Welcome to the August 25, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Brain Implants Can Help People with Paralysis 'Speak' Faster, More Accurately
CNN
Jacqueline Howard
August 23, 2023
Research shows brain implants can help paralyzed people communicate faster and with greater accuracy. A multi-institutional team of researchers led by Stanford University's Jaimie Henderson analyzed how neuroprostheses implanted into two areas of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patient Pat Bennett's brain recorded neural activity as she tried to move her face, produce sounds, or speak single words. The electrode arrays linked to a computer by wire while software decoded and translated the signals into words displayed on a computer screen in real time. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Frank Willett said, "We can decipher attempted speech with a word error rate of 23% when using a large set of 125,000 possible words. This means that about three in every four words are deciphered correctly."
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Quantum Device Generates Single Photons, Encodes Information
Los Alamos National Laboratory
August 24, 2023
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory and Switzerland's University of Basel formed a quantum light emitter to produce a stream of circularly polarized single photons. The researchers stacked a single-molecule-thick layer of tungsten diselenide semiconductor atop a thicker layer of nickel phosphorus trisulfide magnetic semiconductor. Los Alamos' Xiangzhi Li generated a series of nanometer-scale indentations on the stack with atomic force microscopy, which emit the polarized photon stream when struck by a laser. Researchers can encode the photons with the polarization state. Los Alamos' Han Htoon said, "Our research shows that it is possible for a monolayer semiconductor to emit circularly polarized light without the help of an external magnetic field" while also having "the advantage of low-cost fabrication and reliability."
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Computational Simulation Reveals Speed of Merging Black Holes
Interesting Engineering
Mrigakshi Dixit
August 23, 2023
Astrophysicists at the Rochester Institute of Technology used supercomputer simulations to calculate the potential speed of merged black holes as approximately one-tenth the speed of light, or 63 million miles per hour (102 million kilometers per hour). The researchers inputted into the mathematical model the angle at which the two black holes approached each other before merging, processing 1,381 numerical simulations to estimate their post-collision maximum recoil velocity. They found the optimum recoil should propel the merged black hole at roughly 28,500 kilometers per second (17,709 miles per second), which would cover the distance between the Earth and the Moon in 13 seconds.
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Poor In Vivo Validation May Cause Inaccurate Infertility Diagnoses
Cornell Chronicle
Elodie Smith
August 24, 2023
A multi-institutional team of researchers assessed methods for predicting infertility-causing genetic variants to highlight the difficulty of pinpointing causative mutations among variants of unknown significance. Cornell University's John Schimenti and collaborators analyzed the fertility of mice bearing 11 human genetic variants in genes critical for male reproduction that algorithms predicted would disrupt their function; men clinically diagnosed with fertility issues also carried three of the variants. The researchers found 10 mutations that did not affect mouse fertility, while just one found in a male infertility patient significantly reduced sperm production. Schimenti said training the algorithms on inaccurate datasets could partly explain the mismatch between in vivo observations and computational predictions.
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5G-Based System Could Warn Drivers of Potential Collisions
IEEE Spectrum
Rebecca Heilweil
August 23, 2023
Scientists in Germany are readying a prototype system that uses 5G technology to warn drivers of potential collisions, as well as possibly enabling smart traffic control. The researchers suggest a 5G system could detect approaching vehicles, consult a prediction algorithm, and warn drivers about potentially hazardous situations before a collision takes place. Mohammad Reza Mousavi at Germany's Aalen University of Applied Sciences said, "The point is that now, with 5G, we can have some infrastructure that has low latency, and we can actually achieve a reaction time that is less than before." The researchers intend to deploy their prototype of the system in the German city of Aalen next year.
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Robotic Dog Runs (Almost) Entirely on Its Own
EPFL (Switzerland)
August 21, 2023
Mickaël Achkar, a master's student at Switzerland's École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), developed a robotic dog that can run without assistance or motors once set in motion. Achkar's design is based on open-source motion-capture data from real dogs. Each leg of the robotic dog has three joints that each coordinate with the others, allowing it to run with the same agility as a real dog. The prototype robot is comprised of metal rods (bones), three-dimensionally printed pulleys (joints), and thin cables (tendons). The use of a counterweight enables the robot, which can run up to 6 km/h on a treadmill, to remain in motion once started. Said Achkar, "Our goal isn't to compete with ultra-high-tech robotic dogs, but rather to explore bio-inspired robot designs.”
