Diversity As A Trade Secret

When we think of trade secrets, we often think of famous examples such as the Coca-Cola formula, Google’s algorithm, or McDonald’s special sauce used on the Big Mac. However, companies have increasingly made the novel argument that diversity data and strategies are protected trade secrets. This may sound like an unusual, even suspicious, legal argument. Many of the industries that dominate the economy in wealth, status, and power continue to struggle with a lack of diversity. Various stakeholders have mobilized to improve access and equity, but there is an information asymmetry that makes this pursuit daunting. When potential plaintiffs and other diversity advocates request workforce statistics and related employment information, many companies have responded with virulent attempts to maintain secrecy, including the use of trade secret protection. In this Article, I use the technology industry as an example to examine the trending legal argument of treating diversity as a trade secret. I discuss how companies can use this tactic to hide gender and race disparities and interfere with the advancement of civil rights law and workplace equity. I argue that instead of permitting companies to hide information, we should treat diversity data and strategies as public resources. This type of open model will advance the goals of equal opportunity law by raising awareness of inequalities and opportunities, motivating employers to invest in effective practices, facilitating collaboration on diversity goals, fostering innovation, and increasing accountability for action and progress

Grid Analysis of Radiological Data

IGI-Global Medical Information Science Discoveries Research Award 2009International audienceGrid technologies and infrastructures can contribute to harnessing the full power of computer-aided image analysis into clinical research and practice. Given the volume of data, the sensitivity of medical information, and the joint complexity of medical datasets and computations expected in clinical practice, the challenge is to fill the gap between the grid middleware and the requirements of clinical applications. This chapter reports on the goals, achievements and lessons learned from the AGIR (Grid Analysis of Radiological Data) project. AGIR addresses this challenge through a combined approach. On one hand, leveraging the grid middleware through core grid medical services (data management, responsiveness, compression, and workflows) targets the requirements of medical data processing applications. On the other hand, grid-enabling a panel of applications ranging from algorithmic research to clinical use cases both exploits and drives the development of the services

Design, development and testing of a full-stack web service for a trajectory computation algorithm

This document delivers a comprehensive report of the final degree project, which had as its primary goal, the design, developing, and testing a full-stack web service to facilitate user-friendly interaction with a trajectory computation software called Dynamo. The crux of this project lies in taking an existing, complex software and making it more accessible and simpler to use for a broad user base through the development of a web service. By leveraging a wide array of technologies - Python, Flask, Vue.js, Tailwind, and MongoDB - and following modern software development methodologies like Agile, a backend server, frontend interface, and a database structure were meticulously designed and implemented. In addition, secure authentication and an efficient system for error handling and validation were integrated to ensure a secure and user-friendly experience. A key aspect of this project was the need to understand how Dynamo functions, even though we did not go into the intricate operational details of the software itself. The main focus remained on its configuration process, providing the basis for developing a web service that allows users to intuitively configure, run, and monitor their simulations. This facilitates a more straightforward way for users to leverage the power of the Dynamo software, regardless of their technical proficiency. For this reason, a web service requirements capture was carried out with researchers from the ICARUS research group, thus ensuring that the developed web service adapts to their needs. All aspects of this project, from understanding Dynamo's configuration process to the development of the backend and frontend of the web service, were tackled systematically and are detailed in this document

Design for Coworking in Honolulu.

D.Arch. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Spread spectrum-based video watermarking algorithms for copyright protection

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2263 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Digital technologies know an unprecedented expansion in the last years. The consumer can now benefit from hardware and software which was considered state-of-the-art several years ago. The advantages offered by the digital technologies are major but the same digital technology opens the door for unlimited piracy. Copying an analogue VCR tape was certainly possible and relatively easy, in spite of various forms of protection, but due to the analogue environment, the subsequent copies had an inherent loss in quality. This was a natural way of limiting the multiple copying of a video material. With digital technology, this barrier disappears, being possible to make as many copies as desired, without any loss in quality whatsoever. Digital watermarking is one of the best available tools for fighting this threat. The aim of the present work was to develop a digital watermarking system compliant with the recommendations drawn by the EBU, for video broadcast monitoring. Since the watermark can be inserted in either spatial domain or transform domain, this aspect was investigated and led to the conclusion that wavelet transform is one of the best solutions available. Since watermarking is not an easy task, especially considering the robustness under various attacks several techniques were employed in order to increase the capacity/robustness of the system: spread-spectrum and modulation techniques to cast the watermark, powerful error correction to protect the mark, human visual models to insert a robust mark and to ensure its invisibility. The combination of these methods led to a major improvement, but yet the system wasn't robust to several important geometrical attacks. In order to achieve this last milestone, the system uses two distinct watermarks: a spatial domain reference watermark and the main watermark embedded in the wavelet domain. By using this reference watermark and techniques specific to image registration, the system is able to determine the parameters of the attack and revert it. Once the attack was reverted, the main watermark is recovered. The final result is a high capacity, blind DWr-based video watermarking system, robust to a wide range of attacks.BBC Research & Developmen

