Digital Commons Network^™

Facile Atomic-Level Structure Determination Of Proteins, James Moody

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Protein structure and function, Protein crystallization methods, Enzymology, Enzyme engineering

Multi-Scale Simulation Of Turbulent Reacting Flow, David O. Lignell

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Design more efficient processes, Understand key physical phenomena, Limit and control pollutants, Analyze and predict hazards

Dellacorte Lab At Byu, Dennis Dellacorte

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Protein Folding, Protein Engineering, Building models that help interpret experimental results

Using X-Ray Vision To Understand How Things Break: Lensless X-Ray Imaging Of Materials In Extreme Conditions, Richard Sandberg

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Microscopy, nanotechnology, optics, inverse problems, applied math, materials science, computer science, data science, x-ray imaging and diffraction

Polydnavirus Innexins Disrupt Host Cellular Encapsulation And Larval Maturation, Peng Zhang, Matthew Turnbull

Open Access Publishing Fund

Polydnaviruses are dsDNA viruses associated with endoparasitoid wasps. Delivery of the virus during parasitization of a caterpillar and subsequent virus gene expression is required for production of an amenable environment for parasitoid offspring development. Consequently, understanding of Polydnavirus gene function provides insight into mechanisms of host susceptibility and parasitoid wasp host range. Polydnavirus genes predominantly are arranged in multimember gene families, one of which is the vinnexins, which are virus homologues of insect gap junction genes, the innexins. Previous studies of Campoletis sonorensis Ichnovirus Vinnexins using various heterologous systems have suggested the four encoded members may provide different functionality in …

Morag Myerscough, Lukas Emory

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Structural Design, Taylor Sorensen

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Structural analysis, design, and sustainability; Thermal performance of structures

Computational Design Through Manufacturing, Kendrick Shepherd

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Computer-Aided Design, Engineering, and Manufacturing; Continuum Mechanics;

Partial Differential Equations;

Computational Geometry; Isogeometric Analysis

International Education In The U.S. Through The Prism Of Fulbright Program: Historical Analysis, Polina Kaniuka

Bakerman Student Research Awards

The scale and speed of global change challenge higher education and other national sectors to internationalize, to have an understanding of the relationship of various nations, including the United States, with the rest of the world, and to realize the importance of the latter. International education plays a prominent role in the shaping of a new global society. However, it seems there has not been enough support from the federal government in regards to the efforts promoting international education in the United States. Many studies touched on the role of the federal government when it comes to the higher education; …

Winter Cereal Rye Cover Crop Decreased Nitrous Oxide Emissions During Early Spring, Graig W. Reicks, David E. Clay, Sharon A. Clay, Deepak R. Joshi, Janet Moriles-Miller, Shaina Westhoff, Aaron Lee M. Daigh, Stephanie A. Bruggeman

Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science Faculty Publications

Despite differences between the cover crop growth and decomposition phases, few greenhouse gas (GHG) studies have separated these phases from each other. This study’s hypothesis was that a living cover crop reduces soil inorganic N concentrations and soil water, thereby reducing N₂O emissions. We quantified the effects of a fall-planted living cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crop (2017, 2018, 2019) on the following spring’s soil temperature, soil water, water-filled porosity (WFP), inorganic N, and GHG (N₂O-N and CO₂–C) emissions and compared these measurements to bare soil. The experimental design was a randomized …

Bacteria In Blood Particles For Drug Delivery, Bill Pitt

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Biomedical engineering, drug delivery, bacteria, blood, particles, polymers

Ensemble Data Fitting For Bathymetric Models Informed By Nominal Data, Samantha Zambo

Dissertations

Due to the difficulty and expense of collecting bathymetric data, modeling is the primary tool to produce detailed maps of the ocean floor. Current modeling practices typically utilize only one interpolator; the industry standard is splines-in-tension.

In this dissertation we introduce a new nominal-informed ensemble interpolator designed to improve modeling accuracy in regions of sparse data. The method is guided by a priori domain knowledge provided by artificially intelligent classifiers. We recast such geomorphological classifications, such as ‘seamount’ or ‘ridge’, as nominal data which we utilize as foundational shapes in an expanded ordinary least squares regression-based algorithm. To our knowledge …

Boosting Degree Attainment: A Mixed Methods Examination Of An Adult Degree Completion Initiative, Hannah Harrison

Dissertations

Higher education has increased its focus to national degree attainment, especially among adults who have some college education (Hardin, 2008; Nettles, 2017). Research from these entities identifies future economic growth and the strength of the United States economy requires a more highly educated society (Carnevale & Rose, 2014). As a result, Federal and institutional initiatives seek ways to increase the retention rates of current students while also incentivizing students to return to school to complete their degrees (Markle, 2015). A review of the related literature identified economic and social benefits exist for individuals who obtain a postsecondary degree (Chan, 2016). …

Doping Of Conjugated Polymers: Preparation, Characterization And Device Fabrication, Kan Tang

Dissertations

Semiconducting conjugated polymers (CPs) as emerging materials for advanced electronic applications such as sensors, OPVs, and OEFTs has become an intriguing research topic in the past decades. It opens a new avenue of “flexible” electronics, which has shown great potential in next-generation electronic devices.

