Welcome to the June 23, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Why is There a Data Trust Deficit?
ACM
June 21, 2023
ACM’s TechBrief on “The Data Trust Deficit“ examines why better insight into how data-driven systems sow distrust is necessary if those systems are to realize their full potential. “It’s increasingly difficult to participate in society without using systems that collect your data,” said lead author Helen Kennedy of the U.K.'s University of Sheffield. "The most important goal for the computing field is to ensure that data systems are built from the ground up to be trustworthy." Among the TechBrief’s conclusions is that the degree to which people trust a system depends on their level of trust in the institution, sector, or broader data ecosystem in which that system operates.
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England's Computing Curriculum Could be Failing to Engage Girls
King's College London (U.K.)
June 13, 2023
U.K. researchers at King's College London and the University of Reading said the results of their study of 4,983 secondary school students in the U.K. indicates the current educational system is widening the gender gap in the computer science workforce and failing to engage underrepresented students. King's College London's Peter Kemp said, "While digital skills are increasingly important for future jobs and the economy, the current GCSE is focused on computer science and developing programming skills, and this seems to deter some young people, in particular girls, from taking up the subject." The researchers call for the curriculum to be broadened to include creative computing education to attract more students interested in obtaining digital skills but who view the current curriculum as irrelevant.
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Robots Could Help Verify Compliance with Nuclear Arms Agreements
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Raphael Rosen
June 21, 2023
A robotic system developed by researchers at Princeton University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory could help automate the process of ensuring compliance with nuclear arms agreements. The nearly 3-foot-tall N-SpecDir Bot uses six sensors to identify nearby sources of neutrons, which could indicate the presence of nuclear warheads. Said Princeton's Eric Lepowsky, "You could imagine a future agreement with a country that shrinks nuclear arsenals; such an agreement would require tools that would let you determine whether a particular facility was clean. Our device is such a tool, ready to use when politics and international affairs have aligned."
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Google Backs Creation of Cybersecurity Clinics with $20-Million Donation
Associated Press
Glenn Gamboa
June 22, 2023
Google CEO Sundar Pichai pledged $20 million to support and expand the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics, which introduces college students to cybersecurity careers while helping small government offices, rural hospitals, and nonprofits with cyber defenses and threat assessments. This follows Google's May rollout of the Google Cybersecurity Certificate Program to prepare participants for entry-level cybersecurity jobs, and its partnership with universities in New York to develop cybersecurity learning and career opportunities. Google.org's Justin Steele said of the cybersecurity clinics, "Those students get hands-on experience, and they get to increase their marketability for all of these open jobs in cybersecurity. We get to diversify the field of cybersecurity by training these students, and we get to protect critical U.S. infrastructure."
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Computer Scientists Sequence Cotton Genome
DePaul University Newsroom
June 22, 2023
A multi-institutional team of computer scientists has sequenced the genome of the African domesticated cotton cultivar Wagad using a bioinformatics workflow funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The researchers assembled long DNA sequence data generated using Pacific Biosciences sequencing technology, then structured and oriented it with whole genome maps from Bionano genomics, before building a chromosome-level genome using Hi-C sequence data from Phase genomics. DePaul University's Thiru Ramaraj said the technology "allows us to create high-quality genomes that supply a level of detail that simply wasn't possible before. This opens up the possibility for more researchers to sequence many crops that are important to the global economy and to feeding the population."
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Tardos Honored with 2023 Knuth Prize
Cornell Chronicle
Louis DiPietro
June 22, 2023
The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT)_and the IEEE Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF) awarded Cornell University professor Éva Tardos the Donald E. Knuth Prize for her foundational contributions to computer science. Tardos' pioneering work includes fundamental research into combinatorial algorithms, approximation algorithms, and algorithmic game theory. The Knuth Prize committee said they selected Tardos in recognition of her wide-ranging research and field leadership, including her co-authoring of the influential textbook Algorithm Design, co-editing the Handbook of Game Theory, and editing publications including the Journal of the ACM. Said Tardos, "As a theoretician, I'm honored to be recognized with the Knuth Prize by my original home community. I truly appreciate it."
