Digital Commons Network^™

Green Energy Usage In The United States, Chad Hyer

Ballard Brief

Greenhouse gas emissions are the largest contributor to climate change. Green energy solutions prove a promising approach to remedying these emissions, but major economic reliance on fossil fuels, complacent and dismissive attitudes towards climate change, and political polarization and gridlock have encouraged inaction regarding the adoption of green energy in the United States. Such inaction has led to a host of consequences that are detrimental to the United States's environment, economy, and international image. Some efforts by NG0s and for-profit companies have helped remediate such inaction. This brief aims to address the context, contributing factors, and consequences of this inaction …

Reflections On The New Latter-Day Saint Temple In Bengaluru And Religious Gender Norms, Debjani Chakravarty

Mormon Studies Review

There was recent publicity in Utah press about the new Mormon temple that will be built in Bengaluru, India (known as Bangalore until 2014), the first temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the country. There was a groundbreaking ceremony in December 2020, yet a survey of leading English-language newspapers in India reveals that this event was not widely reported. It was certainly not as widely reported as the groundbreaking of another temple in August 2020: the Ram Mandir, or the Ram Temple, which has been a violently contentious issue in India for the last three …

Racial Spatial Relationships In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen, Thomas Jenson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine addresses topics from segregation to police brutality to indicate the extreme spatial relationships between racial groups. Her work reveals the geographic mechanisms that confine African Americans to certain locations as well as the coerce them to violently share space with their white counterparts. Drawing upon spatial theory, which exposes the structures of unjust geography, my analysis also considers language as an additional spatial force that harms the black community as much as more physical phenomena.

Sexual Abuse Of Children In The United States Foster Care System, Abigail Hessing

Ballard Brief

Foster care is a long-running and relatively commonplace system in the US: however, in 2019 there were an estimated 400,000 children in foster care, leaving the system overwhelmed and at its peak capacity. Of those children, it is estimated that up to 40% of them had experienced some type of abuse within the system. Looking at sexual abuse specifically, vulnerable children are often targeted by sexual predators, and when grouped together in a system underequipped to provide adequate protection, foster care children can become easily accessible targets for sexual abuse. Caretakers who are undersupported and households that are overfilled create …

Violence Against Refugee Women In The Mena Region, Genevieve Cole, Harriet Huang

Ballard Brief

Refugee women of the Middle East North Africa (MENA) Region are exposed to violence in a variety of ways along their refugee journey. Once within refugee camps, refugee women face high risk spaces for violence, inhibited privacy, as well as unequal gender based power relations between themselves and predominantly male staff. Outside of refugee camps, lack of and improper implementation of cross-border policies allow trafficking networks, authority figures, and other perpetrators of GBV to harm refugee women without fear of repercussions. Victims of GBV can experience a variety of short and long term physical and mental health concerns that can …

Rise And Run Latter-Day Saint Women And Good Government, Susan R. Madsen

BYU Studies

Thomas Jefferson believed that “the care of human life & happiness, & not their destruction, is the first & only legitimate object of good government.” According to Elder Wilford W. Andersen of the Seventy, one of the ways good government cares for human life and happiness is when it “protects religion and fosters religious freedom. And good religion encourages good citizenship and adherence to the law of the land.” If we are to ensure that human life, happiness, and religious freedom will thrive and be protected in the years ahead, women must be active in government. Women’s participation is essential …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Rebaptism In The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Jonathan A. Stapley, David W. Grua

BYU Studies

The first day of November 1847 brought Patty Sessions a snowstorm that blew her tent down and shredded it. But life in Winter Quarters was never easy, and Sessions maintained her regular schedule despite the disruption. She was a midwife and had a central position among the women of the city. Over the next week alone, she delivered four babies and attended four meetings. She also sewed for hire, and she anointed and blessed in faith. And on Friday the 26th, as she wrote in her diary, “I was baptized.” In this short three-word entry, Sessions documented one of the …

In Memoriam, Orrin Glenn Hatch (1934-2022)

BYU Studies

At the passing of Senator Orrin G. Hatch on April 23, 2022, BYU Studies joins in honoring this outstanding public servant, who has been called “the most important Utah politician since Brigham Young.” Senator Hatch served seven terms in the United States Senate (1977 to 2019), the longest period in office of any Republican. During his tenure, he presided over three major Senate committees: Labor and Human Resources, Judiciary, and Finance. In 2017, he also was elected to the position of president pro tempore of the Senate.

