Friday, November 9, 2012

Crowdsourcing: What is crowdsourcing?


Crowdsourcing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Crowdsourcing is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. This process can occur both online and offline.[1] The difference between crowdsourcing and ordinary outsourcing is that a task or problem is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific body, such as paid employees.
Crowdsourcing is related to, but not the same as, human-based computation, which refers to the ways in which humans and computers can work together to solve problems. These two methods can be used together to accomplish tasks.[2]

Contents

  [hide

[edit]Definitions

Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. In the classic use of the term, problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—also known as the crowd—submit solutions. Solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place—the crowdsourcer. The contributor of the solution is, in some cases, compensated either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudos or intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time, or from experts or small businesses which were unknown to the initiating organization.[1]
Those who use crowdsourcing services, also known as crowdsourcers, are motivated by the benefits of crowdsourcing, which are that they can gather large numbers of solutions or information and that it is relatively inexpensive to obtain this work. Users are motivated to contribute to crowdsourced tasks by both intrinsic motivations, such as social contact and passing the time, and byextrinsic motivations, such as financial gain.
Due to the blurred limits of crowdsourcing, many collaborative activities, online or not, are being considered crowdsourcing when they are not. Another consequence of this situation is the proliferation of definitions in the scientific literature. Different authors give different definitions of crowdsourcing according to their specialities, losing in this way the global picture of the term.
Estellés and González (2012), after studying more than 40 definitions of crowdsourcing, propose a new integrating definition:
"Crowdsourcing is a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a non-profit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The undertaking of the task, of variable complexity and modularity, and in which the crowd should participate bringing their work, money, knowledge and/or experience, always entails mutual benefit. The user will receive the satisfaction of a given type of need, be it economic, social recognition, self-esteem, or the development of individual skills, while the crowdsourcer will obtain and utilize to their advantage that what the user has brought to the venture, whose form will depend on the type of activity undertaken".[3]

[edit]History

Crowdsourcing systems are used to accomplish a variety of tasks. For example, the crowd may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design[4] or distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see human-based computation), or help capture, systematize, or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science).
The term "crowdsourcing" is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing," coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing".[1]

[edit]Historical examples

Long before modern crowdsourcing systems were developed, there were a number of notable examples of projects that utilized distributed people to help accomplish tasks. It has been argued, however, that crowdsourcing can only exist on the Internet and is thus a relatively recent phenomenon.[5]

[edit]Early crowdsourcing

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) may provide one of the earliest examples of crowdsourcing. An open call was made to the community for contributions by volunteers to index all words in the English language and example quotations of their usages for each one. They received over 6 million submissions over a period of 70 years. The making of the OED is detailed in The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester.[6]

[edit]Early Crowdsourcing Competitions

Similarly, crowdsourcing has often been used in the past as a competition in order to discover a solution. The French government proposed several of these competitions, often rewarded with Montyon Prizes, created for poor Frenchmen who had done virtuous acts.[7] These included the Leblanc process, or the Alkali Prize, where a reward was provided for separating the salt from the alkali, and the Fourneyron's Turbine, when the first hydraulic commercial turbine was developed.[8]
In response to a challenge from the French government, Nicholas Appert won a prize for inventing a new way of food preservation that involved sealing food in air-tight jars.[9] The British government provided a similar reward to find an easy way to determine a ship’s longitude in the The Longitude Prize. During the Great Depression, out-of-work clerks tabulated higher mathematical functions in the Mathematical Tables Project as an outreach project.[10]
In 1994, Northeast Consulting compiled a database of trends in the marketplace. This database was collected from numerous sources, offering an example of early crowdsourcing.[11]

[edit]Modern methods

Today, crowdsourcing has transferred mainly to the web. The web provides a particularly good venue for crowdsourcing since individuals tend to be more open in web-based projects where they are not being physically judged or scrutinized and thus can feel more comfortable sharing. This ultimately allows for well-designed artistic projects because individuals are less conscious, or maybe even less aware, of scrutiny towards their work. In an online atmosphere more attention is given to the project rather than communication with other individuals.[12]
Crowdsourcing can either take an explicit or an implicit route. Explicit crowdsourcing lets users work together to evaluate, share, and build different specific tasks, while implicit crowdsourcing means that users solve a problem as a side effect of something else they are doing.
With explicit crowdsourcing, users can evaluate particular items like books or webpages, or share by posting products or items. Users can also build artifacts by providing information and editing other people's work.
Implicit crowdsourcing can take two forms: standalone and piggyback. Standalone allows people to solve problems as a side effect of the task they are actually doing, whereas piggyback takes users' information from a third-party website to gather information.[13]

[edit]Types of crowdsourcing

In coining the term of "crowdsourcing", Jeff Howe has also indicated some common categories of crowdsourcing that can be used effectively in the commercial world. Some of these web-based crowdsourcing efforts include crowdvoting, wisdom of the crowd,crowdfundingmicroworkcreative crowdsourcing and inducement prize contests. Although these may not be an exhaustive list, they cover the current major ways in which people use crowds to perform tasks.[14]

