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BlindDefender – An Educational Game for the Visually Impaired
No full textAs technology develops, video games are not only for entertainment, but also help players develop their problem-solving abilities, strategic thinking, and cognitive skills. However, Visual content in most games prevents visually impaired players from accessing game entertainment and educational value. To bridge this gap, an educational 2D shooting game called BlindDefender was developed with blind accessibility features. The game provides spoken instructions and spatial audio cues alongside visual elements, which enable all players to access the same information egardless of their visual abilities. The game experience enables all players to improve their spatial awareness, auditory attentiveness, and decision-making abilities. Especially, visual impaired players can develop their self-assurance through achievements of game objectives. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles guide the development of BlindDefender into an inclusive and educational game. The paper explains the game design, accessible features, and learning objectives. The test play results demonstrate that educational games with accessibility features enable players to acquire new skills through an environment that supports all learners equally
SyntheticPop: An Investigation Into Poisoning Automated Speaker Verification Systems
No full textVoice Authentication (VA), also known as Automatic Speaker Verification (ASV), is a widely adopted authentication method, particularly in automated systems like banking services, where it serves as a secondary layer of user authentication. Despite its popularity, VA systems are vulnerable to various attacks, including replay, impersonation, and the emerging threat of deepfake audio that mimics the voice of legitimate users. To mitigate these risks, several defense mechanisms have been proposed. One such solution, ‘‘Voice Pops , aims to distinguish an individual’s unique phoneme pronunciations during the enrollment process. While promising, the effectiveness of VA+VoicePop against a broader range of attacks, particularly logical or adversarial attacks, remains insufficiently explored. We propose a novel attack method, which we refer to as SyntheticPop, designed to target the phoneme recognition capabilities of the VA+VoicePop system. The first iteration of this attack exploits the feature extraction process of VA+VoicePops by poisoning 20% of training samples labeled spoof through embedding a 90Hz wave throughout the audio, in order to confuse the model’s ideas of what is considered legitimate audio. This attack proved successful, as system accuracy dropped 55%, representing the needs for more robust training algorithms. However, while successful, this method presents two main obstacles: the human test and detection due to the attack being very broad and easily detectable due to many unnatural peaks in the audio. This led to the development of SyntheticPop+FS2, which leverages the temporal stability of FS2 and introduces SyntheticPops at phoneme locations. Through our testing, it is revealed that while not leading to significant model collapse like SyntheticPop, SyntheticPop+FS2 still leads to a respectable 11.86% decrease in accuracy under the same total poison (20%). In addition, the strategic placement of SyntheticPops leads to a less pattern recognizable audio signal and the addition of a small amount of Gaussian noise helps mask energy signatures that could indicate the use of FS2
Spartan Daily, March 11, 2025
Get PDFVolume 164, Issue 20https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2025/1019/thumbnail.jp
Mal-Information, the Anatomy of an “Information Disorder”
Get PDFMal-information is a fairly recent addition to federal policy and the lexicon of political communication with implications for understanding censorship and secrecy during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reviews documents authored by IGOs, NGOs, and the US government that mark the evolution of mal-information as true information intended to cause harm. The term, as it is currently employed, is now associated with misinformation and disinformation to create a complex of “information disorders” known as the acronym MDM. In this paper, the creep of the term mal-information and its use by federal agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and US Department of Homeland Security is documented. These agencies, according to the Twitter files, for example, pressured tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, and X to restrict speech during the pandemic
Long-term influence of prescribed burning on subsequent wildfire in an old-growth coast redwood forest
Get PDFBackground: Prescribed burning is an effective tool for reducing fuels in many forest types, yet there have been few opportunities to study forest resilience to wildfire in areas previously treated. In 2020, a large-scale high-intensity wildfire burned through an old-growth coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forest with a mixed land management history, providing a rare opportunity to compare early post-wildfire data between areas with and without previous application of prescribed burning. The purpose of this study was to analyze the differences between these two treatments in terms of tree mortality, stand structure, fuel composition, and post-wildfire regeneration. Field data were collected approximately 1 year after the wildfire using a total of fifty 20 m plots in three sites previously treated with prescribed fire more than 9 years prior to the wildfire, and fifty plots in three adjacent sites without a history of prescribed fire. Data regarding the influence of prescribed burning on forest structure and composition following wildfire were assessed using generalized linear mixed effects models (GLMMs). Results: Prescribed burning was positively associated with greater canopy cover, tree survival, counts of early post-fire coast redwood seedlings, and lower stand density, following subsequent wildfire. In addition, the mortality of individual trees was lower within areas treated with prescribed fire and negatively associated with tree height. Topkill was also lower within treated areas and was negatively correlated with tree diameter and tree height for all basal sprouting species combined and for S. sempervirens individually. Conclusions: Results suggest that prescribed fire improved coast redwood forest stand resistance and resilience to wildfire and that these benefits were maintained after a significant wildfire event in areas treated more than 9 years prior to the wildfire. Further research is recommended in areas where prescribed fire has been applied repeatedly, to better understand long-term effects and guide best practices for future prescribed fire use in coast redwood forests
