Global Impact

Be My Eyes is a free app for visually impaired people to get help seeing the world. When a user needs visual assistance, they can be quickly connected to a sighted volunteer from a network of a few million volunteers. Here are some examples of questions that volunteers can help answer: What situation would be least likely to negatively affect the usefulness of the app?

A huge number of volunteers sign up to be the sighted volunteers, and there are more volunteers than people that need help.

A team of researchers is studying the rate of glaciers melting in the Himalayas over the last three decades and discovers a recent increase in the melting rate. The research term is considering where to publish their research, either in a conventional journal or an open access journal. In terms of access, who is least likely to be affected by the decision to publish in an open access journal? Choose 1 answer:

A researcher at a top-tier university

An environmental engineer is researching a new kind of biodegradable plastic and finds exciting results for the rate of decomposition. The engineer is deciding whether to publish the research in a conventional journal or in an open access journal. In terms of access, who is least likely to be affected by the decision to publish in an open access journal?

A researcher at a top-tier university

For a project called "The Sheep Market", Aaron Koblin collected drawings of sheep from strangers on the Internet. He posted the task on the Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform for 2 cents, and over the course of 40 days, at a rate of about 11 sheep per hour, he collected 10,000 drawings from 7,599 IP addresses. Which of these is true about his decision to crowdsource the sheep drawings?

Aaron could expect a diversity in the style of the sheep drawings.

Leonardo made a video montage with video clips of their dog, and then added a song by their favorite pop singer as the background music. He uploaded it to Vimeo, a US-based video hosting website. What is not a possible consequence of uploading that video?

By having published it under their account, they will acquire the copyright to the song.

Felipe is a videographer that enjoys recording videos of local birds in his free time. Felipe is a big fan of remix culture, so he wants other film-makers to be able to use his recordings but only if they allow their films to be remixed by others. What approach will allow other film-makers to reuse his videos only if they allow reuse of their own remix?

Felipe should write "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license" under each recording.

Huang loves retro songs and discovers a website with audio recordings of many old songs. He's also an animator, so he is inspired to make a video channel with animated music videos for retro songs. Assuming US copyright laws, is Huang allowed to use audio recordings of retro songs for his music videos?

He can use the audio recordings if they are explicitly licensed for re-use, like with a Creative Commons license, and he follows the conditions of that license.

Eino is composing a short film about climate change which he plans to display at a science museum and on their public YouTube channel. He searches a video streaming website and finds a video clip with a time lapse of melting ice caps that would be perfect for the film. Assuming US copyright laws, is Eino allowed to use the video clip for his film?

He can use the video clip if it is explicitly licensed for re-use, like with a Creative Commons license, and he follows the conditions of that license.

In 2015, programmer Brendon Ferris created a website to crowdsource a melody. Visitors could vote for the next note in the melody's sequence, and once there were enough votes, the website would store the top-voted note. Which of these is true about his decision to crowdsource a melody?

He could not predict what the melody would sound like, once all the votes and notes were in.

Threadless is an online store that sells shirts with user-submitted designs. Anyone can register and submit a design, then community members score the designs submitted each week, and Threadless picks the top designs to sell in their store each week. Designers receive royalties for every shirt sold. Here's one example of a submitted user design: What situation would be least likely to threaten the success of the Threadless crowdsourcing model?

If a large number of new designers suddenly join the community and submit double the number of designs.

The city of Berkeley, California is in a zone with a high risk of wildfire. The local fire department has a few options for notifying residents of a wildfire: an SMS message, an email message, or a public social media account with real-time updates. Which mechanism can reach all the residents?

None of the above

Zooniverse is an initiative across multiple universities that runs many online citizen science projects. In the Plant Letters project, volunteers transcribe scanned images of letters to botanists at the Botanic Garden in the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Each letter is transcribed by multiple volunteers, so that mistakes made by a single volunteer won't be in the final transcription. This screenshot shows the letter transcribing interface: The university could have run this project in Portugal with local volunteers, but they chose to run it online. Which of these does not describe a benefit of running this project online?

Online volunteers will generally be of a higher quality than local volunteers.

A startup is developing a new web browser with a focus on accessibility for visually impaired users. The startup founder is considering the benefits and drawbacks of releasing the code online under an open source license. What would be a consequence of releasing the code with an open source license? Choose 1 answer:

Other companies and individuals would be able to view and use the code according to the conditions of the open source license.

Karla is making a website about the fluffiest dogs. She discovers this photo of a dog on a social media account: Assuming US copyright laws, is Karla allowed to use the photo on her website?

She can use the photo if it is explicitly licensed for re-use, like with a Creative Commons license, and she follows the conditions of that license.

