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Book Reviews

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Twisted Mirror Of Perception: Social Science In Service Of Political/Ideological Expediency -- The Case Of Russian Eurasianism, Dimtry Shlapentokh

Comparative Civilizations Review

There are many reasons why certain creeds or phenomena from foreign countries remain unknown in the West. They could be almost totally ignored for decades before becoming interesting to the scholarly community and general public until, eventually, works about them become published by the leading presses.

The Earth Will Appear As The Garden Of Eden, Terry Ball

BYU Studies

The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden is a collection of essays designed to introduce, review, illustrate, and promote research and scholarship on the environmental history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book well accomplishes these purposes in an honest and engaging fashion. While essays in edited volumes such as this are often uneven in terms of the quality and the contribution they offer, each piece in this work is remarkably well written and significant. As the book’s introduction explains, Latter-day Saint environmental history is a relatively new discipline, ripe with opportunities and avenues …

Into Arabia: Lehi And Sariah’S Escape From Jerusalem, Warren P. Aston

BYU Studies

In his exhaustively reasoned paper “Dating the Departure of Lehi from Jerusalem,” Jeffrey Chadwick moved the discussion of the timing of the Lehite departure significantly further. Those like myself, who have long assumed that the Book of Mormon’s dating for the departure (about six hundred years before Christ’s birth) is simply a round, approximate number, now have additional reasons to see that the dating may, in fact, be literal and that a definitive year for the event might be within reach.

Life Beyond The Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives, Alec Joseph Harding

BYU Studies

As suggested in the title, Life beyond the Graveis a compilation of perspectives about the afterlife from a range of Christian denominations. The book’s contents were taken from a 2016 academic conference hosted at Brigham Young University. Titled “Beyond the Grave: Christian Interfaith Perspectives,” the ecumenical conference was designed to build understanding among Christian groups. Editor Robert L. Millet noted on the conference, “There has been no effort whatsoever to ignore theological differences between the various traditions, nor was it ever expected that a presenter compromise in the slightest what he or she holds to be true. . . …

Lithic Material Procurement And Processing Of The Ancestral Puebloans In Montezuma Canyon, Richae Knudsen

Student Works

Recent analysis of lithic materials from Ancestral Puebloan sites in Montezuma Canyon demonstrates differences between the northern and southern sites in terms of practices of lithic procurement and processing. Materials from Alkali Ridge and Coal Bed Village had more lithic debitage without cortex, while those from Cave Canyon Village and Three Kiva Ruin had a much higher frequency of debitage with cortex. These data sets suggest that the northern sites performed primary flaking away from home, while those in the south did their primary flaking at home. This distinct behavior may be a result of differential access to lithic material …

The Importance Of The Physical: Lucille Clifton's Poetry About Bodies, Kaitlin Hoelzer

BYU English Symposium

Lucille Clifton’s poetry focuses on a variety of subjects showcasing ordinary life in a literary view. However, much of her poetry focuses on her relationship with her body, both physical and emotional. In these poems, Clifton is able to validate bodies that do not fit a Euro-centric and fat-phobic ideal. She also uses her poetry to explore the relationship between body and identity, demonstrating the essential connection between the two. Finally, her poetry about bodies moves beyond the physical aspects to focus on personhood and ownership, proving that while identity and physical body are linked, worth is not dependent on …

No-Man’S . . . Or Women’S-Land: Ecological Power Over Human Identity In The Things They Carried, Sam Jacob

BYU English Symposium

Elements of Vietnam’s ecology in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried dismantle former understandings of gender and racial identity. While traditional perceptions of wartime ecologies hold these spaces among the most heavily decimated, damaged, and disfigured on earth, the opposite occurs in O’Brien’s Vietnam. Observing how a land burdened by the destruction of a human war dominates these human forms of identity raises interesting questions regarding the level of control that humans possess over their own identity.

