Digital Commons Network^™

Outdoor Education And Meaningful Learning: Finding The Attributes Of Meaningful Learning Experiences In An Outdoor Education Program, Stacy Tooru Taniguchi

Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study sought to identify the common attributes of meaningful learning experiences as found in an outdoor education program. The pragmatic educational philosophy of John Dewey provides the rationale for the essence of meaningful learning in our schools and this research identifies the attributes of educative reflective experiences that are also meaningful learning experiences. Thirteen students enrolled in the Wilderness Writing Program, offered during the fall semester of 2003 at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, made up the focus group of this study. Their participation in four outdoor recreational activities and their reflections about their experiences became the …

Solving Large Mdps Quickly With Partitioned Value Iteration, David Wingate

Theses and Dissertations

Value iteration is not typically considered a viable algorithm for solving large-scale MDPs because it converges too slowly. However, its performance can be dramatically improved by eliminating redundant or useless backups, and by backing up states in the right order. We present several methods designed to help structure value dependency, and present a systematic study of companion prioritization techniques which focus computation in useful regions of the state space. In order to scale to solve ever larger problems, we evaluate all enhancements and methods in the context of parallelizability. Using the enhancements, we discover that in many instances the limiting …

The Big Bang: What Does It Mean For Us?, Hollis R. Johnson

Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011

Review of Paul Copan and William Lane Craig. “Craftsman or Creator? An Examination of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation and a Defense of Creatio ex nihilo.” In The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement,

Velocity And Temperature Characterization Of The First Vacuum Stage Expansion In An Inductively Coupled Plasma - Mass Spectrometer, William Neil Radicic

Theses and Dissertations

The inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) is the analytical instrument of choice for trace element detection and quantification. Despite the popularity of ICP-MS, significant degradation in sensitivity and precision occurs as the result of matrix and instrument-induced effects. The sources of these effects are not well understood, characterized, or correlated to particular plasma operating condition settings or matrix compositions and involve both neutral and charged species. The purpose of this study is to characterize the behavior of metastable Ar (I) atom and Ca (II) ion through the measurement of Doppler velocities and fluorescence line width "temperatures."

For the …

Modeling And Control Of Surface Micromachined Thermal Actuators, Robert K. Messenger

Theses and Dissertations

A model that accurately describes the transient and steady-state response of thermal microactuators is desirable to provide guidance for design and operation. However, modeling the full response of thermal actuators is challenging due to the temperature-dependent material properties and nonlinear deformations that must be included to obtain accurate results. To meet these challenges a three-dimensional multi-physics nonlinear finite-element model was developed using commercial code. The Thermomechanical Inplane Microactuator (TIM) was chosen as a candidate application to validate the model. TIMs were fabricated using the SUMMiT V™ process and their response was measured using a high-speed camera. The TIMs were modeled …

N9 Alkylation And Glycosylation Of Purines; A Practical Synthesis Of 2-Chloro-2'-Deoxyadenosine, Minghong Zhong

Theses and Dissertations

(a) The Robins reagent [2-acetamido-6-O-(diphenylcarbamoyl)purine] was utilized for glycosylation under Lewis acid conditions. Regioselectivity of glycosylation depends on the glycosyl donor and its 2-O- or 2-N-protecting group. Regioselective N9 glycosylation of 2-acetamido-6-O-(diphenylcarbamoyl)purine with problematic glucosamine has been accomplished by protecting the amino function as a phthalimido group with consequent stabilization of the oxocarbenium cation, and lowering the activation energy by introduction of trichloroacetimidate at the anomeric carbon.

(b) 6-Heteroaryl functions [6-(1,2,4-triazol-4-yl) and 6-(imidazol-1-yl)] were introduced into purine derivatives for regioselective N9 alkylation. The regiospecificity of alkylation mainly results from steric effects due to the coplanar conformation of the two linked …

Developing An Instrument For Determining Teacher Beliefs Or Orientations Of Secondary School Spanish Language Teachers, Lori Virginia Cox

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to further the development of an instrument for use in investigating the ideas or beliefs that Spanish language teachers possess about the teaching of a foreign language. It was also the intent of the study to survey Spanish language teachers and use their responses as an aid in the development of the instrument. A questionnaire detailing possible teacher behaviors was sent out to 220 Spanish language secondary school teachers in the state of Utah. Three teacher orientations emerged and were significantly related to gender and years of teaching experience. Seven questions from the questionnaire emerged as …