Unlocking Doors: Inclusive Leadership in Stage Management

As diversity in casting continues to be a topic of intense concentration, stage managers should expect to work with more diverse casts in the years to come. As differing identities in the rehearsal room become more commonplace, stage managers will be called upon to develop an interdisciplinary approach to our vocation; insights from identity studies can help bridge the gap between artists accustomed to homogeneity and artists belonging to historically underrepresented groups. Specifically, this thesis draws upon academic texts and interviews with working theatre practitioners in order to provide an overview of the intersection between stage management and disability, as they currently relate to each other

Linking farmers to markets through valorisation of local resources:the case for intellectual property rights of indigenous resources

This is the scientific report from a research programme which explored the current lack of a suitable public system for protecting GIs in Southern Africa. In contrast to the European Union, the current South African legal framework only provides for the protection of GIs as collective and, in certain circumstances, as certification trademarks. The lack of a public system through which to valorize GIs was identified as excluding resource poor farmers (but also commercial larger scale farmers) from a potentially useful tool for improving their market access. The need for a public system of protection also emanates from the significance of the wild resources found in South Africa and Namibia, which are often the only source of income for resource poor communities and which is threatened by bio‐piracy. It thus appeared important to assess the merits of developing an institutional framework for protecting GIs in Southern Africa and to evaluate the needs for a sui generis legal system. Secondly, an analysis was done of the local dynamics based on specific agro‐food products. Two central questions were therefore addressed in this study: "How can local communities successfully protect their resources and differentiate their production through GIs?" and "What is the nature and extent of the required institutional and legal framework to achieve this objective?”.Geographical indications; indigenous resources; intellectual property rights; collectivae action; Southern Africa

Linking farmers to markets through valorisation of local resources: the case for intellectual property rights of indigenous resources

Agribusiness,

STRONG, INDEPENDENT, AND IN LOVE: FIGHTING FEMALE FANTASIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

During the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist critics like Janice Radway began to reconsider so-called women’s genres, like romance novels and soap operas and melodramas, in order to address the forms of subversion and expressions of agency they provided female audiences. However, in spite of greater willingness to consider the progressive potential in romance narratives, there has been little such consideration given to stories of romance for the fighting female character—defined as a protagonist who uses violence, via her body or weapons, to save herself and others. The fighting female has received a good deal of attention from critics like Yvonne Tasker, Sherrie Inness, Rikke Schubart, and Phillipa Gates because she enacts transgressive forms of femininity. However, the typical response has been to ignore the intimate or romantic relationships she has with men or to critique them based on the assumption that such hetero-relationships automatically limit her agency and attenuate her representation as a feminist-friendly heroine. This view presumes that female empowerment opposes or can only be imagined outside the dominant cultural narratives that generally organize women’s lives around their hetero-relationships—whether sexual or platonic, familial or vocational. As I argue, some fighting female relationship narratives merit our attention because they reveal a new cache of plausible empowered female identities that women negotiate through their intimacies and romances with men. These negotiations, in turn, enable innovative representations of male-female relationships that challenge long-standing cultural scripts about the nature of dominance and subordination in such relationships. Combining cultural analysis with close readings of key popular American film and television texts since the 1980s, my dissertation argues that certain fighting female relationship themes question regressive conventions in male-female intimacies and reveal potentially progressive ideologies regarding female agency in mass culture. In essence, certain fighting female relationship narratives project feminist-friendly love fantasies that reassure audiences of the desirability of empowered women while also imagining egalitarian intimacies that further empower women