Standardising and assessing digital images for use in clinical trials : a practical, reproducible method that blinds the assessor to treatment allocation

With the increasing availability of high quality digital cameras that are easily operated by the non-professional photographer, the utility of using digital images to assess endpoints in clinical research of skin lesions has growing acceptance. However, rigorous protocols and description of experiences for digital image collection and assessment are not readily available, particularly for research conducted in remote settings. We describe the development and evaluation of a protocol for digital image collection by the non-professional photographer in a remote setting research trial, together with a novel methodology for assessment of clinical outcomes by an expert panel blinded to treatment allocation.

From ideation to sculpture : digital sculpting as the primary 'ideation' tool for creature design

This research project examined the potential for circumventing drawing in the ideation process by adopting digital sculpture as the primary conceptual development and design tool for the digital sculpting of creature designs. Through a series of experimental research cycles, multiple frameworks were explored with the aim of identifying a methodology for creating '3D sculpted sketches' for the initial phases of the ideation process. This research project acknowledges that drawing still remains the predominant method of visualising design ideas for characters and creatures for many artists. However, alongside other ideation techniques digital sculpting can function as a rapid and responsive tool to visualize and explore forms in a digital sculpting environment for the conceptualisation of multiple creature design variations. The results of this study are significant for emerging digital sculptors who may not necessarily have a well-defined creative brief or initial concept.

Digital Spring? New media and new politics on the campus

Whilst the dynamics informing processes have taken time to become clear, civic resistance initiated by young people using new media began in Egypt in 2010 against the Mubarak regime, soon widened to Tunisia, Yemen and Libya. Known as the 'Arab Spring', this phenomenon re-ignited discussion about the political role of digital space and its democratic potential. While parallels between authoritarian regimes and universities and educational institutions might seem overdrawn to some readers, I suggest there is value in considering the 'Digital Spring' (apropos the 'Arab Spring') as a metaphor to suggest the possibility that similar processes are taking place in schools and universities. This invites discussion about the political significance of digital space and its democratic potential in those institutions. To assess how some young people engage in digitally mediated politics within schools and universities, I identify five propositions which amalgamate descriptive and normative elements derived from Habermas and Dahlgren. These propositions offer an ideal taxonomy of normative and descriptive elements to establish whether digital technology promotes participation and debate in ways that sustain democratic practice.

The political in the age of the digital: propositions for empirical investigation

This article establishes whether there is a case for revising traditional accounts of politics and the public sphere given the ways in which digital technology is now being used in Western and non-Western settings to engage people politically. The article presents a case for framing this inquiry in terms of imaginaries. It then argues for a new political imaginary which helps to specify what is required for deliberative democratic practice in a way that shifts us away from the dominant liberal-utilitarian political imaginary that currently informs the political value systems of most Western nations. Drawing on the work of key political theorists such as Habermas and Dahlgren, five propositions or conditions for deliberative practice are identified that can be used in empirical investigation to help determine the democratic capacity and potential of new political communication and civic spaces being opened by means of digital media.

Children's Literature Digital Resources Project

Children's Literature Digital Resources is a full text digital repository of Australian children’s literature from 1830 to 1945. Users can read online the complete texts of a selection of early Australian children’s literature, both popular and rare. Digitised items include children’s and young adult fiction, poetry, short stories, and picture books. Users can also read related full text critical articles that were digitised as part of the project.

Digital storytelling at QUT

Digital Storytelling is a powerful means for enabling communication and social participation. Ordinary people work with expert creative practitioners to create first person narratives for a wide and growing range of purposes, including community building, cultural engagement, brand identification and public communication. A digital story usually combines 15-30 still images and a recorded script of 100-250 words to create an original personal digital story in the form of a 2-3 minute digital video. This form of co-creative media takes advantage of newly accessible technologies but is based in the ancient and universal tradition of storytelling. Digital storytelling is being adopted internationally in a variety of institutional contexts. It was introduced at QUT by Distinguished Professor John Hartley in 2004 when he brought well known UK based digital storytelling expert Daniel Meadows to the Creative Industries Faculty to trainer researchers and Faculty in the technique. Since 2005 Creative Industries Faculty researchers have adapted digital storytelling for use in a variety of research contexts including heritage, youth welfare, health, and international development, in collaboration with a range of external partner organisations. More than 300 digital stories have been produced by QUT researchers, staff and students. These have been presented on the World Wide Web, broadcast on community media, released on DVD and exhibited in various forms. In addition CIF researchers have produced numerous journal articles, conference papers and books reporting the outcomes of research projects utilising digital storytelling in research. As a result of research activity the Creative Industries Faculty is now well positioned as a leading site for teaching and learning in digital storytelling. Faculty research activity in digital storytelling has generated interest in adapting the form for use in undergraduate and postgraduate Creative Industries curriculum and in service teaching, including short courses for external clients.

