Welcome to the November 3, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Tech Firms to Allow Vetting of AI Tools
The Guardian (U.K.)
Dan Milmo; Kiran Stacey
November 3, 2023
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced at this week's artificial intelligence (AI) safety summit at Bletchley Park that the most advanced technology firms will allow governments to vet their AI tools under a pact between the European Union and 10 nations. Companies including Meta, Google, DeepMind, and OpenAI have agreed to having their latest products vetted before public release, which officials say will decelerate the race to develop human-competitive systems. Companies and governments also will jointly test large language models against hazards like national security, safety, and societal harms. Sunak also spoke of UN Secretary-General António Guterres' help in securing international community backing for an expert panel to publish a “state of AI science” report, whose production will be led by ACM A. M. Turing Award recipient Yoshua Bengio.
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Wearable Tech Developed for Contact Tracing
The Source (Washington University in St. Louis)
Shawn Ballard
October 31, 2023
An automated COVID-19 contact tracing system developed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis addresses the unique challenges and risks faced by frontline healthcare workers. The Contact Tracing for Hospitals (CATCH) system is comprised of coin-sized Bluetooth low energy beacons attached to intensive care unit (ICU) workers' badges, with signals transmitted to small receivers located around the ICU and data stored on a secure server. The signals are emitted and captured in just the ICU, maintaining privacy and eliminating the need for cellphone-based tracking. CATCH uses contact tracing algorithms customized for different environments and worker behaviors. In tests of simulated positive cases, CATCH was more accurate, effective, and efficient than other contact tracing approaches.
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Patrolling the Shore with Sensors
Science
April Reese
November 2, 2023
Marine biologists at Portugal's University of Porto are monitoring the impact of ocean warming on coastal ecosystems by deploying electronic sensors, or "Envloggers," along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The Envlogger is housed in plastic and can store data for at least a year, with five years of battery life. The researchers and have embedded nearly 1,800 Envloggers at 162 locations along the Atlantic's eastern and western shorelines over the past 15 years, and with international collaborators installed hundreds more along 21,500 kilometers (13,359 miles) of coast this summer and fall. The sensors can detect significant temperature differences in intertidal zones, and the researchers ultimately aim to equip 320 sites to perceive thermal conditions' effects on organisms in these microhabitats across the Atlantic region.
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Using Lasers to 'Heat and Beat' 3D-Printed Steel
University of Cambridge (U.K.)
October 30, 2023
An international team of researchers led by the U.K.'s University of Cambridge has developed a method for "programming" structural modifications within three-dimensionally (3D)-printed steel. Cambridge's Matteo Seita and colleagues devised a formula that confers refined control over the material's internal structure as a laser melts it. The researchers can program the metal's characteristics by controlling how it solidifies after melting and how much heat the process generates. "We found that the laser can be used as a 'microscopic hammer' to harden the metal during 3D printing," said Seita. "However, melting the metal a second time with the same laser relaxes the metal's structure, allowing the structural reconfiguration to take place when the part is placed in the furnace."
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Phone Case Provides Workaround for Inaccessible Touch Screens
University of Michigan News
Derek Smith
October 26, 2023
A smartphone case developed by University of Michigan (U-M) researchers could help individuals with visual impairments, tremors, or spasms navigate touch screen menus in public locations. Users would be able to hold a BrushLens-connected phone against a touch screen and drag it across, with the phone's camera taking note of the touch screen options and its built-in screen reader reading them aloud. They then could use the screen reader or an enlarged, easy-to-tap button in the BrushLens app to make their selection. After dividing the screen into a grid, BrushLens indicates the coordinates of the target and the device to guide the user's hand to their menu choice. Push buttons or autoclickers under the phone case tap the screen on the user's behalf.
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Gallaudet's Latest Technological Innovation Is a Helmet
Associated Press
Stephen Whyno
October 31, 2023
Hearing-impaired football players could benefit from a prototype helmet designed by researchers from Gallaudet University and AT&T that provides visual displays of plays. The plays are transmitted over 5G to be displayed on a nearly transparent screen in the helmet at the push of a tablet button on the sideline. The technology debuted last month in Gallaudet quarterback Brandon Washington's helmet during the team's first win of the season. The helmet is the latest example of how the private school has been an incubator for technology for the deaf. Gallaudet was responsible for the first Dictionary of American Sign Language, and pioneered the use of video phones on campus, as well as the development of translation and ASL recognition applications.
