Welcome to the August 18, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Flying Bird Robot Can Soar So Well It Uses Almost No Power
New Scientist
Alex Wilkins
August 17, 2023
Sunyou Hwang and colleagues at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have engineered a flying robot that can hover like a bird while using its throttle an average 0.25% of the time, consuming 150 times less power than during propelled flight. The drone applies its throttle 38% of the time while flying; it also uses an algorithm to autonomously adjust its position when the wind changes to keep itself aloft. Said Hwang, "It always tries to find a new position if its current position doesn't work—it's very flexible." The algorithm utilizes a tweaked trial-and-error system, subtly shifting the robot's position by measuring wind speed and inferring its locality with a camera and global positioning system sensor. If field tests succeed, the researchers hope to use the drone for long-distance ground or ocean surveys or for monitoring a single spot for extended periods.
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Online Safety Message Failing to Get Through to Women
ComputerWeekly.com
Alex Scroxton
August 15, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s King's College London (KCL) and the University of Westminster found advice about cybersecurity and privacy is not getting through to women, making them less likely to take protective steps for online security. KCL's Kovila Coopamootoo and Westminster's Magdalene Ng said official digital safety advice and guidance from organizations like Action Fraud or the National Cyber Security Center usually excludes the needs of women. The researchers ascertained that roughly 76% of women's preferred strategy was to look to family members or intimate social connections for digital guidance versus less than 24% of men; 38% of women also said they solicited advice from online sources relative to 70% of men. Coopamootoo and Ng said policymakers should consider more aggressively ensuring the online advice ecosystem includes women's needs above and beyond guidance for specific threats like cyber abuse associated with controlling behavior or domestic violence.
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Fiber-Optic Cables Are Natural Earthquake Detectors
IEEE Spectrum
Prachi Patel
August 14, 2023
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have demonstrated the ability of fiber-optic cables to detect earthquakes with high resolution. Caltech's Jiaxuan Li and colleagues applied distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), transmitting laser light pulses over optical fibers and measuring the intensity of the signals reflected by impurities; quake-related stretching or contracting of the fiber can change those signals. The researchers converted preexisting optical cables into a DAS array, and used a 100-kilometer (62.1-mile) stretch of cable to pinpoint the time and whereabouts of four miniquakes constituting a magnitude-6 earthquake. Li said dense cable networks could function as seismic arrays and provide better life-saving early-warning systems.
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Researchers Use Cloud to Replicate Supercomputer for Heart Disease Study
Reuters
Max A. Cherney
August 16, 2023
Harvard University's Petros Koumoutsakos and colleagues cloned a supercomputer for a heart disease study using Google's cloud platform. The researchers modeled a therapy targeting blood clots and tumor cells in the human circulatory system. Koumoutsakos said his team could only access a full-scale supercomputer to run one simulation; the team needed additional supercomputer access to optimize it. Other scientists could tap the public cloud for the additional supercomputing resources, as Koumoutsakos did, to bypass a shortage of computing resources and accelerate their research.
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Laser Mapping Reveals Secrets of World War II's Notorious Battle of the Bulge
Science
Phie Jacobs
August 14, 2023
Scientists at Belgium's Ghent University, Belgian drone data analytics firm Argus Vision, and Canada's University of Toronto Mississauga used laser-based remote sensing technology to expose how the geography of Belgium's Ardennes region influenced the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. The researchers piloted a drone with a high-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanner above the forested area while a team on the ground algorithmically rendered measurements into a three-dimensional map of the battlefield. Researchers detected nearly 1,000 archaeological features, many hidden for decades, that marked remnants of foxholes, dugouts, trenches, bomb craters, and artillery mounting sites. Linking these features to historical accounts revealed new insights into how certain skirmishes unfolded, and how the landscape likely shaped the battle's outcome.
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Computational Model Identifies Metabolites Associated with Parkinson's Disease
News-Medical Life Sciences
Neha Mathur
August 15, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s University of Galway used a computational model to identify metabolites involved in the development and progression of Parkinson's disease. The researchers reviewed metabolomic Parkinson’s studies published until March 2021 through the Web of Science and PubMed databases, then evaluated their reliability using Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and QUADOMICS quality assessment tools. They harmonized and categorized all identified metabolites into a single namespace that excluded unidentified metabolites and fragments through the Virtual Metabolic Human Identifier. The team generated the ReconX Parkinson’s model from the Recon3D global genome-scale metabolic model, indicating about 20% of metabolites identified from the reviewed studies were reported by multiples studies as involved in Parkinson’s pathogenesis.
