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A Definition Of Reliable Water Supply For Public Water Systems, Easton Hopkins Nov 2023

A Definition Of Reliable Water Supply For Public Water Systems, Easton Hopkins

Theses and Dissertations

"Reliable water supply" does not have a universal definition in Utah, or the Western United States, where water resources are limited and such a definition would be especially useful. Utah's three water agencies and 500 public water systems have no consistent method to define, evaluate, and report it, potentially leading to an inability to meet regulatory water demands. We propose a unified definition of reliable water supply for Utah's public water suppliers that can also be used elsewhere. The qualitative definition we propose is necessary to precede quantitative evaluations, set policy, and provide consistency to water resources management in Utah. …

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The Chatgpt Artificial Intelligence Chatbot: How Well Does It Answer Accounting Assessment Questions?, David A. Wood, Ryan D. Sommerfeldt, Muskan P. Achhpilia, Mollie T. Adams, Sanaz Aghazadeh, William G. Heninger, Jeffrey Pickerd, Jon Kerr Nov 2023

The Chatgpt Artificial Intelligence Chatbot: How Well Does It Answer Accounting Assessment Questions?, David A. Wood, Ryan D. Sommerfeldt, Muskan P. Achhpilia, Mollie T. Adams, Sanaz Aghazadeh, William G. Heninger, Jeffrey Pickerd, Jon Kerr

Faculty Publications

ChatGPT, a language-learning model chatbot, has garnered considerable attention for its ability to respond to users’ questions. Using data from 14 countries and 186 institutions, we compare ChatGPT and student performance for 28,085 questions from accounting assessments and textbook test banks. As of January 2023, ChatGPT provides correct answers for 56.5 percent of questions and partially correct answers for an additional 9.4 percent of questions. When considering point values for questions, students significantly outperform ChatGPT with a 76.7 percent average on assessments compared to 47.5 percent for ChatGPT if no partial credit is awarded and 56.5 percent if partial credit …

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Dnssec Meets The Frontend: Usability Study Of Dnssec Status Indicator In Browser, Tyler Karren Oct 2023

Dnssec Meets The Frontend: Usability Study Of Dnssec Status Indicator In Browser, Tyler Karren

Theses and Dissertations

DNSSEC ensures the integrity of DNS data. DNSSEC however is not visible to the end user. We designed a DNSSEC status indicator tool that shows the DNSSEC validation statuses of the host being visited in the Web browser. We then conducted a usability study to evaluate the tool, gathering user behavior and feedback from 30 participants. The usability study revealed that users were able to make security conscious decisions based on context of the task, but the tool struggled to communicate that it was sharing the status of the validity of the name-to-IP-address resolution of visited websites. We hope that …

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Could Our Universe Have Been Initiated Intentionally: An Epistemological Framework, Dan Broadbent Oct 2023

Could Our Universe Have Been Initiated Intentionally: An Epistemological Framework, Dan Broadbent

Faculty Publications

The possibility that our universe was initiated intentionally is a compelling philosophical and scientific question that can be evaluated probabilistically based on four primary considerations: fine-tuning in our universe, hypotheses about the multiverse, the likelihood that intelligent life may be able to initiate a universe, and the possibility that we live in a simulation. This paper offers an equation analogous to the noteworthy Drake equation that is intended to be used as a structured thought experiment to help identify factors related to the initiation of our universe and to facilitate examining each in terms of what we know, do not …

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Task Distillation: Transforming Reinforcement Learning Into Supervised Learning, Connor Wilhelm Oct 2023

Task Distillation: Transforming Reinforcement Learning Into Supervised Learning, Connor Wilhelm

Theses and Dissertations

Recent work in dataset distillation focuses on distilling supervised classification datasets into smaller, synthetic supervised datasets in order to reduce per-model costs of training, to provide interpretability, and to anonymize data. Distillation and its benefits can be extended to a wider array of tasks. We propose a generalization of dataset distillation, which we call task distillation. Using techniques similar to those used in dataset distillation, any learning task can be distilled into a compressed synthetic task. Task distillation allows for transmodal distillations, where a task of one modality is distilled into a synthetic task of another modality, allowing a more …

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Online Protection Laws.Full Issue Sep 2023

Online Protection Laws.Full Issue

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

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Investigating The Potential Benefits Of Standards-Based Grading Practices At Urban Secondary Schools In Southern Utah: A Qualitative Study, April Larsen Sep 2023

