CAPTCHA Accessibility Study of Online Forums

The rise of online forums has benefited disabled users, who take advantage of better communications and more inclusion into society. However, even with accessibility laws that are supposed to provide disabled people the same equal access as non-disabled users, sites have erected technical barriers, such as CAPTCHAs, that prevent users from taking full advantage of site capability. This study analyzes 150 online forums to determine if sites use CAPTCHAs, and what types are used. Each variety presents accessibility problems to disabled users and the results of the research show that most sites use text-based CAPTCHAs, but rarely provide alternatives that would help users with visual disabilities. The research presents alternatives that site designers may wish to consider in order to allow more disabled users to access their sites

Public Evidence from Secret Ballots

Elections seem simple---aren't they just counting? But they have a unique, challenging combination of security and privacy requirements. The stakes are high; the context is adversarial; the electorate needs to be convinced that the results are correct; and the secrecy of the ballot must be ensured. And they have practical constraints: time is of the essence, and voting systems need to be affordable and maintainable, and usable by voters, election officials, and pollworkers. It is thus not surprising that voting is a rich research area spanning theory, applied cryptography, practical systems analysis, usable security, and statistics. Election integrity involves two key concepts: convincing evidence that outcomes are correct and privacy, which amounts to convincing assurance that there is no evidence about how any given person voted. These are obviously in tension. We examine how current systems walk this tightrope.Comment: To appear in E-Vote-Id '1

Medical Image Data and Datasets in the Era of Machine Learning-Whitepaper from the 2016 C-MIMI Meeting Dataset Session.

At the first annual Conference on Machine Intelligence in Medical Imaging (C-MIMI), held in September 2016, a conference session on medical image data and datasets for machine learning identified multiple issues. The common theme from attendees was that everyone participating in medical image evaluation with machine learning is data starved. There is an urgent need to find better ways to collect, annotate, and reuse medical imaging data. Unique domain issues with medical image datasets require further study, development, and dissemination of best practices and standards, and a coordinated effort among medical imaging domain experts, medical imaging informaticists, government and industry data scientists, and interested commercial, academic, and government entities. High-level attributes of reusable medical image datasets suitable to train, test, validate, verify, and regulate ML products should be better described. NIH and other government agencies should promote and, where applicable, enforce, access to medical image datasets. We should improve communication among medical imaging domain experts, medical imaging informaticists, academic clinical and basic science researchers, government and industry data scientists, and interested commercial entities

Scholarly communication in an electronic environment: problems and challenges

Thanks to remarkable feats of international cooperation over the last 50 years librarians have produced and maintained a string of standards which collectively have made the identification of almost any published item a straightforward task (UBC), and have changed interlibrary document supply from a peripheral operation to a core activity (UAP). The system runs so smoothly that it is taken for granted and its lessons are not being used to inform discussions on the emergence of exactly the same issues in the electronic environment. The Internet is seen as a great and liberating development, but it is not a neutral one, and it requires very substantial international effort if it is to be made usable for sustained scholarly communication rather than short-term gratification. The preservation and archiving of electronic information has only just begun to surface as a very complex issue. An electronic environment is being created which is inimical to scholarship and which is largely being ignored by commercial and entertainment forces that are irrelevant to the scholarly process. A much more active approach from the library profession is required

Word Generation in Boston Public Schools: Natural History of a Literacy Intervention

Describes a program to teach high-frequency academic vocabulary and discourses skills, promote effective teaching strategies for vocabulary, comprehension, and discussion, and facilitate faculty collaboration; its implementation; and evaluation results

Research, relativity and relevance : can universal truths answer local questions

It is a commonplace that the internet has led to a globalisation of informatics and that this has had beneficial effects in terms of standards and interoperability. However this necessary harmonisation has also led to a growing understanding that this positive trend has an in-built assumption that "one size fits all". The paper explores the importance of local and national research in addressing global issues and the appropriateness of local solutions and applications. It concludes that federal and collegial solutions are to be preferred to imperial solutions

Atlanta Consultation II: On the Future of the NPT

The Middle Powers Initiative, a program of the Global Security Institute, organized an Extraordinary Strategy Consultation on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) 2005 Review Conference in cooperation with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, January 26-28, 2005.Entitled Atlanta Consultation II: On the Future of the NPT, the gathering involved high-level representatives of key governments and was modeled after the successful Atlanta Consultation I held at The Carter Center in 2000. This report helped identify workable proposals for governments to consider as they prepared for the 2005 Review