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A prospective ecological risk assessment method was developed evaluating the cumulative probabilistic impact of chemical stressors to aquatic organisms. This method was developed in response to the need to evaluate the magnitude, duration and episodic nature of chemical stressors on aquatic communities under environmental exposure scenarios. The method generates a probabilistic expression of the percent of an ecosystem's species at risk from a designated chemical exposure scenario.

The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of recommendations from selected educational reports and state mandates on curriculum, standards and policy in teacher education programs. The survey population included deans of teacher education in thirty-five public and private colleges in the states of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. The study also determined the attitude of the deans regarding the recommendations from the selected reports and state mandates in the survey states and colleges. The recommendations analyzed in the study were from the reports: A Nation At Risk. The Imperative for Education Reform, High School. A Report on Secondary Education in America, Meeting-the Need for Quality. Action in-the South, Paideia Proposal: An Educational-Manifesto, and A Place Called School. Prospects for the Future.A thirty item questionnaire containing recommendations from the selected reports and state mandates related to states surveyed was developed and utilized. Six research questions were tested statistically by use of percent response, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation,analysis of variance and covariance, and Chi-Square. The .05 level of significance was established as the critical probability level for the significant results. The .01 level was also indicated to further identify levels of significance.Conclusions1. There was a greater tendency for the deans of teacher education to agree with the recommendations that had been implemented and a tendency to disagree with the recommendations that were not implemented.2. The majority of the recommendations that were standard oriented were implemented or proposed for implementation.3. A majority of the recommendations that were policy oriented were not considered for implementation.4. The majority of the deans did not favor recommendations that stressed stringent standards regarding the admittance of students to teacher education programs.5. The majority of the deans did not favor reform in curriculum such as the recommendations related to pedagogy and teaching methods, and were divided between disagree and undecided regarding the merits of a five year teacher education program.6. The type of institution did make a difference when responding to recommendations from the reports. The private colleges favored more of the recommendations that were curricula oriented. The public colleges favored more recommendations that were standard oriented. The majorityof the predominantly black colleges did not favor recommendations that emphasized raising the entrance and exit standards in teacher education.This study found that state mandates had greatest influence on teacher education since the release of the national reform reports of 1983-1984. The national reports were not found to have significant influence on teacher education reform regarding implementation of suggested reform; however, the attitudes of the deans supported such reform effort in teacher education.

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In the United States, the transition from aristocratic agriculturalism to liberal democratic industrialism was distinguished from instances of this transformation in other countries by a threat to the territorial integrity of the Union. In this dissertation, I provide novel insight into this unique challenge and its link to American political development. Drawing on recent works on the process of secession, I have developed an innovative framework for the analysis of secession in which the institutional design of the state plays a central role in facilitating this act of territorial and political withdrawal. This framework specifies five factors that contribute to the development, timing, and success of a movement for secession: grievance, the institutional design of the state, boundaries, leadership, and sequence. My framework is generalizable and can be used to illuminate the desire for secession in other regions of the world. / In order to provide a thorough analysis of this case of secession, I examine the historical background of the decision to secede, with an emphasis on the nullification crisis and the first secession crisis. Without the steps and missteps taken in these moments, secession would have been unlikely. In addition, I examine the actions of the other states of the South: the early-seceders of the Deep South, the late-seceders of the Upper South, and the non-seceders of the Border South. / I conclude that secession in South Carolina was the result of a number of dynamically interacting factors, beginning with the grievance experienced by the elites and the rest of the white, male population of South Carolina. This grievance was produced by demographic changes in the Union that allowed Republican Abraham Lincoln to be elected president without needing electoral support in the South. The grievance (fear) wrought by these changes animated the desire for secession, but secession was politically feasible because of the institutional design of the American state. Central to my argument is the notion that federal states are both easier to enter, because they facilitate the maintenance of local autonomy, and easier to exit (than other states), because the maintenance of state capacity and a high degree of autonomy at the state level makes withdrawal from the federal state possible with minimal disruption. / The very sequence by which secession was accomplished provides essential insight into the dynamics of secession. The South did not secede simultaneously, but sequentially---with South Carolina seceding unilaterally, and forcing the hand of the remaining states. Given the divisions present in the South, this strategy of seeking sequential exit through unilateral secession in South Carolina was the best possible strategy to realize the goal of a Southern Confederacy.

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Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-218).

Thesis (M. S.)--Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Dr. Reginald DesRoches; Committee Member: Dr. Barry Goodno; Committee Member: Dr. Laurence Jacobs; Committee Member: Dr. Mulalo Doyoyo.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Columbia Biblical Seminary and Graduate School of Missions, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-171).