Sutton, Abigail The effectiveness of nursing councils Faculty Mentor: Katreena Merrill, College of Nursing Communication is an essential aspect to quality nursing care and patient safety. One way that enhances communication among nursing staff members are nursing councils. This creates an environment where nurses are involved in the decision making process of the unit and […]
Reclaiming the Suburban Landscape Reclaiming the Suburban Landscape The Next Step in Residential Sustainability
Campbell, Abram Reclaiming the Suburban Landscape Reclaiming the Suburban Landscape The Next Step in Residential Sustainability Faculty Mentor: Greg Jolley, Landscape Management In recent years, the push for an increase in green spaces, particularly sustainable and native landscapes, has gained momentum. Across the United States, it’s not uncommon to see new parks and planters creeping […]
How Well Can Machine-learning Algorithms Predict Biomedical Outcomes Based on Gene-expression Data?
Anna Guyer and Stephen Piccolo, Department of Biology Introduction Biomedical data are increasing in size and complexity. To make sense of these data, biomedical researchers often use “machine-learning” algorithms, which are developed by the computer-science community. Our goal was to perform a systematic comparison of many of these algorithms across 100 data sets to identify […]
Rational Design of Enzyme-like Bifunctional Peptide Catalysts
Duval, Jared Rational Design of Enzyme-like Bifunctional Peptide Catalysts Faculty Mentor: David Michaelis, Department of Chemistry Introduction My research in the Michaelis Laboratory has focused on developing enzyme-like multifunctional catalysts for organic synthesis. Nature makes catalysts (enzymes) capable of chemistry that is not currently accessible by synthetic chemists. These enzymes take advantage of preorganization, substrate […]
Mother’s Genetics Create an Environmental Tension for Her Infant
Lange, Natalie Mother’s Genetics Create an Environmental Tension for Her Infant Faculty Mentor: James Dee Higley, Ph.D., Department of Psychology Introduction Over the summer of 2016 the generous donations for the ORCA funds were utilized to investigate the influence of maternal serotonin transporter genotype (5-HTT) on infant temperament. This gave us the potential to analyze […]
Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones
Kezele, Jordan Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones Faculty Mentor: Michael Hubbard MacKay, Church History & Doctrine In October of 2015 the Church unveiled photographs of a Joseph Smith seer stone with a brief article about its history and provenance. With this release numerous new questions have emerged about Joseph’s seer stones and many of the known […]
Domain Adaptation in Machine Translation
Faculty Mentor: Deryle Lonsdale, Linguistics Department Abstract This study uses an open source statistical machine translation system (Moses) to perform machine translation for specific domains, or text types. A machine translation system can be adapted to a specific domain by using training data from the same domain. In this work we show significant improvements for […]
Safety Analysis of a Flashing Drum Steam Generation System
Jacob Ladd with Cade Memmott, Chemical Engineering Introduction The goal of the Integral, Inherently Safe Light Water Reactor (I2S-LWR) Research Project is to design a more inherently safe reactor. This reactor is capable of cooling the core with no external power and no operator action.[1] In the I2S-LWR design, micro-channel heat exchangers (MCHX) facilitate heat […]
The Impact of Government Loan Expansion on Post-Graduation Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study
Mark Johnson and Taylor Nadauld, Department of Finance Introduction The availability of higher education is linked to more affluent and prosperous societies. In the United States, policy makers have attempted to make post-secondary education readily available through grants and loans. In the past two decades student loans have exploded to become the second largest segment […]
The Orca Evaluation Procedure: Does it Need to Be Improved?
Christopher R. Layton, Melvin J. Carr, Associate Director of ORCA Each year the Office of Research and Creative Activities awards $1,000 scholarships to students who propose research and creative projects. These students represent each of the colleges at BYU. The idea is to compare the projects and research proposals with each other to select those […]