Welcome to the October 20, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Integrating Data with Physical Objects
MIT News
Steve Nadis
October 18, 2023
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers developed a tool that can embed information into physical objects. StructCode can extract information from objects produced with laser-cutting techniques via smartphone camera. The researchers used wooden objects made of multiple components and focused on the joints for storing information, varying the length of the gaps or fingers to develop a code based on the sequence of numbers along a joint. They also demonstrated a method for encoding messages in "living hinges," in which cutting a series of parallel, vertical lines in a flat, rigid piece of material makes it bendable. After an object with embedded information is fabricated using a laser cutter and a model created by StructCode, the StructCode app and a smartphone camera can be used to decode the hidden message.
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IBM Chip Speeds Up AI
Nature
Davide Castelvecchi
October 19, 2023
Researchers at IBM have developed a processor that can speed up artificial intelligence (AI) while consuming less power. The NorthPole chip makes frequent external memory access unnecessary, achieving "mind-blowing" efficiency, said Damien Querlioz at France's University of Paris-Saclay. NorthPole features multilayered neural networks; a bottom layer absorbs data while each successive layer identifies increasingly complex patterns and shuttles information to the next layer until the top layer generates an output. The chip incorporates 256 computing cores that each have their own memory, which alleviates the Von Neumann bottleneck, according to IBM's Dharmendra Modha. Wiring the cores together in an arrangement modeled after white-matter connections in the human cerebral cortex allows NorthPole to significantly outperform existing AI in standard benchmark image tests, the researchers said.
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ChatGPT Can 'Infer' Personal Details from Anonymous Text
Gizmodo
Mack DeGeurin
October 17, 2023
A study by computer scientists at Switzerland's ETH Zurich found that large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Anthropic can infer a user's race, occupation, location, other personal information from anonymous text. The findings raise concerns that scammers, hackers, and law enforcement agencies, among others, could use LLMs to identify background information of users from the phrases and types of words they use. The LLM tests involved samples of text from a database of comments from more than 500 Reddit profiles. OpenAI's GPT4 had an accuracy rate of 85% to 95% in identifying private information from the texts.
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Computer Scientists Develop System to Ensure File Systems' Integrity
The Daily Texan
Mara Ramazanoglu
October 18, 2023
University of Texas (UT) computer science researchers designed the open source Chipmunk tool to ensure the integrity and reliability of computer file systems. UT's Vijay Chidambaram said Chipmunk attempts to detect software bugs that would affect the data's security should a crash occur. The researchers based the system's framework on Chidambaram's CrashMonkey tool, which works with older file systems. Chipmunk focuses on persistent memory systems, which Chidambaram said are similar to flash drives but 1,000 times faster. "We think [the impact] it'll have is that Chipmunk can find a lot of bugs in these new file systems," he explained. "That's really why tools like Chipmunk are important, because you want your file system to be sophisticated, but you also want it to be correct."
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Amazon Testing Drone Delivery of Prescriptions
Associated Press
Tom Murphy; Haleluya Hadero
October 18, 2023
Amazon is testing a drone delivery service for prescription drugs in College Station, TX, with plans to expand the service to other markets in the future. More than 500 medications (but not controlled substances) will be available for delivery within an hour of the order being placed. After flying from a delivery center with a secure pharmacy to the customer's address at altitudes of nearly 400 feet, the drone will descend to around 13 feet from the ground and drop the prescription, in a padded package, on a delivery marker. Before releasing the package, the drone will ensure there are no pets, children, or obstructions in the delivery zone. Amazon's Prime Air division already has tested drone deliveries of common household items in College Station and Lockeford, CA.
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Simplifying the Generation of Three-Dimensional Holographic Displays
Chibadai Next (Japan)
October 18, 2023
Researchers at Japan's Chiba University used deep neural networks (DNNs) to create three-dimensional (3D) holograms from two-dimensional (2D) color images produced using ordinary cameras. The researchers employ three DNNs in their approach: one that predicts the depth map of a regular 2D color image, another that generates a hologram using that depth map and the original RGB image, and a third that refines the hologram for display on different devices. The approach outperformed a state-of-the-art graphics processing unit, in terms of the time needed to process the data and produce a hologram. Chiba University's Tomoyoshi Shimobaba added, "The reproduced image of the final hologram can represent a natural 3D-reproduced image."
