The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the relationships that exist between mathematics anxiety and nurse self-efficacy for mathematics, and the medication calculation performance of acute care nurses. This research used a quantitative correlational research design and involved a sample of 84 acute care nurses, LVNs and RNs, from a suburban private hospital. the participants filled out a Mathematics Anxiety Scale, a Nurse Self-Efficacy for Mathematics Scale and also completed a 20-item medication calculation test. Significant practical and statistical relationships were discovered between the variables utilizing multiple linear regression statistics and commonality analysis. As the Nurse’s Mathematics anxiety score increased the scores on the medication test decreased and the scores on nurse self-efficacy for mathematics scale also decreased. the demographic item of “Hours a nurse worked in one week” had the greatest significance. the more hours a nurse worked the lower their score was on the medication calculation test. This study agrees with others that nurses are not good at mathematics. This study also correlated that as the number of hours worked increased so did the medication calculations errors. and many nurses have a measurable level of anxiety about mathematics and dosage calculations and this may influence calculation ability. Suggestions for further research include refinement of instruments used in study, further differentiation of barriers to successful medication calculation performance, and testing of interventions used to teach, train and evaluate accurate medication administration in nurses.

A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science / This thesis examines how emotion is conveyed in music from different eras, and attempts to reconcile differences between psychological and music-theoretical approaches. Chapter 1 introduces the concepts embodied by the two manuscripts within this thesis. Chapters 2 and 3 describe two separate but related complimentary research projects. Chapter 2, entitled “Breaking with Common Practice: Exploring Modernist Musical Emotion”, compares perceived emotion in prelude sets by D. Shostakovich, F. Chopin, and J.S. Bach. This work seeks to clarify the relationship between historic changes in music’s structure and conveyed emotion, particularly in the twentieth century–which remains largely unexplored. Building on previous work, we used commonality analysis to break down the unique and joint contributions of various cues to perceived emotion and provide insight into their changing roles in the twentieth century. The work described in Chapter 3, “Cleaning up our work: Applying decision hygiene to analysis of musical structure”, was inspired by previous attempts in diverse fields (e.g., medicine, judicial sentencing) to resolve unwarranted disagreement, and used a novel procedure to distinguish genuine disagreement from disagreement that is not reflective of true differences of opinion amongst music theorists. Unlike other fields involving judgement, individual theorists’ unique perspectives are valuable. Therefore, rather than forcing inauthentic agreement, our procedure clarified and enhanced individual perspectives in musical analysis. Taken together, the research described in Chapters 2 and 3 bridge the gap between epistemologically different approaches to disseminating musical knowledge–cognition and theory. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Music’s expressive capabilities has inspired scholarship from psychology, music theory, musicology, and philosophy for centuries. Although research in psychology has produced consensus about how certain musical elements contribute to its emotional meaning, musicological research shows that music’s structure evolved across history. Little research has explored emotional communication in music from the twentieth century, raising important questions about how emotion is conveyed in the music of our time. This oversight may contribute to continuing disagreement between music psychologists and music theorists on how music’s structure affects its perceived meaning. Thus, by bridging the gap between theory and cognition, this thesis aims to: (i) shed light on the role of music’s evolving structure–particularly in the twentieth century–on perceived emotion; and (ii) reduce error in music analysis while preserving valuable differences in theorists’ perspectives through applying a novel method inspired by optimized decision-making procedures.

This thesis comprises two manuscripts prepared for scholarly journals. Chapter 2 comprises an article entitled “Exploring Historic Changes in Musical Communication: Deconstructing Emotional Cues in Preludes by Bach and Chopin.”, which examines emotion perception in historic prelude sets by J.S. Bach and F. Chopin. This work connects psychological research on perceived musical emotion to musicological research describing changes in music structure. Using a technique called commonality analysis to deconstruct cues’ individual and joint roles in predicting participants’ perceived emotions, the chapter clarifies how music’s conveyed emotion can differ in compositions from different eras. Chapter 3 comprises an article entitled “Parsing Musical Patterns in Prelude Sets: Bridging Qualitative and Quantitative Epistemologies in Historical Music Research”. This chapter bridges gaps between qualitative and quantitative research on music history through an analytical approach engaging with both fields. Specifically, cluster analyses of Bach and Chopin’s preludes reveal notable differences in the composers’ expressive toolkits, consistent with work from historical and empirical music research. Through a novel analytical framework, the chapter illustrates a method for detecting groups of pieces demarcated by salient musical differences, assessing cues’ importance within these groups, and determining the most influential cue values for each group. Together, these articles provide new insight into the subtle sonic relationships influencing musical meaning and emotion perception. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Music’s capacity to express emotion has received considerable attention in psychological and musicological research. Whereas efforts from psychology clarify the musical cues for emotion through perceptual experiments, efforts from musicology track changes in compositional practice over time—finding changing relationships between music’s cues for emotion in historically diverse compositions. To date, the implications of these changing musical relationships for emotion perception remain unclear. This thesis analyzes musical scores and listeners’ emotion ratings to gain insight into music’s structural changes throughout history and their implications for perceived emotion. By applying statistical techniques to (i) detect musical patterns in prelude sets by J.S. Bach and F. Chopin and (ii) clarify how cue relationships influence emotion perception, this thesis sheds light on the relationship between music’s historic context and its emotional meaning.

Un système de production High-Mix Low-Volume est caractérisé par une grande variété de technologies, des faibles volumes de production, et des produits de courte durée de vie. L’introduction de la technique d’échantillonnage dynamique à ce système de production a permis un gain important sur le rendement de production. Cet échantillonnage est basé, en temps réel, sur les états des équipements et sur l’ensemble des produits en cours de fabrication. Les méthodes classiques d’analyse des rendements, nécessitant un grand nombre de mesure par produit, ne sont plus aussi performantes. Afin d’adapter le diagnostic au nouvel environnement de production, les travaux de cette thèse proposent une approche de diagnostic qui consiste à localiser l’équipement à l’origine de défauts dans une ligne de fabrication du semi-conducteur. Elle est composée de trois modules principaux. Le premier module est constitué d’une méthode d’identification de l’équipement en mode de fonctionnement anormal. Cette méthode est basée sur l’analyse d’éléments communs. Le deuxième est un module de tri de données. Un algorithme d’alignement de séquences a été utilisé afin de comparer les caractéristiques des échantillons et calculer le taux de similarité. Le troisième module est l’échantillonnage réactif pour le diagnostic. Cet échantillonnage est basé sur un modèle d’optimisation linéaire qui permet de trouver l’équilibre entre le nombre d’échantillons et le temps d’analyse. L’approche proposée est validée sur des données expérimentales issues de la ligne de fabrication de la compagnie STMicroelectronics à Rousset-France. / High-Mix Low-Volume manufacturing process is characterized by a wide variety of technologies, low production volumes, and short cycle time of products. The introduction of dynamic sampling technique in this system has enabled a significant improvement of production gain. The dynamic sampling is based on the equipment states and the set of products being manufactured. The yield enhancement methods requiring à large number of measurements by product, are no more efficient. In order to adapt the diagnosis method to the new manufacturing environment, this thesis provides a defect source identification method applied to semiconductor manufacturing process. It is composed of three main modules. The first module aim to identify the faulty process equipment. This module is based on the tool commonality analysis approach. The second module consists in sorting the products. A Sequence Alignment Algorithm has been used in order to compare the sample characteristics and to calculate the similarity degree. The third module is a reactive sampling method for the diagnosis. This method is based on a linear optimization algorithm that allows finding the tradeoff between the number of samples and the analysis time. The proposed approach has been approved on real data from STMicroelectronics manufacturing line in Rousset-France.