Antebellum political historians have long studied the era between Andrew Jackson’s election and the secession crisis through the colored knowledge of the Civil War. This project is an effort to reverse that trend. It explores northeast Tennessee’s political culture from the late 1830s through the start of the Civil War. It reveals that the Second American Party System, a wave of new enfranchised voters, and the area’s demographics mixed together to lay a foundation for the aggressive and populist political style that permeated the region from the 1830s through the 1850s. At the heart of these issues was the transition of power from East Tennessee to Middle Tennessee. As a way to analyze the region’s political culture, I look specifically at Democrats Andrew Johnson and Landon Carter Haynes and Whigs William Brownlow and Thomas Nelson.

The inefficient use and knowledge of direct, on-demand air taxi/air charter flights in the United States was the topic of this dissertation. The general problem studied was the inefficient use of air transportation options by business travelers in the United States. The specific problem was how business travelers in the United States learn of and thereby elect to embrace a newer air travel option. Using Rogers's diffusion of innovations theory as the framework, the dissemination of air travel choices made by business travelers using ImagineAir air taxi service in the United States was explored via a qualitative case study research design methodology. Thirty-five semistructured interviews and matching customer database information provided data for the study, Data were later analyzed for emergent themes and codes using MAXQDA software. Key research questions included communication of the innovation, business travelers' perceptions of the innovation, timeframe of innovation adoption, business environment enabling the innovation adoption, and the Rogers self-described adopter type. The results showed that compatibility, relative advantage, risk, and complexity influence the perception of business travelers about air taxi services. Based on the research, the course of action suggests that business travelers will most rapidly embrace air taxi service via internet dissemination of this new option. With continued success in dissemination, positive social change will come in the form of efficiencies as business travelers use more than 5,000 virtually idle airports and over 7,000 on-demand air taxi aircraft as highlighted by U.S. government studies further bolstered by this research.

The increasing use of blended models of instruction within the U.S. public school system is transforming the K-12 education. However, few studies have been conducted of the innovation-adoption process involving blended instruction within the K-12 public school sector. In this nonexperimental, quantitative study, Rogers's five perceived attributes of innovations was used as a theoretical lens to explore how teachers' affective job satisfaction might affect the innovation-adoption process at the individual level. Research questions pertained to the relationship, if any, between affective job satisfaction among teachers and their perceptions of the complexity, compatibility, and relative advantage of blended instruction. Surveys were administered to middle school teachers (n = 40) in the core curriculum within southeastern U.S. schools. Data were analyzed for relationships using Spearman's correlation; relationships found to have statistical significance were further explored using ordinal logistic regression. Affective job satisfaction had a moderately positive and statistically significant relationship with how participants perceived the compatibility and relative advantage of blended instruction (rs = .487). However, the relationship was inconsistent among subgroups, varying from rs = .181 (n = 13) to rs = .693 (n = 10). Findings could be used to promote positive social change by providing insight into the role of affective job satisfaction within the innovation-adoption process within the K-12 sector.

Une partition d'un entier positif est une façon d'écrire ce nombre comme une somme d'entiers strictement positifs où l'ordre des termes ne compte pas. Plusieurs généralisations des partitions ont été étudiées, parmi lesquelles les surpartitions, qui sont des partitions où l'on peut surligner la dernière occurrence d'un nombre, les paires de surpartitions ou encore les partitions n-colorées, qui sont liées à un modèle de physique statistique. Dans cette thèse, on généralise aux paires de surpartitions les identités d'Andrews-Gordon, qui sont une extension d'un résultat classique de la théorie des partitions : les identités de Rogers-Ramanujan. Pour cela, on définit deux classes de séries hypergéométriques basiques et on montre que ce sont les séries génératrices des paires de surpartitions vérifiant différents types de conditions (multiplicités, rangs successifs, dissection de Durfee) et de certains chemins du plan. On montre également que pour certaines valeurs des paramètres, ces séries peuvent s'écrire comme des produits infinis, ce qui conduit à plusieurs identités de type Rogers-Ramanujan. La démonstration utilise diverses méthodes combinatoires et analytiques. On définit enfin une généralisation des partitions n-colorées, les surpartitions n-colorées, et on les utilise pour interpréter combinatoirement certaines séries multiples et démontrer d'autres identités de type Rogers-Ramanujan.

