Digital Commons Network^™

An Exhortation To Study God’S Two “Books”, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

From the birth of modern science at the end of the sixteenth century, Galileo famously believed that God had written two books — the scriptures and the Book of Nature. The scriptures, he contended, should be interpreted by scholars and theologians, whereas the Book of Nature was the province of scientists:

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

John Milton, Joseph Smith, And The Book Of Mormon, Robert A. Rees

BYU Studies

In my Introduction to Mormonism class at Graduate Theological Union in 2013, among other topics we discussed the Book of Mormon and its possible provenances. The assignments for the class included my article “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance,” in which I compare Joseph Smith with his illustrious contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman in terms of their respective literary imagination, talent, authorial maturity, education, cultural milieu, knowledge base, and intellectual sophistication. In that article, I attempted to demonstrate that each of these authors enjoyed a much greater …

The Alexandrian Epitomes Of Galen, Volume 1: On The Medical Sects For Beginners; The Small Art Of Medicine; On The Elements According To The Opinion Of Hippocrates, Galen, John Walbridge, Translator

Maxwell Institute Publications

The second-century physician and philosopher Galen is not known for brevity. Although his writings on medicine are famously verbose and numerous, for centuries they constituted much of the standard syllabi for medical students. About fourteen hundred years ago, one or possibly several professors put together a series of epitomes of Galen’s work. In contrast to Galen’s rambling and argumentative style, these epitomes present the material dryly but clearly, offering systematic categorizations of concepts, symptoms, diseases, and organs. Originally written in Greek, The Alexandrian Epitomes of Galen can also be found in Arabic and Hebrew translations, and the epitomes have had …

Evolving Faith: Wanderings Of A Mormon Biologist, Steven L. Peck

Maxwell Institute Publications

Believers and scientists have long wrestled over the relationship between science and faith. Steven L. Peck, an acclaimed Latter-day Saint author and scientist, demonstrates in this new book that both science and faith are indispensable tools we can use to navigate God’s strange and beautiful creation. Evolving Faith is a collection of technical, personal, sometimes whimsical essays about Mormon theology, evolution, human consciousness, the environment, sacred spaces, and more.

With the mind of a scientist, the soul of a believer, and the heart of a wanderer, Peck provides welcome companionship for women and men engaged in the unceasing quest for …

Organocatalytic Aryl−Aryl Bond Formation: An Atroposelective [3,3]‑Rearrangement Approach To Binam Derivatives, Gong-Qiang Li, Hongyin Gao, Craig Keene, Michael Devonas, Daniel H. Ess, LaśZlóKüRti *

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Herein we disclose an organocatalytic aryl− aryl bond-forming process for the regio- and atropo- selective synthesis of 2,2′-diamino-1,1′-binaphthalenes (BINAMs). In the presence of catalytic amounts of axially chiral phosphoric acids, achiral N,N′-binaphthyl hydrazines undergo a facile [3,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement to afford enantiomerically enriched BINAM derivatives in good to excellent yield. This transformation represents the first

example of a metal-free, catalytic C(sp²)−C(sp²) bond

formation between two aromatic rings with concomitant de novo atroposelective installation of an axis of chirality. Density functional calculations reveal that, in the transition state for C−C bond formation, the phosphoric acid proton of …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Exploring Proficiency-Based Vs. Performance-Based Items With Elicited Imitation Assessment, Troy L. Cox, Jennifer Brown, Jacob Burdis

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the effect of proficiency- vs. performance-based elicited imitation (EI) assessment. EI requires test-takers to repeat sentences in the target language. The accuracy at which test-takers are able to repeat sentences highly correlates with test-takers’ language proficiency. However, in EI, the factors that render an item more complex are still being investigated. In order to investigate whether item difficulty and test performance were different between proficiency- and performance based tests, two EI instruments were created—one to measure proficiency with items from a general corpus and another to measure language for specific purposes (LSP) performance with items from a …

Validation Of The Intermountain Patient Perception Of Quality (Ppq) Survey Among Survivors Of An Intensive Care Unit Admission: A Retrospective Validation Study, Samuel M. Brown, Glen Mcbride, Dave S. Collingridge, Jorie M. Buter, Kathryn G. Kuttler, Eliotte L. Hirshberg, Jason P. Jones, Ramona O. Hopkins, Daniel Talmor, James Orme

Faculty Publications

Background: Patients’ perceptions of the quality of their hospitalization have become important to the American healthcare system. Standard surveys of perceived quality of healthcare do not focus on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) portion of the stay. Our objective was to evaluate the construct validity and internal consistency of the Intermountain Patient Perception of Quality (PPQ) survey among patients discharged from the ICU. Methods: We analyzed prospectively collected results from the ICU PPQ survey of all inpatients at Intermountain Medical Center whose hospitalization included an ICU stay. We employed principal components analysis to determine the constructs present in the PPQ …