Gold, Silver, And Grain, Shinji Takagi

BYU Studies

In this paper, I discuss, from the perspective of a monetary economist, the operational aspects of the system of fixed prices for gold, silver, and all kinds of grain described in the Book of Mormon (Alma 11:3–19), based on internal evidence, economic logic, and historical precedents from antiquity. Previous authors have noted several unique features of the Nephite system, which was purportedly created by king Mosiah in the early first century BC. For example, John Welch, approaching the system strictly as one of weights and measures, argued that, in this otherwise binary system (in which denomination increases by a multiple …

An Experiential Pathway To Conversion, Robert K. Christensen, Matthew D. Wride, Neil R. Lundberg

BYU Studies

Joseph Smith’s formal education did not extend beyond the third grade. His life did not extend beyond the final years of his thirties. The person he became and his work in restoring the gospel of Jesus Christ, however, extend into eternity. John Taylor observed that “Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”

The Purpose And Function Of The Egyptian Hypocephalus, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson

BYU Studies

Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham is a type of document called a hypocephalus. “The term ‘hypocephalus’ refers to a piece of Late Period and Ptolemaic [ca. 664–30 BC] funerary equipment. It is specifically, an amuletic disc, made of cartonnage, bronze, textile, and more rarely, papyrus, or even wood, emulating a solar disc.” The name was coined by modern Egyptologists beginning with Jean-François Champollion and comes from Greek, meaning literally “under the head.” Spell 162 of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead specifies that these amulets were to be placed hr tp of the mummy, which has been …

God Sitting Upon His Throne, Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, John S. Thompson

BYU Studies

Figure 7 in Facsimile 2 is identified as follows: “Represents God sitting upon his throne, revealing through the heavens the grand Key-words of the Priesthood; as, also, the sign of the Holy Ghost unto Abraham, in the form of a dove.” Appearing in several other ancient Egyptian hypocephali, the sitting personage in figure 7 has been described by one Egyptologist as “a polymorphic god sitting on his throne” with “his back [in] bird-form, while one of his arms is raised like that of [the gods] Min or [Amun] and hold[ing] forth a flagellum.” Standing next to him is a “falcon-or …

Good Government Begins With Self-Government, Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye

BYU Studies

For nearly a thousand years (from around 960 to 1905 CE), becoming a government official in imperial China required passing a battery of multiday, multisubject, anonymously graded written exams requiring decades of intensive preparation. Eighteenth-century European politi- cal thinkers, including Voltaire, admired China’s system for using meritocratic criteria, as opposed to aristocratic birth, to select government officials. The exams tested not only scholars’ abilities in history, philosophy, government, and literature, but also—in theory at least—their personal cultivation of moral virtues such as benevolence and integrity. Good government required goodness.

“To Moderate And Unify” The Role That Latter-Day Saint Citizen-Rhetors Can Play In Healing American Political Discourse, Kristine Hansen

BYU Studies

In the April 1997 general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then-Elder Henry B. Eyring stated, “When the words of prophets seem repetitive, that should rivet our attention.” Repetition, he asserted, means the Lord’s servants are “warning the people, telling them the way to safety.” In both the October 2020 and the April 2021 general conferences, President Dallin H. Oaks stressed the importance of the rule of law and the best ways to participate as citizens in political processes. Although he focused on the United States, President Oaks reassured his global audience that the principles he …

Developing The Experience Impact Scale: A Qualitative Study Using A Study Abroad And International Internship Program, Neil Lundberg, Peter Ward, Grant Lundberg, Brian Hill, Jennifer Brown, Ramon Zabriskie, Mat Duerden, Heather Ashby

Faculty Publications

Recent work has identified different experience types, including experience classifications of ordinary, memorable, meaningful, and transformative. This study further clarifies the experience typology through qualitative data analysis of each experience type. Data analysis identified that within each extraordinary experience type, additional subtypes were present. Experience types and subtypes were organized according to the experience typology continuum into a 10-item Experience Impact Scale (EIS), as no instrument to measure experience types or experience impact was available. An expert panel was used to determine the representativeness of the items in the EIS and to provide content-related evidence of validity. Discussion of the …

Foundations Of Online Learning: Challenges And Opportunities, Christine Greenhow, Charles R. Graham, Matthew J. Koehler

