The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the business administration curriculum at Panola County Junior College, located at Carthage, Texas, to see how well it fits the needs of both the students and the businessmen in Panola County and the surrounding territory from which the college draws its students.

The problem of this study is to evaluate the program of phonetic teaching in the Panola County schools in terms of criteria developed from current literature on the history, theories, and studies relating to the teaching of phonics in connection with the reading program in the elementary grades.

This doctoral thesis deals with Panola County, a rural county in northwestern Mississippi. This historical-comparative study provides insight into the various social, economic, and political factors which have effected the development and diversity of education and schools in its two distinct school systems existing above and below the county's Tallahatchie River. Books, interviews, letters, newspapers, school records, state documents, United States census reports, the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, Biennial Reports, school financial reports, school board minutes, and other local, state, and federal sources were scrutinized to determine these changes within the county. Based on an analysis of the information, starting in the 1830s, both sections of the county became resentful over a battle regarding the site of the county's seat and courthouse. Because of this dispute, resentment and bitterness developed between residents north and south of the river which resulted in producing diverse educational methodology, school growth, curricula, and school advertising. Because of the isolationism of the north portion of the county, residents refused, or were unable, to attract new industry which would increase their tax base to support the schools. During racial integration in the late 1960s the county's southern school district was provided the opportunity to co-operate with federal officials, black and white civic leaders, and community residents to form a more progressive school system. South Panola, like North Panola, initially did not desire integration, but by 1970 knew co-operation between all parties involved was necessary, and this decision aided the southern district in obtaining additional federal funding to make it one of the best school districts in the state. White residents in North Panola, refused to form a co-operative scheme between blacks, whites, and the federal government and chose instead to support the creation of private schools, further causing an environment leading to poor educational leadership, corruption, and the near disintegration of the school district by the 1990s / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)

This doctoral thesis deals with Panola County, a rural county in northwestern Mississippi. This historical-comparative study provides insight into the various social, economic, and political factors which have effected the development and diversity of education and schools in its two distinct school systems existing above and below the county's Tallahatchie River. Books, interviews, letters, newspapers, school records, state documents, United States census reports, the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, Biennial Reports, school financial reports, school board minutes, and other local, state, and federal sources were scrutinized to determine these changes within the county. Based on an analysis of the information, starting in the 1830s, both sections of the county became resentful over a battle regarding the site of the county's seat and courthouse. Because of this dispute, resentment and bitterness developed between residents north and south of the river which resulted in producing diverse educational methodology, school growth, curricula, and school advertising. Because of the isolationism of the north portion of the county, residents refused, or were unable, to attract new industry which would increase their tax base to support the schools. During racial integration in the late 1960s the county's southern school district was provided the opportunity to co-operate with federal officials, black and white civic leaders, and community residents to form a more progressive school system. South Panola, like North Panola, initially did not desire integration, but by 1970 knew co-operation between all parties involved was necessary, and this decision aided the southern district in obtaining additional federal funding to make it one of the best school districts in the state. White residents in North Panola, refused to form a co-operative scheme between blacks, whites, and the federal government and chose instead to support the creation of private schools, further causing an environment leading to poor educational leadership, corruption, and the near disintegration of the school district by the 1990s / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)

