Digital Commons Network^™

Advisory Board Expanded

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

The July 1982 Newsletter announced the creation of an Advisory Board to help F.AR.M.S. achieve Its ambitious goal of publishing a comprehensive Book of Mormon Encyclopedia. Three devoted individuals have recently added their services to that board. Paul R. Cheesman will be the Advisory Coordinator. Truman G. Madsen will be responsible for External Relations, and Noel B. Reynolds will serve as Academic Relations advisor.

Exhibits And Open House

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

During August, the Foundation again sponsored informational exhibits at the CES Symposium and Education Week on BYU campus. We appreciate Reed Hyde, Shannon Magleby, Garth Norman, Stephen Ricks, Larry Smith and Janet Twigg who donated many hours of their time staffing the displays. Over 250 people added their names to the newsletter mailing list as a result of the exhibits.

Meet Our Director Of Promotion

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

Thursday, September 8, 1983 was a red letter day for the Foundation. That was the day Susan Roylance came on board. Things may never be the same again. Mrs. Roylance became acquainted with the Foundation three years ago following a fateful meeting with Kirk Magleby in Guatemala.

New Faces At Farms

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

In a non-profit research organization, people make the difference, and F.A.R.M.S. has some tremendous new people to Introduce:

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Reprints & Preliminary Reports

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

F.A.R.M.S. is pleased to announce the addition of the following articles as Reprints and Preliminary Reports now available. One of the Foundation's main functions is to make research about the Book of Mormon easily accessible to general readers. The demand for these papers continues to be very strong and responses have been enthusiastic.

Notices And Reviews

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

It seemed like a good idea--a first-of-its-kind-in-Australia Book of Mormon symposium sponsored by the LOS Student Association at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Farms News

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

In the fall of 1978 Professor Joseph P. Schlutz, Professor of Talmudic and Rabbinic literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, conducted a semester-long seminar in which he and the class together considered various Jewish elements present in the Book of Mormon. The lectures considered such topic~ as the concept of God, cosmology, prophecy, law, sacrifice, prayer, liturgy, festivals, family and political institutions, messianism, and views of the afterlife. About 20 students participated in the seminar and through the generosity of several of them , F.A.R.M.S. has been able to obtain two sets of cassette recordings of the sessions. In …

Cooperative Navigation Of Autonomous Vehicles In Challenging Environments, Brendon Peter Forsgren

Theses and Dissertations

As the capabilities of autonomous systems have increased so has interest in utilizing teams of autonomous systems to accomplish tasks more efficiently. This dissertation takes steps toward enabling the cooperation of unmanned systems in scenarios that are challenging, such as GPS-denied or perceptually aliased environments. This work begins by developing a cooperative navigation framework that is scalable in the number of agents, robust against communication latency or dropout, and requires little a priori information. Additionally, this framework is designed to be easily adopted by existing single-agent systems with minimal changes to existing software and software architectures. All systems in the …

Dynamic Skin Strain Fields In The Lumbar Region During Functional Movement, Andrew Gibbons, Anton Bowden, Ulrike H. Mitchell, David T. Fullwood

Student Works

Increasing efforts to leverage skin mounted wearables has exposed a gap in our understanding of skin strain in the lumbar region. Lumbar skin is known to be both inhomogenous and anisotropic, and experiences dramatic material strain during activities of daily living (ADLs). Previous efforts to quantify strain fields during ADLs has been limited to a few activities (primarily flexion) and have neglected inhomogeneity or anisotropy. The purpose of the present work was to address this gap by measuring large-deformation skin strain tensors in healthy volunteers during a cadre of functional movements.