Performance Of The Kenward-Project When The Covariance Structure Is Selected Using Aic And Bic, Elisa Valderas Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

Linear mixed models are frequently used to analyze data with random effects and/or repeated measures. A common approach to such analyses requires choosing a covariance structure. Information criteria, such as AIC and BIC, are often used by statisticians to help with this task. However, these criteria do not always point to the true covariance structure and therefore the wrong covariance structure is sometimes chosen. Once this step is complete, Wald statistics are used to test fixed effects. Degrees of freedom for these statistics are not known. However, there are approximation methods, such as Kenward and Roger (KR) and Satterthwaite (SW) …

The "Fair" Triathlon: Equating Standard Deviations Using Non-Linear Bayesian Models, Steven Mckay Curtis

Theses and Dissertations

The Ironman triathlon was created in 1978 by combining events with the longest distances for races then contested in Hawaii in swimming, cycling, and running. The Half Ironman triathlon was formed using half the distances of each of the events in the Ironman. The Olympic distance triathlon was created by combining events with the longest distances for races sanctioned by the major federations for swimming, cycling, and running. The relative importance of each event in overall race outcome was not given consideration when determining the distances of each of the races in modern triathlons. Thus, there is a general belief …

Validation Of Criteria Used To Predict Warfarin Dosing Decisions, Nicole Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

People at risk for blood clots are often treated with anticoagulants, warfarin is such an anticoagulant. The dose's effect is measured by comparing the time for blood to clot to a control time called an INR value. Previous anticoagulant studies have addressed agreement between fingerstick (POC) devices and the standard laboratory, however these studies rely on mathematical formulas as criteria for clinical evaluations, i.e. clinical evaluation vs. precision and bias. Fourteen such criteria were found in the literature. There exists little consistency among these criteria for assessing clinical agreement, furthermore whether these methods of assessing agreement are reasonable estimates of …

Community And Land Attachment Of Chagga Women On Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, Elizabeth Parnell Carr

Theses and Dissertations

Chagga women who control land on Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, have a deep and profound sense of attachment to their lands and homes. This thesis compares their reasons for attachment to the systemic model. The systemic model states that community attachment is dependent on social ties and interactions. The three factors that lead to these ties are length of residence, social status, and age. In-depth interviews with women in 2002 and 2003, a survey from 2002, and field notes from 2002 and 2003 are used to explain the main factors of attachment of women in three villages on the mountain: Mbahe, …

Margaret Cavendish And Scientific Discourse In Seventeenth-Century England, Alisa Curtis Bolander

Theses and Dissertations

Although the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish is eclectic and uncustomary, it offers an important critique of contemporary scientific methods, especially mechanism and experimentalism. As presented in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Blazing World, Cavendish's natural philosophy incorporates rationalistic and subjective elements, urging contemporary natural philosophers to recognize that pure objectivity is unattainable through any method of inquiry and that reason is essential in making sense and use of scientific observation.

In addition to its scientific implications, Cavendish's three-tiered model of matter presents interesting sociopolitical associations. Through her own use of metaphor and her theoretical fusion of matter and motion, …

Ultraconnected And Critical Graphs, Jason Nicholas Grout

Theses and Dissertations

We investigate the ultraconnectivity condition on graphs, and provide further connections between critical and ultraconnected graphs in the positive definite partial matrix completion problem. We completely characterize when the join of graphs is ultraconnected, and prove that ultraconnectivity is preserved by Cartesian products. We completely characterize when adding a vertex to an ultraconnected graph preserves ultraconnectivity. We also derive bounds on the number of vertices which guarantee ultraconnectivity of certain classes of regular graphs. We give results from our exhaustive enumeration of ultraconnected graphs up to 11 vertices. Using techniques involving the Lovász theta parameter for graphs, we prove certain …

Examining The Relationship Between Religious Orientation And Eating Disturbances, Melissa H. Smith, P. Scott Richards, Christopher J. Maglio

Faculty Publications

The relationship between religion and eating concerns is receiving increasing empirical attention. The current investigation sought to examine the relationship between eating attitudes and religious orientation, utilizing the fourfold typology of religious orientation. A curvilinear relationship was found between religious orientation and eating attitudes among a subclinical college population and a clinical population of individuals receiving inpatient treatment for eating disorders, particularly among extrinsically orientated individuals with diagnosis of bulimia nervosa.