However, due to the nature of CP materials and related solution processing techniques, unlike almost perfectly crystalline silicon materials, CPs in the solid-state often exhibit much lower crystallinity if it is not complete amorphous, which severely hinder the electronic property and optical property of the materials. The crystallinity of CPs in a film is often uniquely …

This Was The World And I Was King: Land And Identity In Scottish Children's Literature Of The Golden Age, Rodney Fierce

Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on Scottish cultural identity and its erasure in nineteenth-century British children’s literature as successful Scottish authors became known as British authors, and British children’s literature was canonized as the genre’s first Golden Age. Specifically, it explores the ways that Catherine Sinclair, George MacDonald, R. M. Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, and Helen Bannerman—six popular nineteenth-century Scottish authors—maintain a sense of Scottishness in their adventure fiction. By reading the texts in the historical context of the authors’ biographies, I demonstrate that the land in their works and the benevolent colonizers allowed to control it in some …

Mobbing And Job Satisfaction Among Registered Nurses In Mississippi, Brenda Collins

Dissertations

The incidences of mobbing or workplace bullying are a common occurrence among nurses. The practice has been associated with overwhelming and long-standing comprising emotional, psychosomatic, and psychosocial distress. Mobbing (workplace bullying) impacts the target, those close to them, and the organization in which they work. The experience of mobbing produces affective reactions in the target. Affective experiences on the job can impact job satisfaction within organizations. Job satisfaction plays an essential role in sustaining an adequate nursing workforce. Subsequently, some nurses become frustrated and opt for resigning or early retirement when they are no longer satisfied with the culture or …

Photopolymer Networks With Tunable Command Destruct Properties, William Walker

Dissertations

Photoinduced thiol-catalyzed hydrogen abstraction and beta-scission of acyclic benzylidene acetals is demonstrated as a new route to “command-destruct” polymer thermosets. Using this approach, we show that poly(thioether acetal) networks synthesized via thiol-ene photopolymerization rapidly degrade to alkyl benzoate byproducts when triggered with light, transitioning from solid to liquid within seconds. The light-driven construction and destruction processes, accessible via distinct differences in kinetics, are readily amendable for photopatterning, additive/subtractive manufacturing, and wavelength-selective applications.

The first chapter of this dissertation details the development of command-destruct poly(thioether acetal) networks via a previously unexplored mechanism for polymer degradation. The degradation mechanism is confirmed via …

Semantics-Driven Large-Scale 3d Scene Retrieval, Juefei Yuan

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Gender And Cross-Cultural Invariance Of Attitudes Toward Statistics Among Non-Stem Undergraduate Students, Mihili Edirisooriya

Dissertations

Because of the wide usage of statistics in almost every field, many universities have incorporated statistics into their undergraduate and graduate curricula. Students taking statistics have often reported negative experiences and an aversion to statistics. Non-STEM students have often reported negative attitudes toward statistics (Chew & Dillon, 2014; Keeley et al., 2008). Researchers have used qualitative and quantitative approaches to measure attitudes toward statistics. The Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics-36 (SATS-36) scale has been the most widely accepted measure to investigate attitudes toward statistics. Any psychometrically sound measurement instrument requires invariance across groups in its usage. Otherwise, measurement biases could …

Vision Based Activity Recognition Using Machine Learning And Deep Learning Architecture, Sarbagya Shakya

Dissertations

Human Activity recognition, with wide application in fields like video surveillance, sports, human interaction, elderly care has shown great influence in upbringing the standard of life of people. With the constant development of new architecture, models, and an increase in the computational capability of the system, the adoption of machine learning and deep learning for activity recognition has shown great improvement with high performance in recent years. My research goal in this thesis is to design and compare machine learning and deep learning models for activity recognition through videos collected from different media in the field of sports.

