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The Relationship Between Thalamic Morphology And Behavioral Features In Amnestic And Aphasic Variants Of Alzheimer's Disease, Holly Rochelle Winiarski Aug 2022

The Relationship Between Thalamic Morphology And Behavioral Features In Amnestic And Aphasic Variants Of Alzheimer's Disease, Holly Rochelle Winiarski

Theses and Dissertations

Background: The presence of AD pathology can result in diverse behavioral phenotypes, including the typical amnestic variant characterized by memory deficits, and an atypical aphasic variant characterized by language deficits. Previous research has identified unique cortical atrophy patterns in each phenotype, though less focus has been drawn to subcortical involvement. The current study sought to dissociate these behavioral phenotypes by characterizing their thalamic volume and shape features using high-dimensional brain mapping procedures. Relationships between brain metrics and specific language and memory deficits were also investigated in aphasic AD and amnestic AD, respectively. Method: Thalamic integrity was examined in aphasic AD …


Landscaping Wilderness In Hollywood Westerns And Brazilian Nordesterns, Michael Ashman Aug 2022

Landscaping Wilderness In Hollywood Westerns And Brazilian Nordesterns, Michael Ashman

Theses and Dissertations

In this comparative examination of cinematic representations of American and Brazilian wildernesses, I argue for the necessity of a transnational, postregional, and ecocritical approach to film studies. The way that the deserts of the American West are represented by Hollywood Western filmmakers reveal underlying ecological and political philosophies, and provide a productive contrast with representations of the sertão, a similarly arid biome in Brazil. Among other theoretical approaches, this study uses W. J. T. Mitchell’s idea of “landscape” as a verb to examine the formal devices by which filmmakers and audiences “landscape” these “wildernesses.” Using John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) …


Yardang Morphometry And Substrate Properties In Ignimbrites Of The Campo Piedra Pomez, Argentina Compared With The Medusae Fossae Formation, Mars, Dylan Stephen Mcdougall Aug 2022

Yardang Morphometry And Substrate Properties In Ignimbrites Of The Campo Piedra Pomez, Argentina Compared With The Medusae Fossae Formation, Mars, Dylan Stephen Mcdougall

Theses and Dissertations

Yardangs are streamlined ridges carved by the action of wind into consolidated yet erodible substrates. The direction of sediment transport is indicated by their elongate shapes and steep sides which redirects most of the sediment transport layer onto adjacent low-lying surfaces, resulting in lower erosion rates on the elevated areas. Despite this simple premise, the rates of erosion and transport as well as the material properties necessary to form yardangs have until now been largely unknown. This study aims to determine how material properties affect yardang dimensions in order to use yardang morphometry to derive the mechanical properties of a …


Examination Of 14-3-3 Interactors Identifies A Novel Mechanism Of Regulation For The Ubiquitin Binding Kinase Tnk1 That Can Be Targeted To Block Tumor Growth, Christina Marie Egbert Aug 2022

Examination Of 14-3-3 Interactors Identifies A Novel Mechanism Of Regulation For The Ubiquitin Binding Kinase Tnk1 That Can Be Targeted To Block Tumor Growth, Christina Marie Egbert

Theses and Dissertations

Decades of research have begun to identify oncogenic mut-drivers that are responsible for driving a large percentage of cancers. These high frequency mut-drivers have therapeutics in the clinic for patient treatment. However, there is another group of low frequency mut-drivers that fail to rise above the noise of the high frequently drivers. These low frequency drivers represent a group of genes with untapped potential for new targeted therapies. However, identifying these drivers can be difficult. This study focuses on identifying new functional phosphorylations using the phospho-docking protein 14-3-3. The family of 14-3-3 proteins have been linked to many oncogenic pathways …


A Spatial Long-Term Trend Analysis Of Estimated Chlorophyll-A Concentrations In Utah Lake Using Earth Observation Data, Kaylee Brook Tanner Aug 2022

A Spatial Long-Term Trend Analysis Of Estimated Chlorophyll-A Concentrations In Utah Lake Using Earth Observation Data, Kaylee Brook Tanner