[edit]Crowdvoting

Crowdvoting occurs when a website gathers a large group's opinions and judgment on a certain topic. The Iowa Electronic Market is a prediction market that gathers crowds' views on politics and tries to ensure accuracy by having participants pay money to buy and sell contracts based on political outcomes.[15]
Threadless.com selects the t-shirts it sells by having users provide designs and vote on the ones they like, which are then printed and available for purchase. Despite the small nature of the company, thousands of members provide designs and vote on them, making the website’s products truly created and selected by the crowd, rather than the company.[5] Some of the most famous examples have made use of social media channels: Domino's Pizza, Coca Cola, Heineken and Sam Adams have thus crowdsourced a new pizza, song, bottle design or beer, respectively.[16]
iStockPhoto provides a platform for people to upload photos and purchase them for low prices. Clients can purchase photos through credits, giving photographers a small profit. Again, the photo collection is determined by the crowd's voice for very low prices.[5]

[edit]"Wisdom of the crowd"

Wisdom of the crowd is another type of crowdsourcing that collects large amounts of information and aggregates them to gain a complete and accurate picture of a topic, based on the idea that a group of people is on average more intelligent than an individual. This idea of collective intelligence proves particularly effective on the web because people from diverse backgrounds can contribute in real-time within the same forums.[5]
[edit]Recent Example of "Wisdom of the crowd"
In February 2012, a stock picking game called Ticker Picker Pro was launched, using crowdsourcing to create a hedge fund that would buy and sell stocks based on the ideas coming out of the game. These crowdsourced ideas, coming from so many people, could help one pick the best stocks based on this idea that collective ideas are better than individual ones.[17]

[edit]Crowdsourcing Creative Work

Creative Crowdsourcing spans sourcing creative projects such as graphic design, architecture, apparel design, writing, illustration etc. Some of the better known creative domains that use the Crowdsourcing model include 99designs, DesignCrowd,crowdspringJade MagnetThreadlessPoptent, and Tongal

[edit]Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is the process of funding your projects by a multitude of people contributing a small amount in order to attain a certain monetary goal. The dilemma right now is how the SEC is going to regulate the entire process. As it stands rules and regulations are being refined by the SEC and they will have until Jan. 1st, 2013 to tweak the fundraising methods. The regulators are on edge because they are already overwhelmed trying to regulate Dodd - Frank and all the other rules and regulations involving public companies and the way they trade. Advocates of regulation claim that crowdfunding will open up the flood gates for fraud, have called it the "wild west" of fundraising, and have compared it to the 1980s days of penny stock "cold-call cowboys." The process allows for up to 1 million dollars to be raised without a lot of the regulations being involved. Companies under the current proposal will have a lot of exemptions available and be able to raise capital from a larger pool of persons which can include a lot lower thresholds for investor criteria whereas the old rules required that the person be an "accredited" investor. These people are often recruited from social networks, where the funds can be acquired from an equity purchase, loan, donation, or pre-ordering. The amounts collected have become quite high, with requests that are over a million dollars for software like Trampoline Systems, which used it to finance the commercialization of their new software.[18]
A well-known crowdfunding tool is Kickstarter, which is the biggest website for funding creative projects. It has raised over $100 million, despite its all-or-nothing model which requires one to reach the proposed monetary goal in order to acquire the money.UInvest is another example of a crowdfunding platform that was started in Kiev, Ukraine in 2007. Crowdrise brings together volunteers to fundraise in an online environment.[19]
Most recently, the adult industry gained its own site in the way of Offbeatr. Offbeatr allows the community to cast votes on projects they would like to see make it to the funding phase. [20]

[edit]Microwork

Microwork is a crowdsourcing platform where users do small tasks for which computers lack aptitude for low amounts of money. Amazon’s popular Mechanical Turk has created many different projects for users to participate in, where each task requires very little time and offers a very small amount in payment.[1] The Chinese versions of this, commonly called Witkey, are similar and include such sites as Taskcn.com and k68.cn. When choosing tasks, since only certain users “win”, users learn to submit later and pick less popular tasks in order to increase the likelihood of getting their work chosen.[21] An example of a Mechanical Turk project is when users searched satellite images for images of a boat in order to find lost researcher Jim Gray.[13]

[edit]Inducement prize contests

Web-based idea competitions, or inducement prize contests often consist of generic ideas, cash prizes, and an Internet-based platform to facilitate easy idea generation and discussion. An example of these competitions includes an event like IBM’s 2006 “Innovation Jam”, attended by over 140,000 international participants and yielding around 46,000 ideas.[22][23]
Another example of competition-based crowdsourcing is the 2009 DARPA experiment, where DARPA placed 10 balloon markers across the United States and challenged teams to compete to be the first to report the location of all the balloons. A collaboration of efforts was required to complete the challenge quickly and in addition to the competitive motivation of the contest as a whole, the winning team (MIT, in less than nine hours) established its own "collaborapetitive" environment to generate participation in their team.[24] A similar challenge was the Tag Challenge, funded by the US State Department, which required locating and photographing individuals in 5 cities in the US and Europe within 12 hours based only on a single photograph. The winning team managed to locate 3 suspects by mobilizing volunteers world-wide using a similar incentive scheme to the one used in the Balloon Challenge.[25]
Open innovation platforms are a very effective way of crowdsourcing people’s thoughts and ideas to do research and development. The company InnoCentive is a crowdsourcing platform for corporate research and development where difficult scientific problems are posted for crowds of solvers to discover the answer and win a cash prize, which can range from $10,000 to $100,000 per challenge.[5] IdeaConnection.com challenges people to come up with new inventions and innovations and Ninesigma.com connects clients with experts in various fields. The X PRIZE Foundation creates and runs incentive competitions where one can win between $1 million and $30 million for solving challenges. Local Motors is another example of crowdsourcing. A community of 20,000 automotive engineers, designers and enthusiasts competes to build offroad rally trucks. [19]

