Digital Commons Network^™

Leadership And Employee Motivation In Climate-Focused Organizations: A Pathway To Transformation, Andrew Mwape

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Climate-focused organizations play a crucial role in addressing global environmental challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, and sustainability. This article explores the dynamics of leadership and employee motivation in such organizations, emphasizing the importance of transformational leadership in fostering innovation, collaboration, and resilience. By aligning organizational missions with employee values, leaders can inspire commitment and enhance productivity. The paper examines the roles of civic capacity, organizational change, and cross-sector collaboration in driving climate action. Drawing on case studies and scholarly insights, it provides practical recommendations for leaders to navigate the complexities of managing climate-focused initiatives. The findings underscore the …

Doctors’ Duty To Provide Abortion Information, Michelle Oberman, Lisa Soleymani Lehmann

Faculty Publications

With abortion remaining legal in over half of the country and a proliferation of websites offering information on how to access abortion medications, ending an unwanted early-stage pregnancy remains surprisingly easy. That is, easy for those who know where to look. But not all patients have equal access to reliable information. This Article addresses the urgent downstream harms caused by the lack of access to abortion information, particularly among the most vulnerable Americans, and argues that, in view of these consequences, regardless of abortion’s legal status, clinicians have a duty to provide their patients with abortion information.

We begin with …

Against Silence: Why Doctors Are Obligated To Provide Abortion, Michelle Oberman

Faculty Publications

As a lawyer, I have long been interested in the gap between law and the books and law in practice. In 2008, this curiosity led me to Latin America, where I began studying the impact of the world's most restrictive abortion bans. My first stop was Chile, which at the time banned abortion under all conditions–– there was not even an exception to save women's lives. Raised on the history of what happened when abortion was illegal in the United States prior to Roe v. Wade, I knew asking doctors to share their experiences was one way to gauge the …

A Mixed Methods Approach To Understanding The Links Between Mining, Climate Change And Selected Health Outcomes In India, Mary J. Cheruvillil

Dissertations and Theses

Despite ample evidence of the significant role that mining activities play in determining health outcomes, in India there is a dearth of comprehensive health studies that draw linkages between mining and health. The purpose of the following study is to investigate the impact of mining activities on population health in India using three different methods: ecological multivariable regression, exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and content analysis of government documents using a phenomenological approach. The first aim uses the ecological multivariable regression to examine associations between mining activities and children’s malnutrition outcomes at the district level. Census data, the Demographic Health …

Rhodolith-Forming Coralline Red Algae In The Caco3 Biofactory — A Case Study From The Serravallian Of Tropical Northeastern Indian Ocean, Rikee Dey, Daniela Basso, Arindam Chakraborty, Lopamudra Roy, Ajoy Kumar Bhaumik, Amit K. Ghosh

Research Publications (2021 to 2025)

Non-geniculate coral red algae forming rhodoliths have been recorded in the Long Formation, exposed in four different outcrops on Little Andaman Island (Hut Bay). Non-geniculate corallines are represented by species of Sporolithon Heydrich, 1897, Mesophyllum Lemoine, 1928, Lithothamnion Heydrich, 1897, Phymatolithon Foslie, 1898, Lithoporella (Foslie) Foslie, 1909, Spongites Kützing, 1841, Neogoniolithon Setchell & Mason, 1943 and Lithophyllum Philippi, 1837. Algal assemblages also include geniculate corallines belonging to the generaAmphiroa Lamouroux, 1812 and CorallinaLinnaeus, 1758. Additionally, larger benthic foraminifera and some planktonic foraminifera were also identified in the thin section analysis. Based on the previous study carried out on planktonic foraminifera, …