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Computational Advance Will Help Researchers Model Climate with Higher Fidelity
New Jersey Institute of Technology
June 14, 2023
Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have proposed an algorithmic improvement that could advance climate modeling by balancing computational resources and precise cloud modeling. Accurately representing cloud behavior in climate models has long been a challenge, given that complex calculations (parameterizations) are necessary to approximate the impact of microphysics, turbulence, and other small-scale processes within clouds on a larger scale. Improving the accuracy of climate models requires frequent refinements and updates to these parameterizations. The new approach would enable models to consider dynamic grid points, enabling higher-resolution modeling or lower-resolution refinement, depending on the situation, without affecting overall fidelity.
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Microsoft Looks to Speed Up Materials Science Research with Quantum-Compatible System
Nextgov
Alexandra Kelley
June 21, 2023
Microsoft's newly announced Azure Quantum Elements system aims to support and emulate properties of future quantum computing technologies so researchers can sift through molecules' constituent atom combinations to accelerate materials discovery. The system is designed to interoperate with a future scaled quantum computer and engineered to coordinate with a quantum computer to run accurate models for testing atom combinations. Microsoft said the system would help scientists refine which combinations yield useful molecules via artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms trained on large datasets. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, "Our goal is to compress the next 250 years of chemistry and materials science progress into the next 25."
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System to Detect, Estimate Satellite Maneuvers More Accurately
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain)
June 20, 2023
An algorithm developed by researchers at Spain's Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Italy's Polytechnic University of Milan, and the company GMV aims to improve the detection and characterization of satellite maneuvers and keep space object cataloguing systems up to date, which can help minimize potential space debris collisions. The algorithm combines data from sensors tracking space object movement with statistical information to help monitor the real position of satellites. Said UC3M's Manuel Sanjurjo Rivo, "With this we are able to track them even if the satellites carry out maneuvers we're not aware of." GMV has implemented the algorithm to help with tracking and validation campaigns for space object cataloguing systems.
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Atlas of Biomedical Literature Could Help Track Down Fabricated Studies
Science
Kamal Nahas
June 21, 2023
An atlas of biomedical literature furnishes a "bird's-eye" map of the relationships among nearly 21 million English-language research papers, which "should prove quite useful in looking at high-level trends," according to Kevin Boyack at research consulting company SciTech Strategies. Researchers at Germany's University of Tübingen (TU) and information cartography company Nomic AI downloaded abstracts of the articles from the PubMed search engine, then sorted them by similarity using the PubMedBERT artificial intelligence (AI) large language model. The model clustered similar publications into color-coded "neighborhoods," and then the researchers explored trends such as gender gap variation across the literature. They also underscored nearly 12,000 papers labeled as retracted on PubMed that often formed "islands." TU's Dmitry Kobak suggested this approach could help identify other papers suspected of fabrication.
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Accelerating Aerial Image Simulations for Optimal Lithograph
SPIE.org
June 20, 2023
An international team led by researchers at Taiwan's National Tsinghua University developed an algorithm that can increase the computation speed of aerial image simulations up to 5,000 times. The researchers aimed to overcome a challenge preventing the use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) in lithography by scaling the wavelength down to a power of two, the required input data size for FFT. To recover the original wavelength once the calculations are complete, the inverse FFT is computed and the obtained aerial image is scaled back. National Tsinghua University's Tsai-Sheng Gau said, "Our algorithm is simple and straightforward to implement on popular commercially available platforms."
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This Master's in Data Science Program Has Lower Acceptance Rate Than Any MBA Program
Fortune
Meghan Malas
June 21, 2023
The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (UMAA)'s master's in data science program has an acceptance rate lower than that of any other master's in business administration program and is ranked the lead program of its type by Fortune. Last year's most selective MBA programs at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had respective acceptance rates of 6.2% and 12%, while the UMAA data science program rate was 5.3%. UMAA's Ambuj Tewari said applications to the program have more than doubled since its first full year in 2019. "We do look for quantitative background—without it, it will be very difficult for admitted students to handle our rigorous coursework that blends core courses drawn from statistics and computer science with application electives," according to Tewari.
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Mathematical 'Blueprint' Is Accelerating Fusion Device Development
MIT News
June 22, 2023
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the College of William & Mary, and Greece's National Technical University of Athens investigated the use of Dyson maps to design fusion energy devices. A Dyson map enables analysis of classical electromagnetic waves in the domain of quantum computers. The researchers conceptualized a framework that would facilitate the use of quantum computers to analyze electromagnetic waves in plasma and control them in magnetic confinement fusion devices. They also developed a mathematical blueprint of a quantum circuit encoded with quantum-bit-expressed equations, which can be coded and assessed on classical systems.
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