Theses and Dissertations

We analyzed chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentrations in shallow, turbid Utah Lake using Landsat data from 1984 to 2021. Utah Lake is ~40 km by 21 km, has a surface area of ~390 km2, an average depth of ~3 m, and loses ~50% of inflow to evaporation. This limits spatial mixing, allowing us to evaluate impacts to smaller lake regions. We evaluated long-term trends at the pixel level and for areas related to boundary conditions. We created 17 study areas based on differences in shoreline development and nutrient inflows. We expected impacted areas to exhibit increasing chl-a trends, as population growth and …


Leveraging Large Language Models Trained On Code For Symbol Binding, Joshua Robinson Aug 2022

Leveraging Large Language Models Trained On Code For Symbol Binding, Joshua Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

While large language models like GPT-3 have achieved impressive results in the zero-, one-, and few-shot settings, they still significantly underperform on some tasks relative to the state of the art (SOTA). For many tasks it would be useful to have answer options explicitly listed out in a multiple choice format, decreasing computational cost and allowing the model to reason about the relative merits of possible answers. We argue that the reason this hasn't helped models like GPT-3 close the gap with the SOTA is that these models struggle with symbol binding - associating each answer option with a symbol …


Measuring Nonlinear Thomson Scattering At Arbitrary Emission Angles, Mahonri Romero Carranza Aug 2022

Measuring Nonlinear Thomson Scattering At Arbitrary Emission Angles, Mahonri Romero Carranza

Theses and Dissertations

We use photon-counting to measure nonlinear Thomson scattering from low-density electrons in an intense laser focus. The azimuthal and longitudinal polarization components of the second harmonic are measured across much of the full emission sphere. The data show, for the first time experimentally, emission structure in the ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ hemispheres, where the ‘North Pole’ aligns with the direction of laser propagation. To obtain these measurements, we installed an additional power amplifier on our Ti:sapphire laser system at BYU. The upgrade delivers ten times more energy to the laser focus than we had previously. This increase comes partly from the …


Design And Characterization Of A Miniaturized Spectrometer For Wearable Applications, Tyler Richard Westover Aug 2022

Design And Characterization Of A Miniaturized Spectrometer For Wearable Applications, Tyler Richard Westover

Theses and Dissertations

As individual health monitors continue to become more widely adopted in helping individuals make informed decisions, new technologies need to be developed to obtain more biometric data. Spectroscopy is a well-known tool to gain biological information. Traditionally spectrometers are large and expensive making personal or wearable health monitors difficult. Here we present the development and characterization of a miniaturized short wavelength infrared spectrometer for wearable applications. We present a carbon nanotube parallel hole collimator can effectively select a narrow set of allowed angles of light to be separated by a linear variable filter and detected at a photodiode array making …


Economic And Hydraulic Simulation Models For Evaluation Of Sediment Management In A Reservoir, Razieh Anari Aug 2022

Economic And Hydraulic Simulation Models For Evaluation Of Sediment Management In A Reservoir, Razieh Anari

Theses and Dissertations

Reservoir sedimentation is a serious problem that threatens the water storage capacities across the world. Extending a dam's life requires adopting a new design and operational paradigm that focuses on managing the reservoir and watershed system to bring sediment inflow and outflow into balance by including reservoir sediment management facilities in dam and reservoir. However, the cost of methods that remove the sediment from reservoirs is usually prohibitive and is a serious factor preventing sustainable sediment management. This thesis considered a case study, Paonia Reservoir in Colorado, to investigate two aspects of reservoir operation, sediment management and economic assessment. The …


A Machine Learning Approach That Integrates Clinical Data And Ptm Proteomics Identifies A Mechanism Of Ack1 Activation And Stabilization In Cancer, Eranga Roshan Balasooriya Loku Balasooriyage Aug 2022

A Machine Learning Approach That Integrates Clinical Data And Ptm Proteomics Identifies A Mechanism Of Ack1 Activation And Stabilization In Cancer, Eranga Roshan Balasooriya Loku Balasooriyage