Faculty Publications

Online learning—learning that involves interactions that are mediated through using digital, typically internet-based, technology—is pervasive, multi-faceted, and evolving, creating opportunities and challenges for educational research in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this special issue, we advance an interdisciplinary agenda for online learning research at the intersection of educational technology, educational psychology, and the learning sciences. In this first article in the issue, we define online learning including its variants, review historical and current contexts, explore its multidimensionality, and assert key issues shaping contemporary online learning. We propose five important lenses: community, engagement, pedagogy, equity, and design-based research, through …

Effects Of An Interdisciplinary Communication Partner Training Program On Student Learning, Tyson G. Harmon, Mei-Ling Lin, Gabrielle Scronce, Adam Jacks

Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Communication partner training (CPT) involves educating conversation partners to implement communication strategies that facilitate improved interactions with people with aphasia (PWA). This study aimed to investigate (1) whether a CPT program increased the knowledge and confidence of students with and without a communication disorders background and (2) the differential effects of this training on students from different allied health disciplines. METHODS: Quasi-experimental design study with 6 adult volunteers with aphasia and 36 students (18 speech-language pathology [SLP] students and 18 physical therapy/occupational therapy [PT/OT] students). The CPT program was provided twice (in 2015 and 2016) as a single seminar …

Uplifts, Respite, Stress, And Marital Quality For Parents Raising Children With Down Syndrome Or Autism, Tina M. Taylor, Jamie K. Easler, Susanne Olsen Roper, Jeremy B. Yorganson, James M, Harper

Faculty Publications

Direct, indirect, and partner effects estimated among uplifts, respite care, stress, and marital quality across mothers and fathers of children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 102) and Down syndrome (n = 111) were examined in this cross-sectional study. Parents of children with ASD who reported more uplifts and less stress individually reported better marital quality; these wives reported better marital quality as their husbands reported more uplifts and less stress. Wives with children with DS who reported more uplifts, individually along with their husbands reported less stress and better marital quality. Respite was directly associated with marital quality for …

The Effect Of Wearable Activity Monitor Presence On Step Counts, William B. Tayler, James D. Lecheminant, Jospeh Price, Christian P. Tadje

Faculty Publications

Objective: In this study, we tested the effect of wearable activity monitors and tracking on physical activity over 2 weeks.

Methods: Ninety young adults participated. Prior to initiation of the study, each participant was asked to download an iPhone app that tracked physical activity level (step counts) but were not told the app’s purpose. Each participant was then randomly assigned to one of 3 groups (N=30/group): (1) measurement awareness, (2) measurement awareness+track/record, or (3) control. Participants in the measurement awareness and the measurement awareness+track/record groups were given a pedometer to wear for 2 weeks. Additionally, participants in the measurement awareness+track/ …

Optimal Illiquidity, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias (Amador, Werning, and Angeletos 2006). The government chooses mandatory contributions to respective spending/ savings accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Penalties collected by the government are redistributed through the tax system. When naive households have heterogeneous present bias, the social optimum is well approximated by a three-account system: (i) a completely liquid account, (ii) a completely illiquid account, and (iii) an account with an ≃ 10% early withdrawal penalty. In some ways this resembles the U.S. system, which …

The Library Of Fiction: A Critical Edition Of Volume One (1836), Payton Marie Andreadakis, Joslyn Cristine Bishop, Catherine Ava Eliason, Marissa Nicole Fuller, Ariel Renae Hochstrasser, Jeanie Hope Jones, Elyse Christine Kunzler, Anna Sophia Lamb, Rebekah Olsen, Addison Paige Schenk

Student Works

In Summer of 2021, the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library acquired volumes one and two of a collection of short stories called The Library of Fiction, or Family Story-teller. The first volume of this collection, originally released in monthly installments published by Chapman and Hall beginning in April of 1836, contains 42 pieces of literature written by a number of Victorian authors. Some of these authors (like Mary Russell Mitford, Edward Mayhew, G. P. R. James, and W. H. Wills) were popular in their time but have been largely forgotten. This is not …