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OpenCap: Sophisticated Human Biomechanics from Smartphone Video
Stanford News
Andrew Myers
October 19, 2023
The OpenCap motion-capture application developed by Stanford University engineers measures human motion and underlying musculoskeletal forces using video from two calibrated iPhones. The open source app can compute insights about human movement in just 10 minutes at less than 1% of the cost of specialized laboratory equipment. OpenCap calculates the three-dimensional movement of body landmarks, determining skeletal motion and exertion using models of the human musculoskeletal system. The app can compute biomechanical data like joint angles or joint loads, and processes this data in a freely available cloud. Stanford's Scott Delp said, "Our hope is that in democratizing access to human movement analysis, OpenCap will accelerate the incorporation of key biomechanical metrics into more and more studies, trials, and clinical practices to improve outcomes for patients across the world."
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Scanning a Tropical Forest with a Mixed Reality Device
Rice University News
Carlyn Chatfield
October 19, 2023
Rice University's Daniel Gorczynski and colleagues at Tanzania's Udzungwa Ecological Monitoring Center and Italy's University of Florence scanned and analyzed forest floor vegetation with a Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality headset and custom-designed VegSense software. Gorczynski said the HoloLens allows users to "see both the projected mesh over the forest structure as well as your local surroundings." Gorczynski and Rice's Lydia Beaudrot programmed VegSense to help researchers quantify animal habitats. The researchers leveraged VegSense's shape and configuration measurements of the forest floor with data from motion-activated trail cameras that watch mammal populations in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains National Park. They found increasing animal diversity and ecological characteristics correlated with forest floor habitat surface area as measured by the headset, according to Gorczynski.
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Datacenters Could Work as Well with Less Cooling
New Scientist
Chris Stokel-Walker
October 18, 2023
Shengwei Wang and colleagues at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University found running datacenters at higher temperatures than they currently operate could reduce their energy consumption significantly while maintaining computational performance. The researchers programmed a computer model to simulate information technology equipment's performance at different temperatures in 57 cities worldwide. They learned running servers at 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) could save up to 56% of the energy used for cooling compared with those operating at 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit). This approach would yield the greatest energy savings in sites whose higher ambient temperatures require the most cooling, such as Brazil or West Africa, according to the researchers.
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Algorithms Find Molecular Adaptations to Improve COVID-19 Drugs
Virginia Tech News
Kevin Myatt
October 18, 2023
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) researchers used algorithms to generate molecular adaptations in compounds for existing and potential COVID-19-targeting drugs. Virginia Tech's Sanket A. Deshmukh described "a novel transferable data-driven framework that can be used to accelerate the design of new small molecules and materials, with desired properties, by changing the combination of building blocks as well as decorating them with functional groups." The newly designed functionalized molecule's maximal effective concentration value was more than half that of its parent drug, Deshmukh added. The researchers tested the functionalized molecules against live SARS-CoV-2, verifying that the new compound was more potent against the coronavirus than the parent compound.
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Peering Inside a Quantum Computer Creates New Phases of Information
University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences
Marc Airhart
October 18, 2023
Using Google's 70-qubit quantum computer, University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) researchers showed how taking certain measurements on a quantum computer results in different phases of quantum information. The researchers observed quantum teleportation, in which quantum states instantaneously are sent from one point in space to another, but found information sent in this manner appears purely random on the receiving end and cannot be controlled. Nevertheless, they said, the findings potentially could be used to manage noise in more powerful quantum computers. UT Austin's Matteo Ippoliti said, "From the signal we measured, we can learn about noise in the system, that is to say, imperfections in the quantum computation that cause it to lose accuracy over time. This is very important for near-term quantum computers, where we don't yet have the ability to correct errors."
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