Chris Brown: Out of control mess or grossly misunderstood Artist?

In today’s pop culture world, celebrities are seen as perfect individuals with grand houses, cars, and entourages. When Chris Brown came on the scene in the mid-2000s, he was a teenage heartthrob who could do no wrong. That all changed when he brutally beat fellow music superstar and then girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. Brown’s media persona came crashing down, along with seemingly everything else in his life. However, in a situation where many artists would normally descend and never return, Brown has surged back almost to the heights he reached prior to 2009. How did this happen? What does the role of the music industry play in this? The norms and tendencies of the popular music industry are examined to determine the external factors that both hindered and helped Brown’s changes in reputation (and by extension, record sales) over time

Flipping Out(ward): Changing the Instructional Model for Large-Enrollment Courses

Citation: Citation: Pitts, J., Fritch, M. (2017) Flipping Out(ward): Changing the Instructional Model for Large-Enrollment Courses. Creative Instructional Design: Practical Applications for Librarians. p.227-242For years, Kansas State University Libraries taught face-to-face library instruction sessions for the general education courses, Expository Writing and Public Speaking. We called these Library Days, as they were scheduled daily over week-long periods due to the large number of sections. Expository Writing Library Days were four days of back-to-back, lecture-style sessions for around 1,100 students. It took two weeks to schedule the fifty sections of the course and the eleven librarians needed to lead the instruction and separately operate the computer for each section. The sessions needed to be organized to cover each different research paper assignment and required additional PowerPoint presentations in case the Internet crashed during a session. This was in addition to creating the instruction outlines for all the librarians to follow so each and every student saw the same material, no matter which session they attended. Each session was fifty minutes with approximately seventy students. By the end of the week, we could only hope that the students retained at least ten minutes of our material. This is how we spent a significant amount of library staff time prior to embarking on wide-scale, flipped-classroom implementation that not only transformed how we taught large-enrollment classes, but provided an avenue for improved student learning and self-service. This chapter will cover the design iterations of the online component and discuss the rapid prototyping process utilized to design and implement the program. Assessment and logistics will also be discussed, as will lessons learned and design specifications to consider when embarking on a project of this scale. In essence, we’ll describe how K-State Libraries went from flipping out during Library Days to flipping out(ward) using an effective flipped-classroom model

Nothing is Permanent but Change: The Journey to Consolidation and Back

Responding to a staffing shortage and assessment of usage data, eight of Hale Library's nine service desks were consolidated into one service point. Fourteen months later, the Libraries conducted an assessment of the consolidation using reference transaction data, responses to a survey administered to Libraries’ staff, and responses from a student focus group. The assessment revealed many logistical and staffing challenges with the new desk. As a result, a separate service point for reference was created directly outside the consolidated desk. Our statistics indicate that this was a successful change

Making Decisions for Hospitalized Older Adults: Ethical Factors Considered by Family Surrogates

Background Hospitalized older adults frequently have impaired cognition and must rely on surrogates to make major medical decisions. Ethical standards for surrogate decision making are well delineated, but little is known about what factors surrogates actually consider when making decisions. Objectives To determine factors surrogate decision makers consider when making major medical decisions for hospitalized older adults, and whether or not they adhere to established ethical standards. Design Semi-structured interview study of the experience and process of decision making. Setting A public safety-net hospital and a tertiary referral hospital in a large city in the Midwest. Participants Thirty-five surrogates with a recent decision making experience for an inpatient age 65 and older. Measurements Key factors surrogates considered when making decisions. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using the grounded theory method of qualitative analysis. Results Surrogates considered patient-centered factors and surrogate-centered factors. Patient-centered factors included: 1) respecting the patient’s input, (2) using past knowledge of patient to infer the patient’s wishes, and (3) considering what is in the patient’s best interests. Some surrogates expressed a desire for more information about the patient’s prior wishes. Surrogate-centered factors included 1) Surrogate’s wishes as a guide, (2) The surrogate’s religious beliefs and/or spirituality, (3) The surrogate’s interests, (4) Family consensus and (5) Obligation and guilt. Conclusion These data show that surrogate decision making is more complex than the standard ethical models, which are limited to patient autonomy and beneficence. Because surrogates also imagine what they would want under the circumstances and consider their own needs and preferences, models of surrogate decision making must account for these additional considerations. Surrogates’ desire for more information about patient preferences suggests a need for greater advance care planning

