Welcome to the October 27, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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2023 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Recipients Named
ACM
October 26, 2023
ACM and IEEE named the University of Chicago's James Gregory Pauloski and Northeastern University's Rohan Basu Roy recipients of the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships. Pauloski was recognized for designing high-performance computing (HPC) resource usage systems for enabling efficient large-scale machine learning training and data fabrics or distributed and federated scientific utility. Roy received a fellowship for developing techniques and tools that leverage cloud computing and on-premise HPC resources to augment the productivity of computational researchers and HPC's environmental sustainability. The Georgia Institute of Technology's Hua Huang received an Honorable Mention for his contributions to high-performance parallel matrix algorithms and deployment, and their utilization in quantum chemistry calculations.
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Soft, Elephant Trunk-Like Robot for Close Interaction with Humans
EPFL (Switzerland)
Michael David Mitchell
October 26, 2023
A soft robot arm developed by researchers at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), inspired by the movement of elephant trunks and octopus tentacles, could enable safer human-robot interactions. The new structure, known as a trimmed helicoid, also allows for greater control, increased flexibility and precision, and a wider range of motion. The helicoid, a modified spring-like spiral, can adapt to different shapes and surfaces and handle delicate items. Said EPFL's Qinghua Guan and Francesco Stella, "We introduce a specific surface into the computer model, then trim and adjust. Computational methods guide us, helping assess the optimal geometric structure for maximum workspace and compliance. In the end, our computer models were accurate to the point where we only had to build one version of the arm."
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The App Store—but for Cars—May Not be Far Off
The Wall Street Journal
Isabelle Bousquette
October 26, 2023
Earlier this month, automaker General Motors (GM) issued a suite of open source application programming interfaces (APIs) so software developers can build apps that integrate with connected vehicle hardware. GM's Frank Ghenassia said his company and other manufacturers hope the automotive industry will establish an app development and innovation landscape similar to Apple's through such resources. The API deployment is part of an overarching revamp of GM's software development capabilities, and the automaker hopes its APIs will be adopted as industry standards so open source-developed apps will be compatible with multiple manufacturers' vehicles.
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Spotting Human Activity in Internet Usage Data
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Julia Cohen
October 25, 2023
University of Southern California (USC) researchers analyzed Internet Protocol address activity to infer human trends from Internet usage data. USC's Xiao Song and John Heidemann tapped data used to detect Internet outages to search for and analyze global Internet usage shifts that may signal human behavior. They programmed algorithms to sanitize this data, exfiltrate underlying trends, and identify activity changes. The researchers used this technique to recognize network activity changes in the early months of 2020, which dovetailed with the Wuhan COVID lockdown and the Spring Festival in China and riots associated with immigration law protests in India. They believe this ability to deduce human activity trends from Internet data clears a new path toward understanding how that data complements other public information sources.
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Native Representation Lacking in Tech Roles
Inside Higher Ed
Ashley Mowreader
October 25, 2023
A report by the Kapor Foundation and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society found that Native American students continue to be underrepresented in U.S. college computer science courses. Computer science enrollment for these students has remained stagnant at all two- and four-year institutions, with Native Americans accounting for fewer than 1% of computer science degree holders. Although tech boot camps and apprenticeships provide alternative pathways for upskilling or reskilling, the Indigenous population accounted for just 2% of coding boot-camp alumni in 2020. Further, American Indian and Alaska Native individuals, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, held only 2% of technical apprenticeships offered that year. Among other things, the report recommends institutions offer Native American students scholarships, fellowships, and research awards; launch Native American-led coding boot camps, and eliminate arbitrary barriers to a computer science major.
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Using Computer Vision to Catch Early-Stage Skin Cancer
Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering
Jaimie Patterson
October 23, 2023
A framework developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Lumo Imaging, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development uses computer vision to detect skin cancer in its early stages. The researchers used a three-dimensional textured mesh and geometry and texture analysis to track skin abnormalities. The framework can estimate the location of a skin lesion detected in an earlier scan and use its size, shape, texture, and other details to identify its precise location in a new scan, regardless of changes in body pose and camera angle. It also compares lesions based on texture similarity, landmark alignment, and the region's uniqueness. The framework outperformed a state-of-the-art method in tests using private and public databases.
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Amazon Rolls Out Independent Cloud for Europe to Address Stricter Privacy Standards
Associated Press
Michelle Chapman
October 25, 2023
E-commerce giant Amazon is launching an independent cloud for the European Union (EU) to comply with the bloc's strict privacy rules. Amazon Web Services (AWS) said its AWS European Sovereign Cloud will match current AWS regions' security, availability, and performance while allowing customers to retain all metadata they produce in the EU. Amazon said AWS has partnered with European regulators and national cybersecurity agencies to design the EU cloud to fulfill additional European data residency, operational autonomy, and resiliency requirements. The independent cloud initially will be available in Germany, and only bloc-based EU-resident AWS employees can control its operations and support.