Theses and Dissertations

Identification of novel cancer driver mutations is crucial for targeted cancer therapy, yet a difficult task especially for low frequency drivers. To identify cancer driver mutations, we developed a machine learning (ML) model to predict cancer hotspots. Here, we applied the ML program to 32 non-receptor tyrosine kinases (NRTKs) and identified 36 potential cancer driver mutations, with high probability mutations in 10 genes, including ABL1, ABL2, JAK1, JAK3, and ACK1. ACK1 is a member of the poorly understood ACK family of NRTKs that also includes TNK1. Although ACK1 is an established oncogene and high-interest therapeutic target, the exact mechanism of …


Interprofessional Education For School-Based Settings, Brittney M. Mack Aug 2022

Interprofessional Education For School-Based Settings, Brittney M. Mack

Theses and Dissertations

Teamwork is essential to provide quality services to individuals with disabilities (Morrison & Gleddie, 2019). Deficits across a variety of domains make interprofessional practice even more crucial (Dobbs-Oates & Morris, 2016). Interprofessional education (IPE) provides preprofessionals the opportunity to gain experience collaborating with various disciplines, better preparing them for interprofessional practice (Anderson et al., 2011; Ruebling, et al., 2014). Most IPE research has been completed with preprofessionals engaged in medical cases. The existing evidence for IPE in school-based settings is limited, which creates a gap for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who are pursuing work in school-based settings. The first purpose of …


Sequencing The Guts Out Of Covid-19; The Evolution Behind The Covid-19 Pandemic, Madelyn Purnell Aug 2022

Sequencing The Guts Out Of Covid-19; The Evolution Behind The Covid-19 Pandemic, Madelyn Purnell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The global COVID-19 pandemic has led to an urgent need for scalable methods for clinical diagnostics and tracking of virus variants. In this paper, we attempted a novel method of sequencing using Large Reverse Transcriptase-based cloning (LRTC). Although our methodology ended up not working due to high amount and fast degradation of RNA, we were able to sequence multiple variants of COVID-19 Positive samples from the BYU Student Health Center and 4 sewage samples to check for variant outbreaks in corresponding times. We were able to find several corresponding variants and track the progression of mutation in our local population.


Gradient Conditioning In Deep Neural Networks, Michael Vernon Nelson Aug 2022

Gradient Conditioning In Deep Neural Networks, Michael Vernon Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

When using Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) to train Artificial Neural Networks, gradient variance comes from two sources: differences in the weights of the network when each batch gradient is estimated and differences between the input values in each batch. Some architectural traits, like skip-connections and batch-normalization, allow much deeper networks to be trained by reducing each type of variance and improving the conditioning of the network gradient with respect to both the weights and the input. It is still unclear to which degree each property is responsible for these dramatic stability improvements when training deep networks. This thesis summarizes previous …


Teacher Judgment Accuracy Of Student Perceptions Of Closeness And Conflict In Teacher-Student Relationships, Collin Seastrand Aug 2022

Teacher Judgment Accuracy Of Student Perceptions Of Closeness And Conflict In Teacher-Student Relationships, Collin Seastrand

Theses and Dissertations

Teacher decisions are largely influenced by the judgments that they make regarding their students' states of mind. Thus, it is important for teachers to be accurate in their judgments. The current study investigated the teacher judgment accuracy of student perceptions of the teacher-student relationship. In a Western state of the United States, 40 teachers used a prediction form to predict how their 4th "“ 6th grade students would rate the closeness and the conflict of their teacher-student relationship via the Student Perception of Affective Relationship with Teacher Scale (SPARTS, Koomen & Jellesma, 2015). Students then took the survey, and teacher …


Mediation In A Science Classroom, David Ray Davis Aug 2022

Mediation In A Science Classroom, David Ray Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Languaging and translanguaging are very important concepts in science classrooms when considering their role as mediational tools for supporting emergent bilingual students' needs. Languaging, including translanguaging, has to do with how people perceive, connect, and understand the activities and utterances around them through verbal and non-verbal communication in any language. This study positions languaging and translanguaging as mediational tools that can be used for supporting the use of science terms and overcoming second language challenges with them. Emergent bilingual students can benefit from the implementation of languaging characteristics that promote classroom discourse spaces where all their repertoire for responding, and …