While critical discourse investigating landscapes and the environment in The Things They Carried primarily construe these spaces as mere symbolic topographies of terror …

“To Die Upon A Kiss”: Spirit-Body Gender Duality In Two Shakespeare Plays, Dane Whitaker

BYU English Symposium

Spirit and body become estranged through the dramatic deaths of Shakespeare’s characters in The Merchant of Venice and its thematic descendant Othello. Scholars of the latter play have recognized the central role of gender, but neglect to follow the trajectory of these plays from unstable sexual identity to consequent spirit-body dissonance. According to Phyllis Rackin’s studies of Elizabethan ideology, both foreign origins and desire for women jeopardized masculinity. As an alien living in Venetian society, Shylock the Jew (created in the 1590s) prefigures the more developed, central character of Othello the Moor (created between 1601-03). Both characters are destroyed, …

Population Trends Of The Native Fish Assemblage In Bonita Creek, Arizona, Usa, George N. Zaimes, David Arthun, Vasilios Liordos

Western North American Naturalist

The protection of riparian zones is critical for biodiversity conservation. The exclusion of human activities and invasive nonnative fish species have been used as measures to protect vulnerable native fish populations in Bonita Creek, Graham County, Arizona. The abundance of 5 native fish species, during 2005–2016, and mesohabitat proportions, during 2011–2016, were estimated at 4 sites to assess the effectiveness of these conservation measures. Interannual variation in numbers was high for all the species, with the speckled dace (Rhinichthys osculus) being the most abundant. The speckled dace significantly increased at one of the sites; the Sonora sucker ( …

Knowledge Production And Power In An Online Critical Multicultural Teacher Education Course, Ramon Maile Cutri, Erin Feinauer Whiting, Eric Ruiz Bybee

Faculty Publications

This reflexive inquiry explores a teacher educator’s efforts to design opportunities for students to use their knowledge of social media and the Internet to contribute content to their online critical multicultural education course. Findings identify steps critical multicultural education pedagogues can take to design such opportunities: (a) identify contradictions in their practice, (b) take pedagogical risks, and (c) work with chronic tensions. Designing formal opportunities for students to identify and use content from social media and the Internet as learning resources and curricular content for critical multicultural education shifted the power relations in the course. These results demonstrate the potential …

Significance Of The Rates Of Atmospheric Deposition Around Utah Lake And Phosphorus-Fractionation Of Local Soils, Joshua Glen Reidhead

Theses and Dissertations

Eutrophic Utah Lake receives a large nutrient load from a variety of sources, includingtreated wastewater discharges, runoff and tributaries, recycling from bottom sediments andAtmospheric Deposition (AD). AD was the focus of this study and was comprised of twocomplementary parts. First was a study of nitrogen and phosphorus depositions from theatmosphere, and second was a study of phosphorous as contained in soils near Utah Lake viafractionation methods.The soil samples were found to contain approximately 1,000 mg-P/kg soil for totalphosphorus (TP). A separate phosphorus (P) fractionation gave slightly higher values, excludingthe residual P, we are 95% confident that one gram of sample …

Semantically Aligned Sentence-Level Embeddings For Agent Autonomy And Natural Language Understanding, Nancy Ellen Fulda

Theses and Dissertations

Many applications of neural linguistic models rely on their use as pre-trained features for downstream tasks such as dialog modeling, machine translation, and question answering. This work presents an alternate paradigm: Rather than treating linguistic embeddings as input features, we treat them as common sense knowledge repositories that can be queried using simple mathematical operations within the embedding space, without the need for additional training. Because current state-of-the-art embedding models were not optimized for this purpose, this work presents a novel embedding model designed and trained specifically for the purpose of "reasoning in the linguistic domain".Our model jointly represents single …

No-Man's... Or Women's-Land, Sam Jacob

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Do Genetic Differences Explain The Ability Of An Alkaline Shrub To Grow In Both Uplands And Wetlands?, Carol A. Rowe, Paul G. Wolf, Robert W. Lichvar

