Welcome to the November 13, 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."
|
|
|
Speech Prosthetic Turns Thoughts into Words
The Engineer (U.K.)
November 6, 2023
Duke University researchers developed a speech prosthetic that uses a brain-computer interface to translate a person's brain signals into words. The device is comprised of 256 brain sensors on a flexible piece of medical-grade plastic about the size of a postage stamp. Four patients undergoing brain surgery had the device temporarily implanted, then asked to speak a series of nonsense words aloud. The neural and speech data was run through a machine learning algorithm to determine whether it could accurately predict the sound being made based only on the recordings of brain activity. The overall accuracy rate observed was 40%.
|
Can AI Help Boost Accessibility?
UW News
Stefan Milne
November 2, 2023
Disabled and non-disabled University of Washington (UW) researchers tested artificial intelligence (AI) -based accessibility systems on themselves, with mixed results. For example, an individual with intermittent brain fog used PDF summarizer ChatPDF.com to assist with work, found that it frequently generated "completely incorrect answers." However, the same account found chatbots could help create and format references for a paper they were composing at work. Similarly, an autistic author found AI reduced their cognitive load by helping to write Slack messages at work, despite peers finding them "robotic." The frequency of AI-induced errors "makes research into accessible validation especially important," according to UW's Jennifer Mankoff.
|
MIT Professor’s IoT Sensors Make Roads Safer
IEEE Spectrum
Kathy Pretz
November 12, 2023
ACM Fellow Hari Balakrishnan was named to receive this year’s Marconi Prize, presented annually by the Marconi Society for the advancement of information and communications technology. Balakrishnan, who received the 1998 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, led a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that developed CarTel, short for car telematics, a sensing device for vehicles that can infer the presence of potholes and other impediments from changes in traffic flow. That system evolved into DriveWell, which gathers data from sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and position sensors in smartphones, dashcams, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as the DriveWell Tag. In 2010 Balakrishnan co-founded Cambridge Mobile Telematics, now the largest telematics service provider in the world. Also recognized by the Marconi Society was ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Vint Cerf, who was named to receive its Lifetime Achievement Award.
|
Engineers Are on a Failure-Finding Mission
MIT News
Jennifer Chu
November 9, 2023
An algorithm developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers aims to identify potential failures in simulated autonomous systems prior to their real-world deployment. The automated sampling algorithm also can determine how to fix the failures and suggest repairs. Unlike other automated searches intended to detect the most severe system failures, the new algorithm can catch more subtle vulnerabilities as well. The algorithm also can uncover hidden correlations in the system. Additionally, researchers can go back through the chain of changes that resulted in a certain failure to determine how to fix it. Said MIT's Chuchu Fan, "If you can predict a failure, you should be able to predict what to do to avoid that failure. Our method is now closing that loop."
|
Industrial Robot Crushes Worker to Death
CBS News
November 9, 2023
An industrial robot crushed a worker to death at a vegetable packaging factory in South Korea's southern county of Goseong. According to police, the victim was grabbed and pressed against a conveyor belt by the machine's robotic arms. The machine was equipped with sensors designed to identify boxes. "It wasn't an advanced, artificial intelligence-powered robot, but a machine that simply picks up boxes and puts them on pallets," said Kang Jin-gi at Goseong Police Station. According to another police official, security camera footage showed the man had moved near the robot with a box in his hands, which could have triggered the machine's reaction. Similar incidents have happened in South Korea before.
|
Researchers Improve Measurement of Earth's Rotation
Technical University of Munich (Germany)
November 8, 2023
Researchers at Germany's Technical University of Munich (TUM) improved the ring laser at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell in Germany so it can provide higher-quality daily current measurements of the Earth's rotation. The data can help determine the Earth's position in space and improve the reliability of climate models, among other things. The ring laser, which identifies shifts in mass inside the Earth that can speed up or slow down its rotation, was improved with a corrective algorithm that eliminates asymmetry between its two counter-propagating laser beams, allowing precise measurements of the Earth's rotation down to 9 decimal places, amounting to a fraction of a millisecond per day. TUM's Urs Hugentobler said, "In geosciences, time resolution levels this high are absolutely novel for standalone ring lasers."