Human Monocytic Ehrlichiosis (HME) is an emerging disease first described in 1987 and is transmitted by the bite of Amblyomma americanum. Over the past 10 years, the CDC has documented increasing ehrlichiosis case reports nationwide. Our study site is a golf-oriented retirement community located in the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. In 1993, four men at the study site had symptoms consistent with HME which prompted a CDC outbreak investigation and led community managers to mitigate ticks feeding on deer. The objectives of this study were to measure the efficacy of current tick mitigation attempts, to determine the level of infection and composition of tick-borne disease in the study area, and to assess which wildlife species are potentially acting as reservoirs for disease. Ticks were sampled in the community at eight sites of ‘4-poster’ acaricide applicator utilization and at seven untreated sites. Close to the ‘4-poster’ devices, larval, nymphal, and adult tick abundances were reduced by 90%, 68% and 49% respectively (larval p<0.001, nymphal p<0.001, adult p=0.005) relative to the untreated areas. We extracted DNA from A. americanum ticks collected at the treatment and non-treatment sites and tested for Ehrlichia spp. infections. Of 253 adult and nymphal A. americanum tested, we found 1.2% to be positive for Ehrlichia chaffeensis, 4.7% positive for Ehrlichia ewingii, and 1.6% positive for Panola Mountain Ehrlichia; in combination this prevalence is similar to that reported in other Ehrlichia-endemic areas of the eastern U.S.. We also performed blood meal analysis on DNA from A. americanum ticks and the results suggest that the most significant reservoir hosts for Ehrlichia spp. are white-tailed deer, turkeys, grey squirrels, and Passeriformes. We conclude that while the ‘4-poster’ acaricide applicators reduce the number of ticks close to treatment, at the density at which they are currently being used (8 applicators per 52.6 km2, average distance between applicators = 6.6km) they will have no large-scale effect on the community’s tick population. In order to accomplish area-wide reduction of A.americanum and Ehrlichia spp. in this locale, community managers should develop an integrated management strategy that utilizes other techniques in addition to ‘4-poster’ devices.

Base flow recession curve during a dry period is a distinct hydrologic signature of a watershed. The base flow recession analysis for both streamflow and spring flow has been extensively studied in the literature. Studies have shown that the recession behaviors during the early stage and the late stage are different in many watersheds. However, research on the transition from early stage to late stage is limited and the hydrologic control on the transition is not completely understood. In this dissertation, a novel cumulative regression analysis method is developed to identify the transition flow objectively for individual recession events in the well-studied Panola Mountain Research Watershed in Georgia, USA. The streamflow at the watershed outlet is identified when the streamflow at the perennial stream head approaches zero, i.e., flowing streams contract to perennial streams. The identified transition flows are then compared with observed flows when the flowing stream contracts to the perennial stream head. As evidenced by a correlation coefficient of 0.90, these two characteristics of streamflow are found to be highly correlated, suggesting a fundamental linkage between the transition of base flow recession from early to late stages and the drying up of ephemeral streams. At the early stage, the contraction of ephemeral streams mostly controls the recession behavior. At the late stage, perennial streams dominate the flowing streams and groundwater hydraulics governs the recession behavior. The ephemeral stream densities vary from arid regions to humid regions. Therefore, the characteristics of transition flow across the climate gradients are also tested in 40 watersheds. It is found that climate, which is represented by climate aridity index, is the dominant controlling factor on transition flows from early to late recession stages. Transition flows and long-term average base flows are highly correlated with a correlation coefficient of 0.82. Long-term average base flow and the transition flow of recession are base flow characteristics at two temporal scales, i.e., the long-term scale and the event scale during a recession period. This is a signature of the co-evolution of climate, vegetation, soil, and topography at the watershed scale. The characteristics of early and late recession are applied for quantifying human impacts on streamflow in agricultural watersheds with extensive groundwater pumping for irrigation. A recession model is developed to incorporate the impacts of human activities (such as groundwater pumping) and climate variability (such as evapotranspiration) on base flow recession. Groundwater pumping is estimated based on the change of observed base flow recession in watersheds in the High Plains Aquifer. The estimated groundwater pumping rate is found consistent compared with the observed data of groundwater uses for irrigation. Besides streamflow recession analysis, this dissertation also presents a novel spring recession model for Silver Springs in Florida by incorporating groundwater head, spring pool altitude, and net recharge into the existing Torricelli model. The results show that the effective springshed area has continuously declined since 1988. The net recharge has declined since the 1970s with a significant drop in 2002. Subsequent to 2002, the net recharge increased modestly but not to the levels prior to the 1990s. The decreases in effective springshed area and net recharge caused by changes in hydroclimatic conditions including rainfall and temperature, along with groundwater withdrawals, contribute to the declined spring flow.