Digital Commons Network^™

Brown Bags Continue To Inform

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

The FARMS Brown Bag Lectures are an ongoing series intended to update BYU faculty, staff, and students and interested members of the community on the progress of Book of Mormon research.

Papers In Honor Of John L. Sorenson To Be Presented At March Farms Conference

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

On 21 March 1998, a conference will be held at Brigham Young University featuring several papers that will be included in a forthcoming Festschrift in honor of BYU's emeritus professor John L. Sorenson. The event, "Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World," is cosponsored by FARMS and BYU's Department of Anthropology. It will begin at 8:30 a.m. in room 151 of the Tanner Building on the BYU campus. It is free and open to the public.

Journal Contains Recent Book Of Mormon Research

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

The most recent issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, now on sale, features articles about Nibley' s writings on the Book of Mormon, the possibility that Lehi's family were bond servants during their sojourn in the wilderness, eternal life and spiritual death in the Book of Mormon, chiasmus, and Nephi's psalm.

Captain George Cannon: One Man's Role In The Conquest Of Sugar In The Transatlantic Slave Trade, Leah Brown

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Numerous scholars have examined the transatlantic slave trade in an attempt to understand the brutal system. However, there has been little research on the “Middle Passage,” the part of the trade system when the enslaved would be boarded onto slaving vessels and forced to endure months of abuse till they landed in the Americas. This paper examines the logbook of Captain George Cannon of the slave ship Iris to understand the life of one of the slaving captains and how a seemingly regular British citizen could become such a key member of the system. It came down to political, economic, …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Farms Through The Years, Part 2: A Conversation With Stephen D. Ricks And Noel B. Reynolds

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

The following article continues a three-part series on the history of FARMS, each installment featuring comments from two people who figure prominently in the history and ongoing work of FARMS. This segment presents comments from separate interviews conducted by Don Brugger, managing editor of INSIGHTS, with Stephen D. Ricks and Noel B. Reynolds, who were administrative officers during the organization's middle years. Ricks, currently a professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages at BYU and a member of the FARMS Board of Trustees, succeeded John W. Welch to serve as the second president of FARMS,from 1988 through 1991. He then …

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

Conference Focuses On Book Of Abraham

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

A FARMS-sponsored conference held at BYU on Saturday, 16 October, highlighted recent research on the Book of Abraham. Titled "The Book of Abraham: Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant," the half-day event represented a broad, interdisciplinary approach to deepening understanding of the content and backgrounds of the Book of Abraham.

2 Insights, November 1999 Farms Through The Years, Part 1: A Conversation With John Welch And John Sorenson

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

FARMS's 20th anniversary this month gives reason to reflect on the Foundation's past progress and future promise. The following article begins a three-part series, each installment featuring comments from two people who figure prominently in the history and ongoing work of FARMS. John W. (Jack) Welch and John L. Sorenson were involved with FARMS since its inception, Stephen D. Ricks and Noel B. Reynolds were administrative officers during the organization's middle years, and Daniel C. Peterson and Daniel Oswald are current administrative officers at FARMS. This first segment presents responses from separate interviews conducted by Don Brugger, managing editor of …

Elder Pinnock, Professor Nibley To Speak On Temples

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

On 4 December FARMS will sponsor a conference at BYU titled "Temples through the Ages." The three-hour event will comprise four presentations, including a keynote address by Elder Hugh W. Pinnock and a concluding lecture by Hugh W. Nibley.

Full Issue

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

No abstract provided.