[edit]Implicit crowdsourcing

Implicit crowdsourcing is less obvious because users do not necessarily know they are contributing, yet can still be very effective in completing certain tasks. Rather than users actively participating in solving a problem or providing information, implicit crowdsourcing involves users doing another task entirely where a third party gains information for another topic based on the user’s actions.[5]
A good example of implicit crowdsourcing is the ESP game, where users guess what images are and then these labels are used to tag Google images. Another popular use of implicit crowdsourcing is through reCAPTCHA, which asks people to solve Captchas in order to prove they are human, and then provides Captchas from old books that cannot be deciphered by computers in order to try and digitize them for the web. Like Mechanical Turk, this task is simple for humans but would be incredibly difficult for computers.[13]
Piggyback crowdsourcing can be seen most frequently by websites such as Google that mine one’s search history and websites in order to discover keywords for ads, spelling corrections, and finding synonyms. In this way, users are unintentionally helping to modify existing systems, such as Google’s ad words.[26]

[edit]Crowdsourcers

There are a number of motivations for businesses to use crowdsourcing to accomplish tasks, find solutions for problems, or to gather information. These include the ability to offload peak demand, access cheap labor and information, generate better results, access a wider array of talent than might be present in one organization, and undertake problems that would have been too difficult to solve internally.[27] Crowdsourcing allows businesses to submit problems in which contributors can work on, such as problems in science, manufacturing, biotech, and medicine, with monetary rewards for successful solutions. Although it can be difficult to crowdsource complicated tasks, simple work tasks can be crowdsourced cheaply and effectively.
Crowdsourcing also has the potential to be a problem-solving mechanism for government and nonprofit use. Urban and transit planning are prime areas for crowdsourcing. One project to test crowdsourcing's public participation process for transit planning in Salt Lake City has been underway from 2008 to 2009, funded by a U.S. Federal Transit Administration grant.[28] Another notable application of crowdsourcing to government problem solving is the Peer to Patent Community Patent Review project for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.[29]
Researchers have used crowdsourcing systems, in particular Mechanical Turk, to aid with research projects by crowdsourcing aspects of the research process such as data collection, parsing, and evaluation. Notable examples include using the crowd to create speech and language databases,[30][31] and using the crowd to conduct user studies.[26] Crowdsourcing systems provide these researchers with the ability to gather large amount of data. Additionally, using crowdsourcing, researchers can collect data from populations and demographics they may not have had access to locally, but that improve the validity and value of their work.[32]
Artists have also utilized crowdsourcing systems. In his project the Sheep Market, Aaron Koblin used Mechanical Turk to collect 10,000 drawings of sheep from contributors around the world.[33] Sam Brown (artist) leverages the crowd by asking visitors of his website explodingdog to send him sentences that he uses as inspirations for paintings.[34] Art curator Andrea Grover argues that individuals tend to be more open in crowdsourced projects because they are not being physically judged or scrutinized.[12] As with other crowdsourcers, artists use crowdsourcing systems to generate and collect data. The crowd also can be used to provide inspiration for an artist’s work and also to collect financial support for that work.[35]
Additionally, crowdsourcing from 100 million drivers is being used by INRIX to collect users' driving times to provide better GPS routing and real-time traffic updates.

[edit]Demographics

The crowd is an umbrella term for people who contribute to crowdsourcing efforts. Though it is sometimes difficult to gather data about the demographics of the crowd, a study by Ross et al. surveyed the demographics of a sample of the more than 400,000 registered crowdworkers using Amazon Mechanical Turk to complete tasks for pay. While a previous study in 2008 by Ipeirotisfound that users at that time were primarily American, young, female, and well-educated, with 40% having incomes >$40,000/yr, in 2009 Ross found a very different population. By Nov. 2009, 36% of the surveyed Mechanical Turk workforce was Indian. ⅔ of Indian workers were male, and 66% had at least a Bachelor’s degree. ⅔ had annual incomes less than $10,000/yr, with 27% sometimes or always depending on income from Mechanical Turk to make ends meet.[36]
The average US user of Mechanical Turk earned $2.30 per hour for tasks in 2009, versus $1.58 for the average Indian worker. While the majority of users worked less than 5 hours per week, 18% worked 15 hours per week or more. This is less than minimum wage in either country, which Ross suggests raises ethical questions for researchers who use crowdsourcing.
The demographics of http://microworkers.com/ differ from Mechanical Turk in that the US and India together account for only 25% of workers. 197 countries are represented among users, with Indonesia (18%) and Bangladesh (17%) contributing the largest share. However, 28% of employers are from the US.[37]
Another study of the demographics of the crowd at iStockphoto found a crowd that was largely white, middle- to upper-class, higher educated, worked in a so-called "white collar job," and had a high-speed Internet connection at home.[38]
Studies have also found that crowds are not simply collections of amateurs or hobbyists. Rather, crowds are often professionally trained in a discipline relevant to a given crowdsourcing task and sometimes hold advanced degrees and many years of experience in the profession.[38][39][40][41] Claiming that crowds are amateurs, rather than professionals, is both factually untrue and may lead to marginalization of crowd labor rights.[42]