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Scientists Sequence Last Piece of the Human Genome: The Y Chromosome
ScienceAlert
Clare Watson
August 24, 2023
The Telomere-to-Telomere consortium led by the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute's Arang Rhie has completed sequencing the human genome by adding the fully mapped Y chromosome. The consortium used sophisticated sequencing methods and new bioinformatic algorithms to weave together lengthy DNA segments that have long prevented the Y chromosome's readability. The researchers filled in more than 30 million missing "letters" in the DNA sequence to chart the Y chromosome completely, covering 62,460,029 base pairs. They also remedied errors in previously sequenced segments and uncovered 41 new protein-coding genes. Johns Hopkins University's Dylan Taylor said this accomplishment will allow researchers to "identify and explore numerous genetic variations that could be impacting human traits and disease in a way that we weren't able to do before."
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One in Four Tech Professionals Ready to Leave Their Jobs: Survey
ZDNet
Joe McKendrick
August 22, 2023
A survey by automation platform provider Ivanti found that 25% of IT professionals are considering quitting their jobs in the next six months, largely due to big workloads, stress, and isolation tied to remote work. The survey of 8,400 executives, professionals, and office workers also found that IT professionals are 1.4 times more likely than other knowledge workers to engage in "quiet quitting," at a cost to U.S. employers that could top $145 billion. About 31% of the IT professionals who are considering quitting cited poor mental health. The report said IT workloads have jumped 73% as a result of hybrid or remote working. At least 25% of IT professionals are experiencing burnout, and 23% said they feel less connected to colleagues.
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ML System Based on Light Could Yield More Powerful, Efficient LLMs
MIT News
Elizabeth A. Thomson
August 22, 2023
A team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a light-based machine learning system that could surpass the system behind ChatGPT in terms of power and efficiency, while also consuming less energy. The compact architecture is based on arrays of vertical surface-emitting lasers developed by researchers at Germany's Technische Universitat Berlin. The system uses hundreds of micron-scale lasers and the movement of light to perform computations. The researchers said it could be scaled for commercial use in the near future, given its reliance on laser arrays commonly used in cellphone facial identification systems, and for data communication. They found the system to be 100 times more energy efficient and 25 times more powerful in terms of compute density than current state-of-the-art supercomputers used to power existing machine learning models.
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IBM Makes Error Correction Easier for Quantum Computers
New Scientist
Leah Crane
August 18, 2023
IBM researchers significantly reduced the number of quantum bits (qubits) required for quantum error correction. The protocol involves linking each qubit in the computer to six others via quantum entanglement, so each qubit monitors the others. While the surface code connects each qubit to four others to enable their arrangement into a simple grid on the surface of a chip, the new protocol requires two parallel grids. The researchers estimated this setup could harness 288 qubits to facilitate a level of error correction that would demand 4,000 qubits with the surface code. Jérémie Guillaud at French quantum computing startup Alice & Bob said the technologies needed to realize this concept could be realized in the next few years.
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3D Eye Scans at Opticians Could Identify Those at Risk of Parkinson's
The Guardian
Linda Geddes
August 21, 2023
A study by researchers at the U.K.'s University College London found that Parkinson's disease could be caught up to seven years prior to the emergence of symptoms by taking advantage of the three-dimensional (3D) eye scans performed by opticians. Using data from Moorfields eye hospital and artificial intelligence, the researchers compared optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans of 700 patients who later developed Parkinson's disease to similar scans of over 100,000 patients who did not, identifying differences in inner retinal cell layer thickness that could be associated with the development of Parkinson's. Data from 67,311 participants in the U.K. Biobank study who had retinal scans also revealed that changes to their eyes were apparent seven years prior to symptoms emerging among those who later developed Parkinson's.
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Cyberattack Shutters Major NSF-Funded Telescopes for More Than 2 Weeks
Science
Celina Zhao; Tanvi Dutta Gupta
August 18, 2023
Since the beginning of August, 10 telescopes in Hawaii and Chile run by the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab coordinating center for ground-based astronomy have been offline due to a cyberattack. Research groups have joined forces to identify alternatives to remote control of these telescopes to avoid missing critical observation windows. This includes sending graduate students to assist on-site staff at the Víctor M. Blanco and SOAR telescopes in Chile in making in-person observations. NOIRLab detected the cyberattack on its Gemini North telescope in Hawaii on Aug. 1 and acted quickly to prevent physical damage, but it has released few details about the incident. All operations at the International Gemini Observatory were halted as a result, and its computer network was disconnected from the Mid-Scale Observatories, preventing remote observations using its telescopes.
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Canadian Play on Climate Change Brings Digital, Physical Worlds Crashing Together
CBC News
Megan Williams
August 20, 2023
Animate, a play directed by Chris Salter of Switzerland's Zurich University of the Arts, begins with two actors reading from a story and then transforms into an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience. The audience, wearing VR glasses and earphones and guided by an actor via rope, take a virtual visit to the Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, Canada, and experience real-life sounds as virtual rocks fly around them in the final scene. Salter said, ""I was interested in climate transformation, and Canada is obviously ground zero for it. It's no longer an abstract thing with graphs. It's physically real, in your body.”
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