Investigating The Potential Benefits Of Standards-Based Grading Practices At Urban Secondary Schools In Southern Utah: A Qualitative Study, April Larsen

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Letter grades are often inflated or lowered based on non-learning aspects, and students tend to focus on earning a particular grade rather than on mastering academic content and skills. The problem is that the letter grade method that has been used for many decades in education may not be the best way to determine or report student achievement. Gaps in the literature exist regarding comparisons between letter grades and standards-based grades in terms of increasing student achievement and reporting student learning. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to determine whether one grading method is more effective than the …

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Article Summaries (Online Protection Laws Of Children) Sep 2023

Article Summaries (Online Protection Laws Of Children)

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

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Effects Of Fire On Kangaroo Rats In The San Joaquin Desert Of California, David J. Germano, Lawrence R. Saslaw, Brian L. Cypher, Linda Spiegel Sep 2023

Effects Of Fire On Kangaroo Rats In The San Joaquin Desert Of California, David J. Germano, Lawrence R. Saslaw, Brian L. Cypher, Linda Spiegel

Western North American Naturalist

Fire can alter ecological communities, particularly those that are not fire-adapted, such as desert communities. We examined the effects of fire on rodent communities in the San Joaquin Desert of central California. Of particular interest were the effects on kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spp.) including 2 rare species, the giant kangaroo rat (D. ingens) and the short-nosed kangaroo rat (D. nitratoides brevinasus). Lightning caused multiple fires in arid scrub habitat in western Kern County in 1993. We trapped rodents at 7 sites along paired transects, with one transect in a burned area and one in a …

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Evaluating A Large Language Model’S Ability To Solve Programming Exercises From An Introductory Bioinformatics Course, Stephen R. Piccolo, Paul Denny, Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Samuel H. Payne, Perry G. Ridge Sep 2023

Evaluating A Large Language Model’S Ability To Solve Programming Exercises From An Introductory Bioinformatics Course, Stephen R. Piccolo, Paul Denny, Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Samuel H. Payne, Perry G. Ridge

Faculty Publications

Life scientists frequently write computer code when doing research. Computer programming can aid researchers in performing tasks that are not supported by existing tools. Programming can also help researchers to implement analytical logic in a way that documents their steps and thus enables others to repeat those steps. Many educational resources are available to teach computer programming, but this skill remains challenging for many researchers and students to master. Artificial-intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are able to interpret human-language requests to generate code. Accordingly, we evaluated the extent to which this technology might be used to perform programming tasks described …

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A Probabilistic View Of Protein Stability, Conformational Specificity, And Design, Jacob A. Stern, Tyler J. Free, Kimberlee L. Stern, Spencer Gardiner, Nicholas A. Dalley, Bradley Charles Bundy, Joshua L. Price, David Wingate, Dnnis Della Corte Sep 2023

A Probabilistic View Of Protein Stability, Conformational Specificity, And Design, Jacob A. Stern, Tyler J. Free, Kimberlee L. Stern, Spencer Gardiner, Nicholas A. Dalley, Bradley Charles Bundy, Joshua L. Price, David Wingate, Dnnis Della Corte

Faculty Publications

Various approaches have used neural networks as probabilistic models for the design of protein sequences. These "inverse folding" models employ different objective functions, which come with trade-offs that have not been assessed in detail before. This study introduces probabilistic definitions of protein stability and conformational specificity and demonstrates the relationship between these chemical properties and the p(stucture|seq) Boltzmann probability objective. This links the Boltzmann probability objective function to experimentally verifiable outcomes. We propose a novel sequence decoding algorithm, referred to as “BayesDesign”, that leverages Bayes’ Rule to maximize the p(stucture|seq) objective instead of the p(seq|structure) objective common in inverse folding …

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Cooperative Navigation Of Autonomous Vehicles In Challenging Environments, Brendon Peter Forsgren Sep 2023

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 …

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Trumpet Directivity From A Rotating Semicircular Array, Samuel D. Bellows, Joseph E. Avila, Timothy W. Leishman Sep 2023

Trumpet Directivity From A Rotating Semicircular Array, Samuel D. Bellows, Joseph E. Avila, Timothy W. Leishman

Directivity

The directivity function of a played musical instrument describes the angular dependence of its acoustic radiation and diffraction about the instrument, musician, and musician’s chair. Directivity influences sound in rehearsal, performance, and recording environments and signals in audio systems. Because high-resolution, spherically comprehensive measurements of played musical instruments have been unavailable in the past, the authors have undertaken research to produce and share such data for studies of musical instruments, simulations of acoustical environments, optimizations of microphone placements, and other applications. The authors acquired the data from repeated chromatic scales produced by a trumpet played at mezzo-forte in an anechoic …

