Digital Commons Network^™

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Videos Become Available

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

The transfer of our slide presentation, "Lands of the Book of Mormon," to video is now completed. In addition, the video features an introductory panel discussion by John Sorenson, Truman Madsen, and Stephen Ricks. Videos are available in either VHS or Beta format. Please specify which format and speed you want when ordering.

Meet Our Executive Secretary

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

Every dynamic organization needs a top-notch secretary to keep the people and the projects all pulling together in the same direction. FARMS is fortunate to have Darlene Clarke on board to manage the minutes and agendas of our monthly research and business meetings.

Announcing The Cornerstone Club

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

The Cornerstone Club is our way of saying "Thank you" to those who are providing generous financial support to FARMS. Many of the exciting new projects you are reading about would never happen without people who care enough about scriptural studies to provide the necessary funds.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Dinner Completes Nibley Birthday Celebration

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

A dinner to note the completion of the two-volume By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh Nibley on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday was held on September 7. In attendance were Brother and Sister Nibley, over half of those who contributed articles to the volumes, members of the administration at BYU, and Elder Neal Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve.

Nibley's Latest Lectures Now On Audiotape

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

Facsimile #2 of the Pearl of Great Price is an Egyptian hypocephalus. Anciently such documents were placed under the head of a deceased person before burial. In a series of twelve lectures recently sponsored by F.A.R.M.S. and delivered at BYU, Hugh Nibley discussed "what the Egyptians themselves said about the hypocephalus," "what Joseph Smith said about it," and the facsimile's meaning and importance.

New Book Of Mormon Geography Map Available

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

A handsome new wall map suitable for classroom use has been developed by Dr. Michael Preece, a Salt Lake physician and student of the Book of Mormon. It follows the model of geography in John Sorenson's An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Dr. Sorenson assisted in the project.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Who Is Doing What?

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

We have received inquiries recently about whom to contact at F.A.R.M.S. for various purposes, so we thought it might help you if we outlined the responsibilities of each member of the board of directors. We welcome your inquiries and appreciate your interest and support.

Recent Noon Book Of Mormon Seminars

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

Interested BYU faculty and others continue to participate in an informal seminar on the Book of Mormon held on alternate Wednesdays in the conference room on the 9th floor of the Kimball Tower. For details, contact Noel Reynolds, 764 SWKT. Since January, seven papers have been presented, some of which have either already been published or will be published in the future.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Watch

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

A notice has appeared for Wilfred C. Griggs' book, Early Egyptian Christianity. This book is being published by E. J. Brill (1990), priced at Gld. 140, U5.$ 70.

Mormon's Agenda

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

Again and again Mormon reminds us that he is drastically selecting and condensing as he constructs the Book of Mormon. We can learn much about the man by examining his choices of what to include and what to leave out.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Attend Nibley's Class--In Your Home

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

Join Hugh Nibley in the classroom as he teaches the Pearl of Great Price on video. Watch the story of the Pearl of Great Price unfold; learn about the premortal existence, the council in heaven, the creation, the plurality of worlds, the geological problem, and other topics; discover such personalities as Adam, Eve, Cain, Enoch, and Abraham.

Insights Into Genesis

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

Genesis Made Whole, by Todd Andersen, weaves all the words in the book of Genesis and related scriptural records, particularly the relevant materials in the books of Moses and Abraham and the Joseph Smith Translation, into a single account. It covers premortality, the creation, the Fall, and the lives and teachings of the ancients from Adam to Moses.

Decorative Iron In Early Israel

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

At times when iron was scarce, it was used as a precious decorative metal. So concludes a recent article, "King Og's Iron Bed-Fact or Fancy," Bible Review (April 1990): 16-21. Here, Alan R. Millard documents archaeological evidence for the early use of iron to decorate beds (see Deuteronomy 3:11) and thrones, as well as for bracelets and jewelry, weapons and royal swords. Such beds or jeweled boxes were not solid iron, but they were plated, veneered, or studded with the metal.

Passive Positioning Using Linear Multilateration, Eric R. Widdison

Theses and Dissertations

Passive localization of aircraft in flight using signal time of arrival (TOA) poses some unique challenges. The sensors must be deployed in an approximately coplanar configuration, which produces significant vertical uncertainty in the estimated position. This dissertation examines the traditional algorithms used in passive localization. It presents general forms of linear TOA, time difference of arrival (TDOA), angle of arrival (AOA), and frequency difference of arrival (FDOA) equations from the literature and explains how to apply an intuitive geometric interpretation of these equations. It presents two novel algorithms for passive localization. One uses a one dimensional AOA (1AOA) to improve …

Heated Supersonic Jet Characteristics From Far-Field Acoustical Measurements, Matthew Austin Christian

Theses and Dissertations

In the field of supersonic jet noise, measurements of full-scale afterburning jet engines are infrequent and provide unique opportunities to better understand jet noise phenomena. This thesis represents a phenomenological jet noise analysis using far-field noise data collected from a T-7A-installed GE F404-103 turbofan engine. One issue with the far-field acoustic data from the T-7A was the effects of ground reflections present in the spectra generated from the measured waveforms. A previously developed ground reflection model was implemented into the data to account for this interference. This work represents the first time this model has been implemented in data collected …

How To Make Prison Visits A Success, Ellie Anderson

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Manipulating And Assaying Chromatin Architecture Around Enhancer Elements In Vivo, John Lawrence Carter

Theses and Dissertations

There are about 20,000 genes in the human genome. The lowly nematode worm, C. elegans, has about the same number of genes. How could two organisms that are so different arise from a similar number of genes? The answer is epigenetics, or the factors that help control when and where genes are expressed. There are many layers that comprise the epigenetic control of genes. One of which is the structure or architecture of chromatin. Chromatin is a complex of DNA and proteins. Histone proteins with DNA wrapped around them form the fundamental component of chromatin, the nucleosome. Chromatin exists in …