|
'Virtual Patient' Chatbot Created to Boost Trainee Doctors' Diagnostic Skills
South China Morning Post
Emily Hung
November 8, 2023
A chatbot app developed by University of Hong Kong (HKU) researchers will serve as a virtual patient to help medical students improve their bedside consultation skills. The app features more than 20 patient cases and is accompanied by real-life case input from instructors. Students can select cases from 10 areas and interact with patients with various symptoms, medical histories, personalities, and educational levels. Said HKU's Michael Co Tiong-hong, "The chatbot could not fully replace the conventional bedside teaching, which allows students to interact with real patients. But this tool could address the limitations of bedside teaching, because teachers could tailor rare and complex case scenarios, which students do not usually have access to in clinical settings."
|
Quantum Biology, AI Sharpen Genome Editing Tool
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
November 7, 2023
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers leveraged quantum biology, quantum chemistry, and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the CRISPR Cas9 genome editing tools for modifying the genetic code of microbes. Existing models to predict effective guide RNAs for CRISPR tools are less accurate when applied to microbes because they were built with limited model species data. The researchers developed an explainable AI model known as an iterative random forest, which was trained on a dataset of about 50,000 guide RNAs targeting the genome of E. coli bacteria. Said ORNL's Erica Prates, "The model helped us identify clues about the molecular mechanisms that underpin the efficiency of our guide RNAs, giving us a rich library of molecular information that can help us improve CRISPR technology."
|
Silicon Valley’s Big, Bold Sci-Fi Bet on the Device That Comes After the Smartphone
The New York Times
Erin Griffith; Tripp Mickle
November 12, 2023
San Francisco-based startup Humane, founded by former Apple employees, is pinning its hopes on what's being billed as the first artificially intelligent (AI) device. Designed to replace the smartphone, the Ai Pin, reminiscent of the badges worn in Star Trek, can be controlled by speaking aloud, tapping a touch pad, or projecting a laser display onto the palm of a hand. The device’s virtual assistant can send a text message, play a song, snap a photo, make a call, or translate a real-time conversation into another language. The system relies on AI to help answer questions and can summarize incoming messages with a simple command, among other things. Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, Humane’s husband-and-wife founders, see a future with less dependency on the screens that their former employer helped make ubiquitous. Said Chaudhri, "[AI] can create an experience that allows the computer to essentially take a back seat."
*May Require Paid Registration
|
Model Adds Human Reactions to Flood Risk Assessment
NC State University News
Tracey Peake
November 6, 2023
A land change model developed by North Carolina State University researchers simulates how humans adapt to increased flood risks to improve risk assessments. The open source, scalable model, known as FUTURES 3.0 (FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation), focuses on exposure, hazards, and vulnerability to factors in climate, demographic, socio-economic, and flood-damage data. Using the Charleston, SC, metro area as a test case, the researchers compared land change projections for 2035 and 2050 to a 2020 baseline and simulated demographic and population shifts, to forecast future flooding scenarios. Said NC State's Georgina Sanchez, "Not all residents or communities will have the means or capacity to build protective measures. Visualizing potential ‘what-if’ scenarios help us consider the where and when of impact and understand who is being affected and how."
|
Digital Twins May Enable Personalized Health Treatment
The Guardian (U.K.)
Linda Geddes
November 12, 2023
Combining data about the workings of the human body with patients’ personal data to create digital twins of their organs could lead to personalized treatments and help avoid medical complications. Speaking at the Digital Twins Conference in London last week, Dr. Caroline Roney of the U.K.'s Queen Mary University of London described efforts to develop personalized heart models to help surgeons plan for patients with irregular heartbeats. Artificial intelligence experts at pharmaceutical company GSK, meanwhile, are working with cancer researchers at King’s College London to build digital twins of patients’ tumors using images and genetic and molecular data. Researchers also are developing digital twins for pregnancy to address potential complications.
|
Autonomous Electrochemistry Robot Lightens the Load
University of Illinois Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
Elizabeth Bello
November 6, 2023
An automated benchtop laboratory robot developed by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology can run complex electrochemical experiments and analyze the resulting data. The Electrolab automates basic and repetitive lab tasks and performs electrochemical studies in less time and with less effort. The Electrolab is comprised of a standard three-dimensional printer frame that allows it to move within a designated area to dispense various liquids in electrochemical cells. It also features microfabricated electrode arrays to measure electrical current, electrochemical hardware, and software that enables automated data analysis, visual graphics, and plotting. Combined with machine learning, the robot can analyze the data it has collected in real time to make decisions about the direction of the experiment.
|
|