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Combining Expert Opinions To Assess Risk Of Change In Earth Systems: Permafrost Collapse, Global Wildfire, And Water Security, Sayedeh Sara Sayedi Sep 2023

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 …

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Who Gets The Whip? How Supplier Diversification Influences Bullwhip Effect In A Supply Chain, Tyler N. Burrows Sep 2023

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 …

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Raising Praise: A Parent's Role In Influencing Adolescent Self-Esteem Through Different Forms Of Praise, Karlee Mcrae Sep 2023

Raising Praise: A Parent's Role In Influencing Adolescent Self-Esteem Through Different Forms Of Praise, Karlee Mcrae

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

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Utilizing Low-Cost Sensors To Monitor Indoor Air Quality In Mongolian Gers, Callum Flowerday, Jaron C. Hansen, Phil Lundrigan, Christopher Kitras Aug 2023

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 PM2.5 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 …

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Countnet3d: A 3d Computer Vision Approach To Infer Counts Of Occluded Objects With Quantified Uncertainty, Stephen W. Nelson Aug 2023

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 …

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Full Issue Aug 2023

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

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I Was In Prison, And Ye Visited Me Aug 2023

I Was In Prison, And Ye Visited Me

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

Marvin Roberson, longtime friend of F.A.R.M.S., has brought to our attention an opportunity to supply the Utah State Prison with books, articles, videos, and tapes about the Book of Mormon. Several inmates in this correctional institution are eager to read books like Nibley's Approaching Zion and to watch programs like "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls." Anyone who has worked with prisoners knows that some desire to repent, but the way back is hard. Great needs cry out for strong resources.

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Library Shaping Up Nicely, Thanks To Volunteers Aug 2023

Library Shaping Up Nicely, Thanks To Volunteers

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

Thanks to the efforts of Daniel McKinlay, Pat Eyler, Stephen Heidt, and Jim Holmes, unselfish F.A.R.M.S. volunteers, our library is becoming more accessible. All of our books have been catalogued and assigned call numbers, and our collection of papers is receiving the same attention. A computerized index is being created to make it easier for researchers to find items by title, author, and subject.

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Encyclopedia Of Mormonism Is Available Again Aug 2023

Encyclopedia Of Mormonism Is Available Again

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

Macmillan has reprinted the 4-volume set of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. F.A.R.M.S. will again be able to provide this significant resource at a discount. See the order form.

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Paper Details The Chronology Of The Book Of Mormon Aug 2023

Paper Details The Chronology Of The Book Of Mormon

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

A new preliminary paper, "Introduction to Book of Mormon Chronology: The Principal Prophecies, Calendars, and Dates," by Randall Spackman, examines the temporal context of the Book of Mormon. Much as John Sorenson has done for the geography of the Book of Mormon, Spackman attempts carefully to lay out the issues that must be addressed in any treatment of the chronology of the book and present a plausible and enlightening correlation between the chronology of the Book of Mormon and other historical events and time-keeping systems.

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Broadband Cavity-Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy (Bbceas) Coupled With An Interferometer For On-Band And Off-Band Detection Of Glyoxal, Callum Flowerday, Jaron Hansen, Ryan Thalman Aug 2023

Broadband Cavity-Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy (Bbceas) Coupled With An Interferometer For On-Band And Off-Band Detection Of Glyoxal, Callum Flowerday, Jaron Hansen, Ryan Thalman

ScholarsArchive Data

These data are the raw data from the BBCEAS. The "data_" files are the PMT data and the "DualDetection_08_02_2023" files are the spectrograph data. The PMT data are found in column 7 of the sheet. Column 1 is the time stamp.

