Welcome to the August 4, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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CPU Security Loophole: Analysis of Energy Consumption Allows Data Theft
Graz University of Technology (Austria)
Philipp Jarke
August 2, 2023
Researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) and Germany's Helmholtz Center for Information Security found all common central processing units (CPUs) possess a security loophole. The Collide+Power exploit allows hackers to analyze the CPU's energy consumption to read data from its memory. Attackers upload a data package on a segment of the processor, then malware overwrites the attacker's data with the targeted data, consuming power. By repeating this process thousands of times, attackers can exfiltrate targeted data from slightly modified power consumption occurring each time. The hackers can determine power consumption and the targeted data from computing delays caused by the overwrite on the victim's processor.
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Rise of AI Newsbots Shakes Up India's Media Landscape
Nikkei Asia (Japan)
Neeta Lal
July 30, 2023
Indian broadcaster Odisha TV's July debut of an artificial intelligence (AI) newscaster named Lisa has provoked debate about the future of India's media. Odisha TV's Jagi Mangat Panda said the AI-powered anchor performs repetitive tasks so staff can "focus on doing more creative work to bring better quality news." Government website INDIAai says an AI anchor "collects, tracks, and categorizes what is said and who said it, and then converts that data into usable and actionable information." Production managers say AI anchors benefit the sector by reducing costs, enabling multilingual news delivery, and speedily crunching massive datasets; an anonymous TV producer added that newsbots reduce the potential for ego-fueled disruptions typical of celebrity anchors. Critics counter that AI could erode media credibility since bots lack human journalists' observational expertise and experience.
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3D-Printed Gripper Needs No Electronics to Function
UC San Diego Today
Ioana Patringenaru
July 27, 2023
A three-dimensionally (3D)-printed robotic gripper developed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and chemical company BASF operates without electronics. UCSD's Yichen Zhai said the gripper incorporates a series of valves "to both grip on contact and release at the right time" when turned horizontally as the airflow changes. The robot can recall grasping and holding onto an object through this fluidic logic, releasing it when detecting the weight of the object pushing to the side via horizontal motion. The researchers addressed stiffness, leakage, and post-printing processing and assembly issues by having the print nozzle trace a continuous path through the entire pattern of each layer. This process can generate curved shapes and walls as thin as 0.5 millimeters, providing the potential for a softer structure.
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Chicken Welfare Gets a Boost from Camera Algorithm to Analyze Behavior
ABC News (Australia)
Elly Bradfield; Amy Phillips
August 2, 2023
Cheryl McCarthy at Australia's University of Southern Queensland developed a camera-based algorithm to monitor and analyze chickens' behavior in real time, reducing the need for manual handling. Explained McCarthy, "We can quantify behaviors that might be associated with temperature stress, or signs that the chickens are happy, that they're eating normally." The algorithm can estimate a sample of the flock's weight and welfare. McCarthy said the camera would be watching the flock's overall motion in the shed, demonstrating "that you can actually be inferring or detecting the foot health without actually looking at the feet." She said farmers could use the technology to stage early interventions for potential health issues.
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Simplifying the Construction Process for Complex Materials
MIT News
Adam Zewe
August 2, 2023
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria accelerated complex cellular metamaterial design with a new computational method. Engineers can use a user-friendly interface to quickly model and tinker with metamaterial designs while exploring the full range of potential metamaterial shapes. A graph-based representation allows users to construct metamaterial frameworks using components created by vertices and edges, including very complex triply periodic minimal surfaces. The system outlines the entire graph-based procedure at the process' conclusion, visualizing all operations leading to the final structure. Production of each metamaterial structure took only seconds once the skeletons' designs were completed.
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China Proposes Tighter Limits on Children's Tech Use
Financial Times
Ryan McMorrow; Nian Liu; Qianer Liu
August 2, 2023
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has proposed new rules to restrict children's device use and control their online content consumption. The proposal mandates device manufacturers, operating systems, applications, and app stores must deploy a "minor mode" function that sets time limits and usage curfews and classifies content according to age. The guidelines stipulate minor mode-activated devices must be mostly unusable from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., with pop-ups to remind children to rest after 30 minutes of use. CAC's proposal would allow certain smartphone functions like emergency calls or educational apps to continue during the curfew period by syncing with minor mode-enabled devices. Internet groups also would have to classify content into five age-based categories under the rules, although Li Chengdong with think tank Haitun said implementing such rules would be problematic because "kids are too clever now."
