Digital Commons Network^™

Participants' Observations Of American Intervention In Siberia, 1918-1920, Daniel R. Smith

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

By early 1918, the United States was deeply involved in the international politics of Europe's Great War. As the country's attention turned to Europe, Charles Love Flake left his pregnant wife in Arizona to go to Fort McDowell in California for military training. On May 13, he wrote to his wife about the difficulties of boot camp, "If it takes this grind to stop the Huns, I'm the boy that can do it cheerfully."1 On 22 June 1919, Charles Love Flake died from wounds received in active duty. His death happened long after the November Armistice, when most fighting had …

Reclaiming A Rich Heritage: "Because They Don't Make Wood Like They Used To!", Mary Alice Cannon

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Railroad fans, history enthusiasts, or those who just like old things, sit back and relax! One no longer needs to search for musty old buildings to feel a part of the past. It is now possible to enjoy one's heritage while sitting in the comfort of one's home. In fact, one's own home might be made out of history. Such is the case in hundreds of homes and buildings throughout the United States that have been built from the millions of board feet of salvaged wood coming from a large part of railroad and United States history-the Lucin Cutoff trestle. …

Gt-Ches And Dycon: Improved Classification For Human Evolutionary Systems, Joseph S. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this work is to rethink the process of learning in human evolutionary systems. We take a sober look at how game theory, network theory, and chaos theory pertain specifically to the modeling, data, and training components of generalization in human systems. The value of our research is three-fold. First, our work is a direct approach to align machine learning generalization with core behavioral theories. We made our best effort to directly reconcile the axioms of these heretofore incompatible disciplines -- rather than moving from AI/ML towards the behavioral theories while building exclusively on AI/ML intuition. Second, this …

Rapid Discovery Of House-Keeping Genes In The Bacterium Kushneria, Using A Slalom-Library-Based Crispri Forward Genetic Screen, Andrew Jenkins

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Rising soil salinity levels worldwide have resulted in the loss of millions of hectares of viable cropland. Several solutions to this problem have been posited, including looking into the properties of salt-tolerant plants. Recent research into salttolerant plants in southern Utah has found a host of microorganisms isolated from the soil, plant surfaces, or plant tissues that stimulate salt tolerance in alfalfa. Leveraging a Mobile-CRISPRi system to repress a library of genes created through the recently developed sgRNA Library Assembly by Ligation onto Magnetic Beads (SLALOM) protocol, we induced genome-wide repression of genes in Kushneria spp. grown under optimal and …

The Effects Of Diesel Exhaust Particle Exposure On Adipos Mitochondrial Bioenergetics And Inflammation, Cali Elizabeth Warren

Theses and Dissertations

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) constitutes a significant component of ambient air pollution that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of metabolic disorders, including insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Among PM2.5 constituents, diesel exhaust particles (DEP) are prevalent particulates that infiltrate the bloodstream to drive systemic pathologies. The purpose of this study was to characterize the metabolic response of adipose tissue to DEP. We aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding by exploring mitochondrial bioenergetics, characterizing the inflammatory marker profile, including adipokines, and conducting a detailed histological analysis of adipocytes to provide valuable insights to the evolving understanding of the intricate …

A Comparison Of Ptychography Programs For Lens-Less Imaging With A High Harmonic Generation Source, Aaron Redd

Undergraduate Honors Theses

High Harmonic Generation provides a coherent source of extreme ultraviolet photons. Tuned to the correct energies, these photons can be resonant with electrons associated with the magnetic moment of many magnetic materials. This thesis provides an investigation into performing ptychographic imaging with a high harmonic source as a step towards performing high resolution imaging of magnetic domains. Three ptychography codes (Ptychodactyl, PyNX, and tike), are compared for image reconstruction quality and ease of use. Tike and Ptychodactyl prove more successful than PyNX. These first two programs reconstruct data from a simple helium-neon laser setup with great success, and tike demonstrates …