Strongly-Coupled Plasmas Formed From Laser-Heated Solids, M. Lyon, Scott D. Bergeson, G. Hart, M. S. Murillo

Faculty Publications

We present an analysis of ion temperatures in laser-produced plasmas formed from solids with different initial lattice structures. We show that the equilibrium ion temperature is limited by a mismatch between the initial crystallographic configuration and the close-packed configuration of a strongly-coupled plasma, similar to experiments in ultracold neutral plasmas. We propose experiments to demonstrate and exploit this crystallographic heating in order to produce a strongly coupled plasma with a coupling parameter of several hundred.

A Multi-Experimental Examination Of Analyzing Mouse Cursor Trajectories To Gauge Subject Uncertainty, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Ross Larsen, Robert Bodily, Daniel Sandberg, Parker Williams, Steve Stokes, Spencer Harris, Joseph S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Providing information online is pervasive in human-computer interactions. While providing information, people may deliberate their responses. However, organizations only receive the end-result of this deliberation and therefore have no contextual information surrounding the response. One type of contextual information includes knowing people’s response uncertainty while providing information. Knowing uncertainty allows organizations to weigh responses, ask follow-up questions, provide assistance, or identify problematic instructions or responses. This paper explores how mouse cursor movements may indicate uncertainty in a human-computer interaction context. Specifically, it hypothesizes how uncertainty on multiple-choice questions influences a mouse-movement statistic called area-under-the-curve (AUC). We report the result of …

Exploring Proficiency-Based Vs. Performance-Based Items With Elicited Imitation Assessment, Troy L. Cox, Jennifer Brown, Jacob Buris

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the effect of proficiency- vs. performance-based elicited imitation (EI) assessment. EI requires test-takers to repeat sentences in the target language. The accuracy at which test-takers are able to repeat sentences highly correlates with test-takers’ language proficiency. However, in EI, the factors that render an item more complex are still being investigated. In order to investigate whether item difficulty and test performance were different between proficiency- and performance based tests, two EI instruments were created—one to measure proficiency with items from a general corpus and another to measure language for specific purposes (LSP) performance with items from a …

The Multidimensional Quality Metrics (Mqm) Framework: A New Framework For Translation Quality Assessment, Valerie Mariana, Troy L. Cox, Alan Melby

Faculty Publications

Determining translation quality requires a precise measure of the traits being examined. This article evaluates a new framework for translation quality evaluation, Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM), to the task of grading student translations. It demonstrates the viability (i.e. the practicality, validity and reliability) of using the MQM framework by novice raters to judge translations based on the American Translators Association’s translator certification exam grading system. The data gathered for this study were drawn from 29 student translations of a single news story that were rated by nine novice and two expert raters. The study used average time on task, correlations …

Solving Russian Velars: Palatalization, The Lexicon And Gradient Contrast Utilization, Jeffery R. Parker

Faculty Publications

Палатализованные («мягкие») задненебные согласные в русском языке имеют особый статус, поскольку их появление можно предсказать лишь частично. Эти согласные являются примером часто встречающихся фонологических отношений, в которых звуки могут быть словоразличительными, но используются лишь в некоторых контекстах и/или словоформах. Такие «промежуточные фонологические отношения» (ОоШзткЬ 1995) представляют собой проблему для традиционных фонологических теорий, в которых звуки делятся на предсказуемые (аллофоны; содержатся в грамматике) и непредсказуемые (фонемы; содержатся в лексиконе). Таким образом, для научно-теоретической классификации вышеуказанных промежуточных фонологических отношений необходимо будет пересмотреть существующие предположения о природе и количестве информации, содержащейся в лексиконе. В данной статье я показываю, что и мягкие, и твердые …

Development Of A Thickness Accommodation Technique For Origami-Inspired Design, Bryce Edmondson

Theses and Dissertations

Designers are constantly searching for new sourcing of inspiration for innovative design. Recently, origami has gained interest as one of these potential sources. Origami literally translated from Japanese means “paper folding” where “oru” means “to fold” and “kami” means “paper”. Since paper is insufficient to solve many engineering design problems, designers must turn to other materials. These materials will inevitably be thicker than paper and will often require different folding techniques and considerations. This thesis provides background information describing previous methods to accommodate thickness in origami-inspired design, presents a newly developed technique to address limitations of other methods, and explores …

Frontier: A Framework For Extracting And Organizing Biographical Facts In Historical Documents, Joseph Park