Introgression Or Incipient Speciation? Using Geometric Morphometrics And Gene Expression To Characterize Mouth Development In Larval June Sucker And Utah Sucker, Peter C. Searle Aug 2022

Introgression Or Incipient Speciation? Using Geometric Morphometrics And Gene Expression To Characterize Mouth Development In Larval June Sucker And Utah Sucker, Peter C. Searle

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding how biodiversity evolves is a major goal in evolutionary developmental biology because changes in developmental processes are tightly linked with evolutionary diversification. Heterochrony--alteration to the rate or timing of development--can significantly alter the appearance of descendant species. Heterochronic shifts in gene expression and associated morphological change may explain the morphological divergence between the threatened June sucker (Chasmistes liorus) and the sympatric Utah sucker (Catostomus ardens) in Utah Lake, UT, USA. June sucker are endemic to Utah Lake and have subterminal mouths adapted for pelagic feeding, while Utah sucker (Catostomus ardens) have ventral mouths adapted for benthic feeding. As larvae, …


Crossing The Threshold: Factors That Influence The Beliefs Of First Year Teachers Regarding Reform-Based Mathematics Instruction, Quinn H. Braden Aug 2022

Crossing The Threshold: Factors That Influence The Beliefs Of First Year Teachers Regarding Reform-Based Mathematics Instruction, Quinn H. Braden

Theses and Dissertations

Teacher preparation programs invest significant resources to influence the beliefs of preservice teachers, including clinical faculty who mentor preservice teachers during practicum experiences. Despite the work of university personnel to guide preservice teachers' beliefs, their influence wanes once preservice teachers cross the threshold into inservice teaching. New mentors, including mentor teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators take the place of university personnel. This quantitative study examined how the beliefs of 77 novice inservice teachers changed toward reform-based mathematics instruction during their first year of teaching. Of the 77 subjects, 50 were interns and 27 had completed student teaching. Near the end …


Field Based Study Of Gravel Liquefaction, Jashod Roy Aug 2022

Field Based Study Of Gravel Liquefaction, Jashod Roy

Theses and Dissertations

Characterization and assessment of liquefaction potential of gravelly soil in a reliable cost-effective manner has always been a great challenge for the geotechnical engineers. The typical laboratory investigation techniques have proven to be ineffective for characterizing gravelly soil due to the cost and difficulty of extracting undisturbed sample from gravelly deposits. The traditional in-situ tests like SPT or CPT are not very suitable for gravelly soil because of interference with large size gravel particles which can artificially increase the penetration resistance. The Becker Penetration Test, well known for gravelly soil characterization, is cost-prohibitive for routine projects and is not available …


Estimating Age In Mule Deer: Accuracy And Influence On Reproduction, Morgan S. Hinton Aug 2022

Estimating Age In Mule Deer: Accuracy And Influence On Reproduction, Morgan S. Hinton

Theses and Dissertations

Accurate estimates of parameters and demographic rates of wildlife populations are crucial to management and conservation. One parameter of interest is age because it influences multiple demographic rates and behaviors including reproduction, dispersal, migration, and disease transmission. There are a number of methods used to estimate ages of wildlife. One of the most common methods used for mammals is evaluation of patterns in dental eruption and tooth wear. In the first chapter, we evaluate the accuracy associated with estimates of age from dental eruption and patterns of tooth wear for mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). In the second chapter, we use …


Analysis Of Using V2x Dsrc Equipped Snowplows To Request Signal Preemption, Samantha Kathleen Lau Aug 2022

Analysis Of Using V2x Dsrc Equipped Snowplows To Request Signal Preemption, Samantha Kathleen Lau

Theses and Dissertations

Dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) systems, a form of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) systems, were placed on Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) snowplows to request signal preemption. The study took place along five state routes in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. Snowplows and intersections were equipped with the technology to communicate and process requests for signal preemption. Signal performance and vehicle performance analysis were performed to understand the impacts that snowplows requesting signal preemption had. Signal performance analysis was done to determine how snowplows with V2X systems using DSRC affected signals. Vehicle performance analysis was done to see if plowing and traffic …


