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The advent of music streaming has made it increasingly important for actors in the music industry to understand if tracks are going to succeed or not. This study investigates if it is possible to accurately classify the growth of the listener base of a music track based on multivariate time series with listener behavior data. 18 popular time series classification algorithms were used to build predictive models which were evaluated in a 10-fold cross-validation. We also examined the algorithms’ potential to deliver business value for a record label. Lastly, the possibilities and challenges of applying a data-driven business model in the music industry were investigated by performing a comparative analysis of a modern and traditional record label. Six algorithms were found to significantly outperform the baseline. Two algorithms based on convolutional kernels, RR and AMini, were found to present the biggest business value because of their accuracy and low time complexity. While it may be necessary for record labels to adopt data-driven business models to flourish in the modern market, there are difficulties regarding the competitiveness of digital solutions and complications in moving the focus from networking to developing technology. / Spridningen av musiktjänster har gjort det alltmer viktigt för aktörer i musikbranschen att förstå vilka låtar som kommer att lyckas och inte. Denna studie undersöker om det är möjligt att klassificera tillväxten av en låts lyssnarantal baserat på multivariata tidsserier innehållandes data om lyssnarbeteende. 18 populära algoritmer för tidsserieklassificering användes för att bygga prediktiva modeller som utvärderades med 10-delad korsvalidering. Vi undersökte sedan algoritmernas potential att skapa affärsvärde för ett skivbolag. Slutligen studerades möjligheter och utmaningar som datadrivna affärsmodeller presenterar i denna bransch genom en komparativ analys av ett modernt och traditionellt skivbolag. Sex algoritmer visade sig signifikant överträffa en baslinjeklassificerare. Vi fann att två algoritmer baserade på faltningskärnor, RR och AMini, kunde skapa störst affärsvärde på grund av deras noggrannhet samt låga tidskomplexitet. Det verkar vara nödvändigt för skivbolag att anamma datadrivna affärsmodeller för att frodas i den moderna marknaden, men det finns svårigheter som måste beaktas vad gäller konkurrenskraften för digitala lösningar samt förflyttandet av fokuset från nätverksbyggande till teknologiutveckling.

An empirical investigation of the security flaws and features of an in-use modern electronic health record system is performed. The investigation was carried out using dynamic analysis, manual testing and interviews with developers. The results indicate that in-use electronic health record systems suffer from serious authentication flaws, arising from the interaction of many different proprietary systems. The authentication problems are so severe that gaining access to any user’s computer on the hospital intranet would compromise a large database of patient medical records, including radiological data regarding the patients. Common web vulnerabilities were also present, such as injections and incorrectly configured HTTP security headers. These vulnerabilities were heavily mitigated by the use of libraries for constructing web interfaces. / En empirisk undersökning av säkerheten inom ett modernt elektroniskt patientjournal-system har utförts. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av dynamisk analys, manuell testning och intervjuer med utvecklarna. Resultatet indikerar att system för elektroniska patientjournaler har stora brister inom autentisering, vilka uppstår p.g.a. att flera olika kommersiella system måste samarbeta. Problemen är så allvarliga att med tillgång till en enda dator på intranätet kan en stor databas med patientdata äventyras, inklusive radiologisk data gällande patienterna. Vanliga websårbarheter fanns också, så som injektioner av skript och inkorrekt konfigurerade HTTP säkerhetsheaders. Dessa sårbarheter mitigerades starkt genom användandet av bibliotek för webinterface.

<p>This research examines the opinions and viewpoints of former Crown Wards regarding the Assessment and Action Record (the AAR), which is the main documentation associated with the Looking After Children approach implemented for use with all children in care by the Ministry of Children and Youth for the Province of Ontario. This documentation, which consists of hundreds of questions and a research-based, check-list format, forms a significant component of the contact that Children’s Service Workers with Children’s Aid Societies have with children in care. Crown Wards, because they are in the permanent care of their Society, are subjected to the AAR yearly throughout their time in care. Open-ended interviews were conducted with four former Crown Wards from three separate Children’s Aid agencies in southwestern Ontario. While the findings did not bear out the anticipated overt criticism of the AAR documentation, what was salient was the hope that all of the information they gave over the years was being put to good use (that it might help themselves and other Crown Wards), that these former Crown Wards were not aware that they could decline to answer the AAR questions in whole or in part, and that the AAR document is felt to be too long and repetitive. In addition, issues of automatic compliance by children in care with requests made by CAS personnel became a discomforting theme.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<p>Primary care multi-disciplinary teams were central to recent reform plans for Canadian primary care, in response to limited resources and increasing demands. Health Information Technology was also an integral part of those plans as supporting infrastructure for the modernization of healthcare services, facilitating coordination, collaboration and access to services. As provider-centric Health Information Technology matures, attention turns to the patient. The hallmark of patient-centered applications is the electronic Personal Health Record System (PHR). These systems have grown beyond simple repositories of personal health information, extending to a range of information collection, sharing, self-management and exchange functions.</p> <p>The implementation of PHRs in primary care multi-disciplinary teams involves many stakeholders including patients, physician, allied health professionals and support staff. There is significant literature on physician and patient perspectives on all PHR functions. However, little attention has been given to the other stakeholders: allied health professionals and support staff.</p> <p>In this study, we explored the views of Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) and support staff, working in a primary care clinic adopting a patient-centered, multi-disciplinary model called the Family Health Team (FHT) model. Participants provided their insight on benefits, concerns and recommendations regarding the implementation of MyOSCAR, a PHR, at their clinic. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured one-on-one interviews that were analyzed to extract common themes and summarize participant views. Process diagrams were produced to highlight opportunities for improvement of current work processes through the integration of MyOSCAR functions.</p> <p>As more teams are created in primary care and they attempt to implement new technologies, it is important to get a complete picture of all stakeholder views. This is the first study that focuses on the views of AHPs and support staff, contributing to the literature on PHR implementations. Findings from this study can contribute to future PHR implementations by informing planning and implementation.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Delays in the process of diagnosing and treating cancer are common and lead to confusion and undesirable outcomes. Care coordinators are often embedded within the system of care to manage follow-up care. Electronic and real-time reminder systems can be used to support the care coordinator’s work, but electronic health record (EHR) usability is known to be poor. This study, completed in collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Connecticut Healthcare System, evaluated the Cancer Coordination and Tracking System (CCTS), an EHR-linked, web-based tool for cancer care management. A set of expert-driven and user-driven usability engineering methods was applied to comprehensively identify and analyze usability problems within the system. Ten current CCTS users were engaged in the study to help identify problem. 101 (62.3%) problems were identified through expert-driven methods, 56 (34.6%) were identified by user-driven methods, and 5 (3.1%) were identified through both types of methods. The list of 162 unique problems were prioritized and twelve high priority problems were highlighted. Design recommendations were developed to address each of these high priority problems.