Forgotten Loss: The Story Of Iowa's Deadliest Train Accident, Scott Foens

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

At 8:18 AM on March 21, 1910, the lead tender of a Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railways “double header” passenger train left the tracks four miles outside Green Mountain, Iowa. Detoured because a freight train crash blocked the Rock Island’s main line to Waterloo, CRI&P operations in Cedar Rapids arranged for the two trains to travel west on the Chicago Northwestern’s tracks and then turn northeast towards Waterloo along the Diagonal, a section of Chicago Great Western road that was part of the Maple Leaf route. The wreck completely destroyed one wooden passenger coach and half of a second …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Critical Text Project Reported In California

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The American Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, California, and the University of Judaism in West Los Angeles invited Royal Skousen, professor of English at BYU, to present a lecture in March on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. Skousen's lecture, entitled "Fragments from the American Dead Sea: Reconstructing the Original Text of the Book of Mormon," addressed recent findings from the Wilford Wood fragments of the original Book of Mormon manuscript, non-English Hebraisms in the English language Book of Mormon text, and implications for New Testament textual criticism based on these and other recent findings. Skousen's lecture was one …

Journal To Honor Sperry

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sidney B. Sperry, one of the foremost LDS scholars of this century. In honor of that occasion, the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies will devote its next issue to Sperry's writings on the Book of Mormon.

Review Begins New Features: Picks And Index

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

In the latest Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, editor Daniel Peterson selects the books he would most recommend to his readers from among those published in 1994. The book by Warren and Michaela Aston is the most highly recommended in this issue: In the Footsteps of Lehi: New Evidence for Lehi's Journey across Arabia to Bountiful (reviewed by Ara Norwood). Peterson recommends the book enthusiastically for its "brief and rather personal summary of the authors' extremely important research into the Arabian geography" that might correspond to 1 Nephi.

Data Base Impresses Scholars At Farms-Sponsored Scroll Conference In Jerusalem

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Several BYU professors and FARMS staff and board members recently returned from a successful conference in Jerusalem. On April 30, BYU and FARMS cosponsored the Judaean Desert Scrolls Conference at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. The primary purpose of the conference was to present the first working version of the Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Database, the latest technology using computer images and text search features to aid research on the Dead Sea Scrolls (described in recent issues of Insights).

The Legacy Of The Builder: Joseph T. Jones And The Development Of Gulfport, Mississippi, Reagan Grimsley

Journal of Mississippi History

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ricks's Thorough Concordance

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

In 1971, Eldin Ricks initiated the first project to put the scriptures into computer form. The database that resulted has been used as the basis for the Topical Guide and other scriptural references and was the original database for the Church's distribution of the scriptures in computer form (LDS View) and for most other recent concordances, both computer and printed. But Brother Ricks always had in mind a printed concordance of the LDS scriptures comparable to the James Strong Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, which lists all occurrences of all words in the scripture text, shown with a meaningful …

What Puts A City On The Map? A Book Of Mormon Brain Teaser

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Each of the cities on the left was important in Book of Mormon history. Match each one with the correct situation or event on the right. See the answers on page 8--or better yet, open the Book of Mormon and get the full story.

"History Of The Animal Welfare Movement In Madras-Chennai", Andrew Rowan

Tales of WellBeing

Animal welfare in India enjoys considerable public support. Prashanth Krishna’s book details how this support was translated into government policy.

From Colonization To Conservation: Examining Representations Of Nonhuman Arctic Animals In British Children's Literature During The Long Nineteenth Century, Hannah Ney

Arctic and Northern Studies

This paper examines the impact of British children's literature on shaping attitudes toward the Arctic and its nonhuman animals during the long nineteenth century. As the British renewed their interest in the Arctic, authors used children's literature to convey imperial ambitions and shape beliefs about the region. Using an ecocritical lens, this analysis demonstrates that the crafting of nonhuman animal portrayals helped shape children's beliefs about the Arctic and its role in the British Empire. The literature showcased illustrates a significant shift in British attitudes toward the human-environment relationship, moving from exploration to exploitation to protection. Early exploration narratives introduced …

Designing Social Connection: Older Adults And The Infrastructure Of Social Encounters, Bomin Kim