The Association Of Psychotherapist Cultural Humility And Client Experiences And Outcomes In Psychotherapy: A Meta-Analysis, Lisa Michelle Scott Aug 2022

The Association Of Psychotherapist Cultural Humility And Client Experiences And Outcomes In Psychotherapy: A Meta-Analysis, Lisa Michelle Scott

Theses and Dissertations

Psychotherapist multicultural competence has been given increasing attention in the field of psychology since the 1970s. However, individuals and communities who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color are still less likely to attend psychotherapy and often drop out earlier than White clients. These trends highlight the importance of the ongoing research on therapist multicultural competence. There are many multicultural competencies, however, the current study focuses on therapist cultural humility. Specifically, we systematically searched all the current research on the association between cultural humility and client experiences and outcomes in therapy. Our literature search yielded eight studies that met our …


Bittersweet Experiences For Brazilian Newcomers: Positive Interactions, Microaggressions, And Isolation In English-Only And Dual Language Bilingual Education Programs, Rose Renee Whitney Aug 2022

Bittersweet Experiences For Brazilian Newcomers: Positive Interactions, Microaggressions, And Isolation In English-Only And Dual Language Bilingual Education Programs, Rose Renee Whitney

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of the number of immigrant children in schools across the U.S., education research has directed its attention to understanding these newcomers' social experiences at school. Though Brazilian immigrant populations are growing, research on their unique social experiences remains limited. Grounded in critical sociocultural theory, this interpretive phenomenological study shares the social experiences of four Brazilian newcomers in elementary school. Participants were adolescents who had immigrated to the U.S. as children and attended English-only and/or Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programs. As adolescents, participants were able to look back on their experiences as a newcomer in elementary school …


Interference Between Speaking And Computer Tasks And Their Effects On Physiologic Arousal, Tiana Walker Bateman Aug 2022

Interference Between Speaking And Computer Tasks And Their Effects On Physiologic Arousal, Tiana Walker Bateman

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of concurrent speech and computer tasks on each other and on measures of physiologic arousal in 30 young adults. Physiologic measures included galvanic skin response, heart rate, and heart rate variability. Participants completed a speech-only task, two computer-based tasks, and combined speech and computer-based tasks. Participants spoke for 60 seconds on a procedural discourse prompt. Acoustic measures included the mean and standard deviation of intensity and fundamental frequency as indices of prosody, speaking time ratio to reflect pausing, and speech rate. The primary computer task (with two levels of difficulty) involved making formatting changes to …


Student-Created Learning Objects For Mathematics Renewable Assignments: The Potential Value They Bring To The Broader Community, Webster Wong Aug 2022

Student-Created Learning Objects For Mathematics Renewable Assignments: The Potential Value They Bring To The Broader Community, Webster Wong

Theses and Dissertations

Having students create Learning Objects (LOs) through renewable assignments has proved more helpful to the student creators compared to disposable assignments in some aspects. Additionally, some researchers have presented evidence where the student-created LOs could benefit the users of the LOs more than traditional learning resources. In this study, I examined a collection of LOs created by college students in the subject of mathematics to understand the nature of the value that a student-created LO could bring to other learners. By extending a framework for non-disposable assignments (Seraphin et al., 2019), I evaluated 3 components that affect the value of …


Catharanthine Modulates Mesolimbic Dopamine Transmission: A Potential Treatment For Alcohol Use Disorder, Benjamin M. Williams Aug 2022

Catharanthine Modulates Mesolimbic Dopamine Transmission: A Potential Treatment For Alcohol Use Disorder, Benjamin M. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Catharanthine is derived from the Catharanthus roseus plant and is an analog to ibogaine, a drug that reduces opioid and alcohol withdrawal symptoms and decreases drug self-administration in both animals and humans. Catharanthine has promise to be an alternative pharmacological treatment for addiction without the adverse side effects associated with ibogaine. The objective of this study was to evaluate catharanthine’s effects on dopamine (DA) transmission in the mesolimbic DA system as well as determine its effects on both ethanol withdrawal induced anxiety and drug-seeking behaviors in mice. We hypothesized that catharanthine would inhibit evoked DA release in the nucleus accumbens …


