Digital Commons Network^™

Designing Resilient Agents Using Grammatical Evolution, Behavior Trees, And Finite Linear Temporal Logic, Aadesh Neupane

Theses and Dissertations

Resilience is essential for long-term autonomous agents. Swarm behaviors seen in bees, ants, birds, fish, and others are interesting because they resiliently perform complex coordinated tasks like foraging, nest-selection, flocking and escaping predators without centralized control or coordination. Conventionally, mimicking swarm behaviors with robots requires researchers to study actual behaviors, derive mathematical models, and implement these models as state machines. Since the conventional approach is time-consuming and cumbersome, this dissertation uses a grammatical evolution algorithm with Behavior Trees (BTs) to evolve behaviors that are resilient to different perturbations for foraging and nest maintenance tasks. The modular, reactive, and readable properties …

A Comparison Of Kid Goat Lipase And Microbial Lipase On The Development Of Cheddar Cheese Flavor, Reece H. Larsen

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Manufacturers continue to look for methods to save time in aging cheese. Complex reactions occur during cheese ripening that produce characteristic flavors and aromas. The addition of exogenous lipase enzymes is one accelerated ripening method that has been studied. Our objective was to document and compare the flavor profiles of cheddar cheeses created with either microbial lipase or animal lipase. Materials and Methods: The experiment followed a conventional formulation to create experimental batches of cheddar cheese. Kid goat lipase and three microbial lipase treatments were compared against a control. Other animal lipases were evaluated in preliminary research but were …

Dopamine D2 Receptors As A Peripheral Biomarker For Brain Dopamine Levels, Christina Small

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to objectively index dopamine (DA) levels in the brain has the potential to revolutionize the field of neuropsychopharmacology, as having a peripheral biomarker of brain DA would enable the objective monitoring of the progression of Parkinson's disease (PD) and other DA-dependent psychiatric states. Of particular relevance to commercialization, it would provide an objective measure of treatment efficacy. We used a DA-depletion approach to determine if peripheral D2Rs are a biomarker for brain DA; mainly, the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) neurotoxin model and PD subjects, which are well-known models of DA depletion in the midbrain of rodents and humans, respectively. Dopamine …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Third Volume Of Islamic Translation Series Released

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

With the release of a third volume, and with several more soon to follow, the continuity of the Islamic Translation Series is assured. The latest volume is an English translation of a newly prepared critical text of The Philosophy of Illumination, by Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi. Like the other books in the series, it belongs to a rich tradition of medieval Islamic philosophy and mysticism that has, until now, remained obscure in the Western world and largely unavailable in English translation.

Farms Web Site Features Information On The Dead Sea Scrolls

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The FARMS Web site now offers a link to material on the Dead Sea Scrolls. To access it from the Member Services section or the Free Services section of the FARMS Web site, click on the heading "Dead Sea Scrolls," found under "Links of Interest." Nine topics will appear, covering general information on the scrolls as well as information on the scroll exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago and the traveling scroll exhibit currently touring Latter-day Saint stake centers in the Midwest.

Lds Church Sponsors Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit In Chicago

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the principal sponsors of an exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls that opened on 10 March at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. Running through 11 June 2000, the exhibit features 15 scroll texts and 80 artifacts excavated at Qumran, a site of ancient ruins located near the caves where the scrolls were first discovered.

Body In Rebellion: The Closing Body, Romantic Mesmerism, And Gothic Doubles In Hogg's Justified Sinner, Elizabeth E. Hinds

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the western Romantic period as a transition between the medieval “open body” and the modern “closed body.” It focuses on “closing body” phenomena such as “mesmerism” (i.e. animal magnetism), somnambulism, substance abuse, and the “second-self,” including notions of the subconscious and the trope of gothic Doppelgängers. This study draws from many pieces of western Romantic literature but is most centered around James Hogg’s 1824 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This new reading of Hogg’s novel suggests a core theme of body anxiety, rather than theological dispute.

