Welcome to the November 6, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
ACM TechNews mobile apps are available for Android phones and tablets (click here) and for iPhones (click here) and iPads (click here).
To view "Headlines At A Glance," hit the link labeled "Click here to view this online" found at the top of the page in the html version.
The online version now has a button at the top labeled "Show Headlines."
|
|
|
As a Teen, She Loved Video Games. Now She’s Using A.I. to Try to Quash Malaria
The New York Times
Dionne Searcey
November 3, 2023
As a teen growing up in Senegal, Rokhaya Diagne would spend hours a day playing online computer games. Now, her goals include using artificial intelligence (AI) to help the world eradicate malaria by 2030. Video games, said Diagne, “gave me problem-solving skills.” Diagne is at the center of overlapping phenomena on the African continent: a growing, educated middle class raising even more educated children who see technology as a tool for tackling some of the continent’s biggest problems. Free online coding boot camps, robotics lessons, and lectures from top global universities are inspiring careers in engineering and seeding ideas for start-ups. Diagne, now a computer science major at the Dakar American University of Science and Technology, founded a start-up called Afyasense (“afya” means “health” in Swahili) for her disease-detection projects using AI.
*May Require Free Registration
|
Reverse-Engineering Jackson Pollock
Harvard University John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Leah Burrows
October 30, 2023
Harvard University researchers developed a three-dimensional (3D) printing technique that leverages physics and machine learning to produce complex physical patterns. They used this technique to replicate a Jackson Pollock painting using the same natural fluid instability that he relied on in his work. Most 3D and four-dimensional (4D) printing techniques avoid the dynamic instability of the liquid stream by locating the print nozzle close to the printing surface. However, Harvard's Gaurav Chaudhary said, "We wanted to develop a technique that could take advantage of the folding and coiling instabilities, rather than avoid them." The researchers merged the physics of coiling with deep reinforcement to print at a distance and control fluid coiling. They used the technique to produce a Pollock-like painting, and to decorate a cookie with chocolate syrup.
|
Checking for Counterfeit Medication Using a Smartphone
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Germany)
November 2, 2023
The SmartID barcode system developed by researchers at a group of Germany's Fraunhofer research institutes allows users to verify whether a medical product is genuine using a smartphone. First, information about the unique surface texture of individual packaging is digitized and converted into a barcode, which is printed onto the packaging alongside a small blank area. Using a specially-designed smartphone application to scan both the code and the area beside it, users can check whether the information stored in the barcode matches the data captured from the surface texture, with no Internet or database access required. Said Fraunhofer's Tobias Jochum, “We leverage the fact that all packaging has a unique, characteristic surface texture—similar to a human fingerprint—and that standard smartphone cameras are able to capture this surface texture."
|
Rewarding Women More Like Men Could Reduce Wage Gap
Cornell Chronicle
Tom Fleischman
November 2, 2023
Research led by Cornell University scientists found treating women more like men, especially in terms of salary, could narrow the gender wage gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-related occupations. Cornell's Sharon Sassler and Pamela Meyerhofer analyzed a decade of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data on full-time computer science (CS) employees with a college degree, estimating that the gender wage gap closed by about 34% over that period when controlling for age, degree field, and level of attainment, but still persisted. The researchers suggest women receiving different rewards as partners, parents, and workers shapes the gender wage gap.
|
Human Arm Dynamics Can Help Robots Assemble Satellites
Interesting Engineering
Rizwan Choudhury
October 29, 2023
Scientists from China's Beijing Institute of Technology, the China Northern Vehicle Research Institute, and Italy's University of Rome Tor Vergata developed a robotic control method for assembling satellites in space inspired by human arm dynamics. The researchers designed a variable admittance controller to alter the robots' damping based on contact conditions and assembly requirements. The controller also can offset outside disturbances and environmental variability. The researchers constructed a dynamic data acquisition platform to record human arm movements during assembly tasks, abstracted the dynamic characteristics of the human element and contact patterns for satellite assembly, then fed this information to a robot manipulator. Simulations and experiments showed the method can enhance the safety, resilience, and adaptability of robot space assembly.
|
Wearing Your Heart (Monitor) on Your Sleeve
AIP Publishing
October 31, 2023
Researchers in Australia and India developed a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) patch to monitor the user's heart rate for augmented point-of-care diagnostics. The researchers incorporated active dry electrodes, which "prioritize user comfort, remain durable over time, and reduce the likelihood of skin irritation," according to Peter Francis Mathew Elango at Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The researchers integrated the compact, lightweight, gel-free hexagonal ECG patch with wireless Bluetooth capability to enable remote sensing. Elango envisions the patches transforming remote and ambulatory healthcare, and ultimately redefining "how we monitor cardiac health."