Human activity …

Discrete Moving Target Defense Application And Benchmarking In Software-Defined Networking, Charan Gudla

Dissertations

Moving Target Defense is a technique focused on disrupting certain phases of a cyber-attack. The static nature of the existing networks gives the adversaries an adequate amount of time to gather enough data concerning the target and succeed in mounting an attack. The random host address mutation is a well-known MTD technique that hides the actual IP address from external scanners. When the host establishes a session of transmitting or receiving data, due to mutation interval, the session is interrupted, leading to the host’s unavailability. Moving the network configuration creates overhead on the controller and additional switching costs resulting in …

An Evaluation Of The Central Coast Rangeland Coalition: Trust And Other Factors Important For Collaborative Conservation, Dustin Tran

Master of Science in Environmental Sciences and Management Projects

The proliferation of collaborative partnerships across the western United States and the lack of tools and protocols to evaluate them have been well documented. As the number and types (conservation-based, policy actions, information sharing) of collaboratives rises, there is a need for research that aims to evaluate these partnerships' performance and collaborative process considering their importance and potential to solve complex ecological, economic, and social problems. This study aims to contribute to this pool of research by interviewing the Steering Committee (SC) members of the Central Coast Rangeland Coalition (CCRC), a volunteer-based and information-sharing rangeland collaborative coalition. We evaluate and …

A Comparative Review Of Cell-Based Mariculture And Conventional Seafood Life Cycle Assesments, Kyle Rathbone

Master of Science in Environmental Sciences and Management Projects

The global fishing and aquaculture industries inflict significant environmental impacts on our planet’s oceans. The overfishing, pollution, and environmental degradation currently caused by these industries threatens the sustainability of marine ecological and industrial systems. Despite this, demand for seafood is expected to rise in the coming decades to service the growing global population with nutrient-rich foods. The difficulty in reconciling the need for drastic improvements in marine sustainability and the need to continue meeting global seafood demand has produced an interest in alternative solutions to seafood production. The emerging cell-based foods industry may hold the potential to produce seafood products …

Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing (3d Printing), Jason Weaver

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Multi-material Additive Manufacturing, Hybrid Manufacturing, Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), 3D printing applications

Multi-Scale And Collaborative Disaster Evacuation Planning Framework, Dahai Liu, Kai Zhang, Yongxin Liu, Yupeng Yang, Houbing Song

Center for Advanced Transportation Mobility

When emergency occurs, no tools are available to assist the decision‐making of airline planning and coordination. In this project, we use big data and multi‐agent modeling to integrate ADS‐B data and weather information, to optimize and visualize the airspace strategic planning during disaster, and develop a forecast and recommendation system to aid the authorities and public for optimal airline evacuation process, by using the deep reinforcement learning technique.

Search For The Decay Bs0 →Η′Η, N. K. Nisar, V. Savinov, I. Adachi, H. Aihara, S. Al Said, D. M. Asner, H. Atmacan, T. Aushev, R. Ayad, V. Babu, S. Bahinipati, P. Behera, J. Bennett, M. Bessner, V. Bhardwaj, B. Bhuyan, T. Bilka, J. Biswal, G. Bonvicini

Faculty and Student Publications

We report the results of the first search for the decay Bs0→η′η using 121.4 fb-1 of data collected at the I (5S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e-collider. We observe no significant signal and set a 90% confidence-level upper limit of 6.5×10-5 on the branching fraction of this decay.

Why Moving Fast And Breaking Things Makes Sense?, Francisco Zapata, Eric Smith, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the traditional approach to engineering system design, engineers usually come up with several possible designs, each improving on the previous ones. In coming up with these designs, they try their best to make sure that their designs stay within the safety and other constraints, to avoid potential catastrophic crashes. The need for these safety constraints makes this design process reasonably slow. Software engineering at first followed the same pattern, but then realized that since in most cases, failure of a software test does not lead to a catastrophe, it is much faster to first ignore constraints and then adjust …

Blessings, God, Sacrifices: Possible Rational Explanations Of Biblical Ideas, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this paper, we show that many seemingly irrational Biblical ideas can actually be rationally interpreted: that God is everywhere, that we can only say what God is not, that God's name is holy, why cannot you bless as many people as you want, etc. We do not insist on our interpretations, there probably are many others, our sole objective was to show that many Biblical ideas can be rationally explained.

Northwest Houston Academic Center Newsletter - August 2021, Elizabeth Jean Brumfield

Newsletter Collections

No abstract provided.

Proceedings Of The Harmful Algal Bloom (Hab) Preparedness & Response Virtual Workshop And Tabletop Exercise, Coastal Response Research Center

Coastal Response Research Center

On April 27 - 28, 2021, CRRC and DPP co-sponsored a virtual workshop entitled “Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) Preparedness & Response.” The workshop focused on HAB preparedness and response capabilities and responsibilities across the Federal Interagency Working Group on Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act (IWG – HABHRCA) members and select state agencies. Workshop participants represented academia, Federal, state, and local agencies. The two-day workshop included plenary presentations from Federal, state, and non-government agency representatives outlining: their roles and responsibilities; risk and crisis communication strategies; tools for early detection, measurement quantification, and mitigation; and public health and …