Digital Commons Network^™

Who Controls The Water? Yahweh Vs. Baal, Fred E. Woods

Faculty Publications

As the Israelites settled in the land of Canaan, clashes over religious beliefs and practices developed with other inhabitants of the land. Baalism, the belief in the Canaanite god of water and storm, became a threat to the true belief in Yahweh (Jehovah). This paper is an investigation of the implicit polemical usage of water and storm language in the Deuteronomic History (hereafter referred to as DH). The DH consists of the book of Deuteronomy as well as what is referred to in the Hebrew Bible as the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings). Many passages in the Deuteronomic …

Blended Learning Environments Definitions And Directions, Russell T. Osguthorpe, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

During the past decade the availability of computer technologies, such as the Internet, have greatly expanded the educational options available to learners and instructors alike. Innovative uses of technology have begun to blur the distinctions between traditional face-to-face and more recent distance learning environments. As the learning environments have been combined, many have recognized the inherent strengths and weaknesses associated with both.

“Rocky Mountain Entrepreneur: Robert Campbell As A Fur Trade Capitalist.”, Jay H. Buckley

Faculty Publications

Between 1825 and 1835 Robert Campbell emerged as a fur trade entrepreneur. Campbell served as clerk for Ashley-Smith, as brigade leader for Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, and supplier and financier for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Campbell quickly became a dominant figure in the American fur trade. In addition to leading fur brigades, Campbell and his partner William Sublette built several trading posts (most notably Fort Laramie), supplied the annual rendezvous, and challenged John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company on the Missouri River. Through it all, Campbell's business acumen helped him pursue economic opportunities that paved the way for future …

Dworkin's Fallacy, Or What The Philosophy Of Language Can't Teach Us About The Law, Michael S. Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Wagering On Religious Liberty, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Price Theory, Competition, And The Rule Of Reason, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

Challenging traditional antitrust jurisprudence, Professor Alan J. Meese argues that the present structure of Rule of Reason analysis, applied pursuant to Standard Oil v. United States, has become outdated. The Rule of Reason as currently applied by the courts rests upon neoclassical price theory, an economic paradigm that assumes that legitimate competition consists of unbridled technological rivalry, unconstrained by nonstandard contracts. Recently, however, the Supreme Court has begun to apply a competing paradigm- Transaction Cost Economics-when determining whether a contract is unreasonable "per se" or instead deserving of Rule of Reason scrutiny. Professor Meese argues that Transaction Cost Economics more …

Night Thoughts: Reflections On The Debate Concerning Same-Sex Marriage, John V. Orth

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Retribution For Rats: Cooperation, Punishment, And Atonement, Michael A. Simons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

To mobsters, he is a "rat"; to drug dealers, a "snitch." To school children, he is a "tattletale"; to corporate executives, a "whistleblower." To cops, he is an "informant"; to prosecutors, a "cooperator." By whatever name he is known, the person who betrays his associates to the authorities is almost universally reviled. In movies, on television, in literature, the cooperator embodies all that society holds in contempt: he is disloyal, deceitful, greedy, selfish, and weak.

The cooperator, though, has long been a mainstay of our criminal justice system. For centuries, criminal defendants have received leniency in return for testimony …

From The Individual To Individualism: A Critique Of The Helping Professions, Timothy B. Smith, Matthew R. Draper

Faculty Publications

Individualistic values characterize contemporary society and many popular approaches to mental health treatment. This paper critiques the individualistic values embedded in the helping professions that implicitly contradict the teachings ofJesus Christ, the surest foundation for mental health interventions. Members of AMCAP are encouraged to search out and replace problematic values that contradict gospel teachings which have been integrated into contemporary mental health practice.

Rites Of Passage In Emerging Adulthood: Perspectives Of Young Mormoons, Larry J. Nelson

Faculty Publications

This study explores the role that culture, particularly religious rites of passage, may play in emerging adulthood by examining the demographics, criteria for adulthood, identity development, and risk behavior of Mormon emerging adults.

