Gone Girl and the mediatization of crime

Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) will not be remembered for its representation of journalists, although both lead characters are, as the narrative opens in 2012, magazine writers made redundant in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. To this extent they personify the “death of journalism” narrative of recent years in the United States, but we never see them in a newsroom or doing journalistic work. The marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike) is cast as a victim of, among other things, the downturn in the US economy which accompanied the credit crunch. But this is not the subject of Gone Girl, so much as a context for the marital dysfunctionality at the heart of its plot...

Security Analysis of Randomize-Hash-then-Sign Digital Signatures

At CRYPTO 2006, Halevi and Krawczyk proposed two randomized hash function modes and analyzed the security of digital signature algorithms based on these constructions. They showed that the security of signature schemes based on the two randomized hash function modes relies on properties similar to the second preimage resistance rather than on the collision resistance property of the hash functions. One of the randomized hash function modes was named the RMX hash function mode and was recommended for practical purposes. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA standardized a variant of the RMX hash function mode and published this standard in the Special Publication (SP) 800-106. In this article, we first discuss a generic online birthday existential forgery attack of Dang and Perlner on the RMX-hash-then-sign schemes. We show that a variant of this attack can be applied to forge the other randomize-hash-then-sign schemes. We point out practical limitations of the generic forgery attack on the RMX-hash-then-sign schemes. We then show that these limitations can be overcome for the RMX-hash-then-sign schemes if it is easy to find fixed points for the underlying compression functions, such as for the Davies-Meyer construction used in the popular hash functions such as MD5 designed by Rivest and the SHA family of hash functions designed by the National Security Agency (NSA), USA and published by NIST in the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS). We show an online birthday forgery attack on this class of signatures by using a variant of Dean’s method of finding fixed point expandable messages for hash functions based on the Davies-Meyer construction. This forgery attack is also applicable to signature schemes based on the variant of RMX standardized by NIST in SP 800-106. We discuss some important applications of our attacks and discuss their applicability on signature schemes based on hash functions with ‘built-in’ randomization. Finally, we compare our attacks on randomize-hash-then-sign schemes with the generic forgery attacks on the standard hash-based message authentication code (HMAC).

On Randomizing Hash Functions to Strengthen the Security of Digital Signatures

Halevi and Krawczyk proposed a message randomization algorithm called RMX as a front-end tool to the hash-then-sign digital signature schemes such as DSS and RSA in order to free their reliance on the collision resistance property of the hash functions. They have shown that to forge a RMX-hash-then-sign signature scheme, one has to solve a cryptanalytical task which is related to finding second preimages for the hash function. In this article, we will show how to use Dean’s method of finding expandable messages for finding a second preimage in the Merkle-Damgård hash function to existentially forge a signature scheme based on a t-bit RMX-hash function which uses the Davies-Meyer compression functions (e.g., MD4, MD5, SHA family) in 2 t/2 chosen messages plus 2 t/2 + 1 off-line operations of the compression function and similar amount of memory. This forgery attack also works on the signature schemes that use Davies-Meyer schemes and a variant of RMX published by NIST in its Draft Special Publication (SP) 800-106. We discuss some important applications of our attack.

Mapping geographical knowledge and skills needed for pre-service teachers in teacher education

In Australia, for more than two decades, a ‘social science’ integrated framework was the favoured approach for delivering subjects such as history and geography. However, such interdisciplinary approaches have continued to attract criticism from various parts of the academic and public spheres and since 2009, a return to teaching the disciplines has been heralded as the ‘new’ way forward. Using discourse analysis techniques associated with Foucauldian archaeology, the purpose of this paper is to examine the Australian Curriculum: Geography document to ascertain the discourses necessary for pre-service teachers to enact effective teaching of geography in a primary setting. Then, based on pre-service teachers’ online survey responses, the paper investigates if such future teachers have the knowledge and skills to interpret, deliver and enact the new geography curriculum in primary classrooms. Finally, as teacher educators, our interest lies in preparing pre-service teachers effectively for the classroom so the findings are used to inform the content of a teacher education course for pre-service primary teachers.

Large-scale habitat mapping using vision-based AUVs : experiences, challenges & vehicle design

This paper overviews the development of a vision-based AUV along with a set of complementary operational strategies to allow reliable autonomous data collection in relatively shallow water and coral reef environments. The development of the AUV, called Starbug, encountered many challenges in terms of vehicle design, navigation and control. Some of these challenges are discussed with focus on operational strategies for estimating and reducing the total navigation error when using lower-resolution sensing modalities. Results are presented from recent field trials which illustrate the ability of the vehicle and associated operational strategies to enable rapid collection of visual data sets suitable for marine research applications.

Using personal construct theory and narrative methods to facilitate reflexive constructions of teaching physical education

This paper reports on two lengthy studies in Physical education teacher education (PETE) conducted independently but which are epistemologically and methodologically linked. The paper describes how personal construct theory (PCT) and its associated methods provided a means for PETE students to reflexively construct their ideas about teaching physical education over an extended period. Data are drawn from each study in the form of a story of a single participant to indicate how this came about. Furthermore we suggest that PCT might be both a useful research strategy and an effective approach to facilitate professional development in a teacher education setting.

