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

No abstract provided.

Maxwell Institute Well Represented At Fair Conference

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

Four scholars from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship spoke at the FAIR conference held in Sandy, Utah, in August. FAIR, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of Latter-day Saint doctrine, belief, and practice.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Research In The Arabian Peninsula Continues

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

In July 2007, David Johnson, professor of anthropology, Kent Brown, director of FARMS, and Revell Phillips, emeritus professor of geology, all of BYU, were joined by Sidney Rempel of Arizona State University in an archaeological excavation on the southern coast of the Sultanate of Oman.

Book Of Mormon Critical Text Project Continues With New Volume

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

The Maxwell Institute and Brigham Young University are pleased to announce the release of part 4 of volume 4 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. Part 4 analyzes the text from Alma 21 to Alma 55.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Institute Supports Graduates And Undergraduates

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

The Maxwell Institute continues to encourage and support the work of graduate and undergraduate students through two funds.

Each year at this time we remind graduate students about the Nibley Fellowship Program and its application deadline. Named in honor of the late eminent Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley, this pro-gram provides financial aid to students enrolled in accredited PhD programs in areas of study directly related to the work and mission of the Maxwell Institute, particularly work done under the auspices of one department of the Institute, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, such as studies of the …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Institute Supports Graduates And Undergraduates

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

The Maxwell Institute continues to encourage and support the work of graduate and undergraduate students through two funds.

Barriers To Career Advancement Among Skilled Immigrants In The Us, Cassie Anita

Ballard Brief

Over 2 million highly-skilled immigrants in the US are either underemployed or unemployed due to barriers to career advancement. Barriers to career advancement include, but are not limited to, legal status, the process of transferring credentials, the license and certification process, lack of employer recognition, lack of cultural literacy, and the language barrier. Because of these barriers, immigrants face many challenges, such as retraining, paying high fees for courses or tests, limited course options due to a language barrier, and lacking knowledge of US job application processes. These challenges often prevent immigrants from working high-skilled jobs in the workplace. When …

Exploring Perceptions Of New Media Among The Lakota Nation, Isabelle C. Kramer

Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception, the worldwide web has fundamentally altered our understanding of communications. With the rapid adoption of new media around the globe, individuals are increasingly able to communicate with people on the other side of the planet in real-time--traditional boundaries like time and space are no longer relevant barriers to intercultural communication. As such, scholars are scrambling to recognize and understand the broader implications of social media, videoconferencing, blogging, etc on more traditional definitions of culture. Additionally, researchers are beginning to study the ways in which minority cultures are utilizing new media, and the way that new media impacts …

Archaic Sites, Ecological Zones, And Wetlands Resources In The Eastern Great Basin, Lindsey R. Lyle

Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological data has increased significantly with Cultural Resource Management agencies finding and recording archaeological sites all across Utah. With the site data from the Utah State Historical Preservation Office, I examine the expansion of Archaic sites in the Eastern Great Basin from the Early Archaic through the Late Archaic, through the lens of elevation and ecological zones and proximity to wetland resources. I argue that the aridness of the Middle Holocene caused the people to expand into the mountains of Utah, and that the expansion continued into the Late Archaic period, even though the environment became more moist again. I …

Lost In Translation: Implications For Translating Psychometric Tests As Seen With The Nunchi Scale, Jacob A. Larson

Theses and Dissertations

Psychometric tests are often translated from one language into another for use in cultural and cross-cultural psychological research. This tradition has long been a primary method for studying psychological concepts across cultures. A body of literature has been emerging that raises concerns with this process of translation and suggests that psychological concepts may not always translate smoothly across cultures. In what follows, I examine these issues surrounding the translation of psychometric tests. To do this, I gathered survey data for an English translation of the Nunchi Scale, to examine the process of translation and various analytic techniques devised to demonstrate …

Archaeological Data Suggest Seventeenth-Century Presence Of Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra Serpentina) In The Middle Rio Grande, Emily Lena Jones, Laura W. Steele, Cyler Conrad

Western North American Naturalist

The Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) is well established in the Middle Rio Grande today, but some researchers have suggested this population to be of anthropogenic origin. In this paper, we present a C. serpentina specimen recovered during archaeological excavations at the Isleta Pueblo Mission in central New Mexico. The turtle specimen derives from an archaeological context securely dated to the early seventeenth century. The presence of C. serpentina in this context, taken together with the composition of the rest of the Isleta Pueblo Mission archaeofaunal assemblage and the present-day C. serpentina population in the Middle Rio Grande, …

External Laryngeal Oscillation And Aerodynamic Measures Of Voice Onset: A Translational Study, Erik Mcleod Christensen

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine external laryngeal oscillation and its potential effects on phonation threshold pressure (PTP; cm H2O) and phonation threshold flow (PTF; L/sec). Measures of PTP and PTF have inherent limitations due to the nonlinear nature of phonation, influencing their clinical and experimental utility. This is true particularly for tracking relatively small changes in voice function because variability in the measure itself can be larger than that resulting from voice change. Elevated PTP and PTF are associated with a variety of voice disorders and correlate with self-reported vocal effort and fatigue. Prior studies involving silicone …

Acceptance Finds A Way: How To Teach And Use Evolution's Explanatory Power, Daniel George Ferguson