Theses and Dissertations

The tasks of entity recognition through ontological commitment, fact extraction and organization with respect to a target schema, and entity deduplication have all been examined in recent years, and systems exist that can perform each individual task. A framework combining all these tasks, however, is still needed to accomplish the goal of automatically extracting and organizing biographical facts about persons found in historical documents into disambiguated entity records. We introduce FROntIER (Fact Recognizer for Ontologies with Inference and Entity Resolution) as the framework to recognize and extract facts using an ontology and organize facts of interest through inferring implicit facts …

Fluorescence Imaging Of Analyte Profiles In An Inductively Coupled Plasma With Laser Ablation As A Sample Introduction Source, Lance Moses

Theses and Dissertations

Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) has risen to among the top tier techniques for the direct analysis of solid samples. However, significant problems remain that must be solved to achieve the full analytical potential of LA-ICP-MS. Inefficient conversion of aerosol to ions within the ICP or transmission through the MS interface may decrease precision, sensitivity, and/or accuracy. Although fundamental mechanisms that govern ion production and transmission have been studied extensively in solution-nebulization (SN) ICP-MS instruments, significant gaps in our understanding remain. Furthermore, it is unclear to what extent differences between the aerosols generated during SN and LA …

Using Higher Ionization States To Increase Coulomb Coupling In An Ultracold Neutral Plasma, M. Lyon, Scott D. Bergeson, A. Diaw, M. S. Murillo

Faculty Publications

We report measurements and simulations of the time-evolving rms velocity distribution in an ultracold neutral plasma. A strongly coupled ultracold neutral Ca⁺ plasma is generated by photoionizing laser-cooled atoms close to threshold. A fraction of these ions is then promoted to the second ionization state to form a mixed Ca⁺-Ca²⁺ plasma. By varying the time delay between the first and the second ionization events, a minimum in ion heating is achieved. We show that the Coulomb strong-coupling parameter Γ increases by a factor of 1.4 to a maximum value of 3.6. A pure Ca²⁺ plasma …

Revising By Numbers: Promoting Student Revision Through Accumulated Points, Mark Mcbeth

Journal of Response to Writing

In an effort to rethink the evaluation of student writing with the ultimate goal of convincing novice writers that rewriting predicates as well as presupposes the act of writing, I describe a point-accrual grading system where students accumulate points with redrafted submissions during a semester. This approach to evaluation offers students more autonomy in controlling their “earned” grade as well as incentivizes their investments in the revision process. In contrast to the normative percentages approach to grading, this point-accrual system not only gives students a less ambivalent form of grading but also moves them past surface-level revision and into rhetorical …

Volume 1 Number 2 (2015)

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Symbiotic Werewolves And Cybernetic Anchoresses: Premodern Posthumans In Medieval Literature, Jennifer K. Cox

Quidditas

This paper examines how individual agency in medieval society might be expanded through posthuman configurations; in so doing, it pushes the boundaries of traditional practices in medieval research to include more contemporary ideas. Although as scholars, we must avoid anachronistic readings of these texts, ignoring modern thinkers like N. Katherine Hayles (How We Became Posthuman) and Donna Haraway (“A Cyborg Manifesto”) too easily disregards their valuable – and timeless – insights. While the term “posthuman” can evoke images of cyborgs or superhuman mutants using wormholes to traverse space and time, this pop culture perspective often overlooks less technoscientific examples of …

De-Suturing Milton's Eden: Navigating From An Althusserian Bipartite System To A Badiouian Set In Paradise Lost, Brittany Strobelt

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Fuel Element Combustion Properties For Live Wildland Utah Shrubs, Thomas H. Fletcher, Chen Shen

Faculty Publications

Current field models for wildfire prediction are mostly based on dry or low-moisture fuel combustion research. To better study the live fuel combustion behavior, a laminar flow flat-flame burner was used to provide a convection heating source to ignite an individual live fuel sample. In this research project, four Utah species were studied: Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), canyon maple (Acer grandidentatum), big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), and Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma). Leaf geometrical parameters measured included individual leaf total mass, thickness, leaf width, leaf length, and moisture content. Time-stamped images of combustion behavior along with time-dependent mass data were recorded via …

Measuring Student Engagement In Technology-Mediated Learning: A Review, Curtis R. Henrie, Lisa R. Halverson, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Using digital technology to deliver content, connect learners, and enable anytime, anywhere learning is increasing, but keeping students engaged in technology-mediated learning is challenging. Instructional practices that encourage greater engagement are essential if we are to effectively use digital instructional technologies. To determine the impact of innovative instructional practices on learning, we need useful measures of student engagement. These measures should be adaptable to the unique challenges to studying technology-mediated learning, such as when students learn at a distance or in a blended learning course. In this review, we examine existing approaches to measure engagement in technology-mediated learning. We identify …