[edit]Motivations

Many scholars of crowdsourcing suggest that there are both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that cause people to contribute to crowdsourced tasks, and that these factors influence different types of contributors.[43][38][39][41][44][45] For example, students and people employed full-time rate Human Capital Advancement as less important than part-time workers do, while woman rate Social Contact as more important than men do.[43]
Intrinsic motivations are broken down into two categories, enjoyment-based and community-based motivations. Enjoyment-based motivations refer to motivations related to the fun and enjoyment that the contributor experiences through their participation. These motivations include: skill variety, task identity, task autonomy, direct feedback from the job, and pastime. Community-based motivations refer to motivations related to community participation, and include community identification and social contact.
Extrinsic motivations are broken down into three categories, immediate payoffs, delayed payoffs, and social motivations. Immediate payoffs, through monetary payment, are the immediately received compensations given to those who complete tasks. Delayed payoffs are benefits that can be used to generate future advantages, such as training skills and being noticed by potential employers. Social motivations are the rewards of behaving pro-socially, such as altruistic motivations. Chandler and Kapelner found that US users of the Amazon Mechanical Turk were more likely to complete a task when told they were going to “help researchers identify tumor cells,” than when they were not told the purpose of their task. However, of those who completed the task, quality of output did not depend on the framing of the task.[43]
Another form of social motivation is prestige or status. The International Children's Digital Library recruits volunteers to translate and review books. Because all translators receive public acknowledgment for their contribution, Kaufman and Schulz cite this as a reputation-based strategy to motivate individuals who want to be associated with institutions that have prestige. The Amazon Mechanical Turk uses reputation as a motivator in a different sense, as a form of quality control. Crowdworkers who frequently complete tasks in ways judged to be inadequate can be denied access to future tasks, providing motivation to produce high-quality work.[2]

[edit]Criticisms

There are two major categories of criticisms about crowdsourcing, (1) the value and impact of the work received from the crowd and (2) the ethical implications of low wages paid to crowdworkers. Most of these criticisms are directed towards crowdsourcing systems that provide extrinsic monetary rewards to contributors, though some apply more generally to all crowdsourcing systems.

[edit]Concerns for crowdsourcers

Concerns for crowdsourcers include:
Susceptibility to faulty results caused by targeted, malicious work efforts. Since crowdworkers completing microtasks are paid per task, there is often a financial incentive to complete tasks quickly rather than well. Verifying responses is time consuming, and so requesters often depend on having multiple workers complete the same task to correct errors. However, having each task completed multiple times increases time and monetary costs.[46]
Crowdworkers are a nonrandom sample of the population. Many researchers use crowdsourcing in order to quickly and cheaply conduct studies with larger sample sizes than would be otherwise achievable. However, due to low worker pay, participant pools are skewed towards poor users in developing countries.[46][47]
Ethical concerns. Because crowdworkers are considered independent contractors rather than employees, they are not guaranteed a minimum wage. In practice, workers using the Amazon Mechanical Turk generally earn less than the minimum wage, even in India.[36][48] Some researchers considering using Mechanical Turk to get participants for studies have argued that this may be unethical.[32][49]
Increased likelihood that a crowdsourced project will fail due to lack of monetary motivation or too few participants. Crowdsourcing markets are not a first-in-first-out queue. Tasks that are not completed quickly may be forgotten, buried by filters and search procedures so that workers do not see them. This results in a long tail power law distribution of completion times.[50] Additionally, low-paying research studies online have higher rates of attrition, with participants not completing the study once started.[32] Even when tasks are completed, crowdsourcing doesn't always produce quality results. When Facebook began its localization program in 2008, it encountered criticism for the low quality of its crowdsourced translations.[51]

[edit]Concerns for users of crowdsourcing platforms

Concerns for members of the crowd include:
Below-market wages. The average US user of Mechanical Turk earned $2.30 per hour for tasks in 2009, versus $1.58 for the average Indian worker. While the majority of users worked less than 5 hours per week, 18% worked 15 hours per week or more, and 27% of Indian users said income from Mechanical Turk is sometimes or always necessary for them to make ends meet. This is less than minimum wage in either country, which Ross et al. suggest raises ethical questions for researchers who use crowdsourcing.[36]When Facebook began its localization program in 2008, it received criticism for using crowdsourcing to obtain free labor.[51]
Typically, no written contracts, non-disclosure agreements, or employee agreements are made with crowdsourced employees. For users of the Amazon Mechanical Turk, this means that requestors have final say over whether users’ work is acceptable; if not, they will not be paid.[52] Critics claim that crowdsourcing arrangements exploit individuals in the crowd, and there has been a call for crowds to organize for their labor rights.[42]
Difficulties in collaboration of crowd members, especially in the context of competitive crowd sourcing. Crowdsourcing site InnoCentive allows organizations to solicit solutions to scientific and technological problems; only 10.6% of respondents report working in a team on their submission.[39]