Identifying Highly Responsive Locations For Spinal Motion Tracking Sensors, Tyler Hutchinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Tracking spinal motion in the lower back serves as a useful tool for aiding diagnostics. This study seeks to determine if a fabric garment with integrated strain sensors may provide sufficient information to identify key spinal motion characteristics typically manifested in skin strain. Sensors adhered directly to an individual’s skin would be the most effective means of capturing such characteristics. However, adhering sensors to skin of the lower back is difficult for frequent or everyday application. This research aims to integrate a sensor system into a more comfortable and readily user-applied device. Here we examine the implementation of such a …

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

The Transformation Of Utah From A Colony Of Wall Street To A Colony Of Washington, Thomas G. Alexander

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Ordinarily. American historians divide the years from 1929 through 1945 into two periods. The time from 1929 to about 1939 they generally label· The Great Depression." In most cases, the chapter on the depression tells the story of American domestic affairs during the 1930s with a slight bow to the severity of worldwide economic conditions. In the next chapter, covering the years 1939 to 1945, historians discuss World War II; to do chis, however, they have to return to the 1920s to deal with the foreign affurs they neglected in the previous chapter. In discussing World War II, historians say …

Development Of Bifunctional Peptides As Scaffolds For Bifunctional Catalysis And A Novel Method Of Peptide Stapling Using Squaric Esters, Adam X. Wayment

Theses and Dissertations

Enzymes are some of nature's most powerful tools in chemical processes. However, their molecular complexity makes them difficult to synthesize and complicates their application in traditional organic synthesis. Peptides, a building block of enzymes, can be rapidly synthesized and have been used as a possible alternative in achieving enzyme-like catalysis. However, most peptide-based catalysts are limited in reaction-scope and are unable to incorporate traditional organic catalysts. We have designed a helical peptide scaffold capable of being functionalized with a wide variety of organocatalysts as well as transition-metal based catalysts. In order to understand how the peptide structure effects reactivity and …

Transgenic Beetle Modification Via Nanoinjection, Abigail Wallace, Abraham B. Alton, Jane Lundgren, Marianna Ransom, Michelle Teh, Kai Jeffery, Norman Rasmussen, Alex Rolfson, Brian D. Jensen, Colin Dale, Seth Taylor, Sandra Hope

Student Works

The bacterium Sodalis praecaptivus can be transformed with a transgene for expression in the insect. Symbiotic bacteria in the insect’s reproductive tract will be passed on to their offspring. Red fluorescent protein is used for nanoinjection studies.

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Germany's War For World Conquest And The Extermination Of Jews, Gerhard L. Weinberg

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Fifty years ago the war between Germany and the Allies was coming to its final stage. In the East, the Red Army had broken through the German central front in Poland, had driven deeply into Germany itself, had taken much of the Silesian industrial area, had established a bridgehead over the Oder River, and was eliminating pockets of German resistance isolated by the winter offensive, even while preparations were beginning for the final assault on Berlin. In the South, all Soviet territory once occupied by the Germans had been freed almost a year earlier, and the Red Army occupied Romania, …

Military Comparison Of The Han Dynasty And The Roman Republic, Jack Tribolet

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Middle and Late Roman Republic (264 BCE - 27 BCE) and the Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) characterized two concurrent military superpowers of the ancient world. Anchoring opposite ends of the Eurasian continent, the two powers shared structural similarities that enabled their longevity and resilience to ruination.

Michael Boym: The Polish Marco Polo, Agnieszka Couderq

Comparative Civilizations Review

The following is a selection drawn from Ms. Couderq’s written proposal for a television series based on the book she has published. It offers a summation of the life of this remarkable cross-civilizational traveler.