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Undergraduate Students' Conceptions Of Ngss Science And Engineering Practices, Jessie Webb Aug 2023

Undergraduate Students' Conceptions Of Ngss Science And Engineering Practices, Jessie Webb

Theses and Dissertations

In 2013, a new set of science standards was introduced for K-12 science education, called the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which focused on three dimensions of science learning that work together: disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. These standards are novel in their emphasis on students needing more than only content knowledge to learn science and engineering. The NGSS science and engineering practices (SEPs) stress the importance of students engaging in the authentic practices of scientists and engineers to help them think like a scientist, practice science themselves, and overcome the misconception that science is …

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Simultaneous Multistep Transformer Architecture For Model Predictive Control, Junho Park, Mohammad Reza Babaei, Samuel Arce Munoz, Ashwin N. Venkat, John Hedengren Aug 2023

Simultaneous Multistep Transformer Architecture For Model Predictive Control, Junho Park, Mohammad Reza Babaei, Samuel Arce Munoz, Ashwin N. Venkat, John Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Transformer neural networks have revolutionized natural language processing by effectively addressing the vanishing gradient problem. This study focuses on applying Transformer models to time-series forecasting and customizing them for a simultaneous multistep-ahead prediction model in surrogate model predictive control (MPC). The proposed method showcases improved control performance and computational efficiency compared to LSTM-based MPC and one-step-ahead prediction models using both LSTM and Transformer networks. The study introduces three key contributions: (1) a new MPC system based on a Transformer time-series architecture, (2) a training method enabling multistep-ahead prediction for time-series machine learning models, and (3) validation of the enhanced time …

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Enhanced Capabilities For Investigating Local Structure And Magnetism: Three Dimensional Magnetic Pair Distribution Function And Symmetry Mode Analysis, Parker Hamilton Aug 2023

Enhanced Capabilities For Investigating Local Structure And Magnetism: Three Dimensional Magnetic Pair Distribution Function And Symmetry Mode Analysis, Parker Hamilton

Theses and Dissertations

The local structure, atomic and magnetic structure correlated over a small length scale, of a material has a strong impact on material properties. Pair distribution function (PDF) analysis is a strong tool to investigate local structure and magnetism of this nature. This work outlines extensions to current one dimensional magnetic pair distribution functions (1D-mPDF) and the fitting of structures with symmetry breaking local atomic distortions. 1DmPDF analysis has been used to study local magnetic structure, but requires a rotational averaging of the correlations so directional information is lost, as in powder diffraction experiments. Three dimensional difference magnetic pair distribution function …

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A Colorfully Natural Twin Higgs Model, Logan Coleman Page Aug 2023

A Colorfully Natural Twin Higgs Model, Logan Coleman Page

Theses and Dissertations

Twin Higgs models have the potential to explain phenomena outside of the Standard Model and provide an natural explanation of the Higgs mass. Here I explore a new realization of the twin Higgs concept with an SU(4)c symmetry that is spontaneously broken in the Standard Model sector, but remains unbroken in the Twin sector. I detail the phenomenological results produced by this model. I show that this construction leads to a qualitatively new behavior regarding the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass due to the top-quark sector.

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Constructing Stellar Mass Models For Early-Type Galaxies With Circumnuclear Disks, Jared R. Davidson Aug 2023

Constructing Stellar Mass Models For Early-Type Galaxies With Circumnuclear Disks, Jared R. Davidson

Theses and Dissertations

Dusty circumnuclear disks (CNDs) in luminous early-type galaxies (ETGs) show regular, dynamically cold molecular gas kinematics. For a growing number of these ETGs, Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) CO imaging and detailed gas-dynamical modeling have yielded moderate to high precision black hole (BH) mass (M_BH) determinations. To date, however, few studies have explored the effects of dust attenuation, or uncertainties in dust corrections, on recovered stellar luminosity models from high angular resolution optical/near-IR observations and M_BH measurements. Recent kinematic studies that modeled ALMA CO data sets have found that uncertainties in the intrinsic central stellar surface brightness slope due to …

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Phosphorus Sorption And Kinetics Across The Sediment-Water Interface Of Utah Lake, A Shallow Eutrophic Lake, Forrest Fielding Stretch Jarvis Jarvis Aug 2023

Phosphorus Sorption And Kinetics Across The Sediment-Water Interface Of Utah Lake, A Shallow Eutrophic Lake, Forrest Fielding Stretch Jarvis Jarvis

Theses and Dissertations

Internal sediment phosphorus (P) cycling may regulate harmful algal blooms (HABs) in shallow eutrophic lakes. Utah Lake frequently experiences HABs despite its high alkalinity and P-rich sediment. Phosphorus cycling between the lakebed and the water column is dependent upon stable P-sorption with organic matter (OM) and mineral species, which can vary with substrate availability, P-concentrations, temperature, redox, pH, and microbial activity. A full biogeochemical analysis of the water and sediment across seven sites shows Utah Lake to be spatially well-mixed in terms of composition and sorption, with few exceptions. Sediment P-concentrations (avg. 677 mg-P kg-1) primarily correlate with redox-sensitive iron …

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