O Silêncio Da Mulher Carioca Oitocentista E Sua Representação No Romance Naturalista Lar De Pardal Mallet, Jessyca Kimberly De Oliveira Zanetti

Theses and Dissertations

The 19th century represents the arrival of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil and, with it, significant changes in society and the local population. A formerly reclusive member of society begins to take shape not only in public life but also within the literature: the Brazilian woman. Despite her changing social role, prevailing hygienist and medical theories of the time pointed to the lack of vocation of the nineteenth-century woman for rational matters; which in naturalism implies that these pseudo-scientific theories would be the base to dissect and explain the social pathologies of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and society at …

Utilizing Isothermal Titration Calorimetry To Measure Β-Galactosidase Activity In Dairy Products, Tyler Ronald Jarrard

Theses and Dissertations

The dairy industry uses enzymes to make cheese, alter product flavor, and eliminate lactose. The activities of these enzymes have been measured in clear buffered solutions, but because of the limitations of spectrophotometric methods, enzyme activities have not been measured in opaque or colored dairy products where they are used. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) can be used to determine reaction kinetics in opaque and colored solutions by measuring the heat rate from enzyme-catalyzed reactions as a function of time. This study used ITC to measure β-galactosidase activity in opaque solutions of milk, sweet whey, sweet whey permeate, acid whey, and …

Real-Time Imaging And Measurement Of Compartmentalized Redox Shifts Using Novel Redox-Sensitive Biosensors: Implications In Developmental Toxicology, Brandon Mitchell Davies

Theses and Dissertations

Glutathione (GSH) is a small antioxidant in the body and exists in large quantities compared to other antioxidants. The GSH redox state (Eh) helps developmental processes, however, when the GSH Eh is disrupted, cells may undergo significantly poor developmental pathways, possibly leading to long-lasting damages. Similarly, NADPH and Thioredoxin redox states can have a major impact on cellular function, viability, and response to both endogenous and exogenous toxicants. Subcellular, compartmentalized redox environments during normal or perturbed situations, specifically in the cytosol, mitochondria, and nucleus, are not well understood. Here, using the P19 neurogenesis model of cellular differentiation, the kinetics of …

Pausing In American English: Documenting Native English Speakers' Pausing Patterns, Ammon Hunt

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine more deeply the relationship between pause location and duration and its connection to clause and phrase boundaries for native English speakers (NESs). Previous research has shown pauses produced by NESs to be located at clause boundaries (Brown & Miron, 1971; Hawkins, 1971; Tavakoli, 2011), but little empirical work has been done to probe this issue further. For this research, 80 speech samples, 40 male and 40 female, were randomly selected from the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) representing different regions in the United States. Oral data from the read-aloud portion of …

Against Capital Punishment, Zac Bright, Ben Austin (Editor)

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Capital punishment has a strong legal precedence in the United States. Capital punishment has been a penal option for those who commit conspicuously wrong acts. For such acts, the punishment seems to be proportional to the crime. In addition to the punishment’s adherence to proportionality, capital punishment mitigates problematic outcomes.

This paper advocates, however, that capital punishment should be classified as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Such violation of the eighth amendment delegitimizes capital punishment. Consequently, The Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 should no longer be considered a valid law because of its constitutional violation.

Ecological Disruption In The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Jane Allen

Ballard Brief

Ecological disruption is an issue that is affecting the wildlife and people that live in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Climate change and oil drilling are two of the main causes of ecological disruption in the ANWR. The native people and wildlife are the ones being affected by the ecological disruption and deterioration. Food source decline and land degradation are some of the ways that climate change is affecting these people. Oil drilling and government involvement in the lands of Alaska is causing the degradation for many Alaskans to worsen. Oil drilling destroys ecosystems and harms the native animals, …

Data For Caveat Emptor-Scan Quality Of Elsevier’S Digital Backfile Pdf Collection, Gregory M. Nelson, Paul Kj Robbins

ScholarsArchive Data

The data set contains two Supplementary Files that contain (1) metadata for 31 of Elsevier's journal backfile packages and (2) metadata and results of a PDF scan quality study.

