom, Jeri Ledbetter, Donald W. Sada, Kristine L. Pilgrim, Michael K. Schwartz

Western North American Naturalist

Springsnails (genus Pyrgulopsis, hereafter pyrgs) are small freshwater aquatic gastropods that occur in isolated springs in western North America. Pyrgs are species of conservation concern, but patterns of occupancy and speciation are complex. We investigated patterns of occurrence for pyrgs in the Spring Mountains, Clark County, Nevada. We were primarily concerned with identifying springs containing the species P. deaconi, the Spring Mountains pyrg, and P. turbatrix, the southeast Nevada pyrg. We identified species through genetic analysis of the COI-1 mitochondrial region and examined patterns of genetic structure. We located aquatic gastropods in 26 springs and analyzed 420 …

Pedagogical Approaches And Instructional Content That Predict Increased Acceptance Of Biological Evolution In University Students, Clinton Thomas Laidlaw

Theses and Dissertations

Evolution is the central organizing theory of biology. Without evolutionary theory, biology becomes a somewhat tangential assemblage of facts about living organisms, which is precisely how it is viewed by many students. Many teachers teach evolution in a limited capacity or avoid it entirely due to fear of opposition, lack of confidence in their own understanding, or lack of acceptance of the theory themselves. When evolution is not taught, or is not accepted, it cannot be utilized to make sense of the field, and is quickly forgotten by students. While some studies have shown a correlation between instruction about evolution …

Entropy's Child, Brandon Reed Boulton

Theses and Dissertations

Art, process, and materials offer me an escape from the sometimes-crushing realities of my personal struggle with chronic mental illness. Escape is often my primary motivator for making art. However, personal meaning and understanding sometimes come while I'm working in the studio. Sometimes the meanings of the work only become clear years later. Personal experience and experimenting with materials and processes have led me to an appreciation and awareness of entropy--the second law of thermodynamics. My sculptures use spontaneity, abstraction, and process to dialogue with entropy.