Parenting And Adult Development: Contexts, Processes, And Products Of Intergenerational Relationships, Rob Palkovitz, Loren D. Marks, David W. Appleby, Erin K. Holmes

Faculty Publications

For the past 50 years, parenthood has been discussed in social science literature as a context of adult development. Theories, anecdotes, and the opinions of laypersons are nearly unanimous: People who become parents and are involved in the raising of children are transformed and follow a different developmental trajectory from people who do not engage in parenting roles. Erickson (1950) suggested that positive adult development reflects care for the next generation, or "generativity," and that parenthood is "the first, and for many, the prime generative encounter" (Erickson, 1964, p. 130). More recently, parenthood has been described as a necessary but …

From Individuality To Individualism: A Critique Of The Helping, Timothy B. Smith, Matthew R. Draper

Faculty Publications

Individualistic values characterize contemporary society and many popular approaches to mental health treatment. This paper critiques the individualistic values embedded in the helping professions that implicitly contradict the teachings of Jesus Christ, the surest foundation for mental health interventions. Members of AMCAP are encouraged to search out and replace other problematic values that contradict gospel teachings but that have been integrated into contemporary mental health practice.

Data Mining Of Forensic Association Rules, James V. Hansen, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Rayman D. Meservy

Faculty Publications

Data mining offers a potentially powerful method for analyzing the large data sets that are typically found in forensic computing (FC) investigations to discover useful and previously unknown patterns within the data. The contribution of this paper is an innovative and rigorous data mining methodology that enables effective search of large volumes of complex data to discover offender profiles. These profiles are based on association rules, which are computationally sound, flexible, easily interpreted, and provide a ready set of data for refinement via predictive models. Methodology incorporates link analysis and creation of predictive models based on association rule input.

The Ecosystem Of Partnerships: A Case Study Of A Long-Term University-Community Partnership, Gary Daynes, Scott L. Howell, Nathan K. Lindsay

Faculty Publications

This article presents a case study describing a robust fortyeight- year partnership between the Boy Scouts of America, Brigham Young University, Utah Valley State College, and others in an annual merit badge Powwow1 for Boy Scouts. Service-learning occurs as five hundred university students and faculty prepare for and teach merit badge classes to five thousand Boy Scouts as part of this Powwow. The article presents the history and operation of the Powwow, describes benefits to participants, and identifies some of the factors that contribute to the enduring nature of the partnership. The case study suggests that partnerships are similar to …

A Memory-Based Approach To Cantonese Tone Recognition, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Michael Emonts

Faculty Publications

This paper introduces memory-based learning as a viable approach for Cantonese tone recognition. The memorybased learning algorithm employed here outperforms other documented current approaches for this problem, which is based on neural networks. Various numbers of tones and features are modeled to find the best method for feature selection and extraction. To further optimize this approach, experiments are performed to isolate the best feature weighting method, the best class voting weights method, and the best number of k-values to implement. Results and possible future work are discussed.

High-Pressure Coal Pyrolysis In A Drop Tube Furnace, Koichi Matsuoka, Zhi-Xin Ma, Hiroyuki Akiho, Zhan-Guo Zhang, Akira Tomita, Thomas H. Fletcher, Marek A. Wojtowicz, Stephen Niksa

Faculty Publications

To obtain useful and reliable pyrolysis data under high pressures, continuous pyrolysis experiments were carried out using a drop tube furnace. To ascertain the reliability of data, a mass balance during pyrolysis was carefully checked. The pyrolysis data obtained in this equipment was compared with previous results, and it was found that the weight loss observed in the drop tube furnace was somewhat larger than those obtained with other apparatuses. The experimental results were compared with those predicted by three pyrolysis models. Although discrepancies between predictions and experimental results were observed under a certain condition, the agreement between the experimental …

High-Pressure Intrinsic Oxidation Kinetics Of Two Coal Chars, William C. Hecker, Peter M. Madsen, Michael R. Sherman, Jared W. Allen, Rebecca J. Sawaya, Thomas H. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

Chars were produced from two coals (North Dakota lignite and Pittsburgh No. 8 hva bituminous coal) in a flat flame burner at atmospheric pressure. Intrinsic char reactivities to oxygen were then measured in a high-pressure thermogravimetric analyzer as a function of temperature, total pressure, and partial pressure of oxygen. Care was taken to avoid mass transfer effects. Reactivities were normalized by the available mass of char at any given time (g/(gavailâs)). Reactivity data were obtained over a wide range of char burnout and were found to be independent of burnout level between char burnouts of 20 and 60%. Data were …

