Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Examining The Longitudinal Nature Of Information Privacy Perceptions And Behaviors

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to develop and execute improved research methodology for studying how consumer information privacy perceptions and behaviors change over time. This project is unique because most of the behavioral research regarding information privacy (and with mobile devices in particular) had previously been based entirely on surveys and laboratory experiments with low external validity. Therefore, to accomplish our objective, several mobile applications were developed or improved with built-in capabilities for experimental manipulations which were tested in real-life field studies. We found several interesting new findings which have resulted in published conference paper proceedings with student authors …

Handwriting Recognition Through Distance-Based Morphing And Energy Minimization, Dr. William Barrett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During the past year, I have had the opportunity to mentor two undergraduate students as we performed research for improving technologies used for family history. The specific projects each student worked on, the outcomes of the projects, and the mentoring are described below.

Geometric Optimization, Analysis, And Design, Denise Halverson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

1. Evaluation of how well the academic objectives of the proposal were met

The goals for the mentoring environment were reached:

• Academic Development – Each student had the opportunity to work on a cutting edge research problem, as indicated below. Papers are in various stages of completion, a few submitted or accepted for publication, but all have drafted papers.
• Community Development – Several students were able to attend the MAA Math Fest in both 2014 and 2015. Most students gave presentations at the CPMS Student Research Conference. My students have been able to interact with engineering student working on similar …

Mentoring Environment Grant Final Report, Greg Carling

Journal of Undergraduate Research

1. Evaluation of Academic Objectives

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the chemistry of proglacial streams in the Wind River Range of Wyoming to develop baseline criteria of mercury and other trace metal concentrations in glacial meltwater. Specific objectives include: 1) quantify fluxes of mercury and other trace elements in glacier melt and 2) evaluate relative contributions of trace elements from glacier melt, groundwater, snowmelt, and water-rock interactions.

Searching Inner Galactic Structures (Sings), Dr. Michael Joner

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This Mentoring Environment Grant (MEG) proposed using the Brigham Young University West Mountain Observatory as a mentoring environment where students would experience what it is like to do research at a fully operational observatory by doing a wide variety of observations at regularly scheduled times over the course of several months during the spring and summer terms. The larger campaign (AGN STORM) headed by Dr. Bradley M. Peterson (Ohio State University) was designed to investigate different techniques used to identify structures in the core of an active galaxy and then find fundamental parameters about those structures, such as the mass …

Nanomaterials Used To Destroy Water Contaminants, Roger Harrison

Journal of Undergraduate Research

1. Evaluation of how well the academic objectives of the proposal were met

Students working in the mentoring environment synthesized nanomaterials composed of ZnO and characterized the materials by SEM, TEM, XRD, and IR. They then used the materials as efficient photocatalysts to destroy dyes. They applied reactions and knowledge they had learned in their chemistry courses. They learned to solve problems by finding new ways to synthesize or characterize their compounds. They learned to run, fix, and change settings on multifaceted instruments. They learned to trouble-shoot problems to solve instrumental errors. They learned to reduce human error and understand …

Organic Synthesis As A Platform For Mentoring Undergraduates, Steven L. Castle

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This report summarizes the results that were generated under the auspices of the mentoring environment in my laboratory from January 2014 to the present. A total of six undergraduates participated in the mentoring environment during this period. Their names and accomplishments are listed below.

Changing The World Of Research As We Know It, Aaron Sainsbury, Thomas Meservy

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Research plays a vital role in the advancement of knowledge. In conjunction, feedback through idea exchange, peer reviews, and formal reviews play a vital role in every research project. With the current academic organizations in place, the impact of feedback is not fully realized because of the structure of how and when feedback is received. While collaborative communication among researchers is increasingly more reliant upon technology, there is little focus on the development and implementation of a technologybased collaboration scheme to support and sustain scientific idea exchanges among researchers.