Developing Tools For Introducing Modifications Into The Chicken Genome, Zachary Eldon Olsen

Theses and Dissertations

The chicken is a classic model organism that has provided key insights into embryonic development. Chicken embryos can be directly manipulated and observed during development while retaining the potential to reach adulthood. Despite this benefit, the utility of the chicken in studying development has been limited by the difficulty of introducing genetic changes to the genome. The recent development of cell culture conditions for chicken primordial germ cells (cPGC) has made it feasible to produce transgenic chickens, but there is still a lack of tools for introducing genetic modifications into cPGCs. Recombinase Mediated Cassette Exchange (RMCE) is a technique that …

Comparing Multiple Sclerosis Age Of Onset In American American And European Cohorts Via Polygenic Risk Scores, Amy Arabel Hernandez

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Health disparities have been observed in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), which show that non–Hispanic black patients with MS die at an earlier age and have an increasing mortality trend compared to white MS patients.³ New genetic information shows promising results to treat genetic diseases. For example, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are being used to calculate polygenic risk scores (PRS) which are a method used to understand disease risk. However, current PRS have been developed using GWAS that overrepresent individuals of European ancestry,⁴ showing that they do not equally apply to all individuals. We set out …

Creating Habitat Suitability Models For Restoration Of Sesbania Tomentosa And Chenopodium Oahuense On Molokai, Hawaii, Bronwyn Meldrum

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Hawaii is home to incredible diversity in both plant and animal life. Nearly 90% of Hawaii’s 1,400 plant taxa are found nowhere else in the world, and in an ecosystem threatened by invasive species and terrain alteration, this puts them at risk of extinction. As pressures on global biodiversity intensify, conservation efforts and restoration of endangered species are of the utmost importance. The Molokai Land Trust is actively working to eradicate invasive kiawe (Prosopis pallida) forests and to restore endemic species and other native vegetation on the Mokio Preserve. These vital efforts are made more difficult because the …

Effects Of The Ketogenic Diet On Spatial Memory And Long-Term Potentiation In The Ca1 Region Of The Hippocampus In Young Rodents, Jed Christensen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The ketogenic diet (KD) originated as a treatment for epilepsy nearly a century ago, though its neurological effects are not completely understood. In recent years the diet has resurged as a weight loss aid, reinvigorating research investigating its effects on the nervous system. Notably, the KD alters the concentration of glucose and ketones in the brain, and recent research suggests that the elevated ketone concentration, in the form of beta-hydroxybutyrate, induced by the diet enhances recognition memory and mitochondrial efficiency in the hippocampus. To further explore the effects of the KD, we examined its cognitive effects on spatial memory and …

Trapped By The Past: A History And Translation Of An Equatoguinean Poet, Paul A. Guajardo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Atrapado por el pasado (Trapped by the Past in English) is a collection of Spanish-language poetry and prose by the Equatoguinean poet Zankús Mázé Menemádjimol. Menemádjimol’s work has never received an English translation, and this thesis provides a poetic rendition of three of his poems. It also offers a brief historical introduction, literary overview, and commentary on the poems. While the main goal of this project is artistic and creative, it also aims to introduce readers to an oft-overlooked culture. Equatorial Guinea and the poet’s home island of Annobón are frequently ignored in the fields of both literature and history. …

Elevating The Silicon Slopes, Joseph Evans

Undergraduate Honors Theses

From Utah’s humble beginnings in agriculture and mining, Utah has become an economic powerhouse in the United States, largely due to the rise of Silicon Slopes. Despite the successes of Silicon Slopes, there are still significant shortcomings related to diversity and inclusion in Silicon Slopes that must be remediated if it intends to achieve its economic aspirations and ensure its economic benefits flow to people of all types and backgrounds. This work outlines both the rise of Silicon Slopes as well as existing and potential private- and state-ordered solutions that may be implemented to overcome Silicon Slopes’ existing diversity and …

Repertoire For A Graduate Tenor Trombone Audition, An Annotated List Of Trombone Solos For A Master's Program Audition, Ashley Rands

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Students in the field of trombone performance may find preparation difficult for graduate auditions due to the diversity of required selections and lack of standard repertoire. While not always explicitly available, many graduate programs have a list of required or recommended solos. This brief study is the result of preparations for graduate school auditions, including the challenge of deciding what solos to perform. After looking at application requirements for fifteen strong trombone programs, I created a list of the most frequently required/recommended solos. The study of the pieces provided insight into specific difficulties and performance notes for each solo. Included …

Creating The Listener Language: A Constructed Language With Semantic Rhythms And Tones, Dallyn H. Mccracken

