897 research outputs found
Can the Internet Be a Human Right?
A review of:
Human Rights and the Internet edited by Steven Hick, Edward F. Halpin, and Eric Hoskins. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. 276pp
Social Impact and Diffusion of Telecenter Use: A Study from the Sustainable Access in Rural India Project
In a study of social diffusion of telecenter use in rural south India, we find that these centers are being used only by a relatively small proportion of the village households despite their having been in operation for well over a year. Based on a survey of the telecenter users, we find that these users are, in general, young, male, school or college students, relatively more educated, belong to relatively higher income households, and come from socially and economically advanced communities. Thus the telecenters may sustain existing socioeconomic inequalities within these communities. However, we find some significant exceptions. We find that location of telecenters close to the residential localities where socially and economically backward communities live and presence of local champions within those communities are associated with attracting more users from those communities. We also find that providing localized content and services and making these services more affordable are other important factors in increasing usage and diffusion. We posit that incorporating these factors in the planning, spatial location, and operation of the telecenters can significantly improve their social diffusion and improve their long-term financial and social sustainability
Tackling Hate Speech in Low-resource Languages with Context Experts
Given Myanmars historical and socio-political context, hate speech spread on
social media has escalated into offline unrest and violence. This paper
presents findings from our remote study on the automatic detection of hate
speech online in Myanmar. We argue that effectively addressing this problem
will require community-based approaches that combine the knowledge of context
experts with machine learning tools that can analyze the vast amount of data
produced. To this end, we develop a systematic process to facilitate this
collaboration covering key aspects of data collection, annotation, and model
validation strategies. We highlight challenges in this area stemming from small
and imbalanced datasets, the need to balance non-glamorous data work and
stakeholder priorities, and closed data-sharing practices. Stemming from these
findings, we discuss avenues for further work in developing and deploying hate
speech detection systems for low-resource languages.Comment: ICTD 2022 Conference pape
From the Editors
© Publisher's [all ITID content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License : For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Announcing ITID 2.0
© Publisher's [all ITID content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License : For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Wellbeing and coping strategies of alcohol and other drug therapeutic community workers: a qualitative study
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies utilised to facilitate the wellbeing of workers of an alcohol and other drug (AOD) therapeutic community (TC).
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews with 11 workers from an AOD TC organisation in Australia that provides both a residential TC program and outreach programs. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.
Findings
Three main interconnected themes emerged through analysis of the data: 1) The challenges of working in an AOD TC organisation, including vicarious trauma, the isolation and safety for outreach workers, and a lack of connection between teams; 2) Individual strategies for coping and facilitating wellbeing, such as family, friend and partner support, and self-care practices; 3) Organisational facilitators of worker wellbeing, including staff supervision, employment conditions and the ability to communicate openly about stress. The analysis also revealed cross-cutting themes including the unique challenges and wellbeing support needs of outreach and lived experience workers.
Research limitations/implications
Rather than just preventing burnout, AOD TC organisations can also play a role in facilitating worker wellbeing.
Practical implications
This paper discusses a number of practical suggestions and suggests that additional strategies targeted at ‘at risk’ teams or groups of workers may be needed alongside organisation-wide strategies.
Originality/value
This paper provides a novel and in-depth analysis of strategies to facilitate TC worker wellbeing and has implications for TC staff, managers and researchers
Intervening to alleviate word-finding difficulties in children: case series data and a computational modelling foundation
We evaluated a simple computational model of productive vocabulary acquisition, applied to simulating two case studies of 7-year-old children with developmental word-finding difficulties across four core behavioural tasks. Developmental models were created, which captured the deficits of each child. In order to predict the effects of intervention, we exposed the computational models to simulated behavioural interventions of two types, targeting the improvement of either phonological or semantic knowledge. The model was then evaluated by testing the predictions from the simulations against the actual results from an intervention study carried out with the two children. For one child it was predicted that the phonological intervention would be effective, and the semantic intervention would not. This was borne out in the behavioural study. For the second child, the predictions were less clear and depended on the nature of simulated damage to the model. The behavioural study found an effect of semantic but not phonological intervention. Through an explicit computational simulation, we therefore employed intervention data to evaluate our theoretical understanding of the processes underlying acquisition of lexical items for production and how they may vary in children with developmental language difficulties
A Directory Service for Multi-Literate Users
© 2004 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.DOI: 10.1109/ICME.2004.1394463User directory services, such as a database service
cataloging people in a company or community, are
important components today to many online applications.
