Digital Commons Network^™

Modeling The Fate And Transport Of Nitrate, Selenium, And Uranium Using A Coupled Stream-Aquifer Reactive Transport Model, Ibraheem A. Qurban, John T. Cox, Abdullah Bin Javed, Saman Tavakoli Kivi, Timothy K. Gates, Ryan T. Bailey

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water quality issues related to the transport of nutrients and trace elements in irrigated agricultural systems have become a key concern to both regulators and stakeholders around the world. At high concentrations, these solutes have the potential to negatively impact aquatic life, livestock, and human health. To better understand these systems and to evaluate how best management practices (BMPs) can be used to improve water quality, a numerical model has been developed to simulate flow and solute reactive transport. The groundwater model MODFLOW-UZF is used along with the streamflow routing (SFR2) package to model flow in irrigated stream-aquifer systems. To …

Complexity Of Numerical Modeling For Predicting The Mechanisms Of Toxic Algae Bloom In Lake, Dr. Md. Nazrul Islam, Dr. Daisuke Kitazawa

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A three dimensional hydrodynamic ecosystem coupled model was employed to simulate algae transition and toxin produced ability under the nutrients limited conditions in eutrophic Lake Kasumigaura, Japan. Numerical simulation was carried out for the four years of the period 2005–2009. Algae have shifted seasonally and annually between 2005 and 2009, among three major algal: Microcystis, Planktothrix and Cyclotella. The mathematical model reproduced well the transitions of dominant algae in the four years by calibrating ecological parameters. The biomass of Planktothrix suddenly increased in the summer of 2008, and Planktothrix became the dominant species. Longer periods of stratification, lower …

A Web-Based Healthy Watersheds Assessment Framework, Tyler Wible, Mazdak Arabi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office created the Healthy Watersheds Program to highlight protection of high quality waters. Assessment of healthy watershed characteristics can be made with many publically available national scale datasets. These individual health indicators, like percent natural land cover, can be combined into sub-indices for categories, like landscape condition, and combined for a total watershed health index. When these indices are standardized, it allows a comparison of watersheds, which is useful for selection of ecologically sensitive watersheds for protection or impaired watersheds for restoration programs. Past healthy watershed assessments have compiled watershed scores at the catchment level. …

Water Level, Temperature, And Water Quality Numerical Predictions Of A 3d Semi-Implicit Scheme For Lakes And Reservoirs: An Analytical And Field Case Study, Hussein A. M. Al-Zubaidi, Scott Wells

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In order to develop a three-dimensional version of the two-dimensional longitudinal-vertical hydrodynamic and water quality model CE-QUAL-W2, the hydrodynamic numerical solution scheme was expanded and modified to a unique 3D scheme. The 2D formulation of the CE-QUAL-W2 model is fully implicit and solves for the free surface elevation implicitly from the free surface equation, but the solution of the momentum equations treats the free surface elevation explicitly. In order to make both solutions linked in which the free surface elevation is treated either explicitly or implicitly at the same time step, the degree of implicitness was added to the 3D …

Empowered Motherhood In Tracy K. Smith’S Ordinary Light, Rilley Kaye Mckenna

BYU English Symposium

Black mothers in America have historically been burdened with harmful stereotypes that attempt to cast them as illegitimate mothers and work to erase their unique identities, lumping them all together as “unfit” for motherhood. This has been the case since the days of slavery and continues through today, with the perpetuation of myths such as the “welfare queen.” Despite these negative stereotypes, both real black mothers and fictional representations of black mothers created by black women refuse to remain confined by this narrow conception of motherhood. Instead, in literature, art, media, and life, black mothers are depicted breaking free of …

Framing Crime & Punishment Through The Lens Of Game Theory & Macbeth, Sarah Matthews

BYU English Symposium

Scholars draw on the tools of Game Theory to explore the Humanities as a whole but fail to make sense of the great contributions of Russian literature. Therefore, the purpose of my research paper was to frame Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment through a reading of Game Theory. Framing the novel in this way allowed me to better understand Raskolnikov’s behavior and the moral implications of his actions and the novel itself.

