Digital Commons Network^™

Foreword, Byu Studies

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Language Of God: Understanding The Qur'an, Daniel C. Peterson

BYU Studies

The faith of Islam, one of the three great "Abrahamic" religions, as they might be called, is closely akin to the other two, Judaism and Christianity. It is tightly bound to and thoroughly permeated by its holy book, the Qur'an. Strangely, though, despite the historical and contemporary importance of Islam and despite Islam's kinship with the faith that has dominated Western civilization, neither Islam in general nor the Qur'an in particular is well known in the West. Nor do Westerners typically know very much about the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad. Yet the story of Muhammad is a dramatic …

Behind The Arabesque: Understanding Islamic Art And Architecture, Cynthia Finlayson

BYU Studies

God is the light of the heavens and the earth. A likeness of His light is as a pillar on which is a lamp—the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as it were a brightly shining star—lit from a blessed olive-tree, neither eastern nor western, the oil whereof gives light, though fire touch it not—light upon light. God guides to His light whom He pleases. And God sets forth parables for men, and God is Knower of all things.

—Qur'an 24:35

The Incoherence Of The Philosophers: A Parallel English-Arabic Text Translated, Introduced, And Annotated By Michael E. Marmura Al-Ghazali, David Paulsen, Eric Madsen

BYU Studies

Al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers: A Parallel English-Arabic Text Translated, Introduced, and Annotated by Michael E. Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2000. xxxi, 258 pp. Notes, index. $29.95.

The Day The “Brave Sons Of Mohamed” Saved A Group Of Mormons, David P. Charles

BYU Studies

On March 13, 1899, a small number of Latter-day Saints visited the Armenian cemetery of Aintab (modern Gaziantep), a then-provincial town in what is today southern central Turkey. In this group were two American missionaries, Philip S. Maycock and Joseph W. Booth, and several Armenian converts. Many of the area's Christians were observing Shrove Monday (the first day of Lent), and the cemetery, following Armenian tradition, was crowded with people picnicking and commemorating the loss of loved ones. Recognizing the situation as an opportunity to preach the gospel, the Saints gathered with some friends in a small ravine nearby, where …

Microcredit And The Rural Poor: A Review Of The Maharashtra Rural Credit Project, Raghav Gaiha

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

An attempt is made to review the Maharashtra Rural Credit Project (MRCP)--a microcredit scheme--by focusing on the process of implementation and its implications for targeting, empowerment of women, and trade-off between coverage of the poorest and sustainability of this scheme. Attention is drawn to deficiencies in the design and implementation of this scheme that limit the participation of the poorest and the benefits accruing to them. Moreover, it is argued that there is a risk of overstating the trade-off between the coverage of the poorest and sustainability of the MRCP if these deficiencies are overlooked.

Eli And His Sons: Some Lessons For Parents, Frank F. Judd Jr.

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

The Pedagogy Of A Church Leader: Lessons Learned From Joseph F. Smith's 1854-1916 Letters To His Sister, Martha Ann Smith Harris, David M. Whitchurch

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Do You Need To Clear The Air? Indoor Air Quality And Your Family's Health, Maribeth C. Clarke, Carolyn Garrison

Marriage and Families

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Marriage &. Families

Marriage and Families

No abstract provided.

Serpent Symbols And Salvation In The Ancient Near East And The Book Of Mormon, Andrew C. Skinner

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

The serpent is often used to represent one of two things: Christ or Satan. This article synthesizes evidence from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Greece, and Jerusalem to explain the reason for this duality. Many scholars suggest that the symbol of the serpent was used anciently to represent Jesus Christ but that Satan distorted the symbol, thereby creating this paradox. The dual nature of the serpent is incorporated into the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon.

A Paleoecologic Perspective On Past Plant Invasions In Yellowstone, Cathy Whitlock, Sarah H. Millspaugh

Western North American Naturalist

The role of climate and natural disturbance in the past provides a context for understanding present and future changes in biota. The vegetation history of the Yellowstone region, like that of North America as a whole, is largely one of plant invasions and extinctions in response to changes in climate and environment. When Holocene plant migrations are examined on multiple spatial and temporal scales, several generalities are apparent. First, at a continental and regional scale, plant migration patterns followed the direction of climate change, whereas at local scales plant colonization was governed by site-specific conditions and possibly by biotic interactions. …

What Is Natural? Philosophical Analysis And Yellowstone Practice, Paul Schullery

Western North American Naturalist

The following remarks were Paul Schullerys introduction to a roundtable discussion presented during the 5th Biennial Scientific Conference on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, held 11–13 October 1999 in Yellowstone National Park. His remarks serve a second purpose in this issue of the WESTERN NORTH AMERICAN NATURALIST, as they set the stage for and introduce the remaining articles, all of which are papers, presentations, or addresses from that conference. The 1999 Yellowstone Biennial Conference was entitled "Exotic Organisms in Greater Yellowstone: Native Biodiversity Under Siege." Mr. Schullery is a resource naturalist with the National Park Service in Yellowstone.