Real-Time Webpage Adaptation For Improved User Accessibility, Parker Williams, Jeff Jenkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Hand tremors are experienced by millions of individuals on a daily basis, the main cause being neurological disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Essential Tremor, “a progressive neurologic condition that causes involuntary rhythmic trembling of the hands,” affects 10 million Americans of all ages¹. It is estimated that 87% of individuals ages 18-29, 86% of individuals ages 30-49, 76% of individuals ages 50-64, and 70% of individuals ages 65 and older go online daily². With an increasing number of individuals who have access to and use of the internet, creating a real-time adaptable webpage environment for those with …

Packet Inspection And Modification For Mobile Devices: Trustbase, Scott Heidbrink, Daniel Zappala

Journal of Undergraduate Research

While there is a long tradition of providing protection against attackers for desktop and laptop devices, there has been less work in the mobile space. A common tool used by antivirus software is to inspect all packets entering or leaving a computer, to check for viruses or other malware. There are currently no generalpurpose tools for Android devices that provide for packet inspection and modification. There are a few tools that allow for packet capturing on mobile devices, but they can only function on “rooted” devices and do not allow modification. Since most users do not “root” their devices, these …

Petrologic Comparison Of The Beaver Dam And Mineral Mountains Metamorphic Complexes, Scott Zylstra, Jake Voorhees, Dr. Ron Harris

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Utah’s rocks, though incredibly complete in later eons, hold very little information about what was occurring in that area before 700 million years ago. In Southern Utah, only two relatively small exposures of these ancient Precambrian exist, in the west of the Beaver Dam Mountains west of St. George and the west of the Mineral Mountains west of Beaver. Therefore, it is vitally important to study these exposures, as they constitute the only clues to what was happening in Utah 1.7 billion years ago.

Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance Of Silicon Vacancies In Sic: Predicting Resonance Of Cylindrical Cavities, Kyle Miller, John Colton

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance is one method of performing Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) on a material. ESR is used to determine the electron spin lifetime of a material, an important parameter for use in quantum computing. Resonant cavities are conducting containers that are frequently used in ESR to create a strong magnetic field near the sample. As such it is valuable to design a resonant cavity and predict its resonant frequency. Cylindrical cavities modified with dielectric resonators (DRs) are viable for such experiments.

Exploring The Weak Mach Reflection Regime, Kevin Leete, Dr. Kent Gee

Journal of Undergraduate Research

When a shock wave reflects off a rigid surface with certain combinations of incident shock strength and angle, a Mach reflection can occur. This is when portions of the incident and reflected waves merge to create a stronger shock called a Mach stem that travels parallel to the reflecting surface. This phenomenon has been studied extensively for two extreme cases: large outdoor explosions and small, laboratory experiments of weak shocks. The purpose of this project was to design and execute an outdoor experiment where this phenomenon could be observed by microphones as well as high speed video imaging to detect …

Epigenetic Cost Matrix, Spring Cullen, Dr. Mark Clement

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Epigenetics is of vital importance, comparable to genetics, in predicting the outcome of illnesses. Bisulfite sequencing (BS) provides short DNA fragments that must be mapped in order to discover epigenetic markers. The purpose of this project is to find an optimal cost matrix to map sequences from BS DNA to a reference genome to determine patterns of methylation. A more efficient BS cost matrix will contribute to the ongoing effort to understand the epigenome and analyze data collected.

Resolving “Mixed” Privacy Signals Untangling The Anchoring And Adjustment In The Presence Of Multiple Signals, Thong Pham, Mark Keith

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As the technologies enabling mobile and ubiquitous information rapidly evolve, so do the information privacy risks to consumers (Belanger and Crossler 2011; Pavlou 2011; Smith et al. 2011). Perceived privacy risk has been demonstrated to be a critical factor in both information disclosure intentions (Dinev and Hart 2006; Lowry et al. 2011; Xu et al. 2010) and behaviors (Keith et al. 2013; Lowry et al. 2011; Posey et al. 2010).