Western North American Naturalist

The hydrophyte Allenrolfea occidentalis (S. Watson) Kuntze (iodinebush) is a halophytic shrub of the arid southwest that is listed as a facultative wetland species on the National Wetland Plant List. This rating means that the species is usually a hydrophyte but occasionally is found in uplands. We tested for genetic (ecotypic) differences between plants sampled from wetlands versus uplands. We used the technique of genotyping by sequencing to generate data from 132 plants from 30 locations representing both wetland and upland occurrences for over 1300 loci. Analyses indicated that the strongest genetic signal is from differences in geographic distribution: samples …

A Comparison Of Diurnal Resting Sites Used By Sylvilagus Audubonii And Lepus Californicus In The Chihuahuan Desert, Robert L. Harrison

Western North American Naturalist

Sylvilagus audubonii (desert cottontail) and Lepus californicus (black-tailed jackrabbit) occur in sympatry in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. During the daytime, both species occupy shallow excavations under shrubs known as forms. Comparisons of form and shrub characteristics between the 2 species can provide insights into connections between body size, physiology, and behavior. I examined forms of the 2 species in the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico, USA, from 2014 to 2016. In response to temperature, S. audubonii varied the structure of its forms and dug burrows, whereas L. californicus did not. Sylvilagus audubonii forms were most commonly …

Rafi & Patra, Rafi, Patra, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Rafi and his family have been stuck on the border between Greece and Macedonia for almost four months. They made their way from Afghanistan, received certificates in Greece to help them on their journey, but were then stopped at the border of Macedonia. The Macedonians said that they were no longer allowing Afghans into their country. Now all they can do is wait and hope. In Afghanistan,Rafi was a military man. As a young man, he was a part of the Revolution army, but later was made a soldier for the Government Security of Kabul. During that time, he was …

Naturalistic Explanations Of The Origin Of The Book Of Mormon, Brian C. Hales

BYU Studies

In early 1830, an unknown farmer in upstate New York burst upon the world’s book-publishing scene. The Book of Mormon rolled off the Grandin Press in Palmyra, New York, with Joseph Smith listed as “author and proprietor” on the title page. That same year, a few other authors produced new titles, including The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck by Mary Shelley, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore, and Six Sermons on the Study of the Holy Scriptures by Samuel Lee. If grouped with books classified as “fiction” in 1830, the Book of Mormon may have been the longest, …

Interracial Couples And Neighborhood Attainment In Percent White, Entropy, And Average Income, Hannah Louise Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies of interracial couples' residential outcomes in the United States have limited their focus to a truncated selection of interracial couple-types. To provide a more complete understanding of the residential patterns of interracial couples and how they fit into the contemporary color line, I assess an expanded set of interracial and monoracial couple-types' outcomes in percentage White, entropy, and neighborhood income. I do this by employing multiple OLS regression analysis using data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act from 2005 to 2015. My results suggest that different types of interracial couples follow residential patterns that are distinctive from those …

The Association Of Spirituality And Well-Being In South African And Ugandan Samples, Alicia Jane Doman

Theses and Dissertations

Literature has shown a correlation between spirituality and well-being, but this has not been thoroughly studied outside North America, with very few studies conducted in Africa. This study compared data from two sub-Saharan African nations, Uganda and South Africa, that differ markedly in terms of multiple factors that affect well-being, such as mortality rates and access to healthcare, as well as educational and personal growth opportunities. Survey data were collected using the measures of The Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale and Ryff's Personal Well-Being Scale. There were four racial groups represented in the data: Black South Africans, Coloureds, White South …

P Is For Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever, Erica Sonzogni

Children's Book and Media Review

This book is structured like a regular alphabet book, except each word includes silent letters. These words do not begin with the sound of the letter, which makes it hard for readers trying to learn letter sounds. The purpose of this book is not to learn letter sounds, but for readers to understand that language is complex and sometimes unpredictable. Each page includes information about the word that is mentioned. There is a glossary on the last few pages explaining some of the words mentioned throughout the book.