The Naturalness Of Biological Invasions, Daniel B. Botkin

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Natural And Unnatural; Wild And Cultural, Holmes Rolston Iii

Western North American Naturalist

Yellowstone National Parks mission and policy can be clarified by analysis of the natural and the unnatural. Nature is a comprehensive word, in some uses excluding nothing; more useful is a contrast distinguishing nature and culture. Specifying "wild nature" denotes spontaneous nature absent human influence. Critics claim that the meaning of wild nature, especially of wilderness, is a foil of culture. Pristine nature, often romanticized, is contrasted with a technological and industrial culture. By this account, wilderness is a social construction.

Nevertheless, wild nature successfully denotes, outside culture, an evolutionary and ecological natural history, which remains present on the Yellowstone …

Effects Of Exotic Species On Yellowstone's Grizzly Bears, Daniel P. Reinhart, Mark A. Haroldson, David J. Mattson, Kerry A. Gunther

Western North American Naturalist

Humans have affected grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) by direct mortality, competition for space and resources, and introduction of exotic species. Exotic organisms that have affected grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Area include common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), nonnative clovers (Trifolium spp.), domesticated livestock, bovine brucellosis (Brucella abortus), lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), and white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola). Some bears consume substantial amounts of dandelion and clover. However, these exotic foods provide little digested energy compared to higher-quality bear foods. Domestic livestock are of greater energetic value, but …

Mountain Goats In The Greater Yellowstone Ecosytem: A Prehistoric And Historical Context, Paul Schullery, Lee Whittlesey

Western North American Naturalist

Because the relatively recent colonization of portions of Yellowstone National Park by introduced mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) from public game lands in Montana raises important policy and management questions for the park, it is necessary to understand the prehistoric and early historical record of mountain goats in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We reviewed previous paleontological, archeological, and historical studies of goat presence and examined a large body of historical material for evidence of goats. Native mountain goat range most closely approached the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to the west, but no modern authority claims goats were resident in the …

Biological Invasions—How Are They Affecting Us, And What Can We Do About Them?, Daniel Simberloff

Western North American Naturalist

Nonindigenous species affect native ecosystems, communities, and populations in myriad ways, from plants (and a few animals) that overgrow entire communities, to plants and animals that hybridize individual native species to a sort of genetic extinction. Further, nonindigenous species sometimes interact to worsen each others impact. These impacts are commonly seen in national parks throughout the United States. The key policy change required to alleviate this threat is a shift from blacklists of prohibited species and a presumption of harmlessness to combinations of white and blacklists and a presumption that any species may be damaging. This new guiding philosophy must …

Managing A Complex Exotic Vegetation Program In Yellowstone National Park, Tom Olliff, Roy Renkin, Craig Mcclure, Paul Miller, Dave Price, Dan Reinhart, Jennifer Whipple

Western North American Naturalist

The number of documented exotic plants in Yellowstone National Park has increased from 85 known in 1986 to over 185 today. Exotic plants are substantially impacting the parks natural and cultural resources and are a high management priority. We have adopted an integrated weed management approach with regard to exotic vegetation, emphasizing prevention, education, early detection and eradication, control, and, to a lesser degree, monitoring. The program involves over 140 staff with program expenditures averaging approximately $190,000 annually. Prevention actions include requiring approved gravel on construction projects; banning hay in the backcountry and allowing transport of only certified weed-seed-free hay …

Full Issue, Vol. 61 No. 3

Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Improved Hopfield Networks By Training With Noisy Data, Fred Clift, Tony R. Martinez

Faculty Publications

A new approach to training a generalized Hopfield network is developed and evaluated in this work. Both the weight symmetricity constraint and the zero self-connection constraint are removed from standard Hopfield networks. Training is accomplished with Back-Propagation Through Time, using noisy versions of the memorized patterns. Training in this way is referred to as Noisy Associative Training (NAT). Performance of NAT is evaluated on both random and correlated data. NAT has been tested on several data sets, with a large number of training runs for each experiment. The data sets used include uniformly distributed random data and several data sets …

Mormonism's Encounter With The Michigan Relics, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee

