Welcome to the November 8, 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."
|
|
|
How Farmers Teach Old Tractors to Think for Themselves
The Wall Street Journal
Bob Tita
November 4, 2023
With income pressures making it difficult for farmers to replace aging equipment, many are retrofitting older tractors with satellite-guided steering systems, precision sprayers, and other automated systems. Farm machinery manufacturers including Agco, CNH, and Deere have expanded their retrofit product lines as a result. Deere, for instance, shifted its focus to retrofit options after it determined that farmers are reluctant to invest heavily in automation, artificial intelligence, and farm software programs. Said Deere's Than Hartsock, "Oftentimes, that retrofit upgrade is a lower-stage first step." Nick Welker, a farmer in central Montana, spent $20,000 to outfit his 52-year-old tractor with a satellite-guided steering system, rather than purchase a new tractor for about $700,000. Welker also spent $175,000 to upgrade a crop sprayer, versus spending $500,000 on a new spray truck.
*May Require Paid Registration
|
STEM Career Days Boost High School Students' Career Aspirations in STEM Fields
Show Me Mizzou
November 1, 2023
A study by University of Missouri (MU) and Harvard-Smithsonian researchers found that high school students who attend STEM Career Days at colleges are more likely to work toward a STEM-related career. MU's Michael Williams said, "Now that we have found that this type of intervention works for turning that potential interest in STEM into career aspirations in STEM, we can work on designing these interventions in a way to be even more effective and accessible to develop a more diverse STEM workforce." MU offers the free STEM Cubs program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Williams explained, "By allowing them to learn about scientific concepts and how they relate to everyday life, the program helps them build interest in science and science-based careers."
|
Swarm of Robots Can Make Collective Decisions by Imitating Bees
New Scientist
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
November 7, 2023
Carmen Miguel at the University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues developed small robots that can make collective decisions by flashing lights at each other. The kilobots are guided by an algorithm that simulates the process bees use to reach agreement on where to build a nest. Each kilobot is a circular disc about 3 centimeters in diameter with three spindly legs, equipped with an infrared-light emitter and receiver and a colored LED light. Over more than 70 tests, the researchers placed between 10 and 35 kilobots into a walled-off circular arena and tasked some of them with advertising for a particular state by turning their LED red, green, or blue. Across all those experiments, the kilobots reached consensus within about 30 minutes.
|
Video Technology Could Transform How Scientists Monitor Changes in Species Evolution, Development
University of Plymouth (U.K.)
Alan Williams
November 6, 2023
Combining robotic video microscopes and computer vision allowed researchers at the U.K.'s University of Plymouth to measure all observable characteristics in the embryos of three different species. Analyzing these Energy Proxy Traits (EPTs) showed that traditionally measured timings of developmental events are associated with broader changes to all an embryo's observable characteristics, and that significant changes in these observable characteristics occur before and after each development event. The EPT method employs timelapse videos of embryo development, each comprised of a series of individual pixels that fluctuate in brightness as the heart, muscles, and other objects move. The fluctuations in pixel values can be converted into frequency data to track all the animal's various traits as it develops.
|
Doctors Wrestle with AI in Patient Care
The New York Times
Christina Jewett
October 30, 2023
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s approval of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has raised doubts among doctors about their ability to improve patient care. American Medical Association president Jesse Ehrenfeld said, "If physicians are going to incorporate these things into their workflow, if they're going to pay for them, and if they're going to use them—we're going to have to have some confidence that these tools work." The trial of Google's Med-PaLM 2 chatbot for healthcare workers has provoked issues about patient privacy and informed consent, and the FDA's oversight of large language models is trailing AI's rapid evolution. The agency also has no influence over the development of AI tools built by health systems for internal use, although doctors are hesitant to deploy them due to the dearth of publicly available information. The FDA's Jeffrey Shuren suggested establishing AI-testing laboratories, which would require amending federal law.
*May Require Paid Registration
|
Tool Automates Formal Verification of Systems Software
Columbia Engineering News
Bernadette Young
October 27, 2023
The Spoq tool developed by researchers in Columbia University's Software Systems Laboratory (SSL) simplifies formal systems software verification and enables confirmation of existing C systems code without modifications. Formal systems verification mathematically demonstrates the security of the software in all scenarios. Spoq is designed to reduce tedious manual proof efforts by automating many facets of formal verification. Columbia's Xupeng Li said, "Spoq can generate results in about an hour, compared to doing it manually, which can take months or years to formally verify a system." The SSL intends to open-source Spoq over the next few months to broadly implement formal verification.
|
Machine Learning Could Better Predict Floods
IEEE Spectrum
Tammy Xu
November 6, 2023
A team of hydrologists and computer network researchers in Italy, Spain, and Finland developed a machine learning model that, using the first 30 minutes of a storm, can predict occurrences of water runoff or flooding up to an hour before they might happen. The researchers trained the model with input-data parameters like rainfall and atmospheric pressure obtained from weather station sensors. The output-data parameters, like soil absorption and runoff volume, combined collected data and synthetic data generated using traditional theoretical models. Synthetic data was necessary, explained Andrea Zanella of Italy’s University of Padova, because there is not enough data available to build dependable machine learning models for hydrology, the study of the Earth’s water cycle. The researchers said more sensors and a variable rate of data collection may help solve the problem.