Marta, Marta, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Marta is a member of the support community for Central American refugees arriving in the southwest US. In this interview, Marta shares her own story of crossing the border at a young age with her daughter and her life in the US. Marta was self-employed for many years and later went on to serve in the US Army in Iraq. For the last 9 months, she and her husband Israel and son Josue have worked tirelessly to help make sure the current refugees arriving are cared for after they are released from detention centers and begin their lives in the …

"Why Does It Always Have To Be Switzerland?"1 Daniel Silva's Treatment Of Swiss Society And Culture In Selected Mossad Spy Novels, Brian Champion

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The title quote is uttered by Mossad operative Eli Lavon, who, upon being tasked to assist in the illegal penetration of a sovereign country, despairs of the mission 's success, whose two-fold metric is the apprehension of an existential threat to the State of Israel , and his safe return to his adjunct professorship in Jerusalem, all while avoiding detection or incarceration. His angst is well -placed, as Switzerland is well-known in both real and imaginary in tell igence circles as a formidable environment in which to conduct secret missions of any kind. Silva and his fictitious Mossad team struggle …

Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

Robust Visual-Inertial Navigation And Control Of Fixed-Wing And Multirotor Aircraft, Jerel Bendt Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

With the increased performance and reduced cost of cameras, the robotics community has taken great interest in estimation and control algorithms that fuse camera data with other sensor data.In response to this interest, this dissertation investigates the algorithms needed for robust guidance, navigation, and control of fixed-wing and multirotor aircraft applied to target estimation and circumnavigation.This work begins with the development of a method to estimate target position relative to static landmarks, deriving and using a state-of-the-art EKF that estimates static landmarks in its state.Following this estimator, improvements are made to a nonlinear observer solving part of the SLAM problem.These …

Supbrime Lending/Foreclosure Crisis, Jacob Rugh

Faculty Publications

Subprime mortgage lending in the USA rose alongside home prices and lasted about 15 years, ending abruptly in late 2007, setting off a national foreclosure crisis. Between 2007 and 2012 there were 9 to 12 million foreclosures filings and 4 to 5 million completed foreclosures. The ensuing foreclosure crisis stemmed more from falling home prices but its unequal distribution across society by race and space was also the product of legacies of exclusion and a shared consensus on the expansion of mortgage credit and home ownership. Modest federal interventions to buffer communities and homeowners from the crisis likely reinforced the …

Genetic And Spatial Structuring Of Populus Tremuloides In A Mixed-Species Forest Of Southwest Utah, Usa, Matthew Bishop, Tucker J. Furniss, Karen E. Mock, James A. Lutz

Western North American Naturalist

Populus tremuloides Michx. (aspen) is an iconic species of the southwestern United States, where it is known for its extensive clonality. The size of clones and pattern of clonal distribution within and among stands can provide important clues to the species’ evolution and ecology, but there are very few studies that have conducted the type of sampling necessary to define these features. We examined the genetic composition and habitat associations of aspen in a mixed-species forest in Cedar Breaks National Monument on the Markagunt Plateau, southwestern Utah. Genetic analysis of 94 stems ≥1 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) …

Apparent Extinction Of Native Mussels In Lower Mill Creek And Mid-Jordan River, Ut, David C. Richards, Theron Miller

Western North American Naturalist

Native mussels likely occurred in Mill Creek and the Jordan River, Utah, in the past. However, humaninduced impacts have virtually eliminated the possibility of their continued existence in these waters. We conducted an intensive native mussel survey upstream and downstream of a water reclamation facility discharge into Mill Creek and the Jordan River to determine its effects on mussel populations. The survey was conducted from September to October 2017 and resulted in approximately 7.6 m³ of >4 mm-sized substrate particles being thoroughly examined at near 100% efficiency. We then used statistical models to estimate population densities as a function …

Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind. New York: Harpercollins Publishers, 2015, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.