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Commercial Quantum Computer Identifies Molecular Candidate for More Efficient Solar Cells
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
July 28, 2023
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory modeled singlet fission using the Quantinuum H1-1 quantum computer. The researchers used the PDS (Peeters-Devreese-Soldatov) quantum solver to measure the singlet fission process' quantum states equally to produce accurate energetics numbers. The team reduced the task's computational burden by applying three approaches, accelerating their time to solution from months to a few weeks. They cut the number of quantum bits (qubits) needed to express the problem via qubit tapering, measured groups of terms once rather than measuring terms from every group individually, and used all 20 qubits in the H1-1 by running four circuits concurrently.
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Algorithm Ensnares First 'Potentially Hazardous' Asteroid
University of Washington News
July 31, 2023
An algorithm developed by a team led by University of Washington researchers discovered its first potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) during a test run. The asteroid discovery algorithm HelioLinc3D will be used by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile for its upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky. The asteroid 2022 SF289 is about 600 feet long but poses no risk to Earth in the foreseeable future. Rubin is expected to commence its survey in early 2025,using an 8.4-meter mirror and 3,200-megapixel camera to scan the sky twice each night. ATLAS's Larry Denneau said, "Any survey will have difficulty discovering objects like 2022 SF289 that are near its sensitivity limit, but HelioLinc3D shows that it is possible to recover these faint objects as long as they are visible over several nights. This in effect gives us a 'bigger, better' telescope."
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Researchers Advance Motion Simulation Technology
SFU News (Canada)
Ray Sharma
August 3, 2023
Jason Peng at Canada's Simon Fraser University is advancing next-generation motion simulation technology with colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canadian artificial intelligence research nonprofit Vector Institute, Stanford University, and technology company Nvidia. The researchers' animation system enables the procedural generation of character movements based on footage of real athletes engaged in sports. The system directs character motions through a hierarchical control model that integrates a low-level imitation policy with a high-level motion planning policy. The researchers trained the simulated players on broadcast tennis footage, deploying a motion correction system with physics-based mimicry to resolve low-quality motions derived from the videos.
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Algorithm Monitors Two-Photon Lithography Nanoscale Fabrication
Optica
August 3, 2023
Brown University researchers created a monitoring and process control algorithm to observe the nanoscale manufacture of three-dimensional (3D) tissue scaffolds via two-photon lithography. The algorithm obtains background images before fabrication and eliminates the foreground from the adaptive background, exposing single-layer information. The researchers fabricated synthetic fibers with random orientations, then used the algorithm to ascertain a quality parameter signaling the fabrication's fidelity. Brown's Jieliyue Sun explained, "With optimized process parameters, we reproduced the input scaffold model with a high geometric fidelity while also revealing the internal features of the architecture. The experiment showed that the new monitoring and process control method improved the quality and efficiency of nanomanufacturing using two-photon lithography."
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VR Techniques Help with Stroke Rehabilitation
Xinhua
August 1, 2023
Virtual reality (VR) technology has been used in stroke rehabilitation by researchers at China's Beihang University. The researchers used the VR interactive system to trigger virtual ankle movement through continuous surface electromyography (sEMG) of contralateral wrist movement. They said patient attention and motivation improved during repetitive tasks through the use of the contralateral wrist sEMG signals. Even without active ankle movement, the researchers found the system can be used to provide feedback training for stroke patients in the early stages of recovery, increasing kinesthetic illusion and body ownership and improving motor imagery performance and motor memory.
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Computer Model of Real-Life Brain Plots More Accurate Route for Neurosurgeons
Cardiff University News (U.K.)
August 1, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s Cardiff University and Renishaw Neuro Solutions Ltd. developed a computational model that aims to understand how the brain moves during surgery, to improve surgical plans and patient outcomes. Using data from MRI scans of real-life brain motion, the researchers produced a bespoke model that maps the various material characteristics of the brain and tissues connecting it to the skull. Understanding brain shift is important in stereotactic neurosurgery, where the precise location of points in the patient's brain are required for drug delivery or electrode implantation. Cardiff's Nicholas Bennion said, "Our model means movement of the brain relative to the skull could be predicted pre-operatively, enabling adjustments to be made to the surgical plan to improve the effectiveness of these procedures."
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