Digital Commons Network^™

Gras-Fed Americans: Sick Of Lax Regulation Of Food Additives, Martha Dragich

Faculty Publications

Americans are “GRAS-fed” because of a “loophole” in the strict regime Congress provided for the regulation of food additives. Additives - and food products containing them - are exempt from this strict regime if they are accorded GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status. The guidelines Congress provided for achieving that status by scientific evidence of safety are no longer observed. Most additives are determined by the producer alone to be GRAS. At the same time, Americans’ consumption of highly processed foods continues to rise, giving rise to long-term health problems that are increasingly tied to diet. The average American’s diet …

Late Fremont Cultural Identities And Borderland Processes, Michael T. Searcy, Richard K. Talbot

Faculty Publications

he spread of maize farming across the American Southwest reached its northernmost extent west of the Rockies by the first or second centuries ad (James Allison, personal communication, 2014; Allison 2014), in the area encompassing the Colorado Plateau north of the Colorado River and the eastern portion of the Great Basin. he practitioners of farming in this area, the Fremont, generally resemble other Southwest farmers in material culture, social structure, settlement, and land use. hey are markedly different from contemporaneous hunter- gatherers to the west, north, and east in these same characteristics and in general economic strategy. Changing paradigms have …

The Function Of Field Study: Comparison Of Limited And Full Field Experience Courses, Lauren Fine, Telyn Peterson, Mat Duerden, Riley Nelson, John Bennion

Faculty Publications

Fieldwork, an experiential and outdoor component of a traditional lecture class, has been effective in improving students’ content knowledge and attitudes. However, most studies of these courses use a full lecture course as the comparison group rather than comparing amounts or types of fieldwork. This study compares two classes that incorporate fieldwork (n = 18 and 12 participants, respectively) and uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze changes in content knowledge, self-efficacy, and perceived value of the subject (entomology). Pre-and post-test scores suggest that information memorization is best taught in a traditional classroom environment. Qualitative data illustrate that the …

The Wealth Of Subnations: Geography, Institutions, And Within-Country Development, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

I study determinants of economic development in a new dataset covering 1867 subnational regions from 101 countries, focusing on within-country effects of geography and institutions. Several geographic factors have significant explanatory power forwithin-country differences in per-capita GDP, including terrain ruggedness, tropical climate, ocean access, temperature range, storm risk, and natural resources such as oil, diamonds, or iron. Institutions have a significant positive effect on income among subnational regions with greater autonomy, suggesting that strong subnational institutions enhance development when not dominated by national institutions.

Powerful Association Test Combining Rare Variant And Gene Expression Using Family Data From Genetic Analysis Workshop 19, Yen Yi Ho, Weihua Guan, Michael O'Connell, Saonli Basu

Faculty Publications

Background: Genetic association studies aim to test for disease or trait association with genetic variants, either throughout the human genome or in regions of interest. However, for most diseases and traits, the combined effects of associated genetic variants explain only a small proportion of the genetic variation. This "missing heritability" may be a result of the small effects of common variants considered in the genetic association studies. Rare variants may also play an important role in understanding the missing heritability of complex traits. Method: We propose a novel weight-adjustment approach to combine gene expression into rare variant analysis. Results from …

The Role Of Journaling In Reflective Writing In Experiential Education: A Case Study Intervention, John Bennion, Mat Duerden, Anne Whitehouse

Faculty Publications

Research suggests that journaling will increase reflection and improve program outcomes (Bain, et al, 1999; Duerden, et al, 2012) This study involved a partnership with a non-profit, Global Explorers (GEx), which provides international immersion experiences for youth. Their programs are designed to teach youth participants principles of leadership, environmental awareness, service, and science. This study, which tested whether teaching journaling techniques to youth program facilitators would have a positive impact on participant outcomes, addressed the following hypotheses: 1) Greater training in reflective thinking among participants would be associated with higher outcome scores, and 2) Participants in the intervention group (facilitators …

Sensation, Intuition, Space, And Time In Hegel’S Philosophy Of Subjective Spirit, Willem A. Devries

Faculty Publications

The subject of space, time, sensation, and intuition in Hegel is complicated, more so in Hegel than in Kant, and for good reason. Hegel rejected Kant’s Transcendental Idealism; besides the subjective reality Kant attributed to space and time, Hegel also attributed to them a truly objective reality. According to Hegel, space and time qualify finite things as they really are. Moreover, I shall argue, space and time, in Hegel’s view, have two different modes of subjective presence. We can illuminate these distinctive modes of subjective presence by comparing Hegel’s with Wilfrid Sellars’ strikingly similar arguments against Transcendental Idealism.

