Welcome to the December 4, 2023 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Climate Summit Embraces AI, with Reservations
The New York Times
Jim Tankersley
December 4, 2023
COP28, the United Nations (U.N.) climate summit, opened last week in Dubai with a host of events and announcements centered on artificial intelligence (AI), touting its ability to process vast quantities of information and produce insights and efficiencies that far exceed what computers and data scientists have been able to do. The U.N. announced on the opening day that it was partnering with Microsoft on an AI-powered tool to track whether countries are following through on their pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Officials from Google and Boston Consulting Group, meanwhile, predicted that AI could help mitigate as much as a tenth of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Researchers and company execs also focused on the computing power required to run advanced AI, saying they hoped the relative benefits of AI would outweigh negative impacts on emissions, but they offered no certainties.
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Photonic Chip 'Fits Together Like Lego'
The University of Sydney (Australia)
December 1, 2023
A compact silicon photonic semiconductor chip developed by researchers at Australia's University of Sydney Nano Institute and Australian National University significantly expands radio-frequency (RF) bandwidth and potentially could be used in advanced radar, satellite systems, wireless networks, and 6G and 7G telecommunications. The chip was developed using heterogenous materials integration, a process that University of Sydney's Ben Eggleton described as similar to the fitting together of Lego bricks. With a photonic circuit, the device boasts 15 gigahertz of tunable frequencies and spectral resolution of only 37 megahertz, or less than a quarter of 1% of its total bandwidth. Said the University of Sydney's Moritz Merklein, "This work paves the way for a new generation of compact, high-resolution RF photonic filters with wideband frequency tunability, particularly beneficial in air and spaceborne RF communication payloads, opening possibilities for enhanced communications and sensing capabilities."
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Maghreb Farmers Embrace Drones to Fight Climate Change
Voice of America News
December 3, 2023
Local farmers are using a drone from Tunisian startup RoboCare to help adapt to years of drought and erratic weather patterns caused by climate change in the Maghreb (a region comprised of western and central North Africa, which includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia). The drone, equipped with a multi-lens camera and sensors, scans trees from the air to assess their hydration levels, soil quality, and overall health. The images of fields taken from the drone appear on a computer screen in red, green, and blue; the greener the plants appear, the healthier they are. Farmers can use medicine-filled sprinklers attached to the drones to target sickly plants. The technology, said farmer Yassine Gargouri, "provides us with information on how much water each plant needs, no more, no less."
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Color-Based Sensor Emulates Skin's Sensitivity
EPFL News (Switzerland)
December 1, 2023
Researchers at Switzerland's École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) developed a sensor that can simultaneously perceive combinations of bending, stretching, compression, and temperature changes, using a system based on color. The ChromoSense sensor relies on a translucent rubber cylinder containing sections dyed red, green, and blue. A LED at the top of the device sends light through it. Changes in the light’s path as the device is manipulated are picked up by a spectral meter at the bottom. EPFL's Jamie Paik explains that while robotic technologies that rely on cameras or multiple sensing elements are effective, they can make wearable devices heavier and more cumbersome, in addition to requiring more data processing. "ChromoSense allows for more targeted, information-dense readings, and the sensor can be easily embedded into different materials for different tasks."
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EU Agrees on Rules to Protect Smart Devices from Cyber Threats
Reuters
Foo Yun Chee
November 30, 2023
European Union (EU) countries and lawmakers agreed to new rules to protect smart devices and other gadgets connected to the Internet from cyber threats. Proposed by the European Commission last year, the Cyber Resilience Act sets out cybersecurity requirements for the design, development, production, and sale of hardware and software products. Under the terms of the Act, manufacturers will have to assess the cybersecurity risks of their products, provide declarations of conformity, and take appropriate action to fix problems during the expected lifetime of the product (or for a period of at least five years).
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Ultrasound Enables Less-Invasive Brain–Machine Interfaces
Caltech News
November 30, 2023
A study by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) found that functional ultrasound (fUS) could be used as the foundation for a less invasive brain-machine interface (BMI). The study involved using fUS to measure brain activity from the posterior parietal cortex of non-human primates as they thought about planning to move their hand or eyes to complete a task. After real-time transmission of the data to a machine learning-programmed decoder, control signals were produced to move a computer cursor to the intended location. The BMI performed such movements to eight radial targets, with mean errors of less than 40 degrees. Caltech's Richard Andersen said fUS "is a completely new modality to add to the toolbox of [BMIs] that can assist people with paralysis. It offers attractive options of being less invasive than brain implants and does not require constant recalibration."
