Welcome to the June 7, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Vision Loss Headset Opens Window on Child's World
BBC News
Sara Neill
June 6, 2023
The parents of a seven-year-old girl used a virtual reality headset developed in Belfast, Ireland, to better understand their daughter's visual impairment. The headset is capable of replicating more than 30 eye conditions in various environments including a classroom, a busy street, and a play park, using Empatheyes software developed by Sara McCracken, a mother of blind twins. Said McCracken, "It's a very effective way of giving people who don't have clinical information or knowledge a really immersive impression of visual impairment." Caroline Henderson used Empatheyes to virtually experience her seven-year-old daughter Aibhilin's visually impaired perspective, which she said gave her insights into Aibhilin's behavior.
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Quantum Computers Are Better at Guessing
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
June 6, 2023
The University of Southern California's Daniel Lidar and IBM Quantum's Bibek Pokharel have realized a quantum speed advantage to overcome Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum pitfalls in quantum computing. The researchers adapted dynamical decoupling noise suppression to coax their quantum algorithm to perform as intended, then applied it to a "bitstring guessing game." They accomplished the speed advantage using up to 26-bit-long strings. Lidar and Pokharel's research confirmed that quantum computers run complete algorithms while scaling the time to find solutions more effectively than classical computers via appropriate error control.
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IoT Sentinels Poised for Cardio Emergencies
IEEE Spectrum
Michelle Hampson
June 2, 2023
U.K.-based researchers suggest using a platform of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing called HealthFaaS (function as a service) to flag suspected cardiovascular emergencies. Muhammed Golec at Queen Mary University of London proposes using IoT devices to track and transmit data on a person's vital signs to the cloud for algorithmic analysis, with cardiovascular complications triggering an alert to their doctor and/or the nearest health-service provider. The researchers found five AIs trained to detect heart complications identified heart-disease risk with 83% to 92% accuracy. Said Golec, "With HealthFaaS, we used a serverless platform because it can respond to a high number of users simultaneously, thanks to its dynamic scalability feature."
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Algorithm Sets Parameters for Waves of COVID-19
Cardiff University News (U.K.)
June 5, 2023
A team of researchers from the U.K.'s Cardiff University and the University of Oxford developed an algorithm to define different "observed waves" of COVID-19 when applied to daily cases and deaths attributed to the virus. The algorithm identified higher infection periods as meaningful waves of the virus rather than more temporary shifts, given sufficient length and severity. It ignored dips between waves unless the case rate slipped under a certain threshold of the peak value. The researchers used the algorithm to assemble COVID-19 data across different countries, exposing substantial variations in consecutive observed waves, especially in relation to the case fatality ratio. Oxford's Adam Mahdi said, "By revealing the types, drivers, and modulators of COVID-19 waves, our research contributes to the broader analysis of the epidemic's progression."
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Uber Eats Food-Delivery Robots Set for Use in Multiple U.S. Cities
New Atlas
Ben Coxworth
May 30, 2023
Service robot company Serve Robotics announced that up to 2,000 of its food-delivery robots will be deployed by Uber Eats in multiple cities in the U.S. and Canada next year. Serve said more than 200 restaurants are participating in a test program in Los Angeles, adding that its robots also have "completed tens of thousands of contactless deliveries" in that city and San Francisco since the company's 2017 launch. Each four-wheeled robot can operate for a full day on a battery charge, carry up to 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of cargo at a top speed of seven miles per hour (11 kilometers/hour), and support Level 4 autonomous driving, which requires no human attention in predefined areas.
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Programmable 3D-Printed Wound Dressing Could Improve Treatment for Burn, Cancer Patients
Waterloo News (Canada)
June 6, 2023
Researchers at Canada's University of Waterloo have developed a customizable, three-dimensionally (3D) printed wound dressing material comprised of advanced polymers that could improve the healing process for burn patients. The material has fine-tuned surface adhesion, allowing for easy application and removal. The dressing, comprised of a biopolymer derived from seaweed, a thermally responsive polymer, and cellulose nanocrystals, is customized using a 3D scan of the patient's face and body parts. The material can provide time-release medication, which also could prove useful for cancer treatment. Added Waterloo’s Boxin Zhou, "We also envision applications in the beauty and cosmetic industry."
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Humans Help Computers Spot Bursts from Space
Physics Magazine
June 1, 2023
Citizen scientists mined radio astronomy data from the ThunderKAT survey to discover new sources of sporadic space emissions that computer algorithms missed. A thousand volunteers spent three months sifting through two years of data collected by MeerKAT radio telescopes in South Africa to find new transient sources. The volunteers evaluated candidates on the citizen science platform Zooniverse by studying images and ascertaining if the central source was a point source, then viewing the corresponding light curve to assess the significance of its variability. They validated 168 sources already flagged as transient by ThunderKAT's algorithms, and found another 142 that had been overlooked.
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Improving the Efficiency of 'Vision Transformer' AI Systems
NC State University News
Matt Shipman
June 1, 2023
Patch-to-Cluster attention (PaCa), a new methodology developed by North Carolina State University (NC State) researchers, addresses the challenges associated with vision transformer (ViT) artificial intelligence (AI) systems and improves their performance. ViTs have significant computational power and memory demands and lack transparency in their decision-making. To address these challenges, the researchers employed clustering, in which the AI groups sections of the image together based on similarities in the image data, reducing the number of complex functions. NC State's Tianfu Wu said the researchers found PaCa outperformed two state-of-the-art ViTs, SWIN and PVT, “in every way.”
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Singapore Plans Nationwide Network to Protect Against Future Quantum Threats
The Straits Times (Singapore)
Osmond Chia; Anne Chan Min
June 6, 2023
Telecommunication companies in Singapore have partnered with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), a part of the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information), to overhaul existing fiber networks to enable them to protect themselves, and the companies with which they do business, from future quantum computer attacks. IMDA indicated that approved telecom service providers will construct a nationwide quantum-resistant network to protect connected businesses under the National Quantum-Safe Network Plus program. The network will soon become available to critical infrastructure like hospitals and banks, so they don’t need to build their own networks.
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Framework Reduces Consumers' Privacy Risk, Preserves Advertisers' Utility
Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College News
June 1, 2023
A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the University of Virginia, and New York University developed and tested a machine learning-based framework to measure and reduce consumers' individual privacy risk while retaining advertisers' utility. The framework uses a flexible obfuscation scheme to conceal a subset of locations visited by consumers based on personalized suppression parameters commensurate with their risk level, while also factoring in differing types and levels of risks and utilities. The researchers validated their framework through analysis of 1 million trajectories (travel paths) produced by 40,000 consumers in a major U.S. metropolitan area, in partnership with a leading data aggregator that combines location data across more than 400 popular mobile applications. Said Meghanath Macha, who led the study, “Our framework fills a critical void and offers an important tool for the privacy-aware practices of big data location-based applications and services, providing a balance between privacy risks and data utilities.”
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BHP Taps Microsoft, AI to Improve Copper Recovery
Reuters
Melanie Burton
May 30, 2023
BHP Group aims to bolster copper recovery from its Escondida mine in Chile using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) via a partnership with Microsoft. The goal is for the operators of plants that process ore to use a combination of real-time data and Microsoft Azure's AI-based recommendations to adjust variables impacting ore processing and grade recovery. BHP said copper production must be doubled over the next three decades to keep up with the development of electronic vehicles, offshore wind and solar farms, and other decarbonization technologies. BHP's Laura Tyler said, "We expect the next big wave in mining to come from the advanced use of digital technologies."
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