Digital Commons Network^™

Sequencing Of Chenopodium A-Genome Diploids To Identify Potential Mechanisms Of Speciation: A Preliminary Study, Riley Roser

Theses and Dissertations

The genus Chenopodium is of increasing significance, mainly due to allotetraploid quinoa (C. quinoa Willd.,2x = 4x =36, AABB genome) becoming globally recognized for its high nutritional value and tolerance for stress. Diploid A-genome relatives of quinoa in the Western Hemisphere have shown speciation patterns congruent to adaptive radiation, particularly in the North American continent, where a number inhabit ecological niches while others form mixed populations where they are sympatric. Characterization of the genetic mechanism(s) underlying this rapid speciation, could clarify their potential usefulness for improving quinoa . Previous whole-genome assemblies of AA diploids C. watsonii A. Watson and C. …

Automated Detection Of Bacterial Flagellar Motors, Eben J. Lonsdale

Undergraduate Honors Theses

With advances in cryogenic electron tomography, the ability to study bacterial structures in their cellular context has improved. However, 3D images of bacteria, called tomograms, have a low signal-to-noise ratio. This makes annotating structures of interest difficult, as traditional computer vision models struggle with tomograms and manual annotation is time consuming. We build on the results of the BYU Kaggle competition to create an ensemble model capable of automatically annotating flagellar models with nearly around 85% accuracy.

Wounded Domestic Ecologies: Ecofeminist Readings Of Gendered Trauma In Purple Hibiscus, Erere Victory Iwhi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus through an ecofeminist and postcolonial ecocritical lens, developing the concept of "wounded domestic ecology" to analyze how gendered violence operates within domestic space. Drawing on trauma studies, particularly J. R. Kurtz and Rob Nixon's concept of slow violence, it argues that harm in the novel is accumulative, produced through repetition, surveillance, ritual, and spatial regulation. Eugene's household functions as an environment that disciplines bodies, governs language, and embeds fear into everyday life. In contrast, Aunt Ifeoma's home in Nsukka offers a counter-ecology structured by sound, shared labor, and dialogic authority, interrupting the …

Storytelling, Gender, And The Double-Empathy Problem, Annie Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Storytelling has been proposed as a meaningful way to facilitate empathy and connection, particularly across neurotypes. The present study examined whether a live storytelling event influenced perceptions of the autism community, empathy, and interpersonal connection, while also exploring differences on biological sex and levels of autistic traits. Participants completed pre- and post-event measures assessing relationship perceptions and connection, along with standardized measures of empathy and autistic traits. Results showed a significant increase in positive perceptions of the autism community and perceived closeness to storytellers after the event. Engagement, emotional impact, openness, and motivation to support the autism community were all …

Dual Language Immersion In Utah Schools: Examining Experiences And Access To Improve Sustainability, Melissa Catherine Jensen Kimball

Theses and Dissertations

Dual language immersion (DLI) programs can impact students in many ways. Multiple researchers have studied the effects of these programs and have found numerous benefits. However, there is little published information on the actual experiences of individuals in schools with a DLI program, including those who are involved in the program and those who were a part of DLI school communities but not directly involved in the program. A. Hawks, J. Rowley, D. Stovall, and their respective thesis and dissertation committees created a survey to better understand the current perspectives of administrators, parents, teachers, and other school staff on these …

Harnessing Story To Overcome The Double Empathy Problem Between Autistic And Neurotypical People: Brain-Behavior Relationships, Kate Gifford

Theses and Dissertations

There is a dearth of information on the physical aspects of the Double Empathy Problem which is the bidirectional challenge of shared empathy and understanding between autistic and neurotypical individuals. Storytelling has been shown as means to facilitate empathy between storytellers and listeners in both neurotypical and autistic populations through behavioral research. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging technique used to evaluate the hemodynamic response in the cortex and can be used to compare hemodynamic responses across multiple individuals (i.e., hyperscanning). The purpose of this study was to examine activation in empathy-related brain regions and assess brain synchrony between …

Is Trimethylamine N-Oxide A Friend, Foe, Or Hormetic Agent In Patients With Parkinson’S Disease: A Focused Review Of One Microbial Metabolite, Abraham B. Alton

Student Works

This review synthesizes recent literature examining trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) synthesis and its potential role in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) pathology. An increase in TMAO plasma and CSF concentration is associated with PD progression and severity. TMAO biosynthesis is a two-step process. First, precursors including carnitine and choline are converted to trimethylamine (TMA) by gut microbes. Second, TMAO is oxidized to TMAO in the liver. Once absorbed into circulation TMAO crosses the blood brain barrier and may influence PD disease pathology by increasing neuroinflammation and astrocyte activation and damaging the cerebral lymphatic system. These mechanisms may contribute to the cognitive and motor …

