Ethnic Change in Slovakia Between 1773 and 1910

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Michele N Richardson and Dr. Samuel Otterstrom, Geography Introduction At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Trianon divided the former Austro-Hungarian Empire into multiple autonomous states including Czechoslovakia. Hungarians vociferously decried the southern border around the Slovak portion of this state, which became the independent Slovak Republic in 1993, claiming that it […]

Germans in Slovakia: Settlement Patterns

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Daniel Reeves and Dr. Samuel Otterstrom, Geography From the Middle Ages to the present there has been—to varying degrees—a German minority among the Slovak people. Though nearly nonexistent today, this minority has historically been an important part of Slovakia’s population. German settlers were drawn to Slovakia for several reasons over the centuries, and in the […]

Thermodynamics of L-valine and L-2-aminobutyric acid

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Joshua L Price and Dr. Earl M Woolley, Chemistry and Biochemistry Understanding the thermodynamics of protein hydration is critical to elucidating protein structure and function in aqueous solution. Because they are derivative properties, apparent molar volume Vφ and apparent molar heat capacity Cp,φ are particularly useful in describing solution thermodynamics. It is difficult, however, to […]

Hybrid Radial Basis Functions for Image Representation

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Samuel Payne and Dr. Bryan Morse, Computer Science My ORCA research topic was 3D shape representation. I proposed research to develop a new method for representing surfaces that combined two current methods. The oldest method (thinplate spline model) was developed by Turk and O’Brien in 1998. The second method (compactly supported RBF) was developed by […]

Thermodynamics of Aqueous Nucleic Acid Bases and Nucleosides

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Bryan R McRae and Dr. Earl M Woolley, Chemistry and Biochemistry Despite the astounding advances in modern genetics research, surprisingly little is known about the thermodynamic behavior and physical properties of DNA’s molecular subunits. Our study investigated several thermodynamic properties of common nucleic acid constituents. Specifically, we calculated the apparent molar volumes (Vφ) and apparent […]

Macrocycle-Substituted Resorcinarenes as Primary Functional Groups in Ion Chromatography

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Arlo McGinn and John D Lamb, Chemistry and Biochemistry Ion chromatography is an instrumental technique known for its ability to determine and quantify mixtures of ions in solution. In ion chromatography, a solution containing different ions is passed through a column packed with a stationary phase containing active groups (chemical compounds that exhibit binding properties). […]

Stable Diode Laser Systems for Laser Cooling and Trapping

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Andrew David Ludlow and Dr. Scott Bergeson, Physics Laser cooling and trapping has become one of the most widespread and successful research tools within atomic physics in the last twenty years. The idea is to “hit” an oncoming atom with photons of laser light, which slow the atom down. Then, using the appropriate magnetic field […]

Image Tile Compression for Interactive Terrain Visualization with a Slow Network Connection

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Brandon Lloyd and Dr. Parris K Egbert, Computer Science In the 3D graphics lab at BYU we have developed a terrain visualization program called DVIEW capable of handling extremely large datasets. Our largest model is a piece of the Wasatch front nearly 100 miles long and 50 miles wide. The original vision for DVIEW was […]