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

In recent decades, public space has gained significant attention in both design theory and practice as a critical components of sustainable development for older adults. With growing concerns about social disconnect, economic inequality, and environmental injustice, the revitalization of public space has become a critical piece in creating safe and just cities to foster social connection, health, and resilience for our aging population. I argue in this dissertation that older adults rely on an infrastructure of encounters to navigate social life and that designers and policymakers should critically examine how public spaces distribute and burden labor necessary to create weak …

An Odontometric Biodistance Analysis Of The Rong And The A'Chik, Mary Ashley Stough

Anthropology

Little is known about the population history and genetic affinities of many of the tribal groups of northeastern India, including the Rong and the A'chik. Previous linguistic and genetic studies have suggested that these non-Hindu tribal groups may be descendants of East Asian immigrants. Due to the linguistic and genetic research, cultural differences between the groups, and geographic barriers it was hypothesized that members of these two tribal groups share a population history different from that of ethnic groups of other regions of the subcontinent. This study employs tooth size allocation analysis to test hypotheses concerning the origins of the …

Impacts Of Tidewater Glacier Advance On Iceberg Habitat, Lynn M. Kaluzienski, Jason M. Amundson, Jamie M. Womble, Andrew K. Bliss, Linnea E. Pearson

Faculty, Staff, and Students

Icebergs in proglacial fjords serve as pupping, resting and molting habitat for some of the largest seasonal aggregations of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) in Alaska. One of the largest aggregations in Southeast Alaska occurs in Johns Hopkins Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park, where up to 2000 seals use icebergs produced by Johns Hopkins Glacier. Like other advancing tidewater glaciers, the advance of Johns Hopkins Glacier over the past century has been facilitated by the growth and continual redistribution of a submarine end moraine, which has limited mass losses from iceberg calving and submarine melting and enabled glacier thickening by …

Graph-Based Learning Networks For Automatic Pigment Mapping Of Historical Artifacts, Bei Cao

Theses

Hyperspectral image classification can be a difficult task due to a lack of ground-truth labels and spectral variability. For hyperspectral images (HSIs) of historical artifacts, which are generally man-made objects, this is generally a significant challenge. Aiming to differentiate subtle spectral differences between varied pigments, we introduce graph- based learning networks and a powerful learning pipeline for realizing automatic pigment mapping on the maps. First, we develop a Graph Modularity clustering method for pro- ducing trustworthy ground-truth map for pigment classification task. We analyze the influence of graph structure on the Graph Neural Networks and propose Spatial-Spectral Graph Convolutional Network …

An 11,600-Year Reconstruction Of Vegetation Communities, Moisture Availability, And Land Use Changes At Lake Khargal, Northern Mongolia, Joshua A. Barna

Geosciences

The regional response of vegetation to global atmospheric circulation patterns and human influence throughout the Holocene is recorded by environmental proxies in sediment cores from Lake Khargal in northern Mongolia. Pollen, spores, total organic carbon, and grain size analysis indicate that conditions in the watershed were moderately humid at ~11500 cal yr B.P. The vegetation community surrounding Lake Khargal consists of mainly of Artemisia (sage), Poaceae (grass), and Betula (birch) with a modest amount of extra-local Pinus (pine) from nearby boreal forests. Fluctuations in the ratios of these and other taxa show that aridity increased after ~10000 cal yr B.P., …

Improved Boreal Vegetation Mapping Using Imaging Spectroscopy To Aid Wildfire Management, Interior Alaska, Anushree Badola

Geosciences

Wildfires are a natural and essential part of Alaska ecosystems, but excessive wildfires pose a risk to the ecosystem's health and diversity, as well as to human life and property. To manage wildfires effectively, vegetation/fuel maps play a critical role in identifying high-risk areas and allocating resources for prevention, suppression, and recovery efforts. Furthermore, vegetation/fuel maps are an important input for fire behavior models, along with weather and topography data. By predicting fire behavior, such as spread rate, intensity, and direction, fuel models allow fire managers to make informed decisions about wildfire suppression, management, and prevention. Traditionally used vegetation/fuel maps …