Design And Analysis Of Charge-Transfer Amplifiers For Low-Power Analog-To-Digital Converter Applications, William Joel Marble

Theses and Dissertations

The demand for low-power A/D conversion techniques has motivated the exploration of charge-transfer amplifiers (CTAs) to construct efficient, precise voltage comparators. Despite notable advantages over classical, continuous-time architectures, little is understood about the dynamic behavior of CTAs or their utility in precision A/D converters. Accordingly, this dissertation presents several advancements related to the design and analysis of charge-transfer amplifiers for low-power data conversion.

First, an analysis methodology is proposed which leads to a deterministic model of the voltage transfer function. The model is generalized to any timing scheme and can be extended to account for nonlinear threshold modulation. The model …

Numerical Modeling Of Friction Stir Welding: A Comparison Of Alegra And Forge3, Alma H. Oliphant

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research was to evaluate the capabilities of ALEGRA, a Sandia National Labs hydrocode, and Forge3, a Transvalor S.A. product, to accurately model the Friction Stir Welding Process. ALEGRA and Forge3 are discussed in light of the inherent challenges of modeling Friction Stir Welding, and a rotational boundary condition is added to ALEGRA. Results are presented from Friction Stir Welding modeling outputs from both ALEGRA and Forge3. ALEGRA is shown to be incapable of modeling the Friction Stir Welding process, in large part due to its focus on shock propagation, which causes extremely small time steps. Forge3 …

Fluorescence Detectors For Proteins And Toxic Heavy Metals, Uchenna Prince Paul

Theses and Dissertations

An inexpensive detector for proteins is described. The detection technique was based on two-photon excitation intrinsic protein fluorescence using a visible 532 nm diode-pumped nano laser as the excitation source. Proteins that exhibit intrinsic fluorescence must contain at least one tryptophan, tyrosine, or phenylalanine residue in their amino acid sequences. The detector was characterized and was found to have a detection limit of 4 micro-molar for tryptophan, 22 micro-molar for tyrosine and 500 micro-molar for phenylalanine. Bovine serum albumin, a serum protein with 3 tryptophan residues in its amino acid sequence was also used to characterize the detector. It was …

Responding To Policies At Runtime In Trustbuilder, Bryan J. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Automated trust negotiation is the process of establishing trust between entities with no prior relationship through the iterative disclosure of digital credentials. One approach to negotiating trust is for the participants to exchange access control policies to inform each other of the requirements for establishing trust. When a policy is received at runtime, a compliance checker determines which credentials satisfy the policy so they can be disclosed. In situations where several sets of credentials satisfy a policy and some of the credentials are sensitive, a compliance checker that generates all the sets is necessary to insure that the negotiation succeeds …

From Mission To Megacity: The Changing Concentration Of The Los Angeles City-System, Kerri L. Cosby

Theses and Dissertations

Having an understanding of when, where, and why people settle in an area is crucial in explaining the growth course of a city. However, this cannot be done by looking at a city in isolation. Its surrounding region has a tremendous impact on its development. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the growth of Los Angeles from a regional perspective, called the Los Angeles city-system, which consists of Los Angeles and its hinterland. Connections are made between the history and the geography of the Los Angeles city-system by examining the spatial distribution of population within the region between …

Helping With The Transition To Parenthood: An Evaluation Of The Marriage Moments Program, Elizabeth Brinton Fawcett

Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to strengthen marriages during the transition to parenthood, the Marriage Moments program was developed from Blaine Fowers' virtues based model of marital quality. Marriage Moments is a non-intrusive, mostly self-guided approach to marriage education, which is easily incorporated into childbirth education classes. The Marriage Moments curriculum stresses building marriage on a strong foundation of friendship and partnership. In this model, marital friendship is strengthened through a shared vision of life and important life goals; partnership is nurtured by the virtues of generosity, fairness and loyalty.