36 tightly packed retro-reflective markers were mounted to the …

Recent Breakthroughs In Using Quantum Dots For Cancer Imaging And Drug Delivery Purposes, Aisha Hamidu, William G. Pitt, Ghaleb A. Husseini

Faculty Publications

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Because each person’s cancer may be unique, diagnosing and treating cancer is challenging. Advances in nanomedicine have made it possible to detect tumors and quickly investigate tumor cells at a cellular level in contrast to prior diagnostic techniques. Quantum dots (QDs) are functional nanoparticles reported to be useful for diagnosis. QDs are semiconducting tiny nanocrystals, 2–10 nm in diameter, with exceptional and useful optoelectronic properties that can be tailored to sensitively report on their environment. This review highlights these exceptional semiconducting QDs and their properties and synthesis methods when used …

Combining Expert Opinions To Assess Risk Of Change In Earth Systems: Permafrost Collapse, Global Wildfire, And Water Security, Sayedeh Sara Sayedi

Theses and Dissertations

In a world of uncertainty and change, leaders should base their decisions on best available scientific evidence. However, history has shown that science is often inadequately incorporated into the decision-making process. This dissertation investigates three environmental issues to identify the challenges of considering Earth system dynamics in policymaking and management. I also propose solutions for improving the two-way exchange of knowledge and values between researchers and policymakers. In chapter one, I investigate subsea permafrost carbon sensitivity to climate change using an expert assessment. The analysis revealed that subsea permafrost contains significant carbon stocks and is already contributing to climate change …

Who Gets The Whip? How Supplier Diversification Influences Bullwhip Effect In A Supply Chain, Tyler N. Burrows

Theses and Dissertations

Emergent technologies, such as the `blockchain,' are enabling unprecedented coordination across firms in Supply Chains (SC). Firm decision-makers ultimately are going to need to understand how they can control (and optimize) such a network of relationships. However, the study of SC-level behavior leaves many open questions. Current approaches typically assume a focal firm, and the modeling of SC behavior is usually limited to single-product serial networks. In contrast, real-world SCs show that often a firm has many suppliers, even for the same raw material. This paper aims to understand how demand disturbances (e.g. the 'bullwhip effect') propagate and intensify throughout …

Small-Scale Testing Of Passive Fire Protection Systems For Structures On The Wildland-Urban Interface, Makenzie Wilson, Thomas H. Fletcher, Taylor J. Sorensen

Faculty Publications

The average intensity and frequency of wildland fires have been on the rise over the years due to climate change. This, in combination with recent expansion and growth of rural areas, has led to an increased risk of wildfire damage for structures in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). This paper proposes a permanent passive fire protection system that is built into the structure. A flame-resistant material would be attached to the sheathing underneath the roofing and siding material. This system would allow the easily replaceable exterior components of the structure to burn while leaving the interior of the structure protected. Small-scale …

Discovering Your Family In Digital Libraries, Jeremy Myntti

Faculty Publications

Presentation on using digital libraries in family history research for the BYU Family History Library webinar series.

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

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Three New Books Announced

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

We are pleased to announce final arrangements for the publication of three books in the first part of 1994. The papers from the 1992 F.A.R.M.S. Symposium on the olive in the ancient world will be co-published by F.A.R.M.S. and Deseret Book early in 1994. Two books will be published in the spring: papers on temples in the ancient world presented at the 1993 F.A.R.M.S. Symposium, and the next volume in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, featuring Nibley' s writings on Brigham Young.

Volunteers Create Fonts For Researchers

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

Scholars working with Egyptian and Coptic will benefit from a F.A.R.M.S. project nearing completion. Steve Booras, a team leader in testing with WordPerfect Corporation, has donated his time and expertise to create Type 1 Postscript fonts of Egyptian and Coptic.

New Video Features Nibley, King, And Riddle

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

Face to Face: The Education of Zion, a new video, has been filmed with support from F.A.R.M.S. and the College of Education of BYU. It was produced by Dennis Packard and directed by David Warner, with photography by Gordon Lonsdale and music composed and directed by Mack Wilberg.

Computer Study Aid Makes Studying Book Of Mormon More Meaningful

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

A new computer study aid, available for Windows on IBM-compatible computers, contains all the text of the Book of Mormon, making it easy to search for and see any word or verse in the book. But that's just the beginning.

Foundation Plans Annual Dinner For Subscribers

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

The F.A.R.M.S. banquet, an annual event that brings together F.A.R.M.S. subscribers, volunteers, researchers, members of the board of directors, and many other friends of the Foundation, will be held this year on Friday, October 29.