Assessing Fish Communities And Habitat Dynamics At The North Platte River-Lake Mcconaughy Interface: Implications For Conservation And Management, Thyme Leesa Taulaki

Biology Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

The river-reservoir interface (RRI) provides dynamic habitat heterogeneity that influences fish communities within the reservoir and the tributary upstream. However, little is known about the North Platte River-Lake McConaughy interface. Thus, the objectives of this research were to: 1) describe fish assemblages in the North Platte River and relate their temporal differences to water quality and physical habitat parameters; and 2) compare young fish communities collected with different gears in the upper reservoir. Twenty-nine species were collected across four habitat types in the North Platte River above Lake McConaughy. Main and side channel habitats were more consistently available throughout the …

Effects Of Annual Weather Variation On Peak Herbaceous Yield Date In Sagebrush Steppe, Jonathan Bates, Dustin Johnson, Kirk W. Davies, Tony Svejcar, Stuart Hardegree

Western North American Naturalist

Interannual climate variability impacts forage yield in semiarid rangelands, but it also affects the timing of peak yields. Knowledge of peak standing crop or yield dates would be useful when planning fieldwork for various research or management activities and for developing more accurate models linking herbage production to climatic variables. In this study, herbaceous yield was measured every 2 weeks (April–August) over an 8-year period in a Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis) community in southeastern Oregon. Date of peak yield (Julian day) was calculated for morphological groups (tall perennial bunchgrasses, perennial forbs, annual forbs), Sandberg bluegrass …

Dynamics Of The Mrsa Population In A Chilean Hospital: A Phylogenomic Analysis (2000-2016), José R W Martínez, Paul J Planet, Maria Spencer-Sandino, Lina Rivas, Lorena Díaz, Ahmed M Moustafa, Ana Quesille-Villalobos, Roberto Riquelme-Neira, Manuel Alcalde-Rico, Blake Hanson, Lina P Carvajal, Sandra Rincón, Jinnethe Reyes, Marusella Lam, Juan F Calderon, Rafael Araos, Patricia García, César A Arias, José M Munita

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The global dissemination of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is associated with the emergence and establishment of clones in specific geographic areas. The Chilean-Cordobes clone (ChC) (ST5-SCCmecI) has been the predominant MRSA clone in Chile since its first description in 1998, despite the report of other emerging MRSA clones in recent years. Here, we characterize the evolutionary history of MRSA from 2000 to 2016 in a Chilean tertiary health care center using phylogenomic analyses. We sequenced 469 MRSA isolates collected between 2000 and 2016. We evaluated the temporal trends of the circulating clones and performed a phylogenomic reconstruction to …

Adapting Density Surface Models For Complex Survey Areas: Application To Humpback Whale (Megaptera Novaeangliae) Abundance And Distribution Estimation In Southeast Alaska, Abigail Schiffmiller

Biological Sciences

Population abundance and distribution estimates are foundational to understanding and managing populations. Increasing accuracy and resolution of such estimates increases their utility for researchers and managers. Line transect surveys analyzed using both traditional design-based distance sampling (dbDS) and spatially explicit density surface modeling (DSM) are used across systems and taxa to estimate abundance and distributions of populations. DSM has the advantages of being able to increase the resolution of density estimates and evaluate the correlation between density and environmental factors as well as accepting data from a wider variety of surveys. In this thesis I used a soap film smoother …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New F.A.R.M.S. Series Answers Book Of Mormon Criticisms

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Over the years, many F.A.R.M.S. readers have called or written to ask questions about the Book of Mormon. As we have prepared answers, we have found that many questions are asked over and over again, and that publications attacking the Book of Mormon repeat the same criticisms over and over.

Journal Presents Another Interdisciplinary Look At The Book Of Mormon

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The fall issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, now available on the enclosed order form, features articles that examine the Book of Mormon in terms of theology, chronology, textual analysis, Jewish customs, and even engineering principles. Articles include the following.