Digital Commons Network^™

Nathaniel Hawthorne And The Meiosis Of Americanism In The Marble Faun, Rasoul Aliakbari

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Biblical Allusions And Themes In The Early Renaissance: Joseph Sarfati's Use Of Biblical Hebrew As An Encoded Language, Shon D. Hopkin

Studies in the Bible and Antiquity

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Mormonism And Intellectual Freedom, Rick Anderson

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

To many outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (and to some of its members), the Church’s teachings and practices appear not only socially and experientially constraining, but intellectually restrictive as well, given its centralized system of doctrinal boundary maintenance and its history of sometimes sanctioning members who publicly dissent from its teachings. Do these practices amount to a constraint of intellectual freedom? This essay argues that they do not, and offers several possible explanations for the commonly-asserted position that they do.

Literacy And Orality In The Book Of Mormon, Brant A. Gardner

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

The Book of Mormon is a literate product of a literate culture. It references written texts. Nevertheless, behind the obvious literacy, there are clues to a primary orality in Nephite culture. The instances of text creation and most instances of reading texts suggest that documents were written by and for an elite class who were able to read and write. Even among the elite, reading and writing are best seen as a secondary method of communication to be called upon to archive information, to communicate with future readers (who would have been assumed to be elite and therefore able to …

“And There Wrestled A Man With Him” (Genesis 32:24): Enos’S Adaptations Of The Onomastic Wordplay Of Genesis, Matthew L. Bowen

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

In this brief note, I will suggest several instances in which the Book of Mormon prophet Enos utilizes wordplay on his own name, the name of his father “Jacob,” the place name “Peniel,” and Jacob’s new name “Israel” in order to connect his experiences to those of his ancestor Jacob in Genesis 32-33, thus infusing them with greater meaning. Familiarity with Jacob and Esau’s conciliatory “embrace” in Genesis 33 is essential to understanding how Enos views the atonement of Christ and the ultimate realization of its blessings in his life.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Source Credibility Theory Applied To Logo And Website Design For Heightened Credibility And Consumer Trust, Paul Benjamin Lowry, David W. Wilson, William L. Haig

Faculty Publications

Websites are often the first or only interaction a consumer has with a firm in modern commerce. Because consumers tend to make decisions within the first few seconds of online interaction, the first impression given to users can greatly determine a website’s success. Leveraging Source Credibility Theory (SCT), we present a strategy for building credibility derived from a user’s initial impressions of a website, in online environments. We demonstrate that logos designed to communicate traits of credibility (i.e., expertise and trustworthiness) can trigger positive credibility judgments about the firm’s website, and that this increase in perceived credibility results in greater …

Language Use In Six Study Abroad Programs: An Exploratory Analysis Of Possible Predictors, Dan Dewey, Jennifer Brown, Wendy Baker, Rob A. Martinsen, Carrie Gold, Dennis Eggett

Faculty Publications

A common predictor of language gains during study abroad (SA) is amount of language use. Yet little attention has been given to determining what factors influence the extent of language use while abroad. Studies in this area have mainly been case studies of learners in single locations. In this larger study, we seek to determine variables connected with language use by examining 118 learners studying abroad in Madrid, M´erida (Mexico), Paris, Moscow, Nanjing, or Cairo. These learners reported their second language (L2) use over a 1-week period during their stay. Significant predictors of reported L2 use include SA program, age, …

Assessing The Validity Of Can‐Do Statements In Retrospective (Then‐Now) Self‐Assessment, Troy L. Cox, N. Anthony Brown, Dan P. Dewey

Faculty Publications

In this study, the authors evaluated the strengths and limitations of a self‐ assessment based on ACTFL Can‐Do statements (ACTFL, 2013) as a tool for measuring linguistic gains over an internship abroad in Russia. They assessed its reliability, determined how its items mapped with the ACTFL scale, and measured the degree to which students’ self‐evaluations matched oral proficiency interview (OPI) test results (i.e., predictive validity). Data revealed a high level of reliability. Furthermore, self‐ assessment items ascended in the order of difficulty expected (i.e., Superior items were the most difficult, followed by Advanced), but differences between the means for items …

Review Of Portraits Of The Artist As A Young Woman: Paintings And The Novel In France And Britain, 1800-1860 By Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, Heather Belnap Jensen