Israel, Historical Background Of, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

Israel, historical background of Familiarity with the historical background of ancient Israel is beneficial, even essential for students of the Book of Mormon for many reasons , including the following: (1) so readers can appreciate the historical context in which the Lehites and Mulekites originated ; (2) because the Book of Mormon prophets presupposed that their people (and latter-day readers of their records) were familiar with the Hebrew scriptures (the Ch1istian Old Testament) and Israelite. history as they refer to the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, the existence of ten "lost tribes" of Israel, and so on 1 Ne. 17) ;

Effects Of Concurrent Motor, Linguistic, Or Cognitive Tasks On Speech Motor Performance, Christopher Dromey, April Benson

Faculty Publications

This study examined the influence of 3 different types of concurrent tasks on speech motor performance. The goal was to uncover potential differences in speech movements relating to the nature of the secondary task. Twenty young adults repeated sentences either with or without simultaneous distractor activities. These distractions included a motor task (putting together washers, nuts, and bolts), a linguistic task (generating verbs from nouns), and a cognitive task(performing mental arithmetic). Lip movement data collected during the experimental conditions revealed decreases in displacement and velocity during the motor task. The linguistic and cognitive tasks were associated with increased spatiotemporal variability …

An Imaging System Correlating Lip Shapes With Tongue Contact Patterns For Speech Pathology Research, Christopher Dromey, Daniel Bates, Xiaoqian Xu, Sameer Antani, D J. Lee

Faculty Publications

In this research, an imaging system was built to work with a newly developed electronic device to help people produce sounds correctly. The system consists of two parts, the internal tongue contact pattern data collection and the external lip shape information analysis. The tongue position information was gathered using the palatometer, an innovative tongue contact pattern-tracking device invented by Dr. Samuel Fletcher. The lip shape information was collected by processing images taken from people articulating different sounds. We developed an efficient color image segmentation technique to extract lip contour points and form a closed curve for shape analysis. The geometry …

A Vision System Performing Lip Shape Analysis For Speech Pathology Research, Christopher Dromey, D J. Lee, Daniel Bates, Xiaoqian Xu

Faculty Publications

We have built a machine vision system to perform lip shape analysis and recognition and to generate 3.D lip models for speech pathology research. The system employs two color cameras that are synchronized to capture image video pairs simultaneously. A novel color segmentation technique that converts the RGB color components to linear color space has been developed to extract lip shape contours. Lip shape of the viseme, the smallest visibly distinguishable unit of speech, is used to identify its corresponding image frame in the recorded image sequences. It is also used to reconstruct the 3-D lip shape model as a …

Parent And Child Perspectives Of Family Leisure Involvement And Satisfaction With Family Life, Ramon B. Zabriskie, Bryan P. Mccormick

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between family leisure involvement and satisfaction with family life. The sample consisted of 179 families. Data were analyzed at the parent, child, and family level. Findings indicated that family leisure involvement was the strongest multivariate predictor of family satisfaction from the parent perspective, but was not a significant multivariate predictor from the child's perspective. At the family level of measurement, only the block including Core and Balance family leisure variables explained a significant portion of the variance in family satisfaction. History of divorce was a negative multivariate predictor of family …

Some Loans Are More Equal Than Others: Third-Party Originations And Defaults In The Subprime Mortgage Industry, William P. Alexander, Scott D. Grimshaw, Grant R. Mcqueen, Barrett A. Slade

Faculty Publications

We show how agency problems between lenders (principals) and third-party originators (TPO; agents) imply that TPO-originated loans are more likely to default than similar retail-originated loans. The nature of the agency problem is that TPOs are compensated for writing loans, but are not completely held accountable for the subsequent performance of those loans. Using a hazard model with jointly estimated competing risks and unobserved heterogeneity, we find empirical support for the TPO/default prediction using individual fixedrate subprime loans with first liens secured by residential real estate originated between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 1998. We find that apparently equal …

A Comparison Of Partially Adaptive And Reweighted Least Squares Estimation, Brian H. Boyer, James B. Mcdonald, Whitney K. Newey