Apotheosis Of The State And The Decline Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Humanity is undergoing a second Axial Age. The first, as described by Karl Jaspers, brought transcendence into the vision and self-understanding of humans and the world. The rise of secularism and “Death of God” is dissolving and fragmenting that transcendence — a vital subsystem of the civilization system. Economy, knowledge and government comprise three additional subsystems and have coalesced to form the modern sovereign state, diminishing the traditional place of religion, art and philosophy in civilizations. An example of a state lacking common institutions of transcendence was the Mongol empire. Ruling Russia for a quarter millennium, its state form was …

From Compromise To Confrontation: The American Secretary Of State James F. Byrnes And His Attempts To Mitigate Disagreements With The Soviet Union As The Cold War Began, John Karl

Comparative Civilizations Review

James F. Byrnes as United States Secretary of State pursued a policy based on compromise with the Soviet Union during the first year following the end of the Second World War. He was determined to use his political skill for engineering compromise in order to bring about an agreement with the Soviet Union which would lead to an era of peace. While the crucial question facing American policymakers in the wake of World War II was the creation of a new world order, a most important part of this question was the future of American-Soviet relations, the two nations that …

From The President, Hong Cheng

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

Lists Of Selected Full-Text Databases By Subscription In East Asian Studies, Dongyun Ni, Michiko Ito, Ellie Kim, Anlin Yang

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

Connecting Local Archive Data To Wikidata: Focusing On The Archives Of National Debt Redemption Movement, Jaehyuk Yun, Sam G. Oh

Journal of East Asian Libraries

This study aims to enhance accessibility and data utilization of digital cultural heritage preserved by the National Debt Redemption Movement (NDRM) digital archive. The NDRM archive wants to promote the historical value of cultural heritage, but it struggles with data openness, a common problem for small local archives. In order to overcome this limitation, the research proposes using Wikidata and its SPARQL-based query service. This includes analyzing NDRM materials, the current state of the archive, and metadata elements, and then mapping these to Wikidata properties. Research shows that integrating archival data into Wikidata has the advantages of data expansion, quality …

New Appointment - Joy Wang, Guoqing Li

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

In Situ Chlorine Generation And Rare Earth Chlorination By Molten Salt Electrolysis, Mark Schvaneveldt, Tyler Williams, Ranon Fuller, Devin Rappleye

Faculty Publications

Chloride volatility processes for purifying actinide and rare earth elements have historically required the use of Cl₂ tanks. To minimize the hazards associated with these processes, an apparatus was designed to produce Cl₂ via molten salt electrolysis. Within this apparatus, one can generate Cl₂, chlorinate metals, and consume excess Cl₂. Here, electrode materials were tested for their ability to generate Cl₂, the composition of the gaseous electrolysis product was evaluated using a quadrupole mass spectrometer, and a Ce foil sample was successfully chlorinated using the electrochemically generated Cl₂.

Experimental Determination Of The Electrochemical Properties Of Bismuth Chloride In Eutectic Licl-Kcl And Licl-Kcl-Cacl2 Molten Salts, Greg Chipman, Bryant Johnson, Cameron Vann, Lance Whitesides, Devin Rappleye

Faculty Publications

Bismuth has been investigated as a potential liquid electrode for molten salt electrorefining, but the electrochemical behavior of Bi³⁺/Bi redox couple has received scant attention in eutectic LiCl-KCl melts and no studies were found in the ternary LiCl-KCl-CaCl₂ melts. LiCl-KCl-CaCl₂ melts offer some advantages over eutectic LiCl-KCl, such as a lower melting point. Cyclic voltammetry, square wave voltammetry, chronoamperometry, chronopotentiometry and open-circuit chronopotentiometry were used to measure electrochemical parameters, such as diffusivity and standard apparent potential of bismuth electrodeposition, in LiCl-KCl and LiCl-KCl-CaCl₂ eutectics. The mean diffusivity values of 6.71 x 10^-6 cm^{2 …}

Creating An Inclusive Metadata Policy, Nicole Lewis, Jeremy Myntti

Faculty Publications

Best of Core Forum webinar series

The BYU Library has created an Inclusive Metadata Policy for metadata creators to use when creating and remediating descriptions to be more inclusive. Accompanying the policy is a companion document with recommendations and examples, including links to many external resources. In addition to working with stakeholders in the library to develop the policy, we consulted with the University’s Office of Belonging. This presentation describes the process we used to undertake the creation of the library policy and recommendations document.