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Inspection Method Increases Confidence in Laser Powder Bed Fusion 3D Printing
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
October 26, 2023
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and aerospace and defense company RTX have created a scheme for spotting defects in three-dimensionally (3D)-printed metal products fabricated via laser powder bed fusion. The technique integrates part inspection after printing with information gathered by sensors during production. A machine learning algorithm uses training data generated by X-ray computed tomography scans to detect flaws, and operators can estimate the likelihood of accurate flaw detection with as much reliability as traditional assessments. Said ORNL's Luke Scime, "We can detect flaw sizes of about half a millimeter—about the thickness of a business card—90% of the time. We're the first to put a number value on the level of confidence possible for in situ [in process] flaw detection."
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Improved ICT Infrastructure Leads to Better Math Skills
Radboud University (Netherlands)
October 25, 2023
A study by researchers at the Netherlands' Radboud University found that students whose schools have an information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure perform better in math, and improving schools' ICT environments can help address educational inequality. The researchers analyzed data on 248,730 students aged 15 to 16 in 43 countries from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Study. They found ICT skills can boost math performance by around 60% (although they attributed 25% of the differences between countries to different ICT infrastructures). Said Radboud's Renae Loh, "What we found is that students get more educational benefit out of their digital skills in countries with a strong ICT infrastructure in education. This is likely because the more computers and other digital tools are available to them in their studies, the more they were able to put those skills to use, and the more valued these skills were."
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Using Sound to Test Devices, Control Qubits
Harvard University John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Leah Burrows
October 24, 2023
Researchers at Harvard and Purdue universities have developed a system that measures the stability and quality of acoustic resonators using atomic vacancies in silicon carbide, which could be harnessed to control quantum information processing. Explained Harvard's Evelyn Hu, "As an acoustic resonator probe, this technique in silicon carbide could be used in monitoring the performance of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and clocks over their lifetime and, in a quantum scheme, has potential for hybrid quantum memories and quantum networking." The silicon carbide's atomic vacancies can function as quantum bits (qubits). "When we deform the material, we find that we can also control the coherence of spin and we can get that information just by launching an acoustic wave through the material," Hu said.
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U.S. Universities Producing the Highest-Paid Computer Engineer Grads
Interesting Engineering
Amanda Kavanagh
October 26, 2023
The nonprofit Burning Glass Institute has compiled a list of U.S. universities churning out the highest-earning software engineers and computer scientists based on information from labor-market data firm Lightcast and company review site Glassdoor. Stanford University led private colleges, with graduates earning an average $146,911 annually over a decade versus a $103,354 median salary. Princeton grads followed close behind with average yearly salaries of $145,281, followed by Harvard grads with $144,183, California Institute of Technology grads with $141,486, and Brown University grads with $141,195. The University of California, Berkeley topped the public-college list with a $138,971 average yearly salary for grads, joining six more California-based public colleges in the top 10. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was sixth and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor was seventh for public colleges, with grads earning respective average annual salaries of $120,113 and $119,458.
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Security Threats in AIs Revealed by Researchers
University of Sheffield (U.K.)
October 24, 2023
Scientists at the U.K.'s University of Sheffield, the North China University of Technology, and e-commerce giant Amazon found hackers can trick natural language processing tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT into generating malicious code for possible use in cyberattacks. The researchers discovered and successfully exploited security flaws in six commercial artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including ChatGPT, Chinese intelligent dialogue platform Baidu-UNIT, structured query language (SQL) generators AI2SQL, AIHelperBot, and Text2SQL, and online tool resource ToolSKE. They learned that asking these AIs specific questions caused them to produce malicious code that would leak confidential database information, or disrupt or even destroy database operation. The team also found AI language models are susceptible to simple backdoor attacks. Sheffield's Xutan Peng said the vulnerabilities are rooted in the fact that "more and more people are using [AIs like ChatGPT] as productivity tools, rather than a conversational bot."
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Cruise's Driverless Taxi Service in San Francisco Is Suspended
The New York Times
Yiwen Lu; Cade Metz; Neal E. Boudette
October 24, 2023
On Oct. 24, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended General Motors' Cruise driverless taxi service in San Francisco. This followed a series of traffic issues, including an Oct. 2 accident in which a Cruise vehicle hit a pedestrian, who had been hit by another vehicle first, and dragged them 20 feet. There also have been reports of Cruise vehicles malfunctioning and holding up traffic, colliding with emergency vehicles, and driving through city paving projects and becoming stuck in wet concrete. The length of the suspension has not been specified. Cruise indicated its driverless operations in San Francisco would be paused while it works on technology improvements.
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