|
Google Slides Extension Makes Presentation Software More Accessible for Blind Users
UW News
Stefan Milne
October 30, 2023
University of Washington and Stanford University researchers have created a browser extension for Google Slides and an accompanying phone application to help blind users navigate slide layouts and text. A11yBoard integrates a desktop computer and a mobile device so visually impaired users can work with audio, touch, gesture, speech recognition, and search to perceive where different objects are located on a slide and move them around into layouts. The researchers developed, refined, and tested the interface with blind participants, and demonstrated that A11yBoard significantly improved their ability to comprehend visual content and to collaborate in slide creation without continuous back-and-forth iteration.
|
NASA Testing Two-Way, High-Speed Laser Space Communication System
New Atlas
Michael Irving
October 29, 2023
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will soon test its first two-way, end-to-end laser communications system, which could allow for 10 to 100 times faster data transmission speeds between ground facilities and the International Space Station (ISS). The Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) will be aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft when it launches later this month. When attached to the exterior of the ISS, ILLUMA-T will track and communicate with the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration satellite, which will then transmit the signals to ground stations in California and Hawaii. ILLUMA-T, which features a telescope and a two-axis gimbal, will transmit data at 1.2 gigabits per second, twice as fast as previous laser-based communications and as much as 100 times faster than radio communications.
|
Accelerating AI Tasks While Preserving Data Security
MIT News
Adam Zewe
October 30, 2023
A search engine developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers provides an efficient means of determining optimal designs for deep neural network accelerators. SecureLoop takes into account how an accelerator chip's performance and energy usage will be affected by the addition of data encryption and authentication measures. The goal is to identify the best design for maintaining data security while enhancing performance geared toward the specific neural network and machine learning task. SecureLoop generates an accelerator schedule that offers the most efficient speed and energy usage for the neural network in question, including the data tiling strategy and authentication block size. Simulations demonstrated the schedules identified by SecureLoop were as much as 33.2% faster and had a 50.2% better energy delay product than methods that do not take security into account.
|
As Baby Boomers Retire, German Businesses Turn to Robots
Reuters
Maria Martinez; Victoria Waldersee; William Schomberg
October 30, 2023
As Germany's baby boomers retire, exacerbating the country's labor shortage, many companies are filling job openings with robots. As robots become more affordable and user-friendly, small businesses increasingly are turning to automation. Around half of the Japanese-made robots sold by FANUC Germany are going to small and medium-sized enterprises. Said FANUC Germany's Ralf Winkelmann, "Robots enable the survival of companies that see their future at risk due to staff shortages." Meanwhile, in a recent survey by robot marketplace automatica, almost 50% of German workers indicated they believe robots can mitigate staffing shortages. In contrast, Daimler Truck's Michael Brecht said, "There is nothing more flexible than a human. The more complex the production, the more differentiated, the harder it becomes to use robots."
|
WVU Explores 3D Printing in Microgravity
WVU Today
October 30, 2023
West Virginia University (WVU) researchers investigated three-dimensional (3D) printing in a microgravity environment to advance long-term exploration and habitation in space or on other worlds. WVU's Jacob Cordonier said recent experiments explored "whether a 3D-printed titanium dioxide foam could protect against ultraviolet [UV] radiation in outer space and purify water." The researchers, aboard a Boeing 727 flying a parabolic flight path to simulate weightlessness, printed lines of the foam onto glass slides. Cordonier said they bathed the 200-micron-thick foam film in various wavelengths of light, and learned the material "blocks almost all the UV light hitting the sample and very little visible light gets through." He said the foam also could purify air or water, through its photocatalytic ability to induce chemical reactions with light.
|
Nanowire 'Brain' Network Learns, Remembers 'on the Fly'
The University of Sydney (Australia)
November 1, 2023
Researchers at Australia's University of Sydney (UoSyd) and the University of California, Los Angeles demonstrated that a nanowire neural network can learn and remember dynamic online data, similar to the neurons in the human brain. The researchers used the nanowire network to recognize and remember sequences of electrical pulses corresponding to images. It also was used to perform a benchmark image recognition task that involved accessing images in the MNIST (Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology) database of handwritten digits. The nanowire network identified 93.4% test images correctly. UoSyd's Zdenka Kuncic said, "Our novel approach allows the nanowire neural network to learn and remember 'on the fly', sample by sample, extracting data online, thus avoiding heavy memory and energy usage."
|
|