|
New 3D Printing Technique for Quantum Sensors
Berkeley Engineering
Marni Ellery
October 31, 2023
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, produced complex three-dimensional (3D) configurations of quantum sensing particles using additive manufacturing (three-dimensional printing) techniques. The printable quantum sensors can detect temperature and magnetic field changes in microscopic environments. Creating the 3D configurations involves replacing a single carbon atom inside a diamond with a nitrogen atom, while leaving an adjacent carbon atom empty. These "nitrogen vacancy centers" maintain their quantum properties and can work reliably at room temperature. Berkeley's Brian Blankenship said, "This technique now gives us the ability to print sensing elements into existing microfluidic chips, on top of advanced semiconductor devices and even cellular scaffolding, while providing advanced diagnostics for these systems."
|
Computer Scientist Solves the Game of Othello
Discover
November 7, 2023
Hiroki Takizawa, a bioinformatician at Japanese computing company Preferred Networks, says he has solved Othello, a 2-person board game played on an 8x8 grid with 10 to the power of 28 possible positions. Takizawa modified an algorithm called Edax to make it better suited to the task, then broke down the task into more manageable parts. He ran his program on a supercomputing cluster called MN-J, owned by Preferred Networks, which yielded a brute-force proof that perfect play by both players leads to a draw. Takizawa says that while computational errors due to CPU or memory faults cannot be entirely ruled out, "As the vast majority of calculations were executed on a computer cluster with Error Checking and Correction memory, we believe the results to be nearly indisputable."
|
Accelerating Sparse Tensors for Massive AI Models
MIT News
Adam Zewe
October 30, 2023
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and technology company Nvidia have formulated two complementary methods that expedite sparse-tensor processing for vast artificial intelligence (AI) models. The HighLight accelerator enables hardware to efficiently find nonzero values for more diverse sparsity patterns. It uses "hierarchical structured sparsity" to efficiently embody various sparsity patterns constituting several simple patterns, splitting the tensor's values into smaller blocks before merging them into a hierarchy. The Tailors and Swiftiles method can accommodate circumstances where the data does not fit in memory, which boosts usage of the storage buffer and reduces off-chip memory traffic. It combines two approaches to more than double computational speed while using just half the energy required by current hardware accelerators incapable of handling overbooking.
|
5G-Powered Robots Clean Singapore's Rivers
Interesting Engineering
Can Emir
November 1, 2023
Singapore-based robot-as-a-service company Weston Robot is supplying uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) to clean Singapore's rivers by collecting garbage and monitoring water quality. Said Weston Robot's Yanliang Zhang, "The robots need to be connected to a 5G network in order to achieve their desired efficiencies and to operate with safety in mind." Zhang said 5G connectivity enables real-time remote control by allowing operators to receive alerts and support a holistic perspective of the cleaning process. The USVs are equipped with sensors that evaluate water pH levels and chemical oxygen demand (the amount of oxygen that must be dissolved in the water to oxidize chemical organic materials). Weston Robot partnered with Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority to deploy the robots in Marina Bay.
|
Kids with Disabilities Are Gamers, Too
Pursuit - The University of Melbourne (Australia)
Sam John
October 27, 2023
Students at Australia's University of Melbourne developed three prototype assistive technologies that could enable children with cerebral palsy to play video games. The researchers built a touch button that does not require fine motor skills to use, a kick button, and motion-tracking software that controls games using head movements. The prototypes were developed with an 8-year-old boy with cerebral palsy in mind; he lacked the fine motor skills to use regular or modified game controllers and is non-verbal. After allowing him to test the three prototype technologies, the researchers found his attention span lengthened from about 15 minutes to over an hour, during which he was fully engaged and laughing. Student researcher Fidel Febri Halim said the experience "has reinforced my belief in the importance of inclusive design and technology that can empower individuals with disabilities to lead fulfilling lives."
|
HTC VR Headset Prepped, Ready for Mental Health Mission to ISS
New Atlas
Paul Ridden
November 2, 2023
Taiwanese consumer electronics company HTC, U.S.-based virtual reality (VR) therapy clinic XRHealth, and Danish engineering and consultancy firm Nord-Space Aps have partnered to deliver a Vive Focus 3 VR headset to the International Space Station (ISS). The headset will arrive on an upcoming resupply flight to help Danish ISS commander Andreas Mogensen deal with the mental stress of working in space. The partners aimed to tackle tracking and orientation issues like instability and motion sickness, which were exposed by previous tests of VR headsets in a microgravity environment. The technology includes a handheld controller to serve as an anchor point for spatial tracking, and a modified power source. Mogensen will engage in VR activities like swimming with dolphins and hiking a mountain path in Europe.
|
|
