T.J. Campbell and Dr. Barry Bickmore, Geology The struggle to find and maintain sources of clean water faces billions of people throughout the world. Increases in groundwater contamination have made this problem even more severe. It is therefore of great importance to understand how contaminants travel and interact in the subsurface. Chemical reactions with the […]
Archives for November 2013
A Practical Approach to Specific Heat-Phonon Spectrum Inversion
Thomas C. Butler and Dr. William E. Evenson, Physics and Astronomy Inverse problems have long provided researchers in a variety of disciplines with fruitful and challenging problems with immense applicability. However, as early investigators discovered, most of these problems are ill-posed.1 This means that the existence of the solution is not guaranteed, and even if […]
Finite Size Effects in Isolated Systems of Hard Spheres
Scott Burt and Dr. Randy Shirts, Chemistry and Biochemistry Chemical modeling is an increasingly important tool in modern research. Despite vast improvements in computational speed, most systems of interest are so complex that simulations must be carried out on very small model systems. However, such simplified systems often contain constraints that do not apply to […]
Follicular Dendritic Cells as Reservoirs of Diverse Human Immunodeficiency Virus: A Phylogenetic Analysis
Trever Bradley Burgon and Dr. Gregory F. Burton, Chemistry and Biochemistry Introduction Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the retrovirus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), currently infects over 42 million people; more than three million of them are children under the age of 15. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS calls the current AIDS epidemic: […]
Determining Ruthenium’s Optical Constants in the Spectral Range 11-14 nm
Luke J. Bissell and Dr. David Allred, Physics and Astronomy Introduction Computers are getting faster, and as they do, computer chips are getting smaller. Photolithography is a process used to design nanoscale patterns on a computer chip. In photolithography, the image of a circuit pattern is transferred from a mask to the semiconductor wafer. This […]
The Physiological Effects of Music on Children in Health Clinics and Orphanages in Beira, Mozambique and Bapatla, India
Jordan Joseph Ash and Dr. Shane Reece, Statistics Music therapy seeks to take advantage of specific sounds and rhythms that promote physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being. While the physiological benefits of music have long been recognized, there have been few attempts to quantify the results and document their application. This paper seeks to […]
A Comparison of Computational Efficiency: Cholesky Decomposition and Spectral Methods for the Generation of Fractional Brownian Motion
Micah S. Allred and Dr. David Clark, Mathematics Since its popularization by Mandelbrot and Von Ness in the early 60’s, Fractional Brownian Motion (fBm), has found a great many applications in such fields as Option Pricing, Signal Processing, Internet Traffic, Hydrology, and Geology. This process is an extension of Brownian Motion which allows for a […]
Gender Differences in BYU Communications Students’ Career Attitudes
Alexis Allen and Dr. Shane Reese, Statistics Women have made vast advancements in the workplace within the last thirty years, but gender career issues still exist today. The field of communications presents an interesting case study about discrepancies between male and female employees’ contrasting earnings and career roles. A phenomenon called the Glass Ceiling Effect […]
Strain in Polysilicon Microbeams: The Relationship Between Beam Geometry And The Nominal Strain at Failure
Susan Norma, Candland Bromley and Dr. Larry L. Howell, Mechanical Engineering The objective of this research was to investigate the stress and strain behavior of microscopic cantilevered polycrystallin silicon (polysilicon) beams. A knowledge of this behavior is necessary to accomplish reliable mechanical design of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). In order to better understand the mechanical behavior […]
Modeling Dipyrenylpropane
Steven Bray and Professor David Busath, Department of Zoology 1,3-di(1-pyrenyl)propane(hereinafter dipyrenylpropane) has proven very useful as a fluorescence probe in determining fluidity and monitoring phase transitions in biological membrane systems.1 By virtue of its structure, dipyrenylpropane may fluoresce light in an excimer or a monomer configuration. Each configuration fluoresces light at a different wavelength, thus […]