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J&J Hired Thousands of Data Scientists. Will the Strategy Pay Off?
The Wall Street Journal
Peter Loftus
November 30, 2023
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has invested heavily in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) as it shifts its efforts toward drug discovery, hiring 6,000 data scientists in recent years. While some industry leaders do not believe AI will outperform humans in drug discovery, J&J said its vast database, med. AI, gives it a competitive edge, with more than 3 petabytes of information, including real-world anonymized data and years of clinical-trial results. Said J&J's Najat Khan, "AI and data science are going to be the heart of how we are transforming and innovating. The amount of data is increasing, the algorithms are getting better, the computers are getting better."
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Lightweight Building Elements from a 3D Printer
ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
Corinne Landolt
November 30, 2023
Patrick Bedarf of Switzerland's ETH Zurich developed lightweight insulating building components using recycled materials and a combination of robotics and three-dimensional (3D) printing. The insulating materials are made from cement-free mineral foams derived from recycled industrial waste and comprised mostly of fly ash. The goal is to create more climate-friendly building materials at a low cost. The entire lab functions as a 3D printer, with flexible mixing chambers ensuring the correct mixture of raw material and robotic arms equipped with printer heads layering the material on the print bed. Said Bedarf, "The robots can navigate precisely to every predefined point in the room. We program the relevant path and specify where they travel and how quickly, as well as how much material should flow from the printer head, and at what time and place."
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Weather Apps Are Trying to Become More Accurate
BBC News
Suzanne Bearne
December 3, 2023
Weather applications continue to evolve with the help of technological advancements, providing more real-time updates and personalized recommendations. At the U.K. Meteorological Office (Met), for example, one of its biggest tech developments over the last year has been improvements in digital weather maps and the data feeding them. Said Met's Sophie Yeomans-Smith, "We've been improving the tech underpinning it all, and changed host providers to help us make improvements. It used to be one day ahead that it would show, now it's five days." The Met Office has introduced dedicated beach and mountain forecasts and has joined forces with Scottish airline Loganair to further bolster its forecast accuracy; sensors fitted to Loganair's aircraft monitor environmental conditions around the planes during flights.
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Smart Watch Identifies Atrial Fibrillation
Michigan Medicine
Noah Fromson
November 30, 2023
A research team led by Hamid Ghanbari at the University of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center developed a prescription wristwatch that monitors the wearer’s heart rhythm and uses an algorithm to detect atrial fibrillation (Afib), or an irregular heartbeat. The Verily Study Watch detects subtle changes in heart rhythm by sending light pulses through the skin into blood vessels. The device analyzes data every 15 minutes. If the algorithm determines Afib is present, it prompts the user to seek medical testing. In a test on more than 100 participants, the watch correctly identified Afib in the vast majority of participants, with levels of false negatives and positives commensurate to similar technology. The watch, said Ghanbari, "bridges the gap between long-term, continuous monitoring that is currently more invasive and the consumer space with a practical solution for Afib detection and burden assessment."
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Creating Virtual Objects with the Flick of a Finger
IEEE Spectrum
Michelle Hampson
November 22, 2023
Researchers in the U.K. designed HotGestures, a system that allows the use of quick hand gestures to select tools to create objects and designs in virtual environments. “The system continuously receives observations of the user’s finger and hand movements for both hands through the headset’s integrated hand tracker,” explains Per Ola Kristensson at the University of Cambridge, adding that artificial intelligence evaluates the hand movements and predicts which tool for which the user is signaling. Participants piloting the new system indicated they found using the gesture mode was faster than a menu selection mode for the majority of actions, and that there was no significant difference in error rate between the two modes.
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Crowdsourced Feedback Helps Train Robots
MIT News
Adam Zewe
November 27, 2023
A reinforcement learning approach developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Washington trains robots using crowdsourced feedback from nonexpert users. MIT's Marcel Torne said that with the Human Guided Exploration (HuGE) method, "The reward function guides the agent to what it should explore, instead of telling it exactly what it should do to complete the task." The researchers divided the process into two parts, using a goal selector algorithm updated continuously with crowdsourced human feedback and another algorithm that enables the artificial intelligence agent to explore in a self-supervised manner guided by the goal selector. In both simulated and real-world tests, HuGE enabled agents to complete goals more quickly than other methods.
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