Welcome to the December 15, 2023 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Inside the World Excel Championships
The Wall Street Journal
Robert McMillan
December 11, 2023
The recent Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas brought together 15 participants for a competitive spreadsheet tournament. Reigning champion Andrew "the Annihilator" Ngai retained his title, as well as winning $3,000 and a trophy, although a computer glitch in the final match almost cost him the win. The final match featured six math problems on spaceship construction and asteroid mining, along with five bonus problems. Competitive Excel became a stand-alone esport in 2021.
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Google, Meta, Qualcomm, Others Team Up on Open Digital Ecosystems
Reuters
Foo Yun Chee
December 13, 2023
Google, Meta Platforms, and Qualcomm worked with seven other companies to form the Coalition for Open Digital Ecosystems (CODE), an organization that will collaborate with academics, policymakers, and companies to advocate for open digital ecosystems. The coalition said digital openness can be achieved in Europe "through the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and in future EU regulatory framework developments." Among other things, the coalition will push for seamless connectivity and interoperable systems.
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Robo-Dog Sets 100-Meter Sprint Guinness World Record
New Atlas
Paul McClure
December 13, 2023
A dog-like robot created by a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology was dubbed the fastest quadrupedal robot by Guinness World Records. The 99-lb (45-kg) HOUND robot ran 100 meters at an average speed of 11.26 mph (18.12 km/h), covering the distance in 19.87 seconds. HOUND can also traverse grass, walk long distances, and climb a 22-degree slope. Said Young-Ha Shin, HOUND's designer, "All of these movements were achieved with a single [motor] controller trained in simulation through reinforcement training."
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Next-Gen fMRI Improves Spatial Resolution 10-Fold
IEEE Spectrum
Greg Uyeno
December 12, 2023
An international team of researchers contributed to the development of the NexGen 7T scanner, which provides a ten-fold improvement in resolution over functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices currently available to researchers. The NexGen 7T scanner, can image voxels of less than half a millimeter on each side; the device’s transmit system and radiofrequency receiver array were both expanded to at least double the channels typically encountered in research MRI scanners. Said the University of California, San Francisco's An T. Vu, “The data storage and computational resources need to catch up."
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Avatars Entirely Replace Human Newscasters
Tom's Guide
Ryan Morrison
December 13, 2023
Technology and media startup Channel 1 plans to launch a news channel in February using realistic-appearing AI avatars as its news anchors. A demo episode suggests the channel’s news coverage will come from sources across the globe, with AI used in on-screen output and story selection. Humans will be involved in writing copy and in the editing process. The news will come from freelance independent journalists, in addition to AI-generated news from government documents, among other sources. Coverage will be translated into different languages and will attempt to reflect viewers' interests.
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U.S. Agency Takes a Step Toward Requiring Technology to Prevent Impaired Driving
Associated Press
December 12, 2023
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is starting the process to put a new federal safety standard in place to require technology in all new passenger vehicles to prevent impaired driving. NHTSA and a group of 16 automakers have been jointly funding research on alcohol monitoring, through a group called Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety. The group is researching technologies that could automatically test a driver’s breath for alcohol and prevent a vehicle from moving if the driver is impaired.
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Cheating Fears Over Chatbots Were Overblown, Research Suggests
The New York Times
Natasha Singer
December 13, 2023
Recent research indicates overall cheating rates in U.S. high schools have not increased due to ChatGPT. In surveys of more than 40 high schools across the U.S., Stanford University researchers found 60% to 70% of students admitted cheating in school this year, on par with findings in previous years. Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey of more than 1,400 U.S. teenagers found that almost 33% had heard "nothing at all" about ChatGPT, and just 13% had used ChatGPT to help with their schoolwork. While 20% of teens surveyed by Pew believed it was acceptable to write essays with help from ChatGPT, almost 70% said it was acceptable to use it to research new topics.
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Robotic Third Arm Controlled by Breathing
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
December 13, 2023
Giulia Dominijanni at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and colleagues created actual robotic third arms and virtual ones, all controlled by a combination of eye movements and diaphragm contractions. In tests, volunteers were able to use the arm to carry out a range of tasks without interfering with their normal breathing, speech, or vision. The team has also investigated controlling arms via vestigial ear muscles, which could supplement diaphragm control.
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Researchers Create Stable Hybrid Laser by 3D-Printing Micro-Optics onto Fibers
Optica
December 13, 2023
A team led by researchers at Germany’s University of Stuttgart demonstrated that 3D-printed polymer-based micro-optics can handle a laser’s heat and power levels by 3D-printing microscale lenses directly onto optical fibers to combine fibers and laser crystals inside a single laser oscillator. This resulted in a compact, robust laser with the benefits of both fiber-based and crystal-based solid-state lasers. Said the University of Stuttgart’s Simon Angstenberger, such lasers could be useful for lithography and laser marking, as well as in medical applications such as precisely destroying cancerous tissue.”
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Teens Push to Broaden AI Literacy
The New York Times
Natasha Singer
December 14, 2023
Some teenagers are asking their schools to provide broader AI learning experiences grounded firmly in the present, not in future doomsday and utopian scenarios painted by some experts and technology companies. “We need to find some sort of balance between ‘AI is going to rule the world’ and ‘AI is going to end the world,’” said Isabella Iturrate, a 12th grader at River Dell High School in Oradell, N.J. “But that will be impossible to find without using AI in the classroom and talking about it at school.” Such discussions come as school districts begin to consider how AI fits into existing coursework.
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Researchers Develop Spintronic Probabilistic Computers
Tohoku University (Japan)
December 13, 2023
A proof-of-concept spintronic probabilistic computer developed by researchers at Japan's Tohoku University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, is compatible with current AI. The researchers demonstrated the use of stochastic magnetic tunnel junctions (sMTJ) interfaced with powerful field programmable gate arrays allows for robust, fully asynchronous probabilistic computers. Notably, the researchers demonstrated the fastest p-bits at the circuit level using in-plane sMTJs and the basic operation of the Bayesian network as an example of feedforward stochastic neural networks via an update order at the computing hardware level and layer-by-layer parallelism.
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Smartwatches Pick Up Abnormal Heart Rhythms in Children
Stanford Medicine News Center
Erin Digitale
December 13, 2023
A study by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers found that smartwatches can detect irregular heart rhythms in children. The researchers analyzed electronic medical records for pediatric cardiology patients at Stanford Medicine Children's Health, observing that "Apple Watch" was mentioned in the records 145 times over a four-year period (2018-2022). Of those mentions, traditional diagnostic methods were used to confirm abnormal heart rhythms in 41 patients, 29 of whom were diagnosed with arrhythmias for the first time.
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