Welcome to the December 22, 2023 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
Please note: In observance of the Christmas holiday, TechNews will not be published on Monday, December 25. Publication will resume Wednesday, December 27.
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Bionic Prostheses Empower Wounded Ukrainian Soldiers
Associated Press
Hanna Arhirova
December 22, 2023
About 20,000 Ukrainians have had amputations since the war with Russia started in February 2022. Some were able to receive bionic prostheses. Ukrainian startup Esper Bionics now distributes 70% of its products at home, though before the war its main market was the U.S. The company’s production hub in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv is working at full capacity; more than 30 workers produce about a dozen bionic hands a month. Using AI, the Esper Hand can adapt over time, learning the user’s unique interactions with the hand.
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U.S. Regulators Propose New Online Privacy Safeguards for Children
The New York Times
Natasha Singer
December 21, 2023
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed major changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, which restricts the online tracking of minors. The changes would “shift the