From 1970 to 2010, the number of transistors in integrated circuits approximately doubled every 2 years. In 2012, the CERN research institute confirmed the discovery of the Higgs-Boston particle based on analysis of data collected by the Large Hadron Collider. What's the primary way that the increase in transistor count aided the discovery of the new particle? Choose 1 answer:

The CERN computers could run calculations faster.

Noam runs an online news site and accepts contributions from outside journalists. One day, he receives the following email: "An article was copied onto your servers without permission. The original article is located at: ktyh.news.com/local/undercover-investigation The unauthorized and infringing copy is located at: noams-news.com/post/2019-10-03/investigation This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers." If this notice is legitimate, what does that indicate about the article?

The article is copyrighted with the standard copyright.

An online store is holding a huge sale and wants to bring in as many customers as possible. They're considering sending emails and SMS messages to customers who have bought from them in the past, plus posting an update on their public social media account. Which of these is a potential drawback of those mechanisms?

The customer's email inbox application may mark the message as a spam, so those customers would not see it at all.

Amelia finds out that her roommate downloads recently released movies on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. She requests that he purchase the movies from a movie streaming service instead. Why might she be concerned about her roommate's downloading?

The movies are most likely copyrighted, so downloading them without permission from the studio is a violation of copyright law.

Globe at Night is an international citizen science project with the goal of measuring the night sky brightness and understand the impact of light pollution. Volunteers report the night sky brightness using an online interface: This map visualizes the 8,069 observations recorded in 2018: Which of these are not a benefit of running this as a citizen science project?

The observations recorded by volunteers will be higher quality than observations recorded by professional astronomers.

A photographer puts their photos online and encourages their fans to make memes with the photos by overlaying funny captions. What approach will allow fans to legally make memes of the photos?

The photographer should write "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license."

From 1970 to 2010, the number of transistors in integrated circuits approximately doubled every 2 years. This exponential increase led to discoveries in many scientific fields, particularly physics and astronomy. Starting in 2002, the LIGO observatories collected data with the aim of detecting gravitational waves, a phenomenon predicted by the theory of general relativity. In 2016, LIGO researchers announced the first observation of gravitational waves, confirming their existence. What's the primary way that the increase in transistor count aided the discovery of gravitational waves? Choose 1 answer:

The research computers could process the data more quickly.

The goal of the MilkyWay@Home volunteer computing project is to build an accurate model of the Milky Way by simulating the composition of dark matter around the galaxy. Once volunteers sign up for the project and download the application, their computer will run models of the galaxy whenever it has spare CPU cycles. The results are sent back to the project's central database, so that scientists can identify the models with the best fit and publish the results. What's the primary benefit of enabling volunteers to run the models on their home computers? Choose 1 answer:

The researchers do not have to pay for the computing power used by the home computers.

DreamLab is a research project with a goal of coming up with better treatments for cancer patients. How it works: Anyone can download the DreamLab app onto their smartphone. The app will run computer simulations while their smartphone charges at night. The app send results back to the research team. What is the primary benefit of enabling people to run the simulations on their smartphone?

The researchers do not have to pay for the computing power used by the smartphones.

A software developer is looking for code that they can use to calculate the distance between two points on the Earth's surface. They find a library online called point2point which includes the following license file: Copyright 2019 Nikita Choi Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. What is an implication of this library's open source license?

The software engineer is legally allowed to use the code in a software application that they sell to customers.

Ant Picnic is a citizen science project developed by scientists at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The goal of the project is to understand the diet preferences of ants. Students set up a picnic with various food types and record the number of ants attracted to each bait. Once they've collected the data, they submit it online to a global database. This map visualizes the data collected as of July 2019: Which of these are not a benefit of North Carolina scientists running Ant Picnic as a global citizen science project?

The student-submitted data will be higher quality than data collected by professional scientists.

Ms. O'Keefe is a high school computer science teacher that is developing robotics projects for her class and publishing them online. She wants other teachers to be able to use and adapt the projects for their classrooms, but she doesn't want companies to be able to sell the project plans for a profit. What approach will allow other teachers to use the projects but not allow companies to make a profit off them?

The teacher should write "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial license."

Khan Academy offers an online coding environment for writing programs and webpages. We've considered adding a pair programming mode to the environment, so that two Khan Academy users can collaborate on a program simultaneously. Which of these is a benefit of a pair programming mode?

Users can create a single shared program with contributions from both of them, and iterate on it quickly.

A team of songwriters is working on song lyrics together for a pop star. They're trying to decide between two ways of working: - Working on documents in a desktop text editing application and emailing their latest version of the document after editing them. - Using an online collaborative text editor with real-time updates and revision history. Which of these is a benefit of using the online collaborative text editor?

With the online collaborative text editor, they can iterate more quickly on the lyrics and even edit at the same time.