[edit]See also

[edit]References

  1. a b c d Jeff Howe (2006). "The Rise of Crowdsourcing"Wired.
  2. a b Quinn; Bederson (2010). "Human Computation: A Survey and Taxonomy of a Growing Field"CHI 2011.
  3. ^ Estellés Arolas, E.; González Ladrón-de-Guevara, F. (2012) Towards an integrated crowdsourcing definition. Journal of Information Science (in press). [1]
  4. ^ David Whitford (January 8, 2010). "Crowd Sourcing Turns Business On Its Head"CNN. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  5. a b c d e f Brabham, Daren (2008), "Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases"Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technological Studies 14 (1): 75–90
  6. ^ Nate Lanxon (January 31, 2011). "How the Oxford English Dictionary started out like Wikipedia". Retrieved April 4, 2012.
  7. ^ "Antoine-Jean-Baptiste-Robert Auget, Baron de Montyon". New Advent. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
  8. ^ "It Was All About Alkali". Chemistry Chronicles. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
  9. ^ "Nicolas Appert". John Blamire. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
  10. ^ "9 Examples of Crowdsourcing, Before ‘Crowdsourcing’ Existed". MemeBurn. Retrieved February 25, 2012.
  11. ^ "Looking Forward - Emerging and Declining Networks for 2009". 21st Century Organization Blog. February 1, 2009. Retrieved November 11, 2011.
  12. a b DeVun, Leah (November 19, 2009). "Looking at how crowds produce and present art."Wired News. Retrieved February 26, 2012.
  13. a b c Doan, A; Ramarkrishnan, R; Halevy, A (2011), "Crowdsourcing Systems on the World Wide Web"Communications of the ACM 54 (4): 86–96
  14. ^ Howe, Jeff (2008), "Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business"The International Achievement Institute.
  15. ^ Robson, John (February 24, 2012). "IEM Demonstrates the Political Wisdom of Crowds"Canoe.ca. Retrieved March 31, 2012.
  16. ^ "4 Great Examples of Crowdsourcing through Social Media".
  17. ^ Rulison, Larry (February 14, 2012). "A Winning App? They Hope So"Times Union (Albany).
  18. ^ Belleflame, Paul (2011), "Crowdfunding: Tapping the Right Crowd"Core Discussion Paper
  19. a b "Beyond XPrize: The 10 Best Crowdsourcing Tools and Technologies". February 20, 2012. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
  20. ^ "Offbeatr - A Kickstarter for Porn". The Huffington Post.
  21. ^ Yang, J; Adamic, L; Ackerman, M (2008), "Crowdsourcing and Knowledge Sharing: Strategic User Behavior on Taskcn",Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce
  22. ^ Leimeister, J.M.; Huber, M; Bretschneider, U; Krcmar, H (2009), "Leveraging Crowdsourcing: Activation-Supporting Components for IT-Based Ideas Competition"Journal of Management Information Systems 26 (1): 197–224
  23. ^ Ebner, W; Leimeister, J; Krcmar, H (2009), "Community Engineering for Innovations: The Ideas Competition as a method to nurture a Virtual Community for Innovations"R&D Management 39 (4): 342–356
  24. ^ "DARPA Network Challenge". DARPA Network Challenge. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  25. ^ "Social media web snares 'criminals'". New Scientist. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
  26. a b Kittur, A; Chi, E.H.; Sun, B (2008), "Crowdsourcing user studies with Mechanical Turk"CHI 2008
  27. ^ Noveck, Beth Simone (2009), Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful, Brookings Institution Press
  28. ^ Federal Transit Administration Public Transportation Participation Pilot Program, U.S. Department of Transportation
  29. ^ Peer-to-Patent Community Patent Review Project, Peer-to-Patent Community Patent Review Project
  30. ^ Callison-Burch, C; Dredze, M (2010), "Creating Speech and Language Data With Amazon’s Mechanical Turk"Human Language Technologies Conference: 1–12
  31. ^ McGraw, I; Seneff, S (2011), "Growing a Spoken Language Interface on Amazon Mechanical Turk"Interspeech: 3057–3060
  32. a b c Mason, W; Suri, S (2010), "Conducting Behavioral Research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk"Behavior Research Methods
  33. ^ Koblin, A (2008), "The sheep market"Creativity and Cognition
  34. ^ Explodingdog
  35. ^ Linver, D. (2010), Crowdsourcing and the Evolving Relationship between Art and Artist
  36. a b c Ross, J; Irani, L; Silberman, M.S.; Zaldivar, A; Tomlinson, B (2010). "Who are the Crowdworkers? Shifting Demographics in Mechanical Turk"CHI 2010.
  37. ^ Hirth, M; Hoßfeld, T; Train-Gia, P (2011), Human Cloud as Emerging Internet Application - Anatomy of the Microworkers Crowdsourcing Platform
  38. a b c Brabham, Daren C. (2008). "Moving the Crowd at iStockphoto: The Composition of the Crowd and Motivations for Participation in a Crowdsourcing Application"First Monday.
  39. a b c Lakhani et al. (2007). The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving. Retrieved February 26, 2012.
  40. ^ Brabham, Daren C. (2012). "Managing Unexpected Publics Online: The Challenge of Targeting Specific Groups with the Wide-Reaching Tool of the Internet"International Journal of Communication.
  41. a b Brabham, Daren C. (2010). "Moving the Crowd at Threadless: Motivations for Participation in a Crowdsourcing Application".Information, Communication & Society.
  42. a b Brabham, Daren C. (2012). "The Myth of Amateur Crowds: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Crowdsourcing Coverage".Information, Communication & Society.
  43. a b c Kaufmann, N; Schulze, T; Viet, D (2011). "More than fun and money. Worker Motivation in Crowdsourcing – A Study on Mechanical Turk"Proceedings of the Seventeenth Americas Conference on Information Systems.
  44. ^ Brabham, Daren C. (2012). "Motivations for Participation in a Crowdsourcing Application to Improve Public Engagement in Transit Planning"Journal of Applied Communication Research.
  45. ^ Lietsala, Katri; Joutsen, Atte (2007). "Hang-a-rounds and True Believers: A Case Analysis of the Roles and Motivational Factors of the Star Wreck Fans". MindTrek 2007 Conference Proceedings.
  46. a b Ipeirotis; Provost; Wang (2010). Quality Management on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
  47. ^ Hirth; Hoßfeld; Tran-Gia (2011), Human Cloud as Emerging Internet Application - Anatomy of the Microworkers Crowdsourcing Platform
  48. ^ "Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor". Retrieved 28 February 2012.
  49. ^ Norcie (2011). Ethical and Practical Considerations for Compensation of Crowdsourced Research Participants.
  50. ^ Ipeirotis (2010). "Analyzing the Amazon Mechanical Turk Marketplace"XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students - Comp-YOU-Ter (ACM) 17 (2). Retrieved February 26, 2012.
  51. a b Tomoko A. Hosaka (April 2008). "Facebook asks users to translate for free"MSNBC.
  52. ^ Paolacci, Chandler (2010). "Running Experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk"Judgement and Decision Making 5 (5): 411–419. Retrieved February 26, 2012.