The sustentaculum tali (ST) is located at the medial aspect of the tarsus and is considered a rare anatomic location for diseases. This retrospective case series describes the management of five horses with septic and non-septic ST injuries. All horses were treated surgically with tenovaginoscopy, ST fragment and exostosis removal. In two cases, lameness was caused by an exostosis involving the ST and the plantar aspect of the medial trochlear ridge (MTR). There are no reports of exostosis involving ST and MTR causing lameness. In four horses, the long-termoutcome was considered good and the horses were able to return to the previous level; one horse developed a recurrence of ST and MTR exostosis leading to recurrence of lameness. Curettage of the ST and MTR exostosis, removal of fragments and tarsal sheath adhesions play a pivotal role in increasing prognosis and long-termoutcome. Poor prognosis is correlated with exostosis recurrence.

Agile development methodologies are becoming increasingly popular because they address many risks of software development through things such as quick delivery of working software and responsiveness to change. As agile organizations have begun to develop more user interface-intensive systems, they understand the value and need to design more usable systems. The fields of usability engineering and human-computer interaction are focused on exploring how people interact with computer systems. However, much of this work is inaccessible to agile practitioners because it does not align with core agile values and because there has not been adequate transfer of knowledge between practice and academia. This motivated my creation of the eXtreme Scenario-Based Design (XSBD) process, an integrated agile usability approach. XSBD provides key usability benefits of the scenario-based design (SBD) approach (an established usability engineering process) and is compatible with an agile development framework modeled on leading agile processes like XP and Scrum. XSBD was designed for use in projects in which a large part of the overall system quality is determined by system usability. This requires close communication and coordination of the disparate usability and agile development work practices. A core aspect of XSBD is the central design record (CDR), which is the shared design representation that guides usability design. It tightly couples usability evaluation results to design features and high level project goals, allowing the usability engineer to leverage key benefits of traditional SBD while working in an agile framework. I began developing XSBD at Virginia Tech, evaluating it through several student-led development efforts. To improve and demonstrate the applicability of XSBD in practice, I partnered with Meridium, Inc., a software and services company. Using an action research case study method, I worked with several development teams there who used XSBD to develop products. This directly linked usability and HCI research to practice, allowing me to demonstrate XSBD's utility in practice while evaluating it from a theoretical perspective. The results of this work suggest several avenues for further work both to increase its adoption in practice and to link to existing HCI research efforts such as design rationale and knowledge reuse. / Ph. D.

Time-averaging, the mixing of fossils of different ages within a single bed, defines the limit of temporal resolution of the fossil record. Quantitative estimates of this resolution threshold have not been acquired for any group other than mollusks. This study provides the first quantitative estimates of time-averaging for brachiopods, extending our understanding of intrinsic, or group specific controls on this process. Estimates were obtained by direct dating of individual terebratulid brachiopod shells Bouchardia rosea (Mawe) collected from modern surficial shelly accumulations in the Southeast Brazilian Bight (SW Atlantic). Using amino acid racemization dating calibrated with radiocarbon, 82 individual brachiopod shells, collected from four nearshore localities, were dated. The shells vary in age from modern to 3000 years, standard deviation = 680 years. The age distribution is significantly right-skewed (K3=2.48). At 50-year resolution, the temporal completeness is 75% for the last 1000 years and declines to 20% completeness for 1000-2000 yr. BP. Preservational quality (taphonomy) of modern (<50 yr.) shells is statistically indistinguishable from that of older shells, demonstrating that shell taphonomy is not a good predictor of within-assemblage relative age. These results conform to previously published results for mollusks. Therefore, brachiopods can show considerable time-averaging and this time-averaging can be on a scale similar to aragonitic mollusks despite the apparent lack of robustness of calcitic brachiopod shells. This suggests that the brachiopod fossil record can be notably time-averaged, but estimates of this mixing cannot be reliably deciphered from the taphonomic condition of shells. / Master of Science

Fossil localities across the state of Tennessee and the data related to those sites were compiled from Tennessee Division of Geology Bulletin 84, titled “Tennessee’s Prehistoric Vertebrates,” and stored in a Microsoft Access geodatabase housed by the Department of Collections at the East Tennessee State University Museum of Natural History located at the Gray Fossil Site. Included in the database are forms to enter new site localities, view information about those already entered, view and add data to a master faunal list for the state, view sites repository information and store and add documents that are key-word searchable from the main menu. This database was compiled to give researchers a straightforward and easy to use means of analyzing known information about paleontological sites across the state, with the potential to be expanded worldwide. Conservation of data is crucial and can be lost over time unless data preservation efforts are made.