I consulted many different secondary sources for this paper, but the most important source I consulted was Steven J. Brams book Game Theory and the Humanities: Bridging …

Christmas Hauntings: Similarities And Differences In A Christmas Carol And “A House To Let”, Charlotte Shurtz

BYU English Symposium

Throughout his life, Dickens was both skeptical of and fascinated with hauntings. He used them often in his writing as a way of examining social issues. In this paper, I examine his use of hauntings in his 1843 novella A Christmas Carol and the portmanteau story, “A House to Let,” in the Christmas edition of Household Words and how the stories are either an explicit or implied commentary on ignorance of the poor. In A Christmas Carol, four ghosts haunt Scrooge and teach him the personal and societal dangers of Ignorance. This experience, which erases his personal and deliberate ignorance, …

Loss Of The Giant Salmonfly Pteronarcys Californica And Changes In Stonefly Diversity In The Provo River, Utah (Plecoptera), Jackson Birrell, C. Riley Nelson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Plecoptera (stoneflies) are important insects in aquatic ecosystems worldwide. They cover a wide array of functional feeding groups and provide various ecosystem services (1). Stoneflies are sensitive to reductions in water quality, allowing managers to use their presence or absence to denote if a watershed is healthy or impaired. They are therefore known as bioindicators of stream health (2). Plecoptera are also appreciated by fly fisherman throughout the world. Despite their ecological, conservational and cultural importance, stoneflies are in decline. Their sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbances including pollution, river damming, urbanization and climate change make them particularly vulnerable and have lead …

Provo River Restoration: Success Or Failure?, Jared Meek, C Riley Nelson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Provo River in central Utah flows from its headwaters in the Uinta Mountains, down the heavily agricultural Heber Valley, through the urban center of Provo and Orem, and out into Utah Lake. Beginning in the 1950s, the Provo River underwent significant alterations as part of a large-scale water reclamation project throughout central Utah1, including the channelization and straightening of its middle section. In addition to these alterations, the river had two dams constructed along its course: the Deer Creek Dam (1941) and the Jordanelle Dam (1993). To remedy the ecological impairment that these manipulations caused, the Utah Reclamation Mitigation …

Cardiovascular Health And Cognitive Decline In Older Adults, Alexa Ehlert, Evan Thacker

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Cognitive impairment is a concerning issue among the population of older adults in the United States. This problem is compounded by the fact that science is largely uncertain of how to prevent cognitive decline; however, if we knew that particular modifiable behaviors associated with cardiovascular health were also related to cognitive health, then efforts to prevent cognitive impairment could potentially be developed. There are three principal goals of this project: 1) determine how cardiovascular health evolves in older adults over several years; 2) determine the relationship between cardiovascular health and cognitive decline in older adults; 3) determine how changes in …

A Metagenome-Wide Association Study Of Gut Microbiota In Drosophila Cancer Metastasis., Anthony Caruso, John Chaston

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It has been established by past scientific research that the gastrointestinal microbiome plays a defined role in many human diseases. Some of these diseases include inflammatory bowel disease, autism, hypertension, and even cancer. A common symptom seen in many of these diseases is the dysbiosis of intestinal microbiota. Studies investigating several of these ailments have shown that model organisms can be rescued from negative symptoms through the addition of health promoting bacteria to their gastrointestinal tracts. While these fascinating correlations between levels of gut microbiota and disease have been well established, the specific genes of the bacteria and the inter-organism …

Biochemical Characterization Of The Oat Cslf6 Mixed-Linkage Glucan Synthase, Alexander E. Chu, Eric N. Jellen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The central dogma of molecular biology teaches that the information of life is stored in DNA, a linear chain of nucleotide molecules. The information in DNA nucleotides is then transcribed into RNA, which encodes the amino acids needed to make proteins. These chemically active proteins are responsible for nearly all the processes of life in the cell. Thus, a single gene, consisting of relatively inert DNA, can give rise to a protein with a highly specialized function, and the collection of genes contained in a genome can give rise to the diversity of biomolecular function needed to sustain a living …

A Dakota Woman: Zitkala-Ša’S Fight For Native Gender Identity, Olivia Cronquist

BYU English Symposium

The writings of Dakota author Zitkala-Ša include her memoirs from her elementary education in a white boarding school, as well as some original Native American stories. While there has been much modern scholarship on how Native American women have reconciled their racial and gender identities, I will be examining the link between Native American feminism and assimilation in the boarding school system, exploring the specific aspects of Native femininity that Zitkala-Ša highlights in “A Warrior’s Daughter.” This short story outlines a young Dakota woman’s effort to rescue her lover from the hands of an enemy tribe. Through the main character, …

Books In Their Hands: Why Elizabeth George Speare Wrote, Michelle Forstrom

BYU English Symposium

Elizabeth George Speare was a stay at home Mom who didn't seriously write until her forties, and yet her award winning books are taught in schools and known throughout the world. What was this homemaker turned author trying to teach her YA readers and did she succeed?

The Prevalence Of Music Related Injury Among College Students In Utah And Potential Preventative/Combative Measures, Kaia Rose, Brittany May, Phd.