Superspace is a fundamental tool in the study of supersymmetry, one that while often used is seldom defined with a proper amount of mathematical rigor. This paper examines superspace and presents three different constructions of it; the original by Abdus Salam and J. Strathdee as well as two modern methods by Alice Rogers and Buchbinder-Kuzenko.Though the structures arrived at are the same the two modern constructions differ in methods, elucidating different important aspects of super-space. Rogers focuses on the underlying structure through the study of supermanifolds, and Buchbinder-Kuzenko the direct correlation with the Poincare superalgebra, and the parametrisation in terms of exponents.

The purpose of this study was to determine faculty perceptions about factors impacting the adoption and diffusion of Web-Based Educational Technologies (WBETs) at the University of Cape Coast and the University of Ghana, Legon. This study, based on Rogers’ theory of adoption and diffusion, is a modified replication of a study by Li (2004), in the context of Ghana. Data were collected with a modified instrument created by Li (2004), from 61 teaching faculty out of a target accessible population of 200. The instrument comprised of four sections: The first, was used to collect data about faculty stage in the innovation development process. The second was used to collect data describing five attributes (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability) impacting the adoption and diffusion of WBETs. The third was used to collect data about ten barriers (concerns about time, concerns about incentives, program credibility, financial concerns, planning issues, conflict with traditional education, fear of technology, technical expertise, administrative support, and infrastructure) impacting the adoption and diffusion of WBETs. The fourth section was used to collect data on personal characteristics of the faculty. Descriptive, correlational and regression analyses were used to examine relationships between faculty personal characteristics, stage in the innovation-decision process, and perceptions of attributes and barriers impacting the adoption and diffusion of WBETs. From the descriptive results, respondents perceived ‘relative advantage’ and ‘observability’ as the two most important attributes that impact the adoption and diffusion of WBETs. Infrastructure, financial concerns, and technical expertise were perceived as posing moderate to strong barriers to the adoption and diffusion of WBETs. Only compatibility (attribute) and technical expertise (barrier) had statistically significant correlations with faculty stage in the innovation decision process. The attributes and barriers altogether explained only 10.6% and 17.3% respectively of faculty stage in the innovation-decision process. Of the eight personal characteristics examined, only ‘experience with WBETs’ had a statistically significant correlation with faculty stage in the innovation-decision process. Recommendations to administrators and policy makers include allocating investments and resources that promote attributes and eliminate barriers, and conduct further research into factors that affect the adoption and diffusion of WBETs.

This dissertation is the first historical-cultural exploration of the ways tribal customs made their way into mainstream America. Throughout his career, Cherokee entertainer and political pundit Will Rogers (1879-1935) drew on Cherokee traditions to ameliorate Americans' anxieties over the increase of mass media, the rise of urbanism, and the threatened loss of individuality that came with these changes. This study complicates overly-simplistic assumptions that popular culture uniformly misrepresented and victimized Native peoples during the Progressive Era and Interwar Years. By analyzing the early twentieth century through the work of one of its most influential American Indian participants, this project broadens notions of both American popular political cultures and American Indian identities. Although Rogers and other publicly known Natives like him did not always fit into the public's perception of "the Indian," they did fit into their tribe's artistic and cultural traditions. In this way, Rogers's overlooked work--his live performances on vaudeville and radio, his syndicated journalistic commentary, and his astounding film career--challenges scholarly understandings of the representation and misrepresentation of Native Americans. This study does not merely illuminate the intimate connections between Will Rogers and the Cherokee Nation. It further elucidates the ways American and specific American Indian tribal histories interact with one another. Scholars so often focus on the colonization and usurpation of Indian nations that we overlook the many times indigenous individuals and nations impact the United States in both positive and negative ways. This dissertation, in short, shows that scholars must reconsider essentialized notions of Indianness, turning instead to specific tribal histories and the ways these traditions intermingle with others to affect the whole. / text

Intensive care delirium prevention is currently a practice improvement goal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Delirium increases morbidity, mortality, time mechanically ventilated, length of stay, and health care spending. The Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Pain, Agitation, and Delirium in Adult Patients in the Intensive Care Unit (PAD guidelines) were revised and published in 2013. The ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group at Vanderbilt University have developed the ABCDEF Bundle protocol as a way of operationalizing the 2013 PAD guidelines. Implementation of the ABCDEF Bundle protocol has been shown to decrease occurrence and duration of delirium while improving morbidity and mortality therefore decreasing length of stay. The purpose of this project is to develop an implementation and evaluation plan of the ABCDEF Bundle for a community hospital's TSICU in Arizona. The Squire guidelines for quality improvement reporting are followed for this project. Implementation and evaluation of the ABCDEF bundle are explained in detail.

Zugl.: Mainz, Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Hamburg, Universiẗat, Diss. A. Krebs.