Theses and Dissertations

The theory of evolution is the central combing theory that brings together all the tenets of biology that bring about a solid understanding of life. It is also one of the most controversial scientific theories of all time and is widely rejected by about 40% of the general public in the United States. One of the biggest reasons for low evolution acceptance is the perceived conflict between evolution and religious beliefs. Educators and researchers have been working hard to improve how we teach evolution in the classroom; some methods, such as focusing on evolution knowledge, have shown to be mixed. …

Nursing History And Philosophy, Sheri Tesseyman

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

The nature and history of nursing and its relationship with medicine; comparative study of nursing in the US and the UK; the history of hospital nursing

Reconstituting A Pre-Neolithic Territory By Implementing Plant Functional Types: Application To The Roussillon Territory (France), Benoit Gaudou, Zenith Arnejo, Paul Bannwart, Flavien Loup-Hadamard

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The study of the impact of human activities on a non-humanly modified landscape is confronted with an essential need to define the initial state before farmers arrived. Particularly, vegetation cover (biomass but also vegetation type distribution) is hard to reconstitute once we postulate there is no such thing as climatic vegetation. Here we present the first steps of a reconstitution of a self-evolving vegetation cover of the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales (also, Roussillon) - an area cultivated since the 5th millennium B.C. To simulate the vegetation state at the neolithic period, we first classify the 94 tree and bush species …

Modelling Urban Growth And Future Urban Climate In Indian Cities With Local Climate Zones As Land Uses, Tomas Crols, Jente Broeckx, Inge Uljee, Shu Yang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The urban heat island effect leads to higher temperatures in cities compared to rural areas. The combined effect of climate change and strong urban growth will as such have a massive impact on human health in growing large cities, especially in tropical or humid regions. Climate models usually do not take urban growth into account or do not have detailed data on the specific characteristics of the urban area. Most land-use change simulations are driven by functional land uses (e.g. residential land, commercial land, agriculture), while an urban climate model rather needs more information on climate-relevant surface properties such as …

Transitioning To Sustainable Post-Growth Futures: Exploring Complex Blue Economy Scenarios In The Island Of Barbados, Crystal Drakes, Vanessa Schweizer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There is a need for scientific study into post-growth futures that prioritize ecological and social sustainability. The concept of sustainability brings together complex socioecological systems that prove difficult for stakeholders to implement. In Barbados and many other Small Island Developing States, coastal and marine spaces are of ecological, economic, social, and cultural importance and yet face major environmental, climate and anthropological threats. Due to the negative impacts of the COVID19 pandemic, economic growth has been prioritized particularly by way of coastal and marine resource exploitation. If not counterbalanced with ecological viability and social well-being, this could lead to overexploitation and …

Authenticity Without Belief In Western Tibetan Buddhist Practice, Hannah Sharp-Wang

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of Tibetan Buddhism as practiced by adult converts in Utah. Semiotic ideology is a thread throughout the paper that functions as an explanatory mechanism for describing the ontological variations between beginning and seasoned practitioners. I show examples of clashing semiotic ideologies that demonstrate differing assumptions in understanding of how the world operates. In Chapter 2, I explore the concept of interiority and the taken for granted assumptions of religiosity in the West. The tensions introduced in Chapter 2 are addressed in Chapter 3, which explores how practitioners resolve concerns about authenticity through reliance on their …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Nibley Fellowship Program Assists Rising Scholars

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

For a number of years the Maxwell Institute has sponsored a graduate fellowship program that gives financial aid to students pursuing advanced degrees in fields of special interest to the Institute. Named in honor of the late eminent Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh W. Nibley, this program fosters the next gen- eration of faithful scholars by providing financial aid to students enrolled in accredited PhD programs in areas of study directly related to the work and mission of the Maxwell Institute. Work done under the auspices of the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and the Foundation for …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Nibley Fellowship Program Assists Rising Scholars

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

For a number of years the Maxwell Institute has sponsored a graduate fellowship program that gives financial aid to students pursuing advanced degrees in fields of special interest to the Institute. Named in honor of the late eminent Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh W. Nibley, this program fosters the next generation of faithful scholars by provid- ing financial aid to students enrolled in accredited PhD programs in areas of study directly related to the work and mission of the Maxwell Institute. Of particular interest is work done under the auspices of the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

New Jst Electronic Library Offers Added Features

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

Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: Electronic Library brings together a wealth of information and recent scholarship on Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. The electronic library, produced by the Religious Studies Center and the Maxwell Institute, also includes high-resolution images of every page of the original manuscripts, images and transcriptions of the earliest copies made from those manuscripts, and a collection of recently published studies based on the manuscripts. A short introductory essay precedes each manuscript. This collection also includes the entire 851-page book Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, edited by Scott H. Faulring, Kent …

New Book Features Scholarship On Tree Of Life

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

The tree of life, an ancient and richly evocative symbol found in sacred art, architecture, and literature throughout the world, is the intriguing subject of a new book published by the Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book: The Tree of Life: From Eden to Eternity, edited by BYU professors John W. Welch and Donald W. Parry.

Full Issue

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Spiritual Vs Supernatural Experiences Among Lds, Olivia Barney

Final Projects

About the perceived differences between spiritual and supernatural experiences among Latter-day Saints.