A comparison of grassland vegetation from three agri-environment conservation measures

peer-reviewedSemi-natural grassland habitats have declined significantly throughout Europe. To halt the decline, grassland conservation measures have been included in most European agri-environment schemes. This is the first study to compare the botanical composition of grassland habitats managed under the Irish Agri-Environment Options Scheme (AEOS). Sixty fields on drystock pastoral farms in receipt of agri-environment payments for grassland conservation were surveyed, with 20 fields being enrolled in each of the following AEOS options: Traditional Hay Meadow (THM), Species-Rich Grassland (SRG) and Natura 2000 species-rich grassland (Natura). The vegetation quality of sites enrolled in the Natura measure was higher than the quality of those enrolled in the THM and SRG measures. Natura sites had the greatest species richness, with a mean >40 species per site, which included approximately 17 species indicative of high botanical quality. Traditional Hay Meadows sites had the lowest species richness (mean: 29 species per site) and were dominated by species associated with improved grassland. Some THM sites had good levels of botanical richness and were similar in composition to Natura sites, with some Natura sites having lower vegetation quality, more similar to that of THM sites. Species-Rich Grassland had botanical richness that was intermediate between THM and Natura sites. A thorough assessment of the effectiveness of these measures was confounded by a lack of quantitative objectives for the target community composition to be attained. We discuss limitations and potential opportunities regarding the design, targeting, implementation and cost-effectiveness of these agri-environment measures

A Study into the Continuation of Work Life Balance

Within the field of Human Resource Management, the topic of work-life balance has been of interest as a way to maintain satisfied employees by companies and reduce burnout for individuals. This study aims to develop a deeper understanding in the area of work-life balance. The current research shows gaps in the relationship between the actions of college students and the work-life balance they achieve in their future career. This study shows how a college student’s propensity to work-life balance can affect their future balance between work and home and if college students have the propensity to think about their future work-life balance. It also fills this gap by looking at the relationship between the work-play balance (i.e., time spent on school versus time spent for leisure) a person has during their time in college and the work-life balance (i.e., time spent on work versus time spent at home) during their career. Finally, this study found that the Big Five personality inventory can be used to predict a person’s work-life balance, with the areas of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism being the best predictors

Culture on the prairie: celebrating Oklahoma's art museums and their contributions in the twentieth century

The purpose of this project is to compile a brief history of Oklahoma art museums, while specifically honoring individual contributors that have made the existence of these museums possible. The emphasis on individual contributors is a result of my employment at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum. With an institutional mission of "[preserving] Oklahoma's unique history while promoting pride in our great state...by telling Oklahoma's story through its people," it was necessary to highlight individuals that helped create Oklahoma's extensive museum network. In addition to the institutional constraints highlighted by the mission statement above, there were several factors that contributed to the selection process for inclusion in the project. The most restrictive of these factors was using Hall of Fame inductees whose portraits were already on hand at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. When a portrait was not on hand, a loan agreements were met with a number of other institutions to borrow objects. Following the historical and institutional lens described above, this project follows the guidelines typically used in academic historical works. As such, this project is a combination of primary and secondary sources. The secondary sources are heavily utilized in the first chapter to provide a historiographical background of Oklahoma history. The state's history is important because it provides context to the state's art museum history. Additionally, secondary sources are utilized to help fill in gaps in the historical information. Throughout the rest of the work, primary sources including journals, letters, notes, newspapers or legislation are utilized to demonstrate one of ten individuals' contributions to an Oklahoma museum. Although this project focuses on the individual, this project argues that these persons are responsible for the art museum community that exists today. The third chapter employs the archival information presented in the second chapter to craft two different configurations of a museum exhibit. One configuration is an exhibit physically in the museum, while the other one is a virtual exhibit developed for the post-Covid world. Although there are several publications that focus their attention on the history of museums in general, there is very little work celebrating the history of museums with a commemorative exhibit. With that in mind, the aim of this project is to establish a model other states can follow to honor their state's own museum tradition. At the very least, the aim of this project is to establish a written discourse on the unique history of Oklahoma art museums so more work can be done on the unique history of the state's museums in general

Opioid Use Disorder and Infant Health Outcomes: A Literature Review

Introduction and background Opioid use disorder (OUD) is an epidemic in the U.S. OUD affects both the mother’s and infant’s health. Substance-exposed infants suffer from decreased health outcomes relative to non-exposed infants. Purpose The aim is to identify infant health outcomes when pregnant women are prescribed medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD. Among pregnant women with OUD in the U.S., is medication-assisted therapy as compared to no therapy associated with decreased negative infant health outcomes? Literature review Five studies on OUD and infant outcomes in the U.S. were reviewed. CINAHL and PubMed were searched using terms opioid use disorder, pregnancy, and neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). The search was limited to the last five years and full text only. Of the 815 results, five articles were selected that focused on infant outcomes and prevention of NAS. Articles were excluded if the focus was solely on the maternal outcomes, cost, or unoriginal research. One meta-analysis was included that compared two types of MAT for pregnant women with OUD. Findings MAT is correlated with a shorter hospital stay and less severe NAS symptoms in infants. Conclusion and implications Rates of NAS and OUD have increased significantly in the US. Some of the increase may be attributed to the transition to ICD-10 codes. MAT for pregnant women with OUD is associated with better health outcomes for infants. Patient-centered care could help decrease negative health outcomes for both infants and women with OUD. Future study should focus on degrees of opioid exposure and related outcomes