BYU Studies

One of the strangest and most extensive archaeological hoaxes in American history was perpetrated around the turn of the twentieth century in Michigan. Hundreds of objects known as the Michigan Relics were made to appear as the remains of a lost civilization. The artifacts were produced, buried, "discovered," and marketed by James O. Scotford and Daniel E. Soper. For three decades these artifacts were secretly planted in earthen mounds, publicly removed, and lauded as wonderful discoveries. Because the Michigan Relics allegedly evidence a Near Eastern presence in ancient America, they have drawn interest from The Church of Jesus Christ of …

Culture Carol: Dickens's Influence On Lds Christmas Fiction, Rosalynde Frandsen Welch

BYU Studies

During the festive weeks before Christmas feasts, everybody loves to hate Scrooge. That's how it always was in the household of my childhood. On the first Sunday afternoon of December, my father would gather the children in the family room and ceremonially produce our green hardbound edition of A Christmas Carol. He worked his way through the five staves of the Carol during that afternoon and the Sunday afternoons that followed, in order to complete the reading before Christmas Day. Although the younger children would fidget and the older children would complain, we needed the annual retelling of the …

Tools Leave Marks: Material Analysis Of The Scotford-Soper-Savage Michigan Relics, Richard B. Stamps

BYU Studies

Extensive collections of supposedly prehistoric artifacts known as the Michigan Relics or the Scotford-Soper-Savage collection—possibly as many as 3,000 pieces—exist across the country. I have personally examined more than 1,000 from four different collections. What is so special about this collection of artifacts? Why does it merit further study? Although numerous previous studies have suggested that the materials were not made by ancient people but are of modern origin, there is ongoing interest in the collections. Dr. John Halsey, the state archaeologist of Michigan, says that his office gets more requests to see these materials than any other single collection. …

A Joseph Smith For The Twenty-First Century, Richard Lyman Bushman

BYU Studies

Since Henry Caswall published The Prophet of the Nineteenth Century in 1843, a year before Joseph Smith's death, nineteen book-length biographies of the Prophet have appeared in print, more than half of them since 1940. They differ wildly in tone and perspective, as might be imagined. Several are still worth considering by serious students of Joseph Smith's life. Among the more notable, I. Woodbridge Riley's The Founder of Mormonism is severely critical but ingenious and original, the first biography to attempt a scientific explanation of Joseph Smith's revelations. Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History is a magnificent piece of …

“All Hail To Christmas”: Mormon Pioneer Holiday Celebrations, Richard Ian Kimball

BYU Studies

To Mormon historians and members of the Church generally, Christmas is not a particularly "Mormon" holiday. Though contemporary Latter-day Saints throughout the world embrace a variety of traditions that commemorate the holiday, no major body of distinctively Mormon tradition surrounds the day in December traditionally reserved for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Mormons celebrate the holiday like most other Christians—reading from the nativity account in Luke, exchanging presents, and spending time with family and friends. Santa Claus, decorated trees, and the redemptive story of Ebenezer Scrooge all are staples of the winter holiday for Mormons in the …

Home Production, Christin L. Porter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Swiss Families From The Toggenburg And Werdenberg At Home And Abroad: A Genealogical Sketch, Ernest W. Alther

Swiss American Historical Society Review

During past centuries the moving due to marriage of Toggenburg and Werdenberg families within the region or across borders to neighboring countries can often be observed. Lichtensteig, Wil, and the town of St. Gallen were drawing points for commerce and business for the people of the Toggenburg, and moving across the Swiss border is documented already in the sixteenth century from and to W erdenberg and Appenzell, as shown by moves of families such as Alther, Gantenbein, Giezendanner, and Steiner. They were leaving not only for other European countries but also for overseas, especially to regions that became part of …

Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

Natural Enemy Assemblages On Native And Reseeded Grasslands In Southwestern Montana: A Family-Level Analysis, Kevin M. O'Neill, William P. Kemp, Catherine Seibert, Marni G. Rolston, James A. Bess, T. Keith Philips

Western North American Naturalist

We conducted a 2-year survey, using sweep sampling and family-level taxon identification, of the predatory and parasitoid insects on grassland sites in the Gallatin Valley of southwestern Montana. The 25 sites were divided into 4 habitat classes: 2 native habitat types (Stipa comata/Bouteloua gracilisand Festuca idahoensis/Agropyron spicatum) and 2 that had been reseeded with either crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum) or smooth brome (Bromus inermis). Our major goal was to make quantitative comparisons of the abundance of insects among native and reseeded habitats. Of 51 families in 5 insect orders identified, 7 Hymenoptera (Encyrtidae, …