This program was tested on 155 married couples that were expecting their …

Analysis Of Clinically Important Compounds Using Electrophoretic Separation Techniques Coupled To Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry, Zlatuse Durda Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Capillary electrophoretic (CE) separations were successfully coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometric (TOFMS) detection for the analysis of three families of biological compounds that act as mediators and/or indicators of disease, namely, catecholamines (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine) and their O-methoxylated metabolites (3-methoxytyramine, norepinephrine, and normetanephrine), indolamines (serotonin, tryptophan, and 5-hydroxytryptophan), and angiotensin peptides. While electrophoretic separation techniques provided high separation efficiency, mass spectrometric detection afforded specificity unsurpassed by other types of detectors.

Both catecholamines and indolamines are present in body fluids at concentrations that make it possible for them to be determined by capillary zone electrophoresis coupled to TOFMS without employing any …

Daily Diary Of Mphs 2004 Tour Of New Zealand

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

We had a group of 48 people of which 39 met at BYU-H parking lot at 7:30 PM. to have a bus transport us to the airport for our trip to N. Z. Many family members came to say good-bye, wish us well and to have a safe journey. The leaders of our group are Bro. Colin and Raewin Shelford, John Elkington, Riley Moffat and Rex Frandsen. Stella Keil, Mike Foley and Zane Clark are other members of the MPHS board and are traveling with us as well. Checking in at the airport ran rather smoothly, except for a very …

Full Issue

Mormon Pacific Historical Society

No abstract provided.

Hardware Synthesis Of Synchronous Data Flow Models, Matthew R. Koecher

Theses and Dissertations

Synchronous Dataflow (SDF) graphs are a convenient way to represent many signal processing and dataflow operations. Nodes within SDF graphs represent computation while arcs represent dependencies between nodes. Using a graph representation, SDF graphs formally specify a dataflow algorithm without any assumptions on the final implementation. This allows an SDF model to be synthesized into a variety of implementation techniques including both software and hardware.

This thesis presents a technique for generating an abstract hardware representation from SDF models. The techniques presented here operate on SDF models defined structurally within the Ptolemy modeling environment. The behavior of the nodes within …

Query Rewriting For Extracting Data Behind Html Forms, Xueqi Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Much of the information on the Web is stored in specialized searchable databases and can only be accessed by interacting with a form or a series of forms. As a result, enabling automated agents and Web crawlers to interact with form-based interfaces designed primarily for humans is of great value. This thesis describes a system that can fill out Web forms automatically according to a given user query against a global schema for an application domain and, to the extent possible, extract just the relevant data behind these Web forms. Experimental results on two application domains show that the approach …

Coming To America: Asian Fathers Cross Cultures, David Shwalb, Robert Bubb, Amber Daveline, Catherine Humphreys

Marriage and Families

No abstract provided.

Latter-Day Saint Returned Missionaries In The United States: A Survey On Religious Activity And Postmission Adjustment, Bruce A. Chadwick, Richard J. Mcclendon

BYU Studies

Each year, approximately twenty to thirty thousand Latter-day Saint young adults leave to serve missions throughout the world. Once these young adults return home from their missionary service, must go on to further their education, begin a career, marry, and establish a family. Returned missionaries are a unique group in the Church and are often a point of interest. Parents, for example, note the challenges their missionary has as he or she makes the transition from the mission field to home. They sometimes observe their returned missionary confronting increased stress levels as he or she shifts form the singular focus …

Front Matter, Amcap Journal

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

Cross-Cultural Considerations In Counseling Clients Of Samoan Heritage, Brian S. Canfield, J. Ty Cunningham

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

The Samoan islands have been politically, economically, and culturally influenced by the United States and Western European nations for more than one hundred and fifty years. Divided into two political regions, American Samoa is a protectorate of the United States and Western Samoa is an independent nation. Due to its political status and more direct influence from the United States, American Samoa is, in many aspects, a more modernized region compared to its neighbor Western Samoa. In the past half century, many Samoans have migrated to Hawaii and the west coast of the United States, including a significant population to …

Source Level Debugging Of Circuits Synthesized From High Level Language Descriptions, Karl S. Hemmert

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid increase in the density of modern FPGAs has allowed ever increasingly complex designs to be mapped to FPGAs. However, this increase in logic resources is accompanied by an increase in the complexity of describing and verifying the operation of an application. This has prompted the search for new approaches to the design, debug and verification of circuits. The desire to find more effecient approaches to designing these large FPGA circuits has led to the creation of synthesizing compilers that can create hardware from high-level descriptions based on general purpose programming languages. Being able to describe the application at …