Unlocking The Colleague Next Door, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

The structural barriers that isolate faculty from one another—individualistic reward systems, professional identity protection, disciplinary silos, fragmented time—have been documented in detail elsewhere. This paper begins where that analysis ends. Its sole focus is solutions: what actually works, what you can do without waiting for your institution to change, and most importantly, what you can do today. It is organized in three movements: evidence-based institutional strategies, community-level structures any group of faculty can build, and a granular map of the smallest possible individual first steps—the ones that cost almost nothing and have an outsized probability of changing how you experience …

Panda-Plus-Bench: A Clinical Benchmark For Evaluating The Robustness Of Ai Foundation Models In Prostate Cancer Diagnosis, Joshua L. Ebbert, Dennis Della Corte

Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence foundation models are increasingly deployed for prostate cancer Gleason grading, where GP3/GP4 distinction directly impacts treatment decisions (active surveillance vs. intervention). However, these models may achieve high validation accuracy by learning specimen-specific artifacts rather than generalizable biological features, limiting real-world clinical utility. We introduce PANDA-PLUS-Bench, a curated benchmark dataset derived from expertly annotated prostate biopsies designed specifically to quantify this failure mode. The benchmark comprises nine carefully selected whole slide images from nine unique patients containing diverse Gleason patterns, with non-overlapping tissue patches extracted at both 512 × 512 and 224 × 224-pixel resolutions across eight augmentation conditions. …

The Correlation Between Perceptual Abilities And The Acquisition Of Non-Native Consonant Clusters, Hope Emma Nielson

Theses and Dissertations

A common approach in the study of speech motor learning is to have speakers learn to produce clusters of consonants that do not occur in their native language. This study investigated the relationship between auditory or speech perceptual abilities and the initial acquisition of non-native stop-stop consonant clusters. Sixty young adult participants (56 female, four male) were administered a gap detection test and a speech-in-noise test to assess their innate perceptual skills. The participants then performed a nonsense-word repetition task featuring non-native consonant clusters in the initial position. The participants' spoken productions of the nonwords were recorded and analyzed acoustically …

Rethinking Functional Groupings In Basketball Wings Through Ecological Trait Frameworks, Dhruv Mehrotra

Theses and Dissertations

This paper starts with a review about Plant Functional Types and then goes deeper into the conceptual foundations of Plant Functional Types (PFT's) with detailed discussion of global trait spectra such as the leaf economics spectrum and the fast-slow continuum. Using concepts like response and effect traits, the review then talks about how a trait based ecological framework can provide a more robust guideline to classify plants. The review then talks about how players in basketball have been classified in the past along with some of the newer typologies. The review starts to draw some parallels between the ecological framework …

Unlocking The Colleague Next Door, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

The structural barriers that isolate faculty from one another—individualistic reward systems, professional identity protection, disciplinary silos, fragmented time—have been documented in detail elsewhere. This paper begins where that analysis ends. Its sole focus is solutions: what actually works, what you can do without waiting for your institution to change, and most importantly, what you can do today. It is organized in three movements: evidence-based institutional strategies, community-level structures any group of faculty can build, and a granular map of the smallest possible individual first steps—the ones that cost almost nothing and have an outsized probability of changing how you experience …

Functional And Structural Lesion Network Mapping: Insights Into Acquired Brain Injury And Insomnia, Kathleen Erekson Rugh

Theses and Dissertations

Insomnia disorder is the most reported sleep disorder and can negatively affect daily functioning. Acquired brain injuries can lead to insomnia disorder. Limited research has explored a causal link between brain networks and insomnia symptoms in this population. This study replicated a lesion network mapping methodology of an insomnia study (Helquist et al., 2024) and extended it to examine structural networks linked to insomnia symptoms in individuals with acquired brain injuries. Traced lesions (N =44) were used as seed regions to compare against normative functional and structural network data. For functional analyses, we used resting state fMRI scans from a …

Baseline Moderators Of A Transdiagnostic Adolescent Sleep And Circadian Health Intervention's Effectiveness At Improving Circadian Sleep Health: A Pilot Investigation, Jamon M. Jex

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined whether baseline demographic and clinical characteristics moderate the effectiveness of the Transdiagnostic Sleep and Circadian (TSC) intervention in improving adolescent circadian sleep health. Using an integrative data analysis approach, data from three independent adolescent samples (N = 134; ages 10-18) were pooled to evaluate changes across multidimensional sleep outcomes defined by the RU-SATED model of sleep, including regularity, satisfaction, alertness, timing, efficiency, and duration. Linear mixed-effects models were used to assess pre-to-post intervention changes and test moderation by age, sex, family income, and clinical status. Results indicated significant improvements in sleep satisfaction following TSC, with greater …