High-Yield And Rapid Isolation Of Extracellular Vesicles By Flocculation Via Orbital Acoustic Trapping: Float, Joseph Rufo, Peiran Zhang, Zeyu Wang, Yuyang Gu, Kaichun Yang, Joseph Rich, Chuyi Chen, Ruoyu Zhong, Ke Jin, Je He, Jianping Xia, Ke Li, Jiarong Wu, Yingshi Ouyang, Yoel Sadovsky, Luke P. Lee, Tony Jun Huang

Faculty Publications

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been identified as promising biomarkers for the noninvasive diagnosis of various diseases. However, challenges in separating EVs from soluble proteins have resulted in variable EV recovery rates and low purities. Here, we report a high-yield ( > 90%) and rapid ( <  10 min) EV isolation method called FLocculation via Orbital Acoustic Trapping (FLOAT). The FLOAT approach utilizes an acoustofluidic droplet centrifuge to rotate and controllably heat liquid droplets. By adding a thermoresponsive polymer flocculant, nanoparticles as small as 20 nm can be rapidly and selectively concentrated at the center of the droplet. We demonstrate the ability of FLOAT to separate urinary EVs from the highly abundant Tamm-Horsfall protein, addressing a significant obstacle in the development of EV-based liquid biopsies. Due to its high-yield nature, FLOAT reduces biofluid starting volume requirements by a factor of 100 (from 20 mL to 200 µL), demonstrating its promising potential in point-of-care diagnostics.

Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

The Fetterman Massacre: A Swiss American Officer Leads His Men To Disaster, Albert Winkler

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Following the American Civil War, the United States fought a major war against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians known as Red Cloud’s War, which lasted from 1866 to 1868. It was a costly American defeat and an important Indian victory. A prominent leader of the Native Americans was the great war chief, Red Cloud, who engineered much of their success. The conflict included many raids, skirmishes, and three important and bloody engagements including the Hayfield and the Wagon Box Battles in 1867, and the highly significant Fetterman Massacre in 1866 in which the Swiss American Captain, William J. Fetterman, …

Annual Reports Of The Swiss American Historical Society, Thomas Quinn Marabello

Swiss American Historical Society Review

• Meeting began just after 9:30 AM Central Time.

• Officers present: Fred Gillespie, President; Tom Marabello, Vice President; Ernie Thurston, Treasurer & Membership Secretary; Richard Hacken, Webmaster

• Welcomed by Beth Zurbuchen, President and Board Chair John Etter, Swiss Center of North America, our hosts.

• John Etter said SAHS and the Swiss Center are connected by a desire to connect Swiss culture, heritage and rich history!

• Meeting began with President Fred Gillespie – proved naysayers wrong that people wouldn’t come to a non-East Coast location for the annual meeting.

• Should SAHS raise dues? Dues were last …

Chronic Pain Interventions: Considering Hypnotherapy As A Viable Treatment Option, Madelyn Isom

Student Works

Chronic pain is a widespread and debilitating condition, demanding advancements in current interventions. Conventional medical paradigms have traditionally treated the mind and body separately, but advancement has advocated shifts toward more integrated mind-body approaches to address holistic health. Despite prevailing skepticism and friction within patient-doctor relationships surrounding hypnosis, there is substantial support for its use as a pain management tool (Declercq, 2023; Thompson et al., 2019). This analysis explores the potential of hypnosis as a viable treatment for chronic pain, highlighting its merits and addressing current research limitations. Noteworthy findings underscore hypnosis’ distinctive influence on the physical body through mental …

Scaffold-Based 3d Cell Culture Models In Cancer Research, Waad H. Abuwatfa, William G. Pitt, Ghaleb A. Husseini

Faculty Publications

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures have emerged as valuable tools in cancer research, offering significant advantages over traditional two-dimensional (2D) cell culture systems. In 3D cell cultures, cancer cells are grown in an environment that more closely mimics the 3D architecture and complexity of in vivo tumors. This approach has revolutionized cancer research by providing a more accurate representation of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and enabling the study of tumor behavior and response to therapies in a more physiologically relevant context. One of the key benefits of 3D cell culture in cancer research is the ability to recapitulate the complex interactions …