Measurement resolution enhanced coherence for lattice fermions
Get PDFWeak measurement enables the extraction of targeted information from a quantum system while minimizing decoherence due to measurement backaction. However, in many-body quantum systems, backaction can have unexpected effects on wave-function collapse. We theoretically study a minimal many-particle model consisting of weakly measured noninteracting fermions in a one-dimensional lattice. Repeated measurement of the on-site occupation number with single-site resolution stochastically drives the system toward a Fock state, regardless of the initial state. This need not be the case for measurements that do not, even in principle, have single-site spatial resolution. We numerically show for systems with up to 16 sites that decreasing the spatial resolution strongly affects both the rate of stochastic evolution for each quantum trajectory and the allowed final states. The full Hilbert space can be partitioned into backaction-free subspaces (BFSs), the elements of which are indistinguishable for these measurements. Repeated measurements will drive any initial state into a single BFS, leading to a steady state that is a fixed point of the measurement process. We exactly calculate the properties of these BFSs for systems up to 32 sites, and we find that even for moderate reductions in measurement resolution, they yield nontrivial steady-state entanglement and coherence
Randomised controlled trial of LGBTQ-affirmative cognitive-behavioural therapy for sexual minority women\u27s minority stress, mental health and hazardous drinking: Project EQuIP protocol
Get PDFIntroduction Sexual minority women represent one of the highest-risk groups for hazardous drinking and comorbid mental health problems (eg, depression, anxiety). Research has identified cognitive (eg, expectations of rejection), affective (eg, emotion dysregulation) and behavioural (eg, avoidant coping) pathways through which minority stress (eg, stigma) places sexual minority women at disproportionate risk of hazardous drinking and comorbid depression/anxiety; yet no evidence-based interventions have been tested to address these pathways in this population. This article describes the design of Project EQuIP (Empowering Queer Identities in Psychotherapy), a randomised controlled trial of a transdiagnostic lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ)-affirmative cognitive-behavioural therapy intervention (CBT) designed to improve minority stress coping and reduce sexual minority women\u27s hazardous drinking and mental health comorbidities. Methods and analysis This two-arm randomised controlled trial, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, has two objectives: (1) test the efficacy of 10 sessions of LGBTQ-affirmative CBT compared with 10 sessions of supportive counselling for sexual minority women in the community (anticipated n=450) who report hazardous alcohol use and meet criteria for a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - 5 diagnosis of a depression or anxiety disorder and (2) examine psychosocial mechanisms and demographic factors as potential mediators and moderators, respectively, of the treatment-outcome relationship. This study\u27s primary outcome is change in the proportion of heavy drinking days. Secondary outcomes are changes in depressive and anxious symptoms. Ethics and dissemination The Yale University Human Subjects Committee reviewed and approved the research protocol. Results of this study will be disseminated to researchers and practitioners through peer-review publications and conference presentations, and directly to study participants
Spartan Daily, April 16, 2025
Get PDFVolume 164, Issue 33https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2025/1032/thumbnail.jp
Librarians in U.S. Public Schools Without Other Kinds of Specialist Educators: The Scale of Opportunities for Instructional Leadership
Get PDFThis article explores the unique instructional leadership opportunities for school librarians in U.S. public schools that lack other specialist educators, such as technology specialists, instructional specialists, and instructional coaches. Drawing on data from the 2020–21 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), the study highlights the prevalence of schools with librarians operating without full-time or part-time technology specialists, subject-specific instructional specialists, or instructional coaches. The absence of these roles often places librarians in a central position to support both students and teachers in areas such as literacy development, STEM education, and technology integration. Additionally, the article examines the potential for librarians to function as instructional coaches, mentoring new teachers, fostering collaboration, and addressing teacher retention through professional development. By analyzing the overlap between librarianship and other specialist roles, the article underscores the importance of librarians in shaping instructional practices and contributing to student achievement in under-resourced schools. Recommendations for supporting librarians in these expanded roles include targeted professional development and systemic strategies to optimize their impact on school-wide goals