Faculty Publications

Alexandra K. Wettlaufer’s ambitious study of real and fictitious woman painters in early nineteenth-century France and Britain explores the subject of female artistic self-fashioning at a critical historical juncture. Characterizing this as an auspicious time for the development of the woman artist, the author seeks to examine how historical figures and fictional characters both marked as well as facilitated this process. The stated rationale for the use of a comparative approach is that it enables the author “to highlight the dialogic context in which these novels and paintings were produced and consumed, and to map out aesthetic and political intersections …

Craig R. Scott: Anonymous Agencies, Backstreet Businesses, And Covert Collectives: Rethinking Organizations In The 21st Century, Paul C. Godfrey

Faculty Publications

Organizational scholars have made substantial contributions in understanding organizational life; however, if we deeply examine our knowledge, we’ll find that we know a lot about large, public organizations, be they businesses, civil society, or governmental agencies. We’ve made great strides in understanding the formal, visible organizational world, and our field sports a strong base of stylized facts and even some very generalizable, law-like propositions about these organizational forms. Scott’s book invites us to turn our gaze toward another substantial, and certainly impactful, organizational context: formal or informal organizations that deliberately strive to be invisible.

Hykss: Hybrid Keyword And Semantic Search, Andrew J. Zitzelberger, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Del T. Scott

Faculty Publications

Keyword search suffers from a number of issues: ambiguity, synonymy, and an inability to handle semantic constraints. Semantic search helps resolve these issues but is limited by the quality of annotations which are likely to be incomplete or imprecise. Hybrid search, a search technique that combines the merits of both keyword and semantic search, appears to be a promising solution. In this paper we describe and evaluate HyKSS, a hybrid search system driven by extraction ontologies for both annotation creation and query interpretation. For displaying results, HyKSS uses a dynamic ranking algorithm. We show that over data sets of short …

Exploring Configurations Of Affordances: The Case Of Software Development, Aron Lindberg, James Gaskin, Nicholas Berente, Kalle Lyytinen

Faculty Publications

Affordances have been increasingly used in the information systems literature to account for the usage and effects of information technology. However, a review of the literature shows that the construct has remained nebulously defined, rarely used in anything but singular forms and with little consideration of context. This has resulted in a lack of cumulative research on affordances. We propose that affordances need to be considered not only individually, but also as configurations of multiple affordances. Through a sociomaterial sequence analysis of two software development teams – one waterfall and one agile - we build a framework for the study …

Who Uses The Roth 401(K), And How Do They Use It?, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Using administrative data from twelve companies that added a Roth 401(k) option between 2006 and 2010, we describe the characteristics of Roth contributions. Approximately one year after the Roth is introduced, 9% of 401(k) participants have positive Roth balances. Roth participation is more than twice as high among 401(k) participants who were hired after the Roth introduction than among 401(k) participants who were hired before the Roth introduction. In essence, once an employee joins a 401(k) she becomes passive/inattentive, thereby reducing the likelihood of reacting to the introduction of a new Roth option. Conditional on contributing to the Roth, 66% …

Does Measuring L2 Utterance Fluency Equal Measuring Overall L2 Proficiency? Evidence From Five Languages, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Dan P. Dewey, Jennifer Brown, Rob A. Martinsen

Faculty Publications

The current study examined the relationship between overall second language (L2) proficiency and utterance fluency measures for several L2s in order to determine whether utterance measures can be used to predict L2 proficiency. The study measured the speech rate, number of hesitations, number and length of pauses, number and length of runs, and number of false starts using excerpts from 126 ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) spoken by 86 participants. Forty of the participants provided pre‐ and post‐OPI speech samples, which also allowed examination of changes over time. All 86 participants were native English speakers who spoke L2 French, German, …

Characterization Of Macromolecular Structure Elements From A Green River Oil Shale, I. Extracts, Mark S. Solum, Charles L. Mayne, Anita M. Orendt, Ronald J. Pugmire, Jacob Adams, Thomas H. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

This paper is the first of two associated papers describing the structural details of three sections of an oil shale core taken at the Skyline 16 mine in the Utah Uinta Basin. Bitumen was extracted from the shale using methanol/dichloromethane. Kerogen was isolated from the shale, using a nine-step extraction procedure using HCl and HF. Bitumen samples from the three cores were analyzed using high-resolution ¹³C NMR liquid-state spectroscopy, showing carbon aromaticities of 7%−11%. Aliphatic carbons were dominated by methylene structures, with average aliphatic chain lengths of 24 carbons. The three parent shales and the demineralized kerogens were each …

The Functions Of The Executive At 75: An Invitation To Reconsider A Timeless Classic, Paul C. Godfrey, Joseph T. Mahoney