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Shortly after beginning my music studies at Brigham Young University, I began to struggle with overuse injury that made it difficult to play my instrument. Conversations with fellow BYU music majors over the past few years revealed that music related injuries seem to be relatively common. The informal conversations with fellow music majors as well as my personal experience with music related injury prompted me to investigate the prevalence of music related injury at the University level. I also began to research preventative and combative methods that could be made more available to students who struggle with injury, as it …

Challenging A Stereotype: Female Nature In Rape Of The Lock And “Saturday. Small-Pox. Flavia.”, Elizabeth D. Smith

BYU English Symposium

Due to events such as the Civil War, Interregnum, Restoration, and the rise of the bourgeois, England’s national identity was subject to change during the eighteenth century. Along with this large-scale change came a questioning of the meaning of gender and gender roles. Because of the relatively new forms of written media, like newspapers and journals, both men and women of various social standings could engage in a literary discussion about such questions. This essay focuses on two poets in particular: Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Pope’s Rape of the Lock and Montagu’s “Saturday. Small-Pox. Flavia.” hyperbolize society’s …

Aligning Open Science Textbooks To The Next Generation Science Standards, Spencer B. Perry

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

Open educational resources and open textbooks are popular in schools primarily because of their low cost. However, open textbooks may or may not be aligned to the appropriate learning standards. This project develops an alignment evaluation tool and evaluates an open science textbook to determine if it is in alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). It was found that a textbook may not reasonably be expected to achieve all elements of the NGSS but that the open textbook achieved most of the NGSS elements that could be achieved. Challenges encountered during the alignment process are discussed.

Adult Vaccination Rates In The Severely Mentally Ill Population: An Improvement Project In An Outpatient Setting In Utah, Nathalia H. Williams, Leslie Miles, Beth Luthy, Lacey Eden

Student Works

Background: Adults who suffer with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI) rarely access medical care to address basic medical needs, so they are subsequently less likely to receive preventive vaccines. The aim of this project was to increase the rate of vaccines among the SPMI population. This project started in 2011 and still is ongoing. It took place in an outpatient community mental health center (CMHC) which serves about 4,200 SPMI clients. Personnel managing the project included registered nurses from the local health department, staff from the CMHC, and volunteer nursing students.

Methods: A review of the literature identified a …

The Effect Of The Slope Of The Psychometric Function On The Measurement Of Speech Recognition Threshold Using A Male Talker, Nujod Ali Bakhsh

Theses and Dissertations

Speech audiometry is the aspect of audiology that provides critical information on how individuals hear one of the most important sounds of daily life: speech. The speech recognition threshold (SRT) is a measure of speech audiometry that is widely used to provide information on an individual's capacity to hear speech. Over time, researchers and clinicians have worked to improve the SRT by developing and modifying a variety of word lists to be used during testing. Eventually, spondaic words were selected as the best stimuli for the SRT. The spondaic words had to meet four criteria: familiarity, phonetic dissimilarity, normal sampling …

A Comparison Of Qualitative And Quantitative White Matter Methods In Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury, Kacie Larae Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic resonance imaging is used to assess white matter (WM) abnormalities including total WM volumes and WM hyperintensities (WMHs). Comparisons between several qualitative and quantitative methods to assess WM that are used in research and clinical settings are lacking in pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study 1) WM methods including Scheltens ratings, manual tracings, NeuroQuant®, and FreeSurfer; (2) compared total WM volumes and WMHs to assess potentially similar reporting of WM integrity; and (3) assessed the relationship between cognitive functions (intelligence, attention, processing speed, and language) and WM in pediatric TBI.Sixty participants (65% male) between ages 8-13 years old, …

The Poet Jan Rainis During Swiss Exile, 1906-1920: Internationalism, Nationalism, And The Meaning Of ''A Free Latvia In A Free Russia'', Bryan K. Herman

Swiss American Historical Society Review

T his opening quote appears in the 1949 Stalinist fi lm Rainis, one of several biographical films of cu ltural and scientific figures from the early years of the Cold War. The quote comes at the end of the film , just as Rainis prepares to leave his native Latvia and live under an assumed identity in Switzerland. The scene expresses the tensions of a writer from a relatively small nationality heading to an unknown land . However, instead of finding a strange and unfami liar land, the historic Rainis (Janis Plieksans, I 865-1929) fe lt welcomed and at home …

Informing Social Impact: Enabling Everyday Changemakers Through Research, Marissa Getts

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Despite a lack of expertise regarding social impact, laypeople make many important decisions about social good by starting or supporting organizations or social businesses, voting for or against legislation and policymakers, or spending their money and time on volunteering or service trips. Unfortunately, many people base their interventions or analysis of interventions for any given social issue on overly simplistic understanding or incorrect information regarding social impact. This keeps them from developing interventions with positive, sustainable impact. Ballard Brief is a publication based on a framework intended to inform the layperson about social issues and interventions.