Compensation Or Feedback: Motivating Performance In Multidimensional Tasks, Margaret H. Christ, Scott A. Emett, William B. Tayler, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Employees often perform tasks with multiple dimensions. In this study, we examine how employees’ performance on multidimensional tasks differs under different control structures. We conduct two experiments in which we manipulate the presence of compensation controls and the presence of feedback controls on multiple task dimensions. Our findings suggest that when employees are compensated on multiple dimensions they commit to multiple goals and divide their attention among those task dimensions. However, when feedback controls are implemented on one task dimension with compensation controls on another dimension, employees can improve performance on individual dimensions as well as their overall task performance. …

Thick Rigidly Foldable Structures Realized By An Offset Panel Technique, Bryce Edmondson, Robert J. Lang, Michael R. Morgan, Spencer P. Magleby, Larry L. Howell

Faculty Publications

Rigid-panel origami is often mathematically modeled with idealized zero-thickness panels. When paper is used to realize an origami design, the zero-thickness models are a good approximation. However, many origami-inspired designs require the use of thicker materials that likely will not behave as the zero-thickness kinematic models predict.

The offset panel technique defined previously by the authors [Edmondson et al. 14] maintains the kinematics of a zero-thickness origami source model over its full range of motion. The offset panel technique accommodates uniform and varying panel thickness as well as offset panels or gaps between panels. The preserved kinematic behavior allows designers …

Rigidly Foldable Origami Twists, Thomas A. Evans, Robert J. Lang, Spencer P. Magleby, Larry L. Howell

Faculty Publications

Rigid foldability is an important characteristic of origami structures that becomes significant with non-paper materials. A rigidly foldable origami tessellation is one where the sectors remain rigid and all deflection occurs at the crease lines. Many rigidly foldable patterns have only one degree of freedom, making them potentially useful for deployable structures. Methods have been developed to construct rigidly foldable origami tessellations using materials with finite thickness based on zero-thickness rigidly foldable patterns. [Tachi 11].

Origami methods have been considered for application in deployable structures such as solar panels [Miura 85] [Zirbel et al. 13] and sterile shrouds [Francis et …

Examining Legalism, Scrupulosity, Family Perfectionism, And Psychological Adjustment Among Lds Individuals, Kawika Allen, Kenneth T. Wang, Hannah Stokes

Faculty Publications

This study examined the relationships and interactions between legalism, scrupulosity, family perfectionism, guilt, and shame among 421 Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormons). The results showed that scrupulosity fully mediated the links between legalism and guilt, as well as legalism and shame. A moderated-mediation effect was found, in which family discrepancy (maladaptive perfectionism) intensified the scrupulosity–shame association in the mediation model of legalism and shame by scrupulosity. Family discrepancy was not a significant moderator for the mediation model of legalism and guilt by scrupulosity. Additional results are provided and implications of these findings are outlined.

Instrument For Precision Long-Term Ss-Decay Rate Measurements, M. J. Ware, Scott D. Bergeson, J. E. Ellsworth, M. Groesbeck, J. E. Hansen, D. Pace, J. Peatross

Faculty Publications

We describe an experimental setup for making precision measurements of relative ß-decay rates of ²²Na, ³⁶Cl, ⁵⁴Mn, ⁶⁰Co, ⁹⁰Sr, ¹³³Ba, ¹³⁷Cs, ¹⁵²Eu, and ¹⁵⁴Eu. The radioactive samples are mounted in two automated sample changers that sequentially position the samples with high spatial precision in front of sets of detectors. The set of detectors for one sample changer consists of four Geiger-Müller (GM) tubes and the other set of detectors consists of two NaI scintillators. The statistical uncertainty in the count rate is few times 0.01% per day for the GM …

Ecosystem Restoration On Santa Catalina Island: A Review Of Potential Approaches And The Promise Of Bottom-Up Invader Management, Denise A. Knapp

Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist

Restoring large, complex landscapes can be challenging, especially given that some threats to native diversity and ecological function cannot be wholly eliminated. Santa Catalina Island, California, provides a valuable case study because its challenges include a variety of ecosystem threats, legal restrictions, and cultural attachments, as well as a vocal resident human population that often does not agree with conservation actions. Catalina Island has been highly modified by numerous invasive species, fragmentation and erosion from roads, altered hydrology from dams, and increased fire frequency. In this paper, I build on a previously published review of resources and threats and discuss …