Welcome to the August 28, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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AI Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat
The New York Times
Eric Lipton
August 27, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) operates the U.S. Air Force (USAF)'s pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft, which the military envisions as a next-generation robot wingman for traditional fighter jets. The Valkyrie, manufactured by defense and security solutions company Kratos, is designed to detect and assess enemy threats and high-value targets through AI and sensors, then attack after receiving human authorization. The USAF intends to build a fleet of collaborative combat aircraft like the Valkyrie for surveillance, resupply missions, attack swarms, and wingmen as a more affordable alternative to increasingly costly manned planes. The USAF's Maj. Gen. R. Scott Jobe said these drones could "bring [affordable] mass to the battle space with potentially fewer people."
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Scientists Edge Toward Scalable Quantum Simulations on a Photonic Chip
National Science Foundation
August 24, 2023
A chip-scale optical quantum simulation system developed by University of Rochester researchers could pave the way for photonics-based quantum computing systems. The approach involves controlling the frequency, or color, of quantum-entangled photons over time, rather than controlling the paths of protons like traditional photonics-based computing methods. Said University of Rochester's Qiang Lin, "For the first time, we have been able to produce a quantum-correlated synthetic crystal. Our approach significantly extends the dimensions of the synthetic space, enabling us to perform simulations of several quantum-scale phenomena such as random walks of quantum entangled photons." The researchers said the new approach will facilitate scalability and allow for more complex simulations and computation tasks.
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Computational Model Paves the Way for More Efficient Energy Systems
EPFL (Switzerland)
Michael David Mitchell
August 24, 2023
A computational model from researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) yielded a theoretical framework for enhancing the efficiency of thermoelectric conversion . The researchers investigated skutterudite crystals, which boost their thermoelectric efficiency with the addition of supplementary atoms or "rattlers" to their atomic cage-like lattices. Said EPFL's Enrico Di Lucente, "We found, for the first time, that these rattler atoms cause a transition in how heat is conducted within the crystals, switching from particle-like conduction to wave-like tunneling." The new model paves the way for designing novel materials with ultralow thermal conductivity without requiring empirical data.
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CU Boulder Adds Coding to English Classes
Government Technology
Olivia Doak
August 23, 2023
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) now offers English classes that incorporate data science and coding. After students are taught how to code and use R programming language, they learn to examine novels using data science methods. CU Boulder's David Glimp said, "These courses are a way to reach students from computer science, STEM backgrounds, information science, the social sciences, and business and bring them into literary study and find another way to engage them in thinking about literature." The courses also aim to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration. Glimp added, "We're trying to proceed in a way that values both traditional kinds of literary inquiry and the new opportunities that are opened up by data science."
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Meta's Flamera Has New Vision for AR
IEEE Spectrum
Matthew S. Smith
August 25, 2023
Meta's Flamera augmented reality (AR) headset incorporates a new lens that could eliminate the use of outside cameras to provide wearers with an accurate view of their surroundings. The prototype's "lightfield passthrough" design uses apertures that physically manipulate the light reaching image sensors, blocking light that would distort perspective while allowing light that generates accurate perspective. Flamera reconfigures the raw image to eliminate gaps and rearrange sensor data. Edgar Maucourant at beauty industry AR technology provider ModiFace said Flamera had no latency or difference between eye view and hand position, which could be beneficial for AR applications involving direct user-environment interaction.
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Meet Apollo, the 'iPhone' of Humanoid Robots
CNN
Ashley Strickland
August 23, 2023
Researchers at the Texas-based robotics startup Apptronik recently unveiled Apollo, a nearly 6-foot (1.8-meter) tall, 160-pound (27-kg.) humanoid robot that can lift 55 pounds (25 kg.) and is designed to work alongside humans. The battery-powered robot is equipped with digital chest panels that detail its remaining battery life, current task, estimated completion time, and its next task. Apollo can walk, flex its arms, and grasp objects and has an approachable, friendly face to help human coworkers feel more comfortable with it. It also is equipped with a perception camera and sensors that allow it to map its environment and avoid obstacles. Said Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas, "The goal is to build one robot that can do thousands of different things. It's a software update away from doing a new task or a new behavior."
