This paper describes two web services, PodCastle and Songle, that collect voluntary contributions by anonymous users in order to improve the experiences of users listening to speech and music content available on the web. These services use automatic speechrecognition and music-understanding technologies to provide content analysis results, such as full-text speech transcriptions and music scen...

despite importance of blood transfusion services as life saving procedures, some countries are unable to meet their national requirements for blood and blood components in a timely manner. since establishment of iran blood transfusion organization (ibto) in 1974 as an integral part of national health system, iran has experienced a drastic improvement both in availability and safety of blood and...

This article examines the community organizing process for better health services for disenfranchised populations that cannot afford medical care in an affluent community. In response, concerned citizens and voluntary organizations have attempted to organize to transform policies and to implement new healthcare services. The author adopts a researcher participant role and examines the organizin...

July 2005, Vol. 95, No. 7 SAMJ Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) is an important tool in HIV prevention efforts and in the identification of HIV-infected individuals for care and treatment services. But despite the central role of VCT in the response to HIV/AIDS, less than 20% of South Africans have been tested for HIV. Although there are substantial barriers to seeking VCT, including qua...

Increasingly “social computation” will be used in the delivery of key services, particularly public services. Social computation is a combination of computational infrastructure, voluntary and paid human effort together with an incentive structure to encourage and reinforce participation. For example, in care we will see the use of family and friends to filter out false positives from telemonit...