Farms-Led Expedition Examines Likely Candidate For Lehi's Old-World Bountiful

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

The much-delayed and long-awaited examination of Wadi Sayq, a likely site for Old World Bountiful, became a reality recently. In April, a team of researchers examined the port area of Khor Kharfot ("Fort Inlet" in English) through which the Wadi Sayq enters the Indian Ocean on the southern coast of Oman, at the extreme western end near the border with Yemen. Their findings indicate that Khor Kharfot may be the site of Lehi's Bountiful.

Mass Shootings In The United States, Sydney Livingston

Ballard Brief

High rates of mass shootings are becoming a uniquely American problem; the US makes up 73% of the world’s mass shootings, yet makes up only 4.25% of the world’s population. School shootings, in particular, have increased dramatically in the US since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, an event many perpetrators have since drawn upon as inspiration. There is a strong divide of opinions in the nation regarding how firearm deaths should be reduced, which has complicated and slowed progress in identifying effective solutions. Each mass shooting causes additional shootings to occur, and each one takes a toll on …

Key Elements Of A File Format Strategy, Tyler Thorsted

Faculty Publications

Within the Digital Preservation Community there are many references to policies on file formats, acceptable file formats, preservation policies and strategies, risk matrices, and action plans. All have the intention of defining and describing file formats and guiding decisions on which formats to preserve how, and when. My team and I originally created a File Format Action Plan, which was later migrated from OneNote to Confluence and then included more strategic plans for hundreds of file formats. This paper explores which key elements should be included in an effective file format strategy and the different ways such data can be …

Utilizing Low-Cost Sensors To Monitor Indoor Air Quality In Mongolian Gers, Callum Flowerday, Jaron C. Hansen, Phil Lundrigan, Christopher Kitras

Faculty Publications

Air quality has important climate and health effects. There is a need, therefore, to monitor air quality both indoors and outdoors. Methods of measuring air quality should be cost-effective if they are to be used widely, and one such method is low-cost sensors (LCS). This study reports on the use of LCSs in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia to measure PM_2.5 concentrations inside yurts or “gers”. Some of these gers were part of a non-government agency (NGO) initiative to improve insulating properties of these housing structures. The goal of the NGO was to decrease particulate emissions inside the gers; a secondary result …

Countnet3d: A 3d Computer Vision Approach To Infer Counts Of Occluded Objects With Quantified Uncertainty, Stephen W. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

3D scene understanding is an important problem that has experienced great progress in recent years, in large part due to the development of state-of-the-art methods for 3D object detection. However, the performance of 3D object detectors can suffer in scenarios where extreme occlusion of objects is present, or the number of object classes is large. In this paper, we study the problem of inferring 3D counts from densely packed scenes with heterogeneous objects. This problem has applications to important tasks such as inventory management or automatic crop yield estimation. We propose a novel regression-based method, CountNet3D, that uses mature 2D …

Student’S Choice: In-Person, Online, Or On Demand? A Comparison Of Instructional Modality Preference And Effectiveness, Melissa Larson, Randall Davies, Anna Steadman, Wai Man Cheng

Student Works

The recent increase in online instruction caused by the 2020 pandemic has reignited the debate over the efficacy of online instruction compared to in-person instruction. This study explored the impact various modes of instruction had on student achievement and compared students’ stated modality preference with their actual attendance behavior. Results show that while most students preferred in-person instruction (74%), only 47% of those who indicated they preferred in-person instruction attended class only in-person. Many attended classes utilizing a modality other than in-person, and several students switched their preferred modality away from in-person instruction. In general, students who attended class using …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Scrolls Broadcast Received Well

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

In March the VISN Interfaith Satellite Network broadcast nationally a program entitled "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Era Dawns." It consisted of highlights of the conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls that F.A.R.M.S. helped to sponsor and supplemental information about the scrolls. The number of calls received by the F.A.R.M.S. office indicates that the program generated considerable interest.

Second Issue Of Journal Features Sword Of Laban And Near-Death Experiences

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

The 1993 spring issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies features more than ten outstanding articles, plus notes and communications. Like the first issue of the Journal (which is available again, now in its third printing), this issue contains some of the most recent research on the Book of Mormon. It also features a classic older paper, now updated, that sheds light on some of the new research.