Furthermore, the design of computer applications and
interfaces that are appropriate to currently marginalized
communities, such as those in rural and poor areas of the
developing world, has become an increasingly important
research area. We have developed and tested a novel user
directory service made specifically for rural communities
and for users with low written and computer literacy. Our
system supports a new interface design that allows users to
perfirm directory searches for people across a number of
dimensions without requiring written literacy nor
keyboarding skills. This user directory service was tested
in a rural community of the Dominican Republic. Initial
results suggest that the general user interface and
iconography was effective in supporting users with a
range of written literacy and computer skills. However,
results show that the Boolean query mechanism. as
implemented, is difficult to master
Brown Dwarfs in Young Moving Groups from Pan-STARRS1. I. AB Doradus
Substellar members of young (150 Myr) moving groups are valuable
benchmarks to empirically define brown dwarf evolution with age and to study
the low-mass end of the initial mass function. We have combined Pan-STARRS1
(PS1) proper motions with opticalIR photometry from PS1, 2MASS and
to search for substellar members of the AB Dor Moving Group
within 50 pc and with spectral types of late-M to early-L,
corresponding to masses down to 30 M at the age of the group
(125 Myr). Including both photometry and proper motions allows us to
better select candidates by excluding field dwarfs whose colors are similar to
young AB~Dor Moving Group members. Our near-IR spectroscopy has identified six
ultracool dwarfs (M6L4; 30100 M) with intermediate
surface gravities (INT-G) as candidate members of the AB Dor Moving Group. We
find another two candidate members with spectra showing hints of youth but
consistent with field gravities. We also find four field brown dwarfs
unassociated with the AB Dor Moving Group, three of which have INT-G gravity
classification. While signatures of youth are present in the spectra of our
125 Myr objects, neither their nor colors are
significantly redder than field dwarfs with the same spectral types, unlike
younger ultracool dwarfs. We also determined PS1 parallaxes for eight of our
candidates and one previously identified AB Dor Moving Group candidate.
Although radial velocities (and parallaxes, for some) are still needed to fully
assess membership, these new objects provide valuable insight into the spectral
characteristics and evolution of young brown dwarfs.Comment: ApJ, accepte
Examining the association of life course neurocognitive ability with real-world functioning in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
There is considerable variability in neurocognitive functioning within schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, and neurocognitive performance ranges from severe global impairment to normative performance. Few investigations of neurocognitive clusters have considered the degree to which deterioration relative to premorbid neurocognitive abilities is related to key illness characteristics. Moreover, while neurocognition and community functioning are strongly related, understanding of the sources of variability in the association between these two domains is also limited; it is unknown what proportion of participants would over-perform or under-perform the level of functioning expected based on current neurocognitive performance vs. lifelong attainment. This study examined data from 954 outpatients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders across three previous studies. Neurocognition, community functioning, and symptoms were assessed. Neurocognitive subgroups were created based on current neurocognition, estimated premorbid IQ, and degree of deterioration from premorbid using z-score cut-offs; functional subgroups were created with cluster analysis based on the Specific Level of Functioning Scale and current neurocognition. The sample was neurocognitively heterogeneous; 65% displayed current neurocognitive impairment and 84% experienced some level of deterioration. Thirty percent of our sample was relatively higher functioning despite significant neurocognitive impairment. Individuals with better community functioning, regardless of neurocognitive performance, had lower symptom severity compared to those with worse functioning. These results highlight the variability in neurocognition and its role in functioning. Understanding individual differences in neurocognitive and functional profiles and the interaction between prior and current cognitive functioning can guide individualized treatment and selection of participants for clinical treatment studies
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