Neuroscience-Based Intellectual Productivity: A Ten-Principle Methodology For Knowledge Workers, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

This paper presents a comprehensive, neuroscience-grounded methodology for enhancing intellectual productivity among knowledge workers—particularly academic faculty and researchers operating under conditions of chronic cognitive overload. Drawing on ten foundational principles derived from contemporary cognitive neuroscience, we argue that substantial gains in research output, creative ideation, and knowledge integration are achievable not by working harder, but by working in deliberate alignment with the brain’s native computational architecture.

The ten principles address: strategic activation of the Default Mode Network (DMN) for incubation and creative insight; prefrontal cortex (PFC) energy management through temporal task separation; externalization of cognitive load via AI-assisted working memory …

Increasing Evolution Acceptance Among Religious Adults Through Targeted Education, Jamie Jensen

ScholarsArchive Data

These data come from a study measuring the effectiveness of the Shareable Home Application for Reconciling Evolution (SHARE) tool, which consists of five short videos addressing the nature of science, compatibility between doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and evolution, evolutionary mechanisms, and evidence for evolution, including human evolution.

Faith, Science, And Choice: Vaccine Attitudes Among Religious University Students, Jamie Jensen

ScholarsArchive Data

These data comprise a Q-methodology study conducted at Brigham Young University among undergraduate students to determine vaccine attitudes in relation to religious and political ideologies. It includes raw sort data, templates for running Q-methodology, and interview transcripts.

Engagement Modeling And Inference For Risk-Aware Path Planning Under Adversarial Uncertainty, Grant Stagg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops methods for planning safe and efficient trajectories for autonomous vehicles operating in environments containing adversarial and environmental threats with uncertain parameters. The central objective is to quantify and control the risk of adverse events--such as interception or detection--when threat characteristics are imperfectly known. To address this challenge, probabilistic weapon engagement zone (PEZ) models are introduced to estimate the likelihood of violating adversarial engagement constraints under uncertainty in pursuer state and capabilities. Multiple computational strategies are developed for PEZ evaluation, including first-order sensitivity-based approximations, Monte Carlo estimation, and neural-network surrogate models. These approaches enable rapid engagement-probability assessment and …

Modified Anodic Stripping Voltammetry For In Situ Analysis Of Liquid Metal Composition In Molten Salt Electrorefining Systems, James H. Manner

Reviews, Analyses, and Instructional Studies in Electrochemistry (RAISE)

The development of in-situ analytical techniques for high-temperature molten salt systems is critical for advancing electrorefining in nuclear fuel recycling and metallurgical purification. This study proposes Modified Anodic Stripping Voltammetry (MASV), using a “dip-and-strip” approach where a tungsten electrode captures molten Sn–Ni alloy before stripping in LiCl–KCl–CaCl₂ at 415 °C. OCP results showed rapid loss of the metal layer due to poor wetting, and stripping peaks gave compositions inconsistent with the alloy, likely reflecting Sn/Sn²⁺ and Sn²⁺/Sn⁴⁺ redox processes. These results highlight interfacial limitations and the need for improved electrode materials and surface modification.

Advanced Studies In Characterization Of Pyrolysis Products From Live Vegetation, Mahsa Alizadeh

Theses and Dissertations

Fire is a naturally occurring element in many ecosystems which can have both positive and negative effects. However, in recent years the frequency of the fires and the area they affect has increased. The rapid spread of wildland fires coupled with the limited resources available to forest services to manage wildland fires highlights the urgency for accurate prediction of fire spread. Fire prediction models enable the fire management services to predict the spread of fire and prioritize firefighting efforts more effectively. Understanding reactions and mechanisms occurring during wildland fires improves the fire prediction models. During wildland fires, the biomass covering …

The San José De Laguna Mission: Christian Iconography Through The Lens Of Pueblo Oral Traditions, Natalie Sims Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

The San José de Laguna Mission was constructed in 1699 in modern New Mexico. Following on the heels of the second Pueblo revolt, it stands as a testament to the Pueblo adoption of Christian symbols in the portrayal of their own oral traditions. A central theme in the Laguna oral tradition is the complementary nature of masculine and feminine forces that make up the universe. The Christian figures of the altar screen, such as Saint Joseph, Saint John Nepomuck, Saint Barbara, and the Trinity, can be interpreted through the lens of the Pueblo oral tradition regarding a 19th century Laguna …

Liminality And Space In The Iliad And The Heike Monogatari, Jade Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