Spectral Graph Theory For Weighted Digraphs, Alexander Zaitzeff, Jeffrey Humpherys

Journal of Undergraduate Research

For digraphs weighted and unweighted, one important application is ranking: Given a directed graph, whether it be the Internet or a social network, which node (representing a web page or a person) is the most important? There are many different methods to find answer this question. A few are highest indegree, closeness centrality¹, betweeness centrality², eigenvector centrality, Katz Centrality³, and PageRank⁴. Our idea is to use sparsity, or the idea that in a network only has a few important nodes, to determine the ranking on a graph.

Messageguard: A Secure Webmail System Coupling Security With Usability, Joshua Lowe, Kent Seamons

Journal of Undergraduate Research

While working on my undergraduate degree, I developed an interest for computer security and started working in the Internet Security Research Lab on campus. A PhD student who I had worked with before previously, had proposed a webmail system called MessageGuard as an ubiquitous web encryption extension. The idea behind the system is to be fully open sourced, very easy to use, and extremely secure. Not only was I able to help work on several aspects of this project with PHD, Master’s, and undergraduate students alike, but I was able to put in practice what I was learning in my …

High Resolution Shock Capturing On Gpus, Forrest Glines, David Neilsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This research project concerns the development simulation code to confirm neutron star mergers as the progenitors of Short Hard Gamma Ray Bursts. Short Hard Gamma Ray Bursts (SHGBs) are short (less than 2 second) high energy bursts that we observe with satellites. Their exact cause has not yet been confirmed, but they are believed to be created by the merging of either two neutron stars or a neutron star falling into a black hole. Neutron stars are ultra dense, highly magnetic, and compact stars at the end of their evolution. In a binary system the stars lose angular momentum to …

Determining The Size Of A Light Source Using The Hanbury Brown And Twiss Effect, Adam Kingsley, Dallin Durfee

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 1956, Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) published a paper¹ on a method of determining the angular size of a star by comparing the intensities gathered from two detectors. They used this effect by using two photomultiplier tubes and by increasing the distance between them, saw a drop in the correlation between the currents. Because the correlations are made by the interference at the detectors but only the intensity is measured, the effect is sometimes referred to as intensity interferometry.

The idea arose to use the HBT effect to teach undergraduates various principles of light in a lab setting. …

Phase Matching In Laser Generated Harmonics, David Squires, Justin Peatross

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this mentored research project, we investigated how intense laser light is scattered by samples of gas. In particular, we measured light scattered in non-phase-matched directions perpendicular to the laser beam.

According to classical phase matching, the intensity of light scattered from a sample depends on whether the sample is best approximated as a continuous medium or a collection of discrete emitters (Figure 1). In the former case, as the angle between the phase-matching direction and the radiated harmonic approaches π/2 radians, the intensity of that radiated harmonic light approaches 0. In the latter case, the light intensity reaches …

Trace Element Analysis Of Quartz Grains In The Wah Wah Springs Tuff And Granodiorite Intrusion, Michael Jensen, Dr. Eric Christiansen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Wah Wah Springs Tuff and the Wah Wah Springs Intrusive Granodiorite are both part of the Indian Peak caldera complex in southwest Utah, an area of intense volcanic activity 30 million years ago. This time period is known for explosive silicic activity due to the subduction of the Farallon Plate along North America’s western edge. In the eruption connected with the Wah Wah Springs an estimated 5,900 km³ of magma came out of the Earth, making it one of the largest known explosive eruptions in our planet’s history. This massive eruption was partially dependent upon the changing temperatures …

Porous Cantilevers As Chemical Sensors, Steven Noyce, Robert Davis

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many chemical sensing methods rely on the binding mechanism of the analyte to create a measurable response, making it difficult to create new sensors quickly, but resonant sensors require only that an analyte be bound and rely on the resulting change in mass to obtain a measurement. Solid resonant microcantilevers, or small vibrating fixed-free beams, are a type of resonant sensor that have shown extremely high sensitivities in vacuum environments. The sensitivity of these cantilevers, however, decreases greatly in fluid environments such as air or water due to fluid damping. We propose that porous microcantilever sensors offers both a ten …