Your Memory Is Working Against You: How Eye Tracking And Memory Explain Habituation To Security Warnings, Bonnie Anderson, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Anthony Vance, C. Brock Kirwan, David Eargle

Faculty Publications

Securitywarnings are critical to the security of end users and their organizations, often representing the final defense against an attack. Because warnings require users to make a contextual judgment, it is critical that they pay close attention to warnings. However, research shows that users routinely disregard them. A major factor contributing to the ineffectiveness of warnings is habituation, the decreased response to a repeated warning. Although previous research has identified the problem of habituation, the phenomenon has only been observed indirectly through behavioral measures. Therefore, it is unclear how habituation develops in the brain in response to security warnings, and …

Compelled Commercial Speech And The Consumer "Right To Know", Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Compelled commercial speech, including mandatory labeling and the disclosure of factually true information, should not be seen as a separate category of speech under the First Amendment. Rather, compelled commercial speech should be understood as a type of commercial speech and be subject to the same level of protection as commercial speech generally. Accordingly, commercial speech compulsions, such as mandatory disclosures and labeling requirements, must be supported by a substantial government interest under the Central Hudson framework. The assertion of a consumer “right to know” does not constitute such an interest and cannot, by itself, justify compelled commercial speech within …

Being Student And Practitioner Centered: Lessons Learned From Integrating A Recreation Management Department Into A Business School, Patti A. Freeman, Mat D. Duerden, Brian J. Hill

Faculty Publications

In July 2009, Brigham Young University’s Recreation Management (RecM) Department moved to the Marriott School of Management (MSM), beginning its integration into a nationally ranked business school, including the transition from a college with little coordination between departments to one where all majors share a common core of classes. Despite initial feelings of uncertainty, many insights over time emerged as to how the RecM department could better serve students and professionals. This paper shares some of the lessons the RecM Department learned that hold applicability for other recreation departments, including the (1) influence of names on external perceptions and curriculum, …

Linguistic Cohesion In Middle-School Texts: A Comparison Of Logical Connectives Usage In Science And Social Studies Textbooks, Diego Román, Allison Briceño, Hannah Rhode, Stephanie Hironka

Faculty Publications

Learning from textbooks is challenging because students must understand novel concepts while also comprehending the language used to convey those concepts. In the domain of science, one posited reason for the perceived difficulty in the reading comprehension of science texts is the low frequency of logical connectives (words that signal relationships between sentences and ideas). To test this claim and discuss its potential effects on the reading comprehension of texts used at the middle school level, this study measured whether the usage of logical connectives (e.g., therefore, so) differed between science and social studies textbooks. Our findings from a large …

Pro-Fit: Exercise With Friends, Saumil Dharia, Vijesh Jain, Jvalant Patel, Jainikkumar Vora, Rizen Yamauchi, Magdalini Eirinaki, Iraklis Varlamis

Faculty Publications

The advancements in wearable technology, where embedded accelerometers, gyroscopes and other sensors enable the users to actively monitor their activity have made it easier for individuals to pursue a healthy lifestyle. However, most of the existing applications expect continuous commitment from the end users, who need to proactively interact with the application in order to connect with friends and attain their goals. These applications fail to engage and motivate users who have busy schedules, or are not as committed and self-motivated. In this work, we present PRO-Fit, a personalized fitness assistant application that employs machine learning and recommendation algorithms in …

