title: Explaining cryptographic systems

authors: Bell, Timothy C.

subjects: computer science

abstract: Modern cryptography can achieve levels of security and authentication that non-specialists find literally incredible. Techniques including information-hiding protocols, zero-knowledge proofs and public key cryptosystems can be used to support applications like digital signatures, digital cash, on-line poker and secure voting in ways that are provably secure—far more secure than the traditional systems they replace. This paper describes simple versions of such applications that have been used to give school-children and the general public a broad understanding of what can be achieved, and how. The material has been extensively and successfully used by the authors in schools, science festivals and with undergraduates, and even postgraduate specialists.

text: Explaining cryptographic systems Modern cryptography can achieve levels of security and authentication that non-specialists find literally incredible. Techniques including information-hiding protocols, zero-knowledge proofs and public key cryptosystems can be used to support applications like digital signatures, digital cash, on-line poker and secure voting in ways that are provably secure—far more secure than the traditional systems they replace. This paper describes simple versions of such applications that have been used to give school-children and the general public a broad understanding of what can be achieved, and how. The material has been extensively and successfully used by the authors in schools, science festivals and with undergraduates, and even postgraduate specialists.

year: 2003

title: A Literary and Cultural History of Military Science Fiction and the United States of America, 1870s-2010s

authors: Nicholson, Blair

subjects: History

abstract: This thesis is both a literary history of the military science fiction (military SF) subgenre and a cultural history of the United States of America during the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. This thesis academically rehabilitates a neglected literary subgenre, and utilises it to prove the efficacy of using literary texts, specifically science fiction (SF) texts, in the study of cultural history. It expands both the sources and methods of interpretation open to cultural historians. Employing the military SF subgenre as its archive, it examines the military SF narratives’ engagement – through extrapolation, metaphor and allegory, as well as didacticism – with their historical-cultural contexts and those contexts’ popular rhetorics, adopting methodologies from cultural history, the history of ideas, and the literary New Historicism. In addition to looking at period-specific themes – ranging from the emergence of the military-industrial complex and consensus anticommunism during the 1950s, through soldier alienation and the ‘cult of the mercenary’ during the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era of the 1970s and 1980s, to the renewed American Exceptionalism and military-civilian divide of the 2000s – this thesis focuses on American attitudes towards militarism and militarisation. The concept of militarism also provides a foundational division in the subgenre, between the two ‘streams’ of militaristic military SF and antimilitaristic military SF. This thesis, however, shows that the subgenre has primarily been sympathetic to militaristic and right-wing rhetorics, support for which has become increasingly strident in modern military SF.

text: A Literary and Cultural History of Military Science Fiction and the United States of America, 1870s-2010s This thesis is both a literary history of the military science fiction (military SF) subgenre and a cultural history of the United States of America during the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. This thesis academically rehabilitates a neglected literary subgenre, and utilises it to prove the efficacy of using literary texts, specifically science fiction (SF) texts, in the study of cultural history. It expands both the sources and methods of interpretation open to cultural historians. Employing the military SF subgenre as its archive, it examines the military SF narratives’ engagement – through extrapolation, metaphor and allegory, as well as didacticism – with their historical-cultural contexts and those contexts’ popular rhetorics, adopting methodologies from cultural history, the history of ideas, and the literary New Historicism. In addition to looking at period-specific themes – ranging from the emergence of the military-industrial complex and consensus anticommunism during the 1950s, through soldier alienation and the ‘cult of the mercenary’ during the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era of the 1970s and 1980s, to the renewed American Exceptionalism and military-civilian divide of the 2000s – this thesis focuses on American attitudes towards militarism and militarisation. The concept of militarism also provides a foundational division in the subgenre, between the two ‘streams’ of militaristic military SF and antimilitaristic military SF. This thesis, however, shows that the subgenre has primarily been sympathetic to militaristic and right-wing rhetorics, support for which has become increasingly strident in modern military SF.

year: 2016

title: Popoia te reo kia penapena: Nurture the language

authors: Berryman, Mere

subjects: Maori language

abstract: Research to develop a Māori language screening tool (Specialist Education Services, 2001), identified that students entering Māori Medium at five, could be classified into one of four Māori language competency, groups. Concurrently, teachers raised their need to identify the Māori language proficiency of five year olds entering Māori Medium so that more appropriate teaching strategies could be incorporated in preparation for literacy.
Accordingly, three Māori oral-language assessment tools, to help identify the Māori language competency of students entering Māori Medium settings at five years of age and provide formative information, were developed in response to this need. This paper details the development and trial of these tools.

text: Popoia te reo kia penapena: Nurture the language Research to develop a Māori language screening tool (Specialist Education Services, 2001), identified that students entering Māori Medium at five, could be classified into one of four Māori language competency, groups. Concurrently, teachers raised their need to identify the Māori language proficiency of five year olds entering Māori Medium so that more appropriate teaching strategies could be incorporated in preparation for literacy.
Accordingly, three Māori oral-language assessment tools, to help identify the Māori language competency of students entering Māori Medium settings at five years of age and provide formative information, were developed in response to this need. This paper details the development and trial of these tools.

year: 2009