Current Case Count - Multistate Fungal Meningitis Outbreak


CDC 24/7: Saving Lives. Protecting People. Saving Money through Prevention.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC 24/7: Saving Lives. Protecting People. Saving Money through Prevention.™.

http://www.cdc.gov/hai/outbreaks/meningitis-map.html

Multistate Fungal Meningitis Outbreak - Current Case Count

November 9, 2012 2:30 PM EST
NOTICE: Going forward, we will be providing case count updates on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Cases with Fungal Infections Linked to Steroid Injections

Cases and Deaths with Fungal Infections Linked to Steroid Injections

Table by State
StateTotal Case CountsPeripheral Joint InfectionsDeaths
TOTALS438*1032
Florida (FL)2303
Georgia (GA)100
Idaho (ID)100
Illinois (IL)200
Indiana (IN)5204
Maryland (MD)2301
Michigan (MI)12868
Minnesota (MN)1100
New Hampshire (NH)1340
New Jersey (NJ)2700
New York (NY)100
North Carolina (NC)301
Ohio (OH)**1500
Pennsylvania (PA)100
Rhode Island (RI)300
South Carolina (SC)100
Tennessee (TN)81013
Texas (TX)200
Virginia (VA)5002

*428 cases of fungal meningitis, stroke due to presumed fungal meningitis, or other central nervous system-related infection meeting the outbreak case definition, plus 10 peripheral joint infections (e.g., knee, hip, shoulder, elbow). No deaths have been associated with peripheral joint infections.
** Ohio previously reported 16 cases. Ohio has corrected their case count to 15 cases.
Case counts by state are based on the state where the procedure was performed, not the state of residence.

Supreme Court to tackle key voting rights provision


CNN

November 9th, 2012
03:29 PM ET

Court to tackle key voting rights provision

The Supreme Court agreed today to decide whether the key enforcement provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be scrapped, amid arguments it is a constitutionally unnecessary vestige of the civil rights era.
Known as Section 5, the provision gives the federal government open-ended oversight of states and localities with a history of voter discrimination. Any changes in voting laws and procedures in the covered states must be "pre-cleared" by federal authorities in Washington.
The provision was reauthorized by Congress in 2006 for 25 more years. This move prompted a lawsuit by officials in Shelby County, Alabama, who argued that the monitoring was overly burdensome and unwarranted.
The case could be one of the biggest the justices tackle this term, potentially offering a social, political and legal barometer on the progress of civil rights in the United States - and the justices take on the level of national vigilance still needed to ensure that minorities have equal access in the election process.
While the high court announced this week its intention to take up the issue, oral arguments - and, after that, a decision - won't come until next year.
Post by: 
Filed under: Civil Rights • Supreme Court

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/09/supreme-court-to-tackle-key-voting-rights-provision/?hpt=hp_t2

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Dept of Health & Human Services: Minority Resources...Money & More

FYI: Minority Resources...Money & More

Provided by the Office of Minority Health Resource Center's Information Services Team
November 07, 2012



Funding

Federal Grants

$500k or less . . .  