Young Firms, Old Capital, Song Ma, Justin Murfin, Ryan Pratt

Faculty Publications

Across a broad range of equipment types and industries, we document a pattern of local capital reallocation from older firms to younger firms. Start-ups purchase a disproportion- ate share of old physical capital previously owned by more mature firms. The evidence is consistent with financial constraints driving differential demand for vintage capital. The local supply of used capital influences start-up entry, job creation, investment choices, and growth, particularly when capital is immobile. Meanwhile, as suppliers of used capital, in- cumbents accelerate capital replacement in the presence of younger firms. The evidence suggests previously undocumented benefits to co-location between old and …

Do Privacy Assurances Work? A Study Of Truthfulness In Healthcare History Data Collection, Tamara M. Masters, Mark Keith, Rachel Hess, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

Patients often provide untruthful information about their health to avoid embarrassment, evade treatment, or prevent financial loss. Privacy disclosures (e.g. HIPAA) intended to dissuade privacy concerns may actually increase patient lying. We used new mouse trackingbased technology to detect lies through mouse movement (distance and time to response) and patient answer adjustment in an online controlled study of 611 potential patients, randomly assigned to one of six treatments. Treatments differed in the notices patients received before health information was requested, including notices about privacy, benefits of truthful disclosure, and risks of inaccurate disclosure. Increased time or distance of device mouse …

Challenges Of Ecological Momentary Assessments To Study Family Leisure: Participants’ Perspectives, Kelly D. Chandler, Camilla Hodge, Kara Mcelvaine, Ericka J. Olschewski, Karen K. Melton, Pascal Deboeck

Faculty Publications

Scholars have documented the research tradeoffs of using ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to study daily life. Less is known about participants’ perspectives. The aim of this research note was to delineate the challenges of participating in a 14-day EMA study of family leisure described by 41 individuals (mothers, fathers, and adolescents) from 14 families to inform future family leisure studies using EMA. Participants identified three potential challenges: repetitive questions, inconvenient signals, and short response windows. Despite these challenges, the majority of participants indicated that they would recommend a similar study to others. The reality that so many families feel squeezed …

Multidimensional Signals And Analytic Flexibility: Estimating Degrees Of Freedom In Human-Speech Analyses, Stefano Coretta, Joseph V. Casillas, Joseph A. Stanley, Timo B. Roettger

Faculty Publications

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis that can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only …

Psycholinguistic Profiling Of Children With Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, Kirsten M. Russell, Sean M. Redmond, Andrea C. Ash

Faculty Publications

Language disorders are frequently comorbid with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT),a second attention disorder, may potentially explain some of the links between language disorders and ADHD. In this study we examined the psycholinguistic abilities of 207 children (mean age 7;10) with and without clinically significant levels of SCT symptoms to determine the degree to which symptoms of language disorder co-occur in cases of SCT. Analyses of children’s tense-marking, nonword repetition, and sentence recall indicated that deficits in these areas were not associated with SCT. Instead, SCT appears to be more closely aligned with features of social (pragmatic) …

Microcore: Using Online Playable Cases To Increase Student Engagement In Online Writing Environments, Jon Balzotti, Kevin Haws, Amy A. Rogers, Jason K. Mcdonald, Matt Baker

Faculty Publications

This case study explores a type of educational simulation, an alternative reality game we call a playable case study (PCS), and how its use influenced student engagement in an online writing classroom. The goal of the simulation was to help students create professional communication artifacts and experience real-world professional communication situations. This article reports the effectiveness of the playable case study as a tool specifically for online writing instruction (OWI). The context of our research was a PCS called Microcore. Acting as interns for a company, students are asked to investigate a serious problem that occurs and present a solution …

Steven Pinker. Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, And Progress. New York: Penguin Books, 2018., Ashok Kumar Malhotra

Comparative Civilizations Review

Steven Pinker’s monumental work, Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress is an impressive volume. He presents his position so vividly that the book reached the New York Times Bestseller List, and received enthusiastic reviews from diverse scholars and readers. Even Bill Gates regards it as: “My new favorite book of all time.”

An Attempt To Arrive At The Meaning Of Civilization As The Third Millennium Dawns, Mojtaba Sadeghi Independent Scholar

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilizations may be understood as phenomena subject to differing perspectives. This article views civilization from the perspective of Geography. A civilization is a “Geographical Space” that arises from complex interactions over time. The core of civilization from a geographical perspective is this: every civilization is a geographical space, but not every geographical space is necessarily a civilization. A civilization has a “cultured soul” and an “advanced body.” We may use this approach to understand, measure, critique, and emancipate civilization in the third millennium.