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ORCA grants: Six of the coolest new student projectsIan Wright
prior research that suggested a correlation between the party in power and stock returns. The pair developed statistical models to rigorously test the idea and applied for an ORCA grant to aid the effort. Now Wright is running statistical tests on monthly stock returns during presidencies since WWII, and is looking to see if there is a significant relationship between presidential partisanship and returns in the stock market. Wright will also look at the number of terms served to see if presidential tenure plays a role. Read More in theBYU News... |
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ORCA grants: Six of the coolest new student projects Debbie Gurtler
For centuries a small village in western Spain has practiced equality when it comes to family inheritance – a tradition ahead of its time and also the subject of study by a nontraditional BYU student. Debbie Gurtler, a history student and mother of three grown children, is heading to Garganta la Olla, Spain, to take a closer look at a community that has evenly divided deceased parents’ property among all surviving children since as early as the 1600s. The period’s more common practice of giving the lion’s share to the firstborn son makes this town an ideal setting for study. |
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Video games linked to poor relationships with friends, family in new studyRead more from ABC NewsWall Street Journal Deseret News Telegraph A new study connects young adults’ use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family – and the student co-author expresses disappointment at his own findings. Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results Jan. 23 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down. “It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time,” Walker said. “My guess is that it’s some of both and becomes circular.” |
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BYU student sole author of medical journal articleRead more from the Deseret News When Brett Alldredge submitted a research paper to a scholarly medical journal last year, the Brigham Young University neuroscience major was competing for space with university and medical school professors from around the world. The editor of the Journal of Clinical Pathology was unaware of Alldredge's undergraduate credentials when he reviewed his paper. "Not that that would have impacted my decision to accept his valuable contribution," said Runjan Chetty, who is also the director of surgical pathology at University Health Networks in Toronto. Alldredge, who graduated last month, is the sole author on the study of connectors between cells and their role in human diseases, which will be read by hundreds of physicians and researchers when it is published later this summer. |
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Two graduating seniors taking $100K-plus fellowships to MITRead more in the Deseret NewsTwo Brigham Young University seniors graduating Thursday will be using prestigious post-graduate fellowships worth up to $121,500 each to pursue doctorates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The National Science Foundation recently named as 2008 Fellows Christopher Palmer, of Belmont, Mass., graduating in economics, and Colin Landon, of Grass Valley, Calif., graduating in mechanical engineering. The three-year award includes an annual $30,000 stipend, plus tuition, for master’s and doctoral work. BYU is 10th in the nation in the number of alumni who earn doctorates, and Palmer and Landon say they benefitted from the university’s tradition of preparing students for graduate work. Despite coming from drastically different academic disciplines, both noted that their unusual access to research faculty as undergraduates was one of the strongest points in their applications for the NSF grants and top-tier graduate schools. Such preparation was noticed by director of admissions and aid for the University of Chicago’s graduate economics program, who met with Palmer after he applied there. more |
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Third BYU student in 4 years wins prestigious Gates ScholarshipGrowing up in a town of 234 people in rural Idaho, Tara Westover barely considered attending college, let alone envisioned that one day she would be headed to the University of Cambridge for postgraduate studies with a prestigious scholarship worth more than $37,000. Westover, 21, and a Brigham Young University senior majoring in history, was recently named one of 45 U.S. college students to receive the highly competitive Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She is the third BYU student to receive the award since 2004. Four of this year's recipients come from Harvard, two each from Yale and Princeton and one from Stanford. more |
Paper by BYU history major wins regional competitionBrigham Young University undergraduate Gregory Jackson, a history major, was awarded the best undergraduate paper prize at the recent Phi Alpha Theta Regional History Conference held at Utah State University on March 29. "There were several outstanding papers presented on that occasion, so Jackson's paper achieved true distinction," said BYU history professorGlen M. Cooper. His paper, "Churchill and Oil: The Creation of Iraq and its Effects Today," was based on research in primary documents from the Churchill Archive at Cambridge University conducted while he was a summer student as part of a BYU study program. Phi Alpha Theta is a national organization of historians whose purpose is to promote the study of history. more |