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Technology to Protect EVs from Chip 'Noise'
The University of Texas at Dallas
Kim Horner
October 26, 2023
University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) scientists have created an intelligent sensor to protect electric vehicles (EVs) from electromagnetic interference (EMI)-related "noise." UTD's Dongsheng Brian Ma said EMI is caused by computer chips densely packed into the EVs. The sensor detects conditions like input voltage and load current that can signal increased EMI in power circuits, and responsively implements on-chip countermeasures to reduce interference. "Our device detects the precursors to EMI in certain signature parameters," Ma explained. "When you measure them, it reflects something like when a doctor tests for elevated A1C, which can be a warning sign or actual indicator of diabetes."
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Sharper Images: A Breakthrough in Microscopy Resolution
SPIE
October 31, 2023
A deblurring algorithm developed by Boston University researchers improves image resolution with photon intensity conservation and local linearity. The algorithm, called "deblurring by pixel reassignment" (DPR), sharpens images without amplifying noise by reassigning pixel intensities based on local gradients. It produces consistent results by standardizing raw images before performing the pixel reassignment. DPR enhances microscope resolution by substantially reducing the required separation distance between two point sources. It can be adapted to different fluorescence microscopes and requires minimal assumptions about the emission point spread function. Said Boston University's Jerome Mertz, "Because of its ease of use, speed, and versatility, we believe DPR can be of general utility to the bio-imaging community."
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Browser Extensions Could Grab Passwords, Sensitive Info
University of Wisconsin-Madison News
Jason Daley
October 27, 2023
The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Rishabh Khandelwal, Asmit Nayak, and Kassem Fawaz found browser extensions can extract user data like passwords on many popular websites. The researchers discovered about 15% of more than 7,000 reviewed sites store sensitive data as plain text in their HTML source code, and a malign browser extension could use code written in a common programming language to steal such information. They estimated 17,300 (12.5%) of available browser extensions possessed the necessary permissions to leverage this flaw, and developed and submitted their own extension to the Chrome Web Store, which approved it. Fawaz suggested browser security is configured in this manner so popular password manager extensions can access password information.
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Nvidia Piloting a Generative AI for Its Engineers
IEEE Spectrum
Samuel K. Moore
October 31, 2023
Nvidia's Bill Dally said during the keynote address at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design that the company is testing whether it can increase the productivity of its chip designers using generative artificial intelligence (AI). Nvidia's ChipNeMo system began as a large language model (LLM) trained on 1 trillion tokens (fundamental language units) of data. The next phase of training involved 24 billion tokens of specialized data, 12 billion of which were design documents, bug reports, and other English-language internal data, and the remaining 12 billion tokens were comprised of code. ChipNeMo then was trained on 130,000 sample conversations and designs. The resulting model was assigned to act as a chatbot, an electronic design automation-tool script writer, and a bug report summarizer.
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In Online News, Do Mouse Clicks Speak Louder Than Words?
MIT News
Peter Dizikes
November 2, 2023
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University found people's media preferences and how they are quantified help to determine the media's degree of influence on political views. The researchers contracted with media analytics company comScore to populate and integrate a survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults with Web-browsing data about the news sites they visited in the month prior to analysis. The researchers found surveyed media preferences generally reflected respondents' real-world news intake, with notable distinctions. The survey suggested information from ideologically opposed sources may be more persuasive for members of the public, while Web-browsing data indicated more extreme media consumers are receptive to outlets with which they already agree.
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Cheap Salty Solution Cools Computers, Boosts Performance
New Scientist
Jeremy Hsu
October 31, 2023
City University of Hong Kong researchers demonstrated that a low-cost lithium bromide solution could cool central processing units (CPUs) 10 times longer than alternative cooling systems while bolstering performance by nearly 33%. The passive cooling system depends on water evaporation from the lithium bromide solution, which is placed in within a porous membrane through which only water vapor can pass. A hollow plate protects the computer's electronics from the salty solution, and a metal heat sink moves the heat away from the adjacent computing device. Said City University of Hong Kong's Wei Wu, "The device can spontaneously and quickly recover its cooling capacity by absorbing water vapor from the air during off hours, just like a mammal rehydrating and preparing to sweat again." Tests of an off-the-shelf CPU equipped with the passive cooling system found it could run for around 400 minutes under 147°F.
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Keeping Secrets in a Quantum World
Nature
Neil Savage
November 1, 2023
Cryptographers are working on data-encryption schemes strong enough to withstand attacks from future quantum computers. Current quantum computers contain a few hundred qubits at most, with plans from IBM to roll out a 1,121-qubit chip this year and a computer with more than 4,000 qubits by 2025. However, researchers at Google and the Swedish National Communications Security Authority said cracking an RSA key of 2,048 bits would require an estimated 20 million qubits. NIST released draft standards for three quantum-resistant algorithms for potential adoption in 2024, but put out a call for new submissions earlier this year. Tanja Lange of the Netherlands' Eindhoven University said, "They are sort of sending the message that they are not happy with the three that they have."
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