Digital literacies: Understanding the literate practices of refugee kids in an Afterschool Media Club

Since the 2000s, teachers in an increasing number of Australian schools have been learning how to support students with refugee backgrounds. For some of these students, entry into the Australian school system is not easy. English literacy is integral to some of the challenges confronting the students. In response, educators have been developing and researching ways of engaging with the students’ language and literacy learning. Much of the focus has been on traditional print-based school literacies. In contrast, I look here at student engagement in digital literacies in an after-school media club. Several concepts from the theory of French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu are useful for understanding the position of students of refugee background in the Australian school system. Like other conflict theories, Bourdieusian theory has sometimes been criticised as ‘pessimistic’, that is, for suggesting that schools necessarily reproduce social disadvantage. However, others have used Bourdieusian theory to analyse and critique the reproductive work of schooling for groups of students who experience educational disadvantage. I align myself with this latter tradition. Specifically, I use Bourdieu’s triad of concepts to explain aspects of the literacy education experiences of some young people of refugee background: field, capital and habitus. In particular, I look at questions of the legitimation of students’ competences as capital in literate fields within and beyond the school context. Data are drawn from an Australian Research Council-funded project, Digital Learning and Print Literacy: A design experiment for the reform of low socio-economic, culturally diverse schools (2009-14). The data analysed in this chapter include interviews and observations relating to the participation of two Congolese girls in an after school media club. Implications are drawn for teachers of literacy in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. Consideration is made of early childhood, primary and secondary settings.

Fusion of worlds : consumers’ self-narrative in a hybrid physical/digital world

As the Internet becomes deeply embedded into consumers’ daily life, the digital virtual world brings significant influence to consumers’ self and narrative. Prior studies look at consumer self from either from a certain online space or comparing consumers’ physical and digital virtual selves but not the integration of the physical/digital world. This paper aims to explore the meanings of the digital virtual space on consumers’ narrative as a whole (their interests, dreams, or subjectivity). We utilise a postmodern concept of the cyborg to understand the cultural complexity, subjective meanings of, and the extent to which the digital virtual space plays a role in consumers’ self-narrative. We conducted in-depth interviews and gathered three consumer narratives. Our findings indicate that consumers’ narrative contains important fragments from both physical and digital virtual worlds and their physical and digital virtual selves form a feedback loop that strengthen their overall narrative.

On the Security of Two RFID Mutual Authentication Protocols

In this paper, the security of two recent RFID mutual authentication protocols are investigated. The first protocol is a scheme proposed by Huang et al. [7] and the second one by Huang, Lin and Li [6]. We show that these two protocols have several weaknesses. In Huang et al.’s scheme, an adversary can determine the 32-bit secret password with a probability of 2−2 , and in Huang-Lin-Li scheme, a passive adversary can recognize a target tag with a success probability of 1−2−4 and an active adversary can determine all 32 bits of Access password with success probability of 2−4 . The computational complexity of these attacks is negligible.

The suffix-free-prefix-free hash function construction and its indifferentiability security analysis

In this paper, we observe that in the seminal work on indifferentiability analysis of iterated hash functions by Coron et al. and in subsequent works, the initial value (IV) of hash functions is fixed. In addition, these indifferentiability results do not depend on the Merkle–Damgård (MD) strengthening in the padding functionality of the hash functions. We propose a generic n -bit-iterated hash function framework based on an n -bit compression function called suffix-free-prefix-free (SFPF) that works for arbitrary IV s and does not possess MD strengthening. We formally prove that SFPF is indifferentiable from a random oracle (RO) when the compression function is viewed as a fixed input-length random oracle (FIL-RO). We show that some hash function constructions proposed in the literature fit in the SFPF framework while others that do not fit in this framework are not indifferentiable from a RO. We also show that the SFPF hash function framework with the provision of MD strengthening generalizes any n -bit-iterated hash function based on an n -bit compression function and with an n -bit chaining value that is proven indifferentiable from a RO.

Improved Security Analysis of Fugue-256 (Poster)

We present some improved analytical results as part of the ongoing work on the analysis of Fugue-256 hash function, a second round candidate in the NIST’s SHA3 competition. First we improve Aumasson and Phans’ integral distinguisher on the 5.5 rounds of the final transformation of Fugue-256 to 16.5 rounds. Next we improve the designers’ meet-in-the-middle preimage attack on Fugue-256 from 2480 time and memory to 2416. Finally, we comment on possible methods to obtain free-start distinguishers and free-start collisions for Fugue-256.