More Is Better Than One: The Effect Of Ensembling On Deep Learning Performance In Biochemical Prediction Problems, Jacob A. Stern

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents two papers addressing important biochemical prediction challenges. The first paper focuses on accurate protein distance predictions and introduces updates to the ProSPr network. We evaluate its performance in the Critical Assessment of techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP14) competition, investigating its accuracy dependence on sequence length and multiple sequence alignment depth. The ProSPr network, an ensemble of three convolutional neural networks (CNNs), demonstrates superior performance compared to individual networks. The second paper addresses the issue of accurate ligand ranking in virtual screening for drug discovery. We propose MILCDock, a machine learning consensus docking tool that leverages predictions …

What's The Password? Account Sharing In The Context Of Passwordless Authentication, Daniel Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Passwordless authentication methods are becoming increasingly available for online accounts. This research asks how people will share online accounts with friends and family when there is no longer a password to share. Research participants were introduced to passwordless authentication methods and asked how they imagine the account sharing process might work. They were then introduced to four different methods of passwordless accounts, and asked to evaluate them. Sharing a link to register an additional authentication method proved to be the most popular method of account sharing.

Understanding The Causal Relationship Between State-Level Childcare Tax Credits And Female Labor Participation, Emma K. Webster

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Childcare is an expensive commodity in the United States. However, childcare allows parents the flexibility to work while having children. This paper focuses on the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), a tax-related program intended to reduce the stress of childcare costs that could indirectly increase the female labor participation rate in each state. The paper hypothesizes that states with larger CDCTC values show higher female labor participation rates. It reviews budget constraint theory and previous papers that support the hypothesis and outlines the empirical strategy used in the research. It tests how the CDCTC affects female labor supply …

The "Missionary Voice": Bona Fide Sociolect Or Figment Of The Mormon Linguistic Imagination?, Joshua Stevenson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Can members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints consistently identify the so-called “missionary voice”? That is, when presented with a series of unidentified speech samples that are a mix of currently serving young missionaries and their college-aged peers, how accurate will they be at selecting missionaries from the lineup? Additionally, what features (prosodic and otherwise) make the missionary voice distinct? That is, which characteristics of missionary speech most strongly index it as such? In this paper, I seek to answer both of these questions through a sociolinguistic lens (and, in part, via the tools of perceptual dialectology). …

Student Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Mindfulness Interventions In The Esl Classroom, Lauren Smith

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Mindfulness has received increased attention in recent years in educational contexts as a tool to help students mitigate negative emotions, enhance resilience, and improve academic performance (Dawson et al., 2020; Galante et al., 2018). Although interventions teaching principles of mindfulness have flourished in elementary schools and university contexts (Felver et al., 2016; Ma et al., 2019), limited research has looked at the effects of mindfulness interventions in ESL (English as a Second Language) educational contexts. This thesis details a study investigating student perceptions of the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in an Intensive English Program (IEP) for nonmatriculated university students over …

Islamophobia: The Effect Of Personal Interaction And The Media On Arab Prejudice In Spain, Isabelle Stoddard

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout the western world, prejudice toward Arabs continues to be a significant issue. As the migration of Arabs into Spain continues, it is important to understand the various influences on Arab prejudice. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze the influence of personal interactions and media consumption on Arab prejudice in Spain. To do so, I address several questions: does personal contact significantly change attitudes and language sentiments toward Arabs in Spain? Does the type of media consumption significantly change attitudes and language sentiments toward Arabs? To what extent do personal contact and media consumption jointly affect …

Vanguards Of Change In The "Georgia Of The North": Youth Activism In The New Jersey Civil Rights Movement, 1935-1955, A Digital History Project, Emily Peterson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

By highlighting how youth activism in New Jersey advanced efforts for racial justice in the state and facilitated regional and national collaboration, this project helps us understand the mid-twentieth century's civil rights movement as a national, not just a Southern struggle, led by youth.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the civil rights movement, with scholars looking beyond the most prominent male leaders of the national movement in the 1960s. This project builds on the work of scholars like Martha Biondi and Tomas Sugrue who have established the significance of the Black freedom struggle in the North. …

Songs On The Road: A Novel, Lane Welch

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Songs on the Road: A Novel reimagines the open road of mid-century American literature, a literary phenomenon that frequently imbued the mundane with a power bordering on the fantastic, as literally fantastic in a way that examines and deconstructs literary tropes from the mysterious hitchhiker to the film noir detective. This thesis includes excerpts from the novel and a critical introduction exploring the works of literature the novel draws from and engages in dialogue with.

