The Gunpowder Behind Ghana’s Cocoa Boom: Examining How International Market Pressure and British Colonial Policies Created Ghana’s Cocoa Market

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Chase Arnold and Professor Sheila Bibb, Anthropology At the turn of the 20th century, British imperialism renewed with remarkable vigor. The British Empire was expanded, its borders defined, and greater effort was invested into making each of its distant lands more profitable for Crown and country. A remarkable, yet often overlooked, portion of this colonial narrative […]

The Influence of Positive Affect on Working Memory

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Brenna S. Adams and Dr. Michael J. Larson, Psychology Department Main Text Positive affect, or positive emotion, is associated with improvements in most cognitive abilities, such as creative problem solving (Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987), the integration of information for strategic decision-making (Estrada, Isen, & Young, 1997), and verbal fluency (Phillips, Bull, Adams, & Fraser, […]

ESTABLISHMENT OF LIFE REDUCTION FACTORS FOR MICROSURFACING

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Bryan Wilson and Dr. W. Spencer Guthrie, Civil and Environmental Engineering Main Text Since the majority of the pavement network in the United States is already constructed1, most of the attention has turned toward maintaining and reconstructing existing roads. Through routine maintenance of the wearing surface, the life of a pavement is greatly extended and […]

Analysis of Intervertebral Disc Degeneration Testing Method

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David Williams and Dr. Anton Bowden, Mechanical Engineering Departmenet, with Holly Woods This ORCA research project has focused on the determination of the effects of the order of the mechanical tests on the response of an intervertebral disc. We hypothesized that the order of the mechanical tests may influence the rate of diffusion of the […]

Third World Water Filtration System Implementation

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Christopher Welton and Professor Perry Carter, School of Technology Introduction Approximately 70 million people in rural India do not have access to clean water. Chemicals such as cesium, arsenic, and others contaminate India’s drinking water, rendering it unsafe. Biological contaminates pose increased health risks to those drinking the water. If a water source is bad, large […]

High-Speed Full-Spectrum Interrogation of Fiber Bragg Gratings for Composite Laminate Sensing

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Tyrie Vella and Dr. Richard Selfridge, Electrical & Computer Engineering Main Text Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors are specialized optical fibers that can be used for detecting changes in strain. Under normal conditions, when a broadband spectrum of light is transmitted through the fiber, a narrow band of light is reflected by the sensor. When […]

Development/Ballistics Testing of Lightweight Sandwich-Composite Body Armor

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Brian Spencer and Dr. Anton Bowden Introduction and Objective Body armor is one of the most important tools used in the protection of soldiers and other armed forces around the world. Although the current style of armor, using Kevlar fiber and ceramic inserts, is generally effective, it is bulky and heavy and can cause overheating […]

Short Surface Relief Fabry-Perot Fiber Bragg Gratings For Improved Strain Sensing

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Andrew Sieler and Dr. Stephen Schultz, Electrical Engineering Main Text The use of optical fiber as a sensing instrument has become an important application in the optics field. Due to previous research conducted here at BYU1 it is now possible to fabricate Surface Relief Fiber Bragg Gratings, SR-FBGs, which can be used as a temperature […]

Miniature Linear Ion Trap Fabrication

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Hannah Quist and Dr. Aaron Hawkins, Electrical and Computer Engineering Main Text Ion trapping is a method of determining the elemental composition of a charged sample, allowing the substance to be properly identified. It uses metal rings or lines with an applied voltage and radio frequency to initially trap the ions in a central region […]

Multi-axial Fiber-optic Electric Field Sensor

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Daniel Perry and Dr. Stephen Schultz, Electrical Engineering High powered microwave weapons use electric fields to overload electronics. We developed a non-intrusive sensor using a technology based on slab coupled optical sensing (SCOS). Each sensor detects the electric field component normal to the surface of the slab. By mounting two of these sensors orthogonally to […]