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AI Can Spot Early Signs of a Tsunami from Atmospheric Shock Waves
New Scientist
Jeremy Hsu
August 23, 2023
Researchers at Florida-based satellite manufacturing company Terran Orbital Corp. found that off-the-shelf artificial intelligence (AI) models can detect the early signs of a tsunami in two-dimensional (2D) images from GPS satellites. The researchers used data generated by a computer algorithm developed by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Italy's Sapienza University of Rome, which measures changes in the density of charged particles in the ionosphere as tsunamis form. The data was transformed into 2D images that were analyzed by the AI to identify features associated with tsunamis. The AI achieved a reported detection performance rate above 90% after eliminating ionospheric disturbance patterns that at least 70% of ground stations in contact with the satellites failed to pick up.
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Pocket-Sized Device Could Spot Infected Wounds Faster
Frontiers Science News
Angharad Brewer Gillham
August 24, 2023
Scientists in Canada and Mexico have designed a pocket-sized device to identify infected wounds from medical images captured by a smartphone or tablet. Clinicians can attach the Swift Ray 1 to a smartphone and link it to the Swift Skin and Wound software to record medical-grade photos, infrared thermography images, and bacterial fluorescence images. The researchers enlisted 66 wounded patients while a scientist reviewed their wound images and classified 20 wounds as non-inflamed, 26 as inflamed, and 20 as infected. The researchers used the nearest k-neighbor clustering algorithm to determine a machine learning model could identify the three wound categories with 74% overall accuracy, and correctly identified 100% of infected wounds and 91% of non-infected wounds.
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Planning Algorithm Enables High-Performance Flight
MIT News
Adam Zewe
August 23, 2023
New algorithms for tailsitter aircraft developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) allow for more complex trajectory planning and better control of the fixed-wing aircraft in real time. The algorithms leverage tailsitters' maneuverability and versatility to help them achieve peak performance. The researchers used a global dynamics model to account for all flight conditions and employed the technical property of differential flatness to determine the feasibility of a particular trajectory. MIT's Ezra Tal said, "That check is computationally very cheap, so that is why with our algorithm, you can actually plan trajectories in real time." Using the algorithms, the researchers had tailsitters perform loops, rolls, and climbing turns. They also raced three aircraft through aerial gates and demonstrated their ability to complete synchronized acrobatic maneuvers.
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Opening the Black Box
ASU News
Annelise Krafft
August 25, 2023
Researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of California, Los Angeles hope to enable scientists and processor designers to understand the underlying reasoning of deep learning accelerator designs through explainable-design space exploration (DSE). ASU's Shail Dave said hardware and software designs are typically optimized via black box mechanisms that "require excessive amounts of trial runs because of their lack of explainability and reasoning involved in how selecting a design configuration affects the design's overall quality." Explainable-DSE simplifies the accelerator's decision-making process so choices of design methods can be made in minutes rather than days or weeks, supporting smaller, more systematic, and more energy-efficient models. Dave's algorithm can investigate design solutions relating to multiple applications, including those differing in functionality or processing traits, while resolving their product execution inefficiencies.
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Scientists Develop Fermionic Quantum Processor
Universitat Innsbruck (Austria)
August 23, 2023
Researchers at Austria's University of Innsbruck, Harvard University, and the University of Colorado, Boulder have developed a quantum processor that can produce fermionic models from quantum chemistry and particle physics. The processor consists of a fermionic register and an array of fermionic quantum gates. Innsbruck's Daniel Gonzalez Cuadra said the state of the system to be modeled generally constitutes "a superposition of many occupation patterns, which can be directly encoded into this register." A fermionic quantum circuit then processes this information, and the researchers propose using optical tweezers to snare fermionic atoms to implement the quantum gates. Gonzalez Cuadra said fermionic quantum-information encoding and processing will ensure intrinsically certain traits of the simulated system at the hardware level, "which would require additional resources in a standard qubit [quantum bit]-based quantum computer."
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Dataset Revolutionizes Understanding of Beta Barrels, Promising Target for Vaccine Development
University of Kansas News
August 21, 2023
A dataset developed by University of Kansas (KU) researchers includes over 270,000 previously unidentified beta barrels, the tubelike outer-membrane proteins in certain gram-negative bacteria. The dataset could pave the way for new vaccines to combat drug-resistant infections. Using an algorithm they called IsItABarrel, the researchers detected around 1.9 million instances of proteins with the beta barrel shape and observed 11 independent instances in different types of bacteria where proteins evolved into the beta barrel shape, compared with two or three identified previously. Further, the algorithm identified other types of proteins with barrel signs that previously were unknown. KU's Joanna Slusky said, "This discovery provides additional substantiation for the concept of independent evolution. However, it also underscores the limitations in our comprehension of the folding process for these other proteins."
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