This thesis is comprised …

The Effect Of A Social Communication Intervention On The Correct Production Of Emotion Words In Children With Language Impairment, Annelise Luddington

Theses and Dissertations

Children diagnosed with Language Impairment (LI) often have difficulty with aspects of social communication. This thesis evaluates the effects of a social communication intervention focused on facilitating the correct production of emotion words in four elementary school-aged children with LI. Researchers monitored changes from pretreatment baseline data, through the intervention, and ended with posttreatment follow-up data for the emotions happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Based on baseline measures, emotion categories in which the child showed limited proficiency were targeted for the 20 intervention sessions. The emotions targeted were different for each child. Each intervention session contained a combination …

Biomarker Analysis And Clinical Relevance Of Thymidine Kinase 1 In Solid And Hematological Malignancies, Evita Giraldez Weagel

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the global effort to discover and improve ways to detect, treat, and monitor cancer, it still remains the second leading cause of death in the United States and poses a major health and economic burden worldwide. While traditional treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and hormone therapy have been successful and have decreased cancer mortality, cancer incidence in all sites continues to rise. Consequently, there is an immediate need to find new therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. In recent years, and with the continuing push towards personalized medicine, cancer biomarkers have become crucial to detect, treat, and monitor …

Examining Multimorbidities Using Association Rule Learning, Kaylee Dudley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

All insurance companies, regardless of the kind of insurance they offer, do their best to predict the future by comparing current to historical information. Any statistically significant correlation, regardless of expectations and hidden factors, can help to actuarially model future behavior. Using deidentified data from over 6 million health insurance policies over one year, we looked for any significant groupings of medical issues. The medical issues are defined based on the commercial “Episode Treatment Groups” (ETGs) classification, and our claims contain 347 different ETGs. We performed different kinds of analysis, including Bayesian posterior cluster analysis, k-means cluster analysis, and association …

Increased Energy Yield Through Fast Pyrolysis: Empowering Malawian Villages, Diehl Mutamba

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Biomass contributes to several renewable energy technologies. This project will explore the use of fast pyrolysis to produce fuels by designing an apparatus for fast pyrolysis. Malawian people harvest firewood from the forests, which is a major contributor to deforestation. Furthermore, they convert some of it to charcoal with about 10-15% efficiency to sell to city dwellers. The project will enable herbaceous fuels to replace wood, increase charcoal yields and create new products. Firewood and charcoal produce smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) that compromises the villagers’ health.

This project will address deforestation problems, improve sustainability, decrease health hazards and improve …

Addressing Pre-Service Teachers' Misconceptions About Confidence Intervals, Kiya Lynn Eliason

Theses and Dissertations

Increased attention to statistical concepts has been a prevalent trend in revised mathematics curricula across grade levels. However, the preparation of secondary school mathematics educators has not received similar attention, and learning opportunities provided to these educators is oftentimes insufficient for teaching statistics well. The purpose of this study is to analyze pre-service teachers' conceptions about confidence intervals. This research inquired about statistical reasoning from the perspective of students majoring in mathematics education enrolled in an undergraduate statistics education course who have previously completed an introductory course in statistics. We found common misconceptions among pre-service teachers participating in this study. …

Lunchtime Experiences And Students' Sense Of Belonging In Middle School, Anna Elisabeth Hinton

Theses and Dissertations

We know that it is important that students feel a sense of belonging in school, but additional research is needed to better understand the influences on belonging, especially for junior high and middle school students. Junior high lunchtime is an ideal space to study as a potential influence on belonging because it is a central part of the secondary school experience and it is a social space for students. The purpose of this study is to connect lunchtime experiences to school belonging by showing that how students experience lunchtime and how this affects their overall sense of belonging in school.Descriptive …

Lean Six Sigma's Impact On Firm Innovation Performance, Austin Michael Strong

Theses and Dissertations

Following Toyota's dramatic rise to prominence within the automotive industry in the late 1980's, firms around the globe have widely sought to adopt Lean Six Sigma (LSS) as a means of reducing costs, improving quality, and gaining an overall competitive advantage. While the operational benefits of LSS are largely undisputed, there are criticisms of the movement with regards to its effect on firm innovation capability. Prior academic studies investigating the relationship between LSS and innovation are largely conceptual in nature, rely heavily on qualitative data, and display a high degree of variability in results. The objective of this work was …

Using Quantitative Mri To Measure Cartilage Health, Laurel Jane Hales

Theses and Dissertations

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the leading causes of disability world-wide. It affects 12% of all Americans ages 25-74 [1]. One of the challenges with OA, is that there are currently no clinically viable methods to measure the health of the cartilage before cartilage loss. There are no ways to replace or heal the cartilage after it has been lost. It is known that the early stages of OA involve a decrease in the amount of glycosaminoglycans (GAG), one of the main molecules in cartilage. This decrease in GAG leads to a change in the fixed charge density of the …