Both the Iliad and the Heike monogatari have received scholarly attention throughout the years, though rarely in comparison with one another. A few scholars, such as Tyler Creer and Naoko Yamagata, have attempted to examine the two side by side, but very little work has been done beyond their respective analyses. This is unsurprising as a cursory glance at the two texts suggests that they are too separated by time and space to warrant closer examination. I argue, however, that there is great value in analyzing the two side by side. Indeed, a closer look at these texts reveals that …

Improving Electrochemical Measurements And Informing Future Reprocessing Of Advanced Nuclear Fuels, J. Marvin Torrie

Theses and Dissertations

This research promotes the application of molten salts through developing analytical tools in electroanalytical studies and in the data analysis of vapor pressure data. The electrochemical community lacks standardized, stable, and repeatable reference electrode designs which threaten the reliability of measured thermophysical properties and repeatability of published studies. This work confirms the application of a saturated reference electrode design for molten chlorides systems that outperforms traditional Ag+/Ag reference electrodes. In the field of thermal physical property measurements, vapor pressure data for chloride salts are diffused throughout the literature, uncertainty quantification is absent or limited, and all previous studies rely on …

A Masked-Perturbation Model For Destabilization Security Games In Feedback Systems, Gabriel Michael Perry

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we present a mathematical formulation for increasing cyberphysical system security. This model allows a system administrator to use assumptions about exposed signals to derive defense strategies meant to mitigate the system's vulnerability to feedback perturbation attacks. We begin with a survey of game theory with the goal of building the concepts of resource and security games. We then introduce our model, which is a security game; targets in this game are exposed signals in the model map of the system, and resources are perturbed or introduced dynamical relationships between these signals. This formulation, called the masked-perturbation model, …

Improving Reclamation Seeding Success Through Seed Technologies, Surface Preparation, And Microbial Inoculants, Josh M. De Santiago Lazalde

Theses and Dissertations

Revegetation of reclaimed lands is often limited by poor seed placement, unfavorable surface conditions, and reduced biological activity, particularly on steep or physically degraded substrates where broadcast seeding is commonly used. Improving early seeding establishment under these conditions requires approaches that address both physical and biological barriers to seedling development. We evaluated the effectiveness of surface preparation, seed technologies, and microbial inoculants for improving plant establishment in field and greenhouse settings relevant to mineland reclamation. At the field scale (Chapter 1), we investigated the effects of chain harrowing and seed enhancement treatments on the establishment of grasses, forbs, and shrubs …

Answers “Go By Water”: Felt Knowledge As An Alternative Epistemology In Othello, Annalisa Gulbrandsen

Theses and Dissertations

William Shakespeare's Othello is fundamentally a play about epistemology--how does one know what he/she knows amidst the sea of words, evidence, and misdirection? Traditionally, the problem of knowledge in Othello has been treated as an intellectual problem of the mind. However, this thesis argues that the play purposefully draws attention to the limits of what the mind can know by way of the eye (what is seen) and ear (what is spoken or heard), instead offering an alternative epistemology that is felt through embodiment. When Desdemona's words no longer have the power to affect what Othello believes, Desdemona's answers to …

Model Unification: A Systematic Approach For The Cluster Expansion, Kolten Barfuss

Theses and Dissertations

A systematic approach for model unification of cluster expansion models is developed and demonstrated. The method builds on previous work with the Manifold Boundary Approximation Method (MBAM) to identify supremal models. The work is motivated by the exercise of unifying cluster expansion models – characterized by Π matrices – for two binary alloys that share one atomic species to form a model for the ternary alloy. The result is the Supremal Π Algorithm, a systematic unification algorithm that relies on an MBAM-informed understanding of models and on the singular value decomposition. The algorithm yields ΠΛ, a Π matrix for the …

Impacts Of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi And Novel Soil Amendments On Perennial Grass Establishment In Mineland Soils, Melissa M. Burrell

Theses and Dissertations

Establishing perennial vegetation on mine waste materials is one of the primary challenges in mine land reclamation. Waste rock and mine tailing substrates typically lack the physical structure, nutrient availability, and biological communities necessary to support plant establishment and long-term ecosystem recovery. As a result, revegetation efforts often experience poor seeding success and limited plant persistence despite intensive management efforts. These studies investigated two complementary strategies to improve perennial grass establishment in degraded mine substrates: restoring mycorrhizal associations and enhancing soil function through soil amendments. The first study examined the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in facilitating plant establishment …

Infertility And Mental Health, Laynie Pugmire

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Impacts Of Adoption On Attachment, Laynie Pugmire

Family Perspectives

No abstract provided.