Simulation Of Crystal Nucleation In Polymer Melts, Pierre Kawak Aug 2022

Simulation Of Crystal Nucleation In Polymer Melts, Pierre Kawak

Theses and Dissertations

Semicrystalline polymers are an important class of materials for their prevalence in today's markets and their desirable properties. These properties depend on the early stages of the polymer crystallization process where a crystal nucleates from the polymer melt. This nucleation process is conventionally understood via an extension of Classical Nucleation Theory to polymers (CNTP). However, recent experimental and simulation evidence points to nucleation mechanisms that do not agree with the predictions of CNTP. Specifically, these experiments suggest a previously unrecognized role of nematic phases in mediating the melt"“crystal transtion. To explain these observations, several new theories of nucleation alternate to …


High-Velocity Impact Dissociation Of Molecular Species In Spacecraft-Based Mass Spectrometers, Brandon M. Turner Aug 2022

High-Velocity Impact Dissociation Of Molecular Species In Spacecraft-Based Mass Spectrometers, Brandon M. Turner

Theses and Dissertations

Mass spectrometers have proven to be vital to understanding the Solar System and the planets within it. Spacecraft containing mass spectrometers have been sent to numerous remote places and have determined important information about the atmospheric composition of Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, along with other celestial bodies. Such results have shown a variety of small neutral molecules, such as CH4 NH3, H2O, CO2, and CO, neutral radicals such as atomic O, H, and N, and a host of small ions, such as H+, N+, and NH4+. Closed ion source inlets, which allow for the detection of these small …


The Discovery Of Novel 14-3-3 Binding Proteins Atg9a And Ptov1 And Their Role In Regulating Cancer Mechanisms, Colten Mitchell Mcewan Aug 2022

The Discovery Of Novel 14-3-3 Binding Proteins Atg9a And Ptov1 And Their Role In Regulating Cancer Mechanisms, Colten Mitchell Mcewan

Theses and Dissertations

14-3-3 proteins are among a family of phospho-binding proteins that are known to regulate many essential cellular mechanisms. By binding to sites of phosphorylation, 14-3-3s are integrated into multiple signaling pathways that govern critical processes, such as apoptosis, cell cycle progression, autophagy, glucose metabolism, and cell motility. These processes are crucial for tumorigenesis and 14-3-3 proteins are known to play a central role in facilitating cancer progression. In this study, my colleagues and I discover two novel 14-3-3 interacting proteins, ATG9A and PTOV1, that are both vital to essential cellular functions and describe various mechanisms that these two proteins regulate. …


Data Assimilation And Parameter Recovery For Rayleigh-Bénard Convection, Jacob William Murri Aug 2022

Data Assimilation And Parameter Recovery For Rayleigh-Bénard Convection, Jacob William Murri

Theses and Dissertations

Many problems in applied mathematics involve simulating the evolution of a system using differential equations with known initial conditions. But what if one records observations and seeks to determine the causal factors which produced them? This is known as an inverse problem. Some prominent inverse problems include data assimilation and parameter recovery, which use partial observations of a system of evolutionary, dissipative partial differential equations to estimate the state of the system and relevant physical parameters (respectively). Recently a set of procedures called nudging algorithms have shown promise in performing simultaneous data assimilation and parameter recovery for the Lorentz equations …


Developing Ultra-High Resolution 3d Printing For Microfluidics, Kent Richard Hooper Aug 2022

Developing Ultra-High Resolution 3d Printing For Microfluidics, Kent Richard Hooper

Theses and Dissertations

Building upon previous research on Digital Light Projection (DLP) 3D printing for microfluidics, in this thesis I performed the detailed design and fabrication of a novel DLP 3D printer to increase resolution and device footprint flexibility. This new printer has a pixel resolution twice that of our group’s previous printers (3.8 μm vs 7.6 μm). I demonstrated a new state of the art for minimum channel width, reducing the minimum width to 15 μm wide (and 30 μm tall). This is an improvement over the previous smallest width of 20 μm. This printer also has the capacity to perform multiple …