Is Costco Worth Incentivizing? An Analysis From The City’S Perspective., Mccord Lethco

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Costco stores have significant economic implications for smaller cities, often becoming pivotal points in their development. These cities eagerly invite Costco to establish stores within their borders, offering substantial financial incentives to facilitate this growth. The effects of a new Costco store can be diverse, impacting local municipalities in both positive and negative ways. This study focuses on two key aspects: changes in sales tax revenue and property values, keeping in mind the agglomeration[1] effects that Costcos bring about.

I examine three Utah cities to estimate the impact on taxable sales and analyzes Costco's influence on residential property values …

Census Tree, Joe Price

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Economic history, record linking, computer vision

Data Mining On Human Diseases, Brett E. Pickett

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Transcriptomics, RNA-sequencing, data mining, machine learning, biomarker identification, comparative genomics, Oxford Nanopore sequencing, genome assembly

Life Sciences Research, Stephen Piccolo

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

•Analyzing high-throughput, gene-expression data (RNA-Seq, microarrays) •Curating and reusing publicly available ”omics” data •Gene Expression Omnibus •The Cancer Genome Atlas •Creating software and algorithms for analyzing biological and medical data •Also CodeBuddy – a feature-rich, programming-assignment management system •Applying machine-learning techniques to biological and medical data

Using and evaluating large language models for educational research

Effects Of Vascular Risk Factors On Risk For Dementia And Stroke After Late-Onset Epilepsy, Evan Thacker

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Brain health, neuroepidemiology, cardiovascular epidemiology

Statistics Consulting Center, Greg Snow

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Statistical support for any university research

Civilizational Security: Why The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Shows That ‘National Security’ Is Not Enough To Understand Geopolitics, Greg (Grzegorz) Lewicki

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper argues that the idea of “national security” is sometimes overwritten by “civilizational security” in security-related considerations. Civilizational security, as understood in this paper, refers to a country's security stemming from its belonging to a cultural zone or a civilization. The author clarifies the terms “a civilization,” “civilizational identity,” and “civilizational security.” Citing the examples of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia when considering the parameter of civilizational security allows us to better analyze and predict some processes, including geopolitical dilemmas and civilizational trends. It is argued that prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia misunderstood its own civilizational security …

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Claude-Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon, a father of modern sociology, observed that the history of the world alternated between two poles: organic periods (in which the social and political institutions are in harmony with the state of civilization), followed by critical periods, which are transitional and marked by conflict and destructive criticism.

Rector's Welcome, Robert Kosowski Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

With immense pleasure, we welcome the beginning of cooperation of the War Studies University with the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC). As an Organizing Partner of the 2023 ISCSC annual conference entitled "Civilizational Security", we will facilitate solutions to make the conference impactful, memorable and internationally fruitful.

Here, There, And In-Between: On The Civilizing Process And Civilizational Analysis, Michael Palencia-Roth

Comparative Civilizations Review

This essay presents a cautionary tale about certain problems with systematization and abstraction in comparative civilizational studies. It advocates instead for the analysis of single works, limited events, or particular figures, within larger issues pertaining to what is understood as a “civilization” or “culture”. It prioritizes certain aspects of the civilizing process: the here, or the civilizing and interpretive gaze; the there, or the Other that is the object of that gaze; and the in-between. It further suggests that insights and methods from Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans-Georg Gadamer and others from the humanities, social sciences, and philosophy can …

The Applicability Of Lessons From American Society For The European Union: Tolerance, Demographic Change, And Social Structure, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

While Americans have long tended to see our society and civilization as exceptional, in fact the civilization is primarily based on European precedent. We see ourselves, in the words of one of our most significant poets, Emma Lazarus, as the new colossus, “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp cries she... I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” We claim to be an exception; that means that we are unique, different, what many, alluding to the New Testament as viewed by the Pilgrim founding fathers, have called “a shining city upon a hill.”2 And as “a beacon of hope.”