Among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public. Too often, these tools are used to limit our opportunities and prevent our access to critical resources or services. These problems are well documented. In America and around the world,…

Proposes and explains a new mechanism for controlling the access requests in information protection systems that is based on Newton's interpolating polynomial. Access control matrices are discussed; single-key-lock systems are described; relevant algorithms are explained; and an example of the new mechanism is included. (10 references) (LRW)

High impact astronomy journals were identified by using a methodology called Discipline-Contribution Score (DCS). The DCS algorithm was used to track citations of 33 nonrecognized astronomy journals, as well as to measure contributions to astronomy by multisubfield physics and multidisciplinary journals. (JKP)

Discusses information retrieval and the use of binary trees as a fast access method for search strategies such as hashing. Proposes new methods based on compact binary trees that provide faster access and more compact storage, explains the theoretical basis, and confirms the validity of the methods through empirical observations. (LRW)

Discussion of electronic news delivery systems and the automatic generation of electronic editions focuses on the association of related items of different media type, specifically photos and stories. The goal is to be able to determine to what degree any two news items refer to the same news event. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of language barriers when using multilingual digital library collections on the Internet focuses on query translation and document translation in a Chinese-English information retrieval system called MTIR. Highlights include a bilingual dictionary; machine transliteration algorithm; design issues for document translation; HTML tags; and…

Describes an algorithm for computer generation of hierarchical indexes for document collections. The resulting index, when presented with a graphical interface, provides users with a view of a document collection that permits general browsing and informal search activities via an access method that requires no keyboard entry or prior knowledge of…