Faculty Publications

The year 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Chester I. Barnard’s classic, The Functions of the Executive, a groundbreaking contribution to management theory. We maintain that Barnard’s work provides a valuable perspective on the causes and potential solutions to challenges facing capitalism, business, and management consequent to the scandals and financial crises of the early 21st century. We believe Barnard would see a systemic failure of the moral dimension of organization as a driver of these crises, and that management theory and practice need to focus on both the science and the aesthetics of management. We look …

A Direct Test Of Agency Theories Of Debt, Yilin Huang, Taylor D. Nadauld

Faculty Publications

When a firm is facing default, equity holders have incentives to engage in asset substitution, underinvest, or directly transfer wealth. Few papers document investment distortions on account of debt-equity agency conflicts, only that the threat of distortions influence ex ante financing costs. A non-agency RMBS deal represents an entity that is highly leveraged where, ex ante, equity holders know they will face default. This provides an ideal laboratory for testing whether the threat of default creates any of the distortions predicted in theory. We estimate agency costs associated with direct wealth transfers to range between $.011 and $.025 per dollar.

Improving Password Cybersecurity Through Inexpensive And Minimally Invasive Means: Detecting And Deterring Password Reuse Through Keystroke-Dynamics Monitoring And Just-In-Time Fear Appeals, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Mark Grimes, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot, Paul Benjamin Lowry

Faculty Publications

Password reuse – using the same password for multiple accounts – is a prevalent phenomenon that can make even the most secure systems vulnerable. When passwords are reused across multiple systems, hackers may compromise accounts by stealing passwords from lowsecurity sites to access sites with higher security. Password reuse can be particularly threatening to users in developing countries in which cybersecurity training is limited, law enforcement of cybersecurity is non-existent, or in which programs to secure cyberspace are limited. This article proposes a two-pronged solution for reducing password reuse through detection and mitigation. First, based on the theories of routine, …

Library Instruction Case Wiki, Andy Spackman

Faculty Publications

We hope you find the guides and case studies collected here helpful, and we invite you to contribute by discussing your experiences on the discussion page for each case study, and by submitting case studies you have developed and used in your own instructional efforts.

Cases for Advanced Business Students

• Building a Company List - Trucking in Texas
• Company and Market Research - Big Sweety and the Chocolate Manufacturing Industry
• Determining Market Size - Infant Formula
• Entrepreneurial Marketing - The Comic Book Guy
• Global Trade and Economics - Manufacturing Medical Instruments
• International Business - Launching the Wii
• International Marketing - …

The Determinants And Consequences Of Information Acquisition Via Edg, Michael S. Drake, Darren T. Roulstone, Jacob Thornock

Faculty Publications

Using a novel dataset that tracks all web traffic on the SEC’s EDGAR servers from 2008-2011, we examine the determinants and capital market consequences of investor information acquisition of SEC filings. The average user employs the database very few times per quarter and most users target specific filing types such as periodic accounting reports; a small subset of users employ EDGAR almost daily and access many filings. EDGAR activity is positively related with corporate events (particularly restatements, earnings announcements, and acquisition announcements), poor stock performance, and the strength of a firm’s information environment. EDGAR activity is related to, but distinct …

The Adolescent Community Of Engagement: A Framework For Research On Adolescent Online Learning, Jered Borup, Richard E. West, Charles R. Graham, Randall S. Davies

Faculty Publications

This paper describes the Adolescent Community of Engagement (ACE ) framework as a guide to research and design in adolescent online learning environments. Several online learning frameworks have emerged from higher education contexts, but these frameworks do not explicitly address the unique student and environmental characteristics of the adolescent online learning environment. The ACE framework consists of four main constructs that make up an adolescent online learning community. The first three (student engagement, teacher engagement, and peer engagement) build on frameworks originally established from higher education contexts. The ACE framework additionally recognizes the role of parents in their children’s learning …

“The Frontier Thesis In Transnational Migration: The U.S. West In The Making Of Italy Abroad,” In Immigrants In The Far West: Historical Identities And Experiences, Edited By Jessie L. Embry And Brian Q. Cannon (Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2014), 363-381., Mark I. Choate

Faculty Publications

In 1879, a young postal worker in the small town of Lendinara, Italy, decided to emigrate. Adolfo Rossi, twenty-two years old, was discouraged with his prospects in his small town near Venice. Adolfo lived at home with his mother in the heavily populated Polesine valley. Although he had a steady job, he wanted to become a journalist. In Adolfo’s words, while taking a walk along the Adige river one night, a strange idea struck my mind like a bolt of lightning. I reflected only a moment and committed myself to an audacious resolution. “No, I will not stay vegetating here,” …