Faculty Publications

The small sample performance of least median of squares, reweighted least squares, least squares, least absolute deviations, and three partially adaptive estimators are compared using Monte Carlo simulations. Two data problems are addressed in the paper: (1) data generated from non-normal error distributions and (2) contaminated data. Breakdown plots are used to investigate the sensitivity of partially adaptive estimators to data contamination relative to RLS. One partially adaptive estimator performs especially well when the errors are skewed, while another partially adaptive estimator and RLS perform particularly well when the errors are extremely leptokurtotic. In comparison with RLS, partially adaptive estimators …

Concealing And Confounding Adverse Signals: Insider Wealth-Maximizing Behavior In The Ipo Process, James S. Ang, James C. Brau

Faculty Publications

We study a known negative signal, the sale of insider shares in an IPO and find that insiders adopt two concealment strategies consistent with wealth-maximizing behavior. First, insiders underreport the number of personally owned shares in the prominent original prospectus and use an obscure amendment to communicate the true higher level of shares to be offered. Second, when insiders increase shares in a later amendment, they tend to either increase secondary shares disproportional to primary share increases, or to reduce primary shares to wholly or partly conceal the increase in secondary shares offered. Insiders confound the negative secondary share signal …

Efficient Estimation Of Conditional Asset-Pricing Models, Douglas J. Hodgson, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

A semiparametric efficient estimation procedure is developed for the parameters of multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity-in-mean models when the disturbances have a conditional distribution assumed to be elliptically symmetric but otherwise unrestricted. Under highlevel assumptions, the resulting estimator achieves the asymptotic semiparametric efficiency bound. The elliptical symmetry assumption allows us to avert the curse of dimensionality problem that would otherwise arise in estimating the unknown error distribution. This framework is suitable for the estimation and testing of conditional asset-pricing models, such as the conditional capital asset-pricing model. We apply our procedure in an empirical study of stock prices, with Monte …

Return Distributions And Improved Tests Of Asset Pricing Models, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

We compare and contrast some existing ordinary least squares (OLS)- and generalized method of moments (GMM)-based tests of asset pricing models with a new more general test. This new test is valid under the assumption that returns are elliptically distributed, a necessary and sufficient assumption of the linear capital asset pricing model (CAPM). This new test fails to reject the CAPM on a dataset of stocks sorted by market valuations, whereas similar tests constructed from OLS and GMM estimation methods reject the linear CAPM. We also find that outliers reduce the OLSestimated mispricing of the linear CAPM on monthly returns …

Testing Forward Exchange Rate Unbiasedness Efficiently: A Semiparametric Approach, Douglas J. Hodgson, Oliver Linton, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

We apply semiparametric efficient estimation procedures for a seemingly unrelated regression model where the multivariate error density is elliptically symmetric to study the efficiency of the foreign exchange market. We consider both cointegrating regressions and standard stationary regressions. The elliptical symmetry assumption allows us to avoid the curse of dimensionality problem that typically arises in multivariate semiparametric estimation procedures, because the multivariate elliptically symmetric density function can be written as a function of a scalar transformation of the observed multivariate data. We test the unbiasedness hypothesis on both weekly and daily exchange rate data and strongly reject unbiasedness at the …

Investor Overconfidence And Trading Volume, Meir Statman, Steven Thorley, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

The proposition that investors are overconfident about their valuation and trading skills can explain high observed trading volume. With biased self-attribution, the level of investor overconfidence and thus trading volume varies with past returns. We test the trading volume predictions of formal overconfidence models and find that share turnover is positively related to lagged returns for many months. The relationship holds for both market-wide and individual security turnover, which we interpret as evidence of investor overconfidence and the disposition effect, respectively. Security volume is more responsive to market return shocks than to security return shocks, and both relationships are more …

Propping And Tunneling, Eric Friedman, Simon Johnson, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

In countries with weak legal systems, there is a great deal of tunneling by the entrepreneurs who control publicly traded firms. However, under some conditions entrepreneurs prop up their firms, i.e., they use their private funds to benefit minority shareholders. We provide evidence and a model that explains propping. In particular, we suggest that issuing debt can credibly commit an entrepreneur to propping, even though creditors can never take possession of any underlying collateral. This helps to explain why emerging markets with weak institutions sometimes grow rapidly and why they are also subject to frequent economic and financial crises. Journal …