Borrelia burgdorferi is the etiological agent of Lyme disease. Not much is known about the susceptibility of this organism to chemical disinfection. Current antimicrobial susceptibility test methods, such as those published by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), usually require assessment of the number of colony forming units (cfu) of growing organisms on plates following exposure to an agent. For fast-growing organisms, plates are ready for counting 1-2 days post plating, while several weeks may be needed for slower growing organisms. Spirochetes, like B. burgdorferi are difficult to grow on solid media and typically require long incubation periods, sometimes up to several weeks, to generate visible colonies. These issues make B. burgdorferi cfu assessment by plate counting difficult and unreliable. Furthermore, Borrelia have a demonstrated capacity for pleomorphic forms, and can exist in spirochete, round body, or biofilm forms, depending on culture conditions. Plate counts, by nature, do not allow for assessment of morphological form changes. Additionally, the susceptibility of B. burgdorferi pleomorphic forms to chemical disinfectants has not been tested. In this study, we used the SYBR GREEN I/Propidium Iodide (SG I/PI) viability assay to rapidly estimate the percent kill of B. burgdorferi pleomorphic forms to chemical disinfection. Planktonic spirochete populations in 30-second treated samples showed viability percent values of: >95% for Hanks balanced salt solution (HBSS), ~60% for distilled deionized H2O (dd H2O), <5% for ACS 200, and 1% for 1% glutaraldehyde (GTA). Solutions containing 70% ethanol (ETH) and 1% hypochlorite (HC) showed no viable spirochetes following treatment. The percent of live round body cells following different treatments were: >99% for HBSS and <25% for dd H2O. ACS 200, 1% GTA, and 70% ETH treatments resulted in <1% live round body forms, whereas HC showed no live round cell forms. The susceptibility of B. burgdorferi biofilms to various treatments was also assayed using a SG I/PI viability stain after 30-minute contact times. The percent of viable organisms (green) in the treated biofilms was estimated by microscopic observations. HBSS controls showed >98% of bacteria in the biofilm were alive, while treated biofilms showed the following percent viabilities: ACS 200 - ~2%, 1% HC - <1%, 5% HC - <1%, 1% GTA - ~10%, 70% ETH - ~ 2%, and dd H2O ~40%. These techniques merged standardized assessment of antimicrobial activity in liquid culture using an ASTM-type kill-time procedure with viability techniques used in antibiotic susceptibility testing to rapidly evaluate the percent kill of B. burgdorferi pleomorphic forms in vitro following disinfectant exposure. These results showed that B. burgdorferi biofilm forms are orders of magnitude more resistant to chemical disinfection than other morphological forms of this organism.

The purpose of this study was to examine multi-track Year-Round Education (YRE) elementary school principals' perceptions of the effects of YRE on their instructional leadership activities. A review of the related literature revealed that principals perceived that multi-track YRE has increased their management activities. A questionnaire was developed and sent to a selected sample of 105 principals who served at multi-track (60-20 calendar) YRE elementary schools with grade level configurations of K-5 and K-6. In addition. the principals selected for this study had prior experience as principal s of traditional calendar schools and were assigned full-time administrative assistance (e.g., vice-principal. assistant principal, or equivalent). Ten of 64 principals who returned completed questionnaires were interviewed.

The Round Barn is a novel in two parts that tells the story of two Iowa farm families during the period 1915 to 1929, a volatile time in the history of the American farm. The first part of the novel tells the story of Joe Marshall, a young man in conflict with his hard-working farmer father. At sixteen-years-old, Joe must choose whether to leave the farm to pursue his own desires or to stay where he is needed to help keep his financially strapped family afloat. Part two of the novel focuses on Mae Allinson, a woman in her early twenties, who has willingly accepted the responsibility of raising her sister's child after her sister dies in childbirth. By doing so, Mae forsakes the man she was to marry, the man who would take her to Chicago and away from farm life. The round barn, built by Joe Marshall's father in the opening chapter of the novel, serves as a through line linking all the chapters and connecting characters to a specific place. The round barn, in addition to being a stage setting for the action of the novel, has its own story arc, rising out of the Iowa soil in the first chapter, functioning as a working barn through the central part of the novel, then finally falling into disrepair by the end. In the novel, Joe and Mae each seek their own identities within their families, identities that put them in conflict with a family dynamic that is focused on the survival and prosperity of the family as a whole. This conflict forces each character to define for themselves what love, power, freedom, and obligation mean and how far they are willing to go inpursuit of these things. In addition to functioning within their own families, the main characters must also contend with the larger issues that put pressure on the American farm of the time (economics, war, social change, and migration to the urban areas), factors that push and pull the characters in different directions. By telling the story from the positions of two different characters and by spanning the number of years that it does, the novel seeks to show how events and the passage of time transform the individual characters, their families, and the American farm.

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The purpose of the study was to identify student summer activities and determine whether a relationship exists between the activities and mathematics testing change scores measured from spring to fall. This current effort built upon research conducted by Heyns (1978), Burkam et al. (2004), Downey et al. (2004), and Alexander et al. (2007). The commonality in findings that existed among all of these efforts was that learning loss occurred in the absence of instruction such as that experienced during the normal school term. A quantitative, correlational study was conducted using a survey method which requested that parents answer questions concerning the nature of activities and daily structure experienced by their children during the summer break. The Group Mathematics Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GMADE) testing platform was used to generate quantitative measurements of mathematics skills for exiting second graders in the spring of 2010 and for these same students as entering third graders in the fall of 2010. A voluntary sample of 57 students from elementary schools in a suburban school district in Southwestern Virginia participated in the testing process. At the conclusion of all testing and at the point at which all surveys were completed, student scoring differentials from spring to fall were compared to the activity and daily structure components reported in the survey for potential correlations between that information and mean gain test results. This study sought potential correlations between types of summer activities and documented change between mathematics spring and fall test scores. Results of data analysis from this research will assist leaders in understanding whether activities bear a relationship to mathematics score changes. Should those relationships be established, the findings would assist leaders in determining which activities should be encouraged or discouraged during the summer break to avoid score declines. The findings indicated that though summer mathematics learning loss did occur for the participants, no correlation between activities and test score change could be established. Implications of these findings and suggestions for the future are presented in the final chapter. / Ed. D.