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Rice University Establishes 3-Year Partnership with Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Rice University
Sam Byrd
August 15, 2023
Rice University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) have announced the first recipients of the Rice/IITK Strategic Collaboration Award program. The goal of the program is to foster joint research and innovation in fields such as computer science, engineering, data science, and health care. The winning proposals include one researcher from each institution, with recipients receiving up to $38,000 in funding. The winning proposals include a comprehensive study of solution spaces and model uncertainty using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning models; the use of radio frequency reflections from the human body to track the positions of victims buried under debris following a building collapse; a study to characterize food inks suitable for three-dimensional printing; and the use of a new recording tool and computational method to improve available information about the non-human primate anterior cingulate cortex.
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Scientists Recreate Pink Floyd Song by Reading Brain Signals of Listeners
The New York Times
Hana Kiros
August 15, 2023
A research team led by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrated that a song can be recreated using the listener's brain activity, which could help pave the way for new "speech prosthetics." The researchers trained a computer to analyze neuronal patterns to recreate Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)." They also identified an area in the brain's temporal lobe that may determine a person's perception of rhythm based on its reaction to a particular note of the song. The study used data from 29 patients with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted in their brains. The researchers observed the parts of the brain that lit up during the song and the frequencies to which they reacted, using 128 frequency bands and training 128 computer models to recreate the song. The resulting song was muffled but recognizable, with variances attributed to patient electrode placement and such personal characteristics as whether they are musicians.
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The Best Thing Since Sliced Tissue
Gladstone Institutes
Sarah Stanley
August 17, 2023
A multi-institutional team of researchers used a new technique developed at biomedical research foundation Gladstone Institutes to ascertain the three-dimensional (3D) composition of tissue from only a few slices. The Gaussian Process Spatial Alignment (GPSA) method is applicable to nearly any type of tissue and data from tissue slices, including cellular structure and internal gene or protein expression. The technique applies a two-layer Gaussian process to tap data from two-dimensional (2D) tissue slices and map the warped 2D slice to a 3D model in the first layer, then ascribe data compiled from the slice to each point in the model in the second. The GPSA model produces a 3D tissue atlas by populating the spaces between slices with gene or protein expression predictions for every point throughout the tissue.
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Simple Superconducting Device Could Dramatically Cut Energy Use in Computing, Other Applications
MIT News
Elizabeth Thomson
August 15, 2023
A simple superconducting device developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers could help achieve significant reductions in energy usage by high-power computing systems and potentially improve quantum computing technologies. Millions of nanoscopic rectangular diodes could be produced on a single silicon wafer. The new diodes take advantage of the universal Meissner screening effect, with the screening current mechanism for expelling the external magnetic field and maintaining superconductivity activated with the application of a tiny magnetic field, directly or through the adjacent ferromagnetic layer. The researchers also achieved an increase in efficiency from 20% to over 50% by optimizing the differences in the edges of the devices, with one altered to have sawtooth features and the other left alone. MIT's Jagadeesh Moodera said this means it may be possible to develop devices with edges that could be "tuned" to further increase efficiency.
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Teens Hacked Boston Subway Cards and Nobody Got Sued
Wired
Andy Greenberg
August 10, 2023
Matty Harris and Zachary Bertocchi, inspired by a hack whose disclosure at the 2008 Defcon hacker conference was legally blocked by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), replicated the exploit to get free rides on Boston's subway system. The teenagers collaborated with fellow hackers Noah Gibson and Scott Campbell to hack, duplicate, and alter the value of Boston's CharlieTicket magstripe paper cards, as well as reverse engineer MBTA's radio-frequency identification (RFID) smart cards. The hackers have created a portable "vending machine" combining a desktop device with a touchscreen and an RFID card sensor to add any chosen value to the cards or change their settings, and embedded the same process within an Android application. They say the MBTA did not threaten them with litigation or attempt to block their Defcon talk, and instead invited them to detail the flaws they discovered and asked that they keep part of the hack opaque.
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Paper Exams, Chatbot Bans: Colleges Seek to 'ChatGPT-Proof' Assignments
Associated Press
Jocelyn Gecker
August 10, 2023
Plagiarism via ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots is rampant on college campuses, and educators in various fields, including computer science, are considering ways to prevent the tools from being used to complete test questions and assignments. Some are shifting from digital-only tests back to paper exams, while others want to see students' drafts and editing histories. However, many agree that plagiarism detection services like Turnitin aren't accurate in identifying text produced by chatbots or hybrid work, so unless the cheating is obvious, educators cannot be completely sure that a chatbot has been used. St. John's University's Bonnie MacKellar said computer science instructors, already dealing with plagiarism among students taking computer code from friends or the Internet, likely will use paper tests and require handwritten code. MacKellar added that using AI shortcuts in intro-level classes will prevent students from learning skills required for upper-level courses.
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