Olivet Nazarene University Annual Catalog 2004-2005

https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/acaff_catalog/1079/thumbnail.jp

The Environment: Alive, Whole, Interconnected and Interacting

Nurses frequently care for individuals whose conditions are related to destructive environmental influences. Although the environment is a central construct in the nursing paradigm, its definition is client oriented, circumscribed, and does not adequately explain situations emanating from the larger physical, social, cultural, political, or economic spheres of the environment. This research described an expanded, ideal, environmental nursing domain derived from selected upstream scholars whose work has addressed broad environmental dimensions. Using the concept of future search, once this idealized environmental domain is envisioned, the nursing profession can begin to discover the knowledge base that is needed in order to created an expanded environmental world view. Combined qualitative data collection methods of individual field interviews using feminist approaches, and a focus group consisting of scholars who have addressed broad environmental dimensions related to nursing were used in this study. Data analysis was performed by using the constant comparative method which consisted of concurrent data collection and analysis. The participants described an ideal environment as the entire planet which is alive, whole, interconnected and interacting. Within this planetary environment are numerous dynamic patterns, dimensions, and levels that are interconnected and have open or indefinite boundaries. Because of the interconnections and interactions, any part of the planet that is unhealthy affects the entire planet adversely. Recommended nursing actions included the use of nursing and ecofeminist paradigms to liberate the nursing profession and the environment from oppressive conditions. Steps to achieving liberation consisted of including the environment as the nursing client and redirecting nursing actions from downstream to upstream environmental activities. The findings of this study have the potential for freeing nurses to expand their actions beyond the present limited environmental arena of the individual person. Using this enlarged conceptualization of the environment, nursing researchers, educators, and practitioners can address health issues within broad environmental dimensions in order to facilitate human well-being

Automated manipulation of musical grammars to support episodic interactive experiences

Music is used to enhance the experience of participants and visitors in a range of settings including theatre, film, video games, installations and theme parks. These experiences may be interactive, contrastingly episodic and with variable duration. Hence, the musical accompaniment needs to be dynamic and to transition between contrasting music passages. In these contexts, computer generation of music may be necessary for practical reasons including distribution and cost. Automated and dynamic composition algorithms exist but are not well-suited to a highly interactive episodic context owing to transition-related problems including discontinuity, abruptness, extended repetitiveness and lack of musical granularity and musical form. Addressing these problems requires algorithms capable of reacting to participant behaviour and episodic change in order to generate formic music that is continuous and coherent during transitions. This thesis presents the Form-Aware Transitioning and Recovering Algorithm (FATRA) for realtime, adaptive, form-aware music generation to provide continuous musical accompaniment in episodic context. FATRA combines stochastic grammar adaptation and grammar merging in real time. The Form-Aware Transition Engine (FATE) implementation of FATRA estimates the time-occurrence of upcoming narrative transitions and generates a harmonic sequence as narrative accompaniment with a focus on coherent, form-aware music transitioning between music passages of contrasting character. Using FATE, FATRA has been evaluated in three perceptual user studies: An audioaugmented real museum experience, a computer-simulated museum experience and a music-focused online study detached from narrative. Music transitions of FATRA were benchmarked against common approaches of the video game industry, i.e. crossfading and direct transitions. The participants were overall content with the music of FATE during their experience. Transitions of FATE were significantly favoured against the crossfading benchmark and competitive against the direct transitions benchmark, without statistical significance for the latter comparison. In addition, technical evaluation demonstrated capabilities of FATRA including form generation, repetitiveness avoidance and style/form recovery in case of falsely predicted narrative transitions. Technical results along with perceptual preference and competitiveness against the benchmark approaches are deemed as positive and the structural advantages of FATRA, including form-aware transitioning, carry considerable potential for future research

Harding University Course Catalog 2001-2002

Catalog of Harding University 2001-2002https://scholarworks.harding.edu/catalogs/1037/thumbnail.jp

Olivet Nazarene University Biennial Catalog 2000-2002

https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/acaff_catalog/1077/thumbnail.jp

Predicting success for nontraditional students in an afternoon and evening/weekend associate degree in nursing program

Mount St. Mary\u27s College has offered a nontraditional Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) Program since 1992. The program has an afternoon and evening/weekend format. There has been one previous research study published in 2005 that described the student population that Mount St. Mary\u27s College serves. This present study will examine the student population since 2005 because of changes in admission requirements, the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) - Registered Nurse (RN) passing standard, and the persistent nursing shortage. The purpose of this research study is to predict success for nontraditional adult learners in an Afternoon and Evening/Weekend Associate Degree of Nursing (ADN) program. Success is defined as completion of the nursing program and passing the national board examination on the first attempt. This research study will also identify and describe the nontraditional adult learners served in an Afternoon and Evening/Weekend Associate Degree of Nursing (ADN) program. Additionally, this research will determine if selected admission criteria and other factors such as student characteristics are correlated with both nursing program completion (as measured by exit grade point average) and subsequent passage of the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) - Registered Nurse (RN) on the first attempt