Non Federal Grants

Minority Population Specific: $500k or less . . . 
  • The Seattle Indian Health Board's Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI): Partnership to Support Depression Programming (PSDP). An opportunity for Urban Indian Health Organizations (UIHOs) to participate in a facilitated partnership and strategic planning process. Supported by a cooperative agreement through the Office of Minority Health. View Full Announcement [PDF | 69KB] Exit Disclaimer
$500k or less . . . 
  • The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA): PHA End Childhood Obesity Innovation Challenge. The finalists will win a trip to Washington, D.C., where they'll present their idea before a panel of judges and all attendees at the PHA's Building a Healthier Future Summit on March 6-8, 2013. View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer
  • The Sunflower Foundation: Letters of Intent (LOI), Integrated Care Initiative. View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer

Resources

  • The Commonwealth Fund: Webinar. Mongan Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy. November 13, 2012, at 2:00 pm, ET. Learn More Exit Disclaimer

Scholarships/Fellowships

  • The American Heart Association/Macy's: Go Red for Women Multicultural Scholarship Fund. View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer
  • Montana State University: NIMHD NIH-funded fellowship. Graduate Education in Health for Minority Scholars (GEhMS). View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer
  • The University of Minnesota: The Division of Epidemiology & Community Health/Nutrition Graduate Program. PostdoctoraL Fellowship in Nutrition and Cancer. View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer
  • Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention of the Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN2): Postdoctoral Fellowship Positions now open. View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer
  • The University of Arizona: Graduate Certificate in Maternal & Child Health (MCH)Scholarships avaialble. View Full Announcement Exit Disclaimer

Resources

  • Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: A free online database of faculty mentors & portfolio reviewers launched to support community-engaged careers in the academy. CCPH Database of Faculty Mentors and Portfolio Reviewers. Learn More Exit Disclaimer

American Indians/Alaska Native Health

  • Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board: A new website launched to serve as a national multimedia health resource for Native teens and young adults. The We R Native Website. Learn More Exit Disclaimer
  • Florida Department of Health, Office of Minority Health and the American Indian Advisory Council: Celebrating November as American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. Share the Spirit: Cultures, Traditions and Contributions. Resources, stats, history and a calendar of events now available. Learn More

Diabetes

  • NEI/National Eye Health Education Program: November is Diabetes Awareness Month A variety of resources in English and Spanish for community organizations and health professionals to use in educating people about diabetic eye disease are now available. Learn More

Emergency Preparedness

  • National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems: Hurricane Sandy Resources now available, including a crisis response map and local and federal relief organizations. Learn More Exit Disclaimer

Health Care

  • American Public Health Association: Public health infographics now available. What Does Public Health Mean for You? Learn More Exit Disclaimer

Health Equity

Events

  • Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: Forum. 2nd National Community Partner Forum on Community-Engaged Health Disparities Research. December 5-7, 2012 in Washington, DC. Learn More
  • Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: Knowledge for Equity Conference, National Conference on Using Data to Promote Health Equity and Address Disparities. November 13, 2012 8:00 am - November 14, 2012 5:00 pm in Silver Spring, MD. Learn More Exit Disclaimer
  • The Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health/Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH): First Annual Symposium. Environmental Justice And Environmental Health Disparities In Maryland And DC. December 1, 2012, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Learn More Exit Disclaimer
  • Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS): Webcast. Addressing Health Disparities for Minority Populations in Jails. 8:30 am EST on Thursday, December 6, 2012. Learn More Exit Disclaimer

Nutrition/Obesity

  • University of Southern California: Obesity infographics now available.Understanding Childhood Obesity. Learn More Exit Disclaimer

Pulmonary Health

  • FDA/CTP: Launch new Spanish and/or English pledge widget to protect kids from tobacco. Break the Chain of Tobacco Addiction. Learn More

Substance Abuse

  • SAMHSA: Seven scripted modules to assist treatment program staff in understanding and implementing evidence-based group therapy practices based on Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) 41, now available for download. Substance Abuse Treatment: Group Therapy Inservice Training. Learn More

Opportunities for Public Comment

  • NIH: Request for Information (RFI) Pediatric Suicide Prevention in Emergency Medicine Settings. Seeking input on strategies to enhance suicide prevention efforts targeted at children and adolescents within emergency medicine department (ED) settings, where many individuals at high risk for suicide are seen. Feedback is requested from any and all organizations and individuals interested in youth suicide prevention research in the ED setting. Learn More

Adolescent Health

  • Office of Adolescent Health: Updated fact sheets on state and national summaries that focus on different areas of adolescent health and behavior now available. These fact sheets provide data from across federal agencies, so you can see exactly how adolescents in your state compare to the national averages. Fact sheets include:Physicial Health; Mental Health; Substance Abuse; and Healthy Relationships Learn More

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

SAMHSA: Helping Children and Youth Who Have Experienced Traumatic Events

United States Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - A Life in the Community for Everyone: Behavioral Health is Essential to Health, Prevention Works, Treatment is Effective, People Recover
Download New Community Action Guide To Support Infants and Young Children
Supporting Infants, Toddlers, and Families Impacted by Caregiver Mental Health Problems, Substance Abuse, and Trauma: A Community Action Guide
Supporting Infants, Toddlers, and Families Impacted by Caregiver Mental Health Problems, Substance Abuse, and Trauma: A Community Action Guide presents resources that service providers, advocates, and practitioners can use to better understand and respond to young children whose caregivers are negatively affected by these issues. The Guide offers information, resources, and tips useful for engaging the wider community to come together for children and families in need of support.
The Guide is outlined in five sections:
  • Section 1 focuses on the importance of early development for children from birth to age 5.
  • Section 2 looks at the newest research on how toxic stress can harm brain development.
  • Section 3 emphasizes building a sturdy foundation for young children with family and the surrounding community.
  • Section 4 outlines a six-step roadmap for action.
  • Section 5 provides resources and references to help you move forward.
The problems facing families today are complex. Fortunately, small changes can have big impacts. Working together—connecting community resources and groups—enables us all to work more efficiently to help families benefit from resources that are coordinated and responsive to their needs. This Guide is meant to serve as a resource in support of this improved approach.