Measuring Frequency Noise For Use In Preventing Mode Hops In Extended Cavity Diode Lasers, Mckinley Pugh, Dallin Durfee

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Diode lasers are useful in physics because they are relatively cheap and robust, they are available in a number of wavelengths, and they are tunable. However, because diode lasers have large bandwidths compared to atomic resonances, a reflection grating is added outside the laser. This creates the extended cavity in extended cavity diode lasers (ECDLs) and forces the lasers to operate at a narrower line width, one acceptable for use in atomic physics. Unfortunately, because the ECDL has many factors trying to control the wavelength of the laser (e.g. temperature, current, grating angel and position) small changes in the lasers …

Streamlining The 3d Animation Process, Dylan Hoffman, Kelly Loosli

Journal of Undergraduate Research

I knew from the beginning that this project – centered around improving the collaborative process of making a 3D animated film across several “stages” and made by several artists of different specialties, temperaments, and backgrounds – would be two-fold. The first phase was learning more about the process itself, and how each phase related to another. The second, zoning in on an area that has been a weakness for BYU Animated Films in the past – character effects and cloth simulation. The project evolved much over the course of the year, with far more time and value being placed in …

Girl’S Cybersecurity Camp, Sarah Cunha, Dale Rowe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 2015, the BYU Cybersecurity Research Lab (CSRL) held its first annual summer camp for Girls aged 14-18. A total of 38 girls attended the week’s activities and workshops. While over 75% of girls indicated they had taken a computing-related class, only 40% reported any significant interest in cybersecurity prior to the summercamp with 10% believing they had some experience in the field. At the conclusion of the camp, 80% of attendees reported a significant interest in the field with 100% of attendees interested in attending a similar event again.

The Impact Of Snake Creek On The Provo River Watershed Chemistry, Tucker Chapman, Greg Carling

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Snake Creek is a tributary to the Provo River, which is an important water source for over two million people along the Wasatch Front. Arsenic concentrations in Snake Creek exceed the EPA limit of 10 μg/L and mixing water in the Provo River exceed the EPA (recommended level) of 1 μg/L. Snake creek contributes about 20% to the overall flow of the Provo River. This study focused on the probable source of arsenic in snake creek. Hot springs and faults are probable causes for high trace element contamination are were the focus of this study.

Dual Species Calcium And Ytterbium Magneto Optical Trap, Alexander Erickson, Scott Bergeson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

One area of particular interest in modern physics research is creating a viable fusion system for sustainable energy. Fusion occurs when a high energy plasma is manipulated in such a way that small atoms collide together, combining to create larger atoms and releasing tremendous amounts of harvestable energy. However, there are many theoretical, mathematical, and practical roadblocks to creating a stable fusion experiment. One practical limitation and one mathematical limitation are as follows: practically, much of the energy used to create a fusion-grade plasma ends up in the kinetic energy of the electrons and is lost to the experiment; mathematically, …

Reflectometry Of Aluminum Thin Films In The Vacuum Ultraviolet, Benjamin Smith, R. Steven Turley

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Vacuum Ultraviolet (VUV) is a range of light on the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to wavelengths from 40 – 280 nm. VUV photons have too much energy to see visibly and are blocked completely by atmosphere. This wavelength range, however, shows promise for applications in space-based exoplanet research telescopes. Specifically, the chemical fingerprints that this light contains can tell us about the composition and formation of exoplanet atmospheres.

Systematic Analysis Of Nonlinearities In Complex Models, Alexander Shumway, Mark Transtrum

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Mathematical models are ubiquitous in science. Many models are nonlinear in the parameters and may have dozens to thousands of parameters and make hundreds to thousands of predictions. Analysis and application of these models is thus theoretically complicated and computationally expensive.

The standard method of model analysis is a model-by-model approach that relies on the intuition of expert researchers. Recent research, however, has shown that many models—known as sloppy models—are statistically similar, despite coming from widely varied fields⁴. This suggests the possibility of developing a theory of modeling in place of relying on expert intuition. Our research …