How Well Does Multiple Ocr Error Correction Generalize?, William B. Lund, Eric K. Ringger, Daniel D. Walker

Faculty Publications

As the digitization of historical documents, such as newspapers, becomes more common, the need of the archive patron for accurate digital text from those documents increases. Building on our earlier work, the contributions of this paper are: 1. in demonstrating the applicability of novel methods for correcting optical character recognition (OCR) on disparate data sets, including a new synthetic training set, 2. enhancing the correction algorithm with novel features, and 3. assessing the data requirements of the correction learning method. First, we correct errors using conditional random fields (CRF) trained on synthetic training data sets in order to demonstrate the …

The Federal Charter Of 1291 And The Founding Of The Swiss State, Albert Winkler

Faculty Publications

The traditional date for the founding of the Swiss state is 1291 with the signing of the Federal Charter or Bundesbrief. The document was elevated to national significance not by historians or by the opinion of the Swiss people but as an act of government. It was unknown among the early historians of the Swiss Confederation, and many modern historians are skeptical about its authenticity and significance. Internal evidence suggests that the document was composed at a later date, and that it may be a forgery.

Characterization Of Macromolecular Structure Elements From A Green River Oil Shale, Ii. Characterization Of Pyrolysis Products By 13c Nmr, Gc/Ms, And Ftir, Thomas H. Fletcher, Ryan Gillis, Jacob Adams, Trent Hall

Faculty Publications

This paper is Part II of a study of the chemical structural components of the organic matter of oil shale in the Green River formation. Three sections of a well-characterized oil shale core from the Utah Green River formation were demineralized, and the resulting kerogen was pyrolyzed at 10 °C/min in nitrogen at atmospheric pressure at temperatures up to 525 °C. The pyrolysis products (light gas, tar, and char) were analyzed using ¹³C NMR, GC/MS, and (FTIR). Pyrolysis yields of 80% (daf basis) were achieved at these conditions, with 60% daf tar yield at the highest temperature. The solid-state …

Issues Raised By Studying Defond And Zhang: What Should Audit Researchers Do?, John Donovan

Faculty Publications

We view audit-quality choice as one among many that managers make to maximize firm value. We question whether audit-quality differences among publicly traded companies are of significant interest to investors, clients, and auditors and ask for research on this topic.  Relatedly, we ask for research on whether auditors and their clients show behavior consistent with regulated audit quality exceeding the audit quality level demanded absent regulation. We propose that researchers incorporate the competitive advantages of auditors and the institutional features of the audit process into the definition of audit quality. We propose that audit quality research test for externalities and …

The Reputational Costs Of Tax Avoidance*, John Gallemore, Edward L. Maydew, Jacob Thornock

Faculty Publications

This study investigates whether firms and their top executives bear reputational costs from engaging in aggressive tax avoidance activities. At least two decades of empirical tax research has shown that firms engage in a wide range of strategies for tax avoidance purposes. 1 Recent studies suggest that for many firms, tax avoidance appears to be highly effective at reducing the firms’ tax payments and increasing their after-tax earnings. For example, Dyreng, Hanlon, and Maydew (2008) find that more than a quarter of publicly traded U.S. firms are able to reduce their taxes to less than 20 percent of their pre-tax …

“And It Came To Pass . . .”: The Sociopolitical Events In The Book Of Mormon Leading To The Eighteenth Year Of The Reign Of The Judges, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap, Daniel Belnap, Dan Belnap

Faculty Publications

The period from the end of the seventeenth year of the reign of the judges to the beginning of the nineteenth year was a particularly unstable time in the history of the Nephite people. The amount of text Mormon devotes to it reveals the importance of this time period in their history. The crises that emerged during this time affected every Nephite, but they did not arise out of a vacuum. Instead, a number of prior social forces were at work and created an environment from which the tensions could find full form. This paper focuses on three primary forces: …

Judaism And Orthodox Judaism, Loren Marks, Trevan Hatch

Faculty Publications

The Term Jew, which began as a tribal name and later became a national title, today refers to many things: an ethnic group a philosophy, a religion (Judaism), a tradition, or a way of life. Although Jews have comprised a relatively small portion of the world population, over the last 3,000 years the sacred tects and monotheistic tradition of the Jewish people have been foundational in Western civilization. The Jews, while suffering some of the greatest persecutions of any group in recorded history