View These Related Resources

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Thirty-four contracts totaling $40 million were awarded this week to 29 academic and research organizations


DHS S&T Directorate Awards 34 Contracts For Cybersecurity Research, Development
By: Anthony Kimery
10/26/2012                                


Thirty-four contracts totaling $40 million were awarded this week to 29 academic and research organizations by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) to research and develop solutions to cybersecurity challenges.

The contracts were awarded by DHS’ S&T Cyber Security Division (CSD) under a Jan. 2011 Cyber Security R&D Broad Agency Announcement (BAA 11-02) that solicited proposals for 14 Technical Topic Areas (TTAs) aimed at improving security in federal networks and across the Internet while developing new and enhanced technologies for detecting, preventing and responding to cyber attacks on the nation’s critical information infrastructure.

BAA 11-02 elicited white paper responses from more than 1,000 offerors. Following an extensive review and down-select process, more than 200 offerors were invited to submit full proposals for a final review. And of those, new awards were made to the organizations that were announced Thursday.

Many of the awards involve several organizations “teamed to conduct the planned research,” according to the S&T Cyber Security Division. “These organizations will conduct cyber security research and developments that result in knowledge products and deployable security solutions that advance understanding of cyber risks, as directed by the President in the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.

The 14 technical topic areas are:
  • Software Assurance;
  • Enterprise-Level Security Metrics;
  • Usable Security;
  • Insider Threat;
  • Resilient Systems and Networks;
  • Modeling of Internet Attacks;
  • Network Mapping and Measurement;
  • Incident Response Communities;
  • Cyber Economics;
  • Digital Provenance;
  • Hardware-Enabled Trust;
  • Moving Target Defense;
  • Nature-Inspired Cyber Health; and
  • Software Assurance MarketPlace

Dr. Douglas Maughan, director of DHS' S&T Cyber Security Division, toldHomeland Security Today “The work to be accomplished through these contracts will significantly advance cyber security and support the mission of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s Cyber Security Division to create a safe, secure and resilient cyber environment.”

“Our goal,” said Maughan, “is to transform the cyber-infrastructure to be resistant to attack so that critical national interests are protected from catastrophic damage and our society can confidently adopt new technological advances.”

The Cyber Security Division convened a meeting October 9-11 in Washington, DC of the principal investigators of the 34 funded projects and their international co-funding partners for a kickoff meeting where they were able to discuss how all of the collective work will come together over the lifespan of each project’s research, development and technology transition to significantly advance cyber security.

Maughan explained at the investigators’ meeting that the contracts are intended to “deliver both near-term and medium-term solutions to develop new and enhanced technologies for the detection of, prevention of and response to cyber attacks on the nation’s critical information infrastructure, based on customer requirements; to perform research and development aimed at improving the security of existing deployed technologies and to ensure the security of new emerging cybersecurity systems,” and “to facilitate the transfer of these technologies into operational environments.”

The 34 Cyber Security Division contracts are intended to develop knowledge products and deployable security solutions advancing the understanding of cyber risks were awarded pursuant to the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which is an implementing component of the National Strategy for Homeland Security that is complemented by the National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets.

According to DHS, “The purpose of this document is to engage and empower Americans to secure the portions of cyberspace that they own, operate, control, or with which they interact. Securing cyberspace is a difficult strategic challenge that requires coordinated and focused effort from our entire society -- the federal government, state and local governments, the private sector and the American people.”

In his address to the principal investigators’ meeting this month, Maughan emphasized that “Cybersecurity  research is a key area of innovation needed to support our future,” and that “DHS S&T continues with an aggressive cyber security research agenda” that involves “Working to solve the cyber security problems of our current (and future) infrastructure and systems; working with academe and industry to improve research tools and datasets; [and] looking at future R&D agendas with the most impact for the nation, including education.”

Maughan concluded that the Cyber Security Division “Need[s] to continue [with a] strong emphasis on technology transfer and experimental deployments.”

The 34 contracts that were awarded this week went to the following organizations:
  • Applied Visions, Inc, Northport, NY
  • Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
  • Columbia University, New York, NY
  • Def-Logix, Provo, UT
  • George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
  • Georgia Tech Research Corp., Atlanta, GA
  • HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, CA
  • IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY
  • International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA
  • ITT Advanced Engineering & Sciences Division, Rome, NY
  • Kestrel Technology, LLC, Palo Alto, CA
  • Merit Network Inc, Ann Arbor, MI
  • Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, WI
  • Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA
  • Northrop Grumman Information Systems, McLean, VA
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN
  • Pacific NW National Laboratory, Richland, WA
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
  • Raytheon BBN Technologies, Cambridge, MA
  • Rutgers University - New Brunswick Campus, New Brunswick, NJ
  • The Trustees of Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
  • The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
  • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
  • Trustees of Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
  • Trustees of Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
  • University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA
  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
  • University of Maryland, College Park, MD
  • University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA

Four of these contracts include co-funding from international partners – two from the United Kingdom and two from Australia. Negotiations are currently underway for additional international co-funding from partner agencies in Canada, Sweden and The Netherlands.

RECOMMENDED READING LIST

Search This Blog

ARCHIVE List 2011 - Present