Monitoring Brain Region-Specific Control Of Protein Turnover And Concentration Using Proteomics, Rebecca Suzanne Burlett

Theses and Dissertations

Regulation of metabolism is vital to health and lies at the core of many different diseases. The breakdown of metabolisms' regulation within the brain can lead to neurological disease like Alzheimer's Disease (AD). AD is known to affect brain regions responsible for memory and memory processing like the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. The regulation of these regions' protein quality, synthesis, and degradation deviate from 'normal' or 'healthy' levels when AD is happening. It is known there is a breakdown of regulation in those regions; however, little is known about the specifics of regulation in healthy brains regions or how it …

Dispensing With Humans In Human-Computer Interaction Research, Courtni L. Byun

Theses and Dissertations

Machine Learning models have become more advanced than could have been supposed even a few years ago, often surpassing human performance on many tasks. Large language models (LLM) can produce text indistinguishable from human-produced text. This begs the question, how necessary are humans - even for tasks where humans appear indispensable? Qualitative Analysis (QA) is integral to human-computer interaction research, requiring both human-produced data and human analysis of that data to illuminate human opinions about and experiences with technology. We use GPT-3 and ChatGPT to replace human analysis and then to dispense with human-produced text altogether. We find GPT-3 is …

Inconsistent Correlation And Momenta: A New Approach To Portfolio Allocation, David Kercher

Theses and Dissertations

Correlated stocks should, in equilibrium, have correlated momenta, but in practice momenta do not always correlate. We use short-term inconsistencies between correlations and momenta to predict price corrections, produce more meaningful investment indicators, and improve upon accepted investing strategies. In particular, our approaches integrate inconsistencies within an entire security class rather than relying only on individual or pairwise security data. We use this theory to improve upon not only the standard momentum portfolio but also Pair Trading and Momentum Reversion methods. This results in three strategies for portfolio allocation that outperforms overlying indices and market benchmarks by 5%-10% in annual …

Feasibility Of An Abstract Verb Naming Treatment For Aphasia, Dallin J. Bailey, Lisa Bunker, Julie L. Wambaugh

Faculty Publications

Purpose

Verb production impairments in aphasia have important implications for sentence production and communication in general. Verbs with low concreteness may be especially important for certain functional uses, and yet limited data regarding their response to treatment are available. This study was designed to examine a novel behavioral treatment approach to improve low concreteness verb naming in persons with aphasia.

Method

Three persons with nonfluent aphasia participated in a single-subject experimental design research study examining the feasibility of the novel treatment. The treatment was based on approaches that target the verb as the central node of meaning during sentence construction. …

Analog Artificial Neurons And Digital Amplifiers: Challenging The Roles Of Analog And Digital Circuit Architectures In Modern Cmos Processes, Taylor S. Barton

Theses and Dissertations

As complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies scale and field-effect transistor (FET) architectures change, the factors in deciding to utilize analog or digital transistor behaviors evolve. This thesis examines three case studies where traditionally analog or digital circuitry has dominated published works but I show that the opposite regime has significant benefits in scaled CMOS technologies. I present a highly digital operational amplifier (traditionally analog) and two artificial neurons (traditionally digital). In Chapters 2 and 3 I present a highly-digital five-stage zero-crossing-based amplifier which breaks the trade-off between slew rate and settling accuracy. I investigate the optimal charge pump design by …

Using Severity Weighted Risk Scores To Prioritize Safety Funding In Utah, Tomas Barriga Aristizabal

Theses and Dissertations

Budgets for transportation improvements are limited so it is important for governments to focus on improving locations most in need of safety funding. The objective of the Two-Output Model for Safety (TOMS) is to provide the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) a reliable method to prioritize safety improvements on state-owned roadways among the different regions. This research will improve the existing Crash Analysis Methodology for Segments (CAMS) and Intersection Safety Analysis Methodology (ISAM) being used to analyze crashes on Utah roadways. The scope of this project is improving on the existing CAMS and ISAM to work together within R, to …

Nano Composite Piezo-Responsive Foam Enabled Pressure Mapping, Jake Duane Sundet

Theses and Dissertations

Pressure injuries cause pain both physically and financially. By creating a comfortable pressure mapping system, pressure injuries can more easily be prevented, and a large expenditure avoided. Nano composite piezo-responsive foam (NCPF) is an inexpensive foam that can be used to measure a static load while still providing a comfortable interface. As NCPF compresses, the impedance changes, correlating to a change in pressure. Optimizing electrode geometry is needed to take full advantage of the impedance change NCPF incurs upon deformation. To optimize electrode geometry, a design of experiment was performed which concluded that a one square inch area of interlaced …

A Novel Application Of Spinning Disk Technology To Collect Plasma From Whole Blood Prior To Quantifying Plasma Rna, Naomi Rapier-Sharman, Mae-Lynn L. Hutchinson, Carlos M. Moreno, Abraham Quaye, Brian D. Poole, K. Scott Weber, William G. Pitt, Brett E. Pickett

Faculty Publications

The spinning disk technology has previously been utilized to isolate bacterial components from blood in hours instead of days. We hypothesized that this platform could be applied as an alternative approach to isolating plasma RNA from a whole blood sample. We consequently tested the efficacy of the spinning disk technology to extract plasma from whole blood upstream of RNA isolation and analysis. To do so, we collected plasma using either the spinning disk or the typical two-spin centrifuge method. We found that the spinning disk method results in significantly more hemolysis during collection than the conventional two-spin centrifuge method. However, …