Natural History, Phenology, And Stream Use Of Hyla Plicata From The Arroyo Los Axolotes, State Of Mexico, Mexico, J. A. Lemos-Espinal, Geoffrey R. Smith, A. Hernandez Ruiz, R. Montoya Ayala

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Amphibians And Reptiles Of The State Of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, J. A. Lemos-Espinal, Geoffrey R. Smith, A. Cruz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Amphibians And Reptiles Of The State Of Coahuila, Mexico, With Comparison With Adjoining States, J. A. Lemos-Espinal, Geoffrey R. Smith

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

When Training Gets Trumped: How Dual-Task Interference Inhibits Security Training, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Bonnie Anderson, Anthony Osborn Vance, Scott Jensen

Faculty Publications

Security training programs are an important intervention to protect users and organizations against security threats. Unfortunately, users often ignore their training and engage in poor security behaviors. We explain how dual-task interference (DTI) is a primary cause of security training disregard. DTI is a cognitive limitation wherein humans cannot perform more than one task simultaneously without experiencing a deterioration of performance. In our context, we hypothesize how prompting users to perform security behaviors during high-DTI times may derail one’s previous security training, resulting in less secure behaviors.

We test our hypotheses in an experiment that compares users’ adherence to security …

Life Satisfaction Moderates The Associations Between Motives And Excessive Social Networking Site Usage, Jin-Liang Wang, James Gaskin, Hai-Zhen Wang, Dong Liu

Faculty Publications

It has been suggested that excessive social networking sites (SNS) users might use SNS as a method of coping with their life problems and that psychosocial well-being variables might interact with users’ motives for using SNS in predicting problematic SNS use. The present research explores whether the association between motives (i.e. self-expression and passing time) and excessive SNS usage is moderated by the user’s life satisfaction. A total of 996 college students were recruited from two colleges in Chongqing China. The participants were divided into excessive and nonexcessive SNS usage groups based on their mean score from the excessive SNS …

Real-Time Hand Tremor Detection Via Mouse Cursor Movements For Improved Human-Computer Interactions: An Exploratory Study, Parker A. Williams, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Joseph S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Millions of people experience hand-tremors—rhythmic oscillation of the fingers, hands, or arm that cause shaking in the hand. People who experience hand tremors often experience difficulty in human computer interactions. For example, when browsing a website, people with hand tremors may have difficulty navigating or clicking on links in the website. With sever hand tremors, effective computing is difficult without assistance. Past research has developed interventions that can be automatically deployed by a website to make it more accessible to people with hand tremors. We build on this research by creating a methodology to unobtrusively detect hand tremors, allowing these …

Rethinking Fremont Chronology, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

The dating of Fremont sites is based almost entirely on radiocarbon dates. A large number of dates exist from the region as a whole, but many of the largest Fremont sites are poorly dated. Most of the important sites excavated prior to the 1980s have at best a few dates, and many of the dates that do exist are on charcoal from structural wood. In some cases the only available dates are clearly centuries too early for the sites and structures they purport to date. In addition to problems with the data, some reports and publications about Fremont archaeology make …

Early Mimbres Households: Exploring The Late Pithouse Period (550–1000 Ad) At The Florida Mountain Site, Michael T. Searcy, Bernard Schriever, Matthew Taliaferro

Faculty Publications

Many studies have explored the household to understand social organization, production, and other dynamics of societies throughout the world. In this work, the approach outlined by Richard Wilk and colleagues is used to investigate households at the Florida Mountain Site, an intermittently occupied Late Pithouse period (550–1000 AD) residential site in the Mimbres Mogollon area of Southwestern New Mexico. Drawing on the similarities of this intermittent residential site to contemporaneous pitstructure sites in the Mimbres area, we suggest that one or more household units occupied the site. Our analysis also supports previous inferences that Mimbres households were integrated into more …

No Association Between Current Depression And Latent Toxoplasmosis In Adults, Bruce L. Brown, Shawn D. Gale, Andrew N. Berrett, Lance D. Erickson, Dawson W. Hedges