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through creating a language that uses semantic rhythms to convey information in ways that typical intonation does not, I was able to see the benefits and drawbacks of strict semantic intonation. The Listener language replaces intonation with rhythms, and it uses rhythms in place of intonation in cases where intonation would generally be used in other languages, though it also uses rhythms in all other speech. Rhythms in the Listener language are grammatical, and speaking the language without the rhythms is considered to be ungrammatical. During the language construction process, there were several setbacks, both expected and unexpected. The Listener …

Gyno-Gerontological Discourse And The Dearth Of Old Women Narrators In British Fiction 1790-1860, Lavender Elisabeth Earnest

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the remarkable dearth of old woman narrators in British fiction between 1790 and 1860, both documenting their under-representation and explaining it as, in part, a product of a wave of medical discourse disparaging the physical and mental vitality of post-menopausal women. Regarding methodology, I perform a random sample upon a corpus of first-person novels published in the period and categorize each according to the gender and age of the narrator. This analysis exhibits, unsurprisingly, that most narrators in the dataset are either in the first half of their life, male, or both. Old women represent only a …

Bookbinding In The Middle Ages: Presenting Book History In A University Setting, Louisa Eastley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Original bindings on historical books can provide important and interesting context to the book’s contents, including the class status of the original owner, the aesthetic standards of the time period, and the priorities of the bookbinder. Oftentimes, however, the bindings are ignored or neglected by those interested solely in the book’s content.

This thesis project centered around providing visitors to the Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah, with the opportunity to see books from the Middle Ages on exhibit, alongside educational material created to help them understand the significance and relevant characteristics of the books’ original bindings. The project’s …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Joseph's Coat And Moroni's Covenant Of Liberty, Matthew Roper

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

In the biblical account, after Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery, they kill a goat, dip Joseph's coat in the blood of the animal, and send the coat to their father, Jacob, to make him think that Joseph has been killed by a wild beast (see Genesis 37:3 1-33). Later we read that Joseph refused the advances of Potiphar's wife in order to remain faithful to God but was nevertheless falsely accused and imprisoned (see Genesis 39).

Sustainably Providing Accurate Local River Discharge Data With Global Hydrologic Modeling And Bias Corrections, Riley Chad Hales

Theses and Dissertations

The Global Water Sustainability Initiative of the Group of Earth Observations (GEOGloWS) supported an initiative to develop a global hydrologic model. The purpose of the modeling initiative is to build a high-quality model using the best available datasets and modeling methods with the primary emphasis on accessibility of the model. The goal is to make the model a sustainable source of river discharge information to supplement the capacity of those countries without the local capacity to maintain sufficient gauge networks and local modeling capabilities and cyberinfrastructure. Past research developed a modeling approach and piloted implementations and data and visualization services …

Analysis Of The Rigid Motion Of A Conical Developable Mechanism, Mckell Woodland, Michelle Hsiung, Erin L. Matheson, C Alex Safsten, Jacob Greenwood, Denise M. Halverson, Larry L. Howell

Faculty Publications

We demonstrate analytically that it is possible to construct a developable mechanism on a cone that has rigid motion. We solve for the paths of rigid motion and analyze the properties of this motion. In particular, we provide an analytical method for predicting the behavior of the mechanism with respect to the conical surface. Moreover, we observe that the conical developable mechanisms specified in this paper have motion paths that necessarily contain bifurcation points which lead to an unbounded array of motion paths in the parameterization plane.

Phage Host Interactions In Fhua Dependent Bacteriophages, Ian W. Baeten, Jessica M. Lewis, Kathryn E. Janda, David E. Kotter, Julianne H. Grose, William R. Mccleary

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2023

Bacteriophages are the natural enemy of bacteria. They infect and kill bacterial cells similarly to how animal viruses infect and kill our (eukaryotic) cells. Being viruses, bacteriophages need to get inside of their host to be able to replicate and survive. To do this, phages use receptor binding proteins (RBPs) to bind to various molecules on the surface of bacterial cells, which allows them to attach and initiate the first step of infection. Several novel bacteriophages were isolated from sewage samples across the Wasatch Front of Utah that infect Escherichia coli strain MG1655 and are being used to gain greater …