‘Hiring a Nashville sensation’ : using narrative learning to develop the problem solving skills of contract law students

This article discusses the design of interactive online activities that introduce problem solving skills to first year law students. They are structured around the narrative framework of ‘Ruby’s Music Festival’ where a young business entrepreneur encounters various issues when organising a music festival and students use a generic problem solving method to provide legal solutions. These online activities offer students the opportunity to obtain early formative feedback on their legal problem solving abilities prior to undertaking a later summative assessment task. The design of the activities around the Ruby narrative framework and the benefits of providing students with early formative feedback will be discussed.

The timing of solid introduction in an ‘obesogenic’ environment : a narrative review of the evidence and methodological issues.

Objective To evaluate the evidence for association between obesity risk outcomes >12 months of age and timing of solid introduction in healthy term infants in developed countries, the large majority of whom are not exclusively breastfed to 6 months of age. Methods Studies included were published 1990-March 2013. Results Twenty-six papers with weight status or obesity prevalence outcomes were identified. Studies were predominantly cohort design, most with important methodological limitations. Ten studies reported a positive association. Of these only two were large good quality studies and both examined the outcome of early (<4 months) solid introduction. None of the four good quality studies that directly evaluated current guidelines provided evidence of any clinically relevant protective effect of solid introduction from 4-5 versus ≥ 6 months of age. Conclusion Overall the introduction of solids prior to 4 months may result in increased risk of childhood obesity but there is little evidence of adverse weight status outcomes associated with introducing solids at 4-6 rather than at 6 months. Implications More and better quality evidence is required to inform guidelines on the ‘when, what and how’ of complementary feeding.

The 'gourmet' sausage factory: Keeping it human

Whilst tertiary institutions continue to invest heavily in the technological aspects of online Teaching & Learning (T&L), there does not appear to have been a commensurate investment in the “human” aspects of the use of the technology. Despite the broad recognition that teaching and learning materials need to be adapted for and to the onscreen medium, little attention appears to have been paid thus far to the actual people who are delivering it – who equally need to “adapt themselves” to that medium, in order to maximise the benefit of the technology by maximising the human communication skills of those using the online medium – as distinct from the technical skills required to drive and deliver the bits and bytes. The REdelivery Initiative was a direct response to that notion. This paper details – by way of a narrative of one of the workshop participants – that part of the process involving the professional development of academics specifically in and specifically for the digital, online, T&L context, in order to both illuminate and maximise the potential and opportunities afforded by the technology.

Literacy and Digital Culture in the Early Years

In this chapter we present data drawn from observations of kindergarten children using iPads and talk with the children, their parents/guardians and teachers. We identify a continuum of practices that extends from ‘educational apps’ teaching handwriting, sight words and so forth to uses of the iPad as a device for multimodal literacy development and substantive conversation around children’s creative work. At the current time high stakes testing and the implementation of the Australian Curriculum are prompting new public and professional conversations about literacy and digital technology. The iPad is construed as both cause of and solution to problems of traditional literacy education. In this context we describe the literacies enabled by educational software available on iPads. We higlight the time constraints which bore on teachers' capacity to enact their visions of literacy education through the iPad platform and suggest ways of reflecting on responses to this constraint.

Designing a digital experience for young children with developmental disabilities

This paper reports on the development of a playful digital experience, Anim-action, designed for young children with developmental disabilities. This experience was built using the Stomp platform, a technology designed specifically to meet the needs of people with intellectual disability through facilitating whole body interaction. We provide detail on how knowledge gained from key stakeholders informed the design of the application and describe the design guidelines used in the development process. A study involving 13 young children with developmental disabilities was conducted to evaluate the extent to which Anim-action facilitates cognitive, social and physical activity. Results demonstrated that Anim-action effectively supports cognitive and physical activity. In particular, it promoted autonomy and encouraged problem solving and motor planning. Conversely, there were limitations in the system’s ability to support social interaction, in particular, cooperation. Results have been analyzed to determine how design guidelines might be refined to address these limitations.

Injury narrative text classification using factorization model

Narrative text is a useful way of identifying injury circumstances from the routine emergency department data collections. Automatically classifying narratives based on machine learning techniques is a promising technique, which can consequently reduce the tedious manual classification process. Existing works focus on using Naive Bayes which does not always offer the best performance. This paper proposes the Matrix Factorization approaches along with a learning enhancement process for this task. The results are compared with the performance of various other classification approaches. The impact on the classification results from the parameters setting during the classification of a medical text dataset is discussed. With the selection of right dimension k, Non Negative Matrix Factorization-model method achieves 10 CV accuracy of 0.93.

5 examples of transmedia storytelling and activism

Transmedia storytelling and transmedia activism both afford and demand new approaches to telling our stories. Contemporary transmedia utilises multiple tools to engage audiences by creating stories that offer unique approaches to narrative, character, setting and innovative ways of looking at social issues. Here are 5 of the best recent examples.

Global journalism in the digital age

Mass media have transitioned in the past five years from being one-way communication mediums, from journalists to audiences, into an era of networked digital media in which individuals can easily publish text, photos and video to a world-wide audience.The power of the press is severely threatened and its business model is broken...