Faculty Publications

Changes in behaviour and cognition have been associated with latent infection from the apicomplexan protozoan Toxoplasma gondii (Nicolle et Manceaux, 1908) in both animal and human studies. Further, neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia have also been associated with latent toxoplasmosis. Previously, we found no association between T. gondii immunoglobulin G antibody (IgG) seropositivity and depression in human adults between the ages of 20 and 39 years (n = 1 846) in a sample representative of the United States collected by the Centers for Disease Control as part of a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from three datasets collected …

For Love Or Money? The Economic Consequences Of Delayed Marriage, Jason S. Carroll

Faculty Publications

It has been well documented that over the last few decades we have seen a substantial increase in the median age of marriage in the United States. In fact, we are currently at all-time historic highs in these trends. According to the Current Population Survey from the U.S. Census, the median age of marriage right now is nearly 29 years of age for men and 27 years of age for women. Given the trajectory of this trend over the last several years, we are quickly approaching a time in our culture where half of marriages will occur for individuals after …

The Role And Functions Of The Biblical Genealogies, Paul Ray

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Old Testament Principles Relevant To Consensual Homoerotic Activity—Part 3, Roy E. Gane

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Modeling Animal Behavior In A Changing Environment, Shandelle M. Henson, James M. Cushing, James L. Hayward

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Growth Conditions For Uniqueness Of Smooth Positive Solutions To An Elliptic Model, Joon Hyuk Kang

Faculty Publications

The uniqueness of positive solution to the elliptic model

∆u + u[a + g(u, v)] = 0 in Ω, ∆v + v[a + h(u, v)] = 0 in Ω, u = v = 0 on ∂Ω,

were investigated.

No Association Between Latent Toxoplasmosis And Multiple Body Measures In U.S. Adults, Bruce L. Brown, Andrew N. Berrett, Shawn D. Gale, Lance D. Erickson, Dawson W. Hedges

Faculty Publications

Toxoplasma gondii (Nicolle et Manceaux, 1908) is an intracellular parasite that can cause ongoing latent infection persisting for the duration of a non-definitive host's life. Affecting approximately one-third of the world's population, latent toxoplasmosis has been associated with neuropsychological outcomes and a previous report suggested an association between latent toxoplasmosis and adult height. Given the large number of people with latent toxoplasmosis and its potential associations with human height, we sought to better understand the association between latent toxoplasmosis and human morphology by evaluating seropositivity for T. gondii and multiple body measures reported in the National Health and Nutrition Examination …

Blended Learning Citation Patterns And Publication Networks Across Seven Worldwide Regions, Kristian J. Spring, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

The field of international blended learning (BL) is primed to benefit from stronger communication and collaboration. Collaboration is currently limited, and regions vary greatly in terms of citations. However, BL is growing worldwide and each region is an important part of the community. The goal of this research is to explore where the most impactful conversations about BL worldwide are occurring and how, if at all, are they connected to one another in terms of citations and publications. We present here the most cited BL articles from each region, the journals that publish these articles, and citation and publication patterns …

Comparing The Publication Process In Accounting, Economics, Finance, Management, Marketing, Psychology, And The Natural Sciences, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

I present two types of data about the publication and review process in the accounting, economics, finance, management, marketing, psychology, and natural science disciplines. First, I collect all articles published in 2012 in top tier journals of these disciplines and compare the articles based on word counts, figures and tables included in each article, the time it took to be published, citations, the number of co-authors, and submission fees. I then survey academics in each discipline. Survey questions were designed to evaluate overall perceptions of the review process; changes in the review process in the last 5 years; opinions about …

Aerodynamic Performance Characterization Of Leading Edge Protrusions On Small Propellers, Kevin Moore, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

The relatively large tubercles or protruding bumps on the leading edge of the humpback whale fin create counter-rotating chordwise vortices. At high Reynolds numbers, these vortices have been shown to delay stall with minimal effect on drag. The range of Reynolds numbers that these types of vortices form is unknown, and so an investigation of the potential for an increased envelope of operation for small aircraft propellers was done. For the cases tested in this report no benefits were observed. The addition of leading edge protrusions decreased propeller performance in both efficiency and thrust. Because of the inherent restrictions on …