Shoeprints are a common type of evidence found at crime scenes and are regularly used in forensic investigations. However, their utility is limited by the lack of reference footwear databases that cover the large and growing number of distinct shoe models. Additionally, existing methods for matching crime-scene shoeprints to reference databases…

Schools face increasing pressure to ensure teachers are using data to support and inform their instruction, and the practice of data-based decision making has many positive effects on teacher satisfaction, instruction, and student achievement. Teachers face difficulties in gathering, organizing, and effectively utilizing student data to drive…

Disease associated gene discovery is a critical step to realize the future of personalized medicine. However empirical and clinical validation of disease associated genes are time consuming and expensive. In silico discovery of disease associated genes from literature is therefore becoming the first essential step for biomarker discovery to…

In this dissertation, we discuss the problem of enabling cooperative query execution in a multi-cloud environment where the data is owned and managed by multiple enterprises. Each enterprise maintains its own relational database using a private cloud. In order to implement desired business services, parties need to share selected portion of their…

Expenditures on health information technology (HIT) for healthcare organizations are growing exponentially and the value of it is the subject of criticism and skepticism. Because HIT is viewed as capable of improving major health care indicators, the government offers incentives to health care providers and organizations to implement solutions.…

Location-based social networks (LBSNs) have recently attracted the interest of millions of users who can now not only connect and interact with their friends--as it also happens in traditional online social networks--but can also voluntarily share their whereabouts in real time. A location database is the backbone of a location-based social…

Classification, clustering and association mining are major tasks of data mining and have been widely used for knowledge discovery. Associative classification mining, the combination of both association rule mining and classification, has emerged as an indispensable way to support decision making and scientific research. In particular, it offers a…

This dissertation is a study of the impact of federal legislative proposals considered between 1997 and 2004 that offer protection to databases. It investigates the effect that the proposals had on the balance between the economic interests of owners and the right of the public to unfettered access to information. This identified legislation…

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems could make healthcare delivery safer by providing benefits such as timely access to accurate and complete patient information, advances in diagnosis and coordination of care, and enhancements for monitoring patient vitals. This study explored the nature of EHR adoption in U.S. hospitals and their patient…

A lack of communication, information sharing, and a centralized and unified intelligence repository to gather, maintain, and analyze intelligence information before the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks limited the ability of U.S. law enforcement to share intelligence. The problem addressed in this case study was the lack of multiagency…

A lack of interoperability impairs data quality among health care providers' electronic health record (EHR) systems. The problem is whether the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9000 principles relate to the problem of interoperability in implementation of EHR systems. The purpose of the nonexperimental quantitative research…

"Reflective Database Access Control" (RDBAC) is a model in which a database privilege is expressed as a database query itself, rather than as a static privilege contained in an access control list. RDBAC aids the management of database access controls by improving the expressiveness of policies. However, such policies introduce new interactions…

Learning vocabulary and understanding texts present difficulty for language learners due to, among other things, the high degree of lexical ambiguity. By developing an intelligent tutoring system, this dissertation examines whether automatically providing enriched sense-specific information is effective for vocabulary learning and reading…

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to the geographic subset of online user-generated content. Through Geobrowsers and online mapping services, which use geovisualization and Web technologies to share and produce VGI, a global digital commons of geographic information has emerged. A notable example is Wikipedia, an online collaborative…

An unprecedented amount of information encompassing almost every facet of human activities across the world is generated daily in the form of zeros and ones, and that is often the only form in which such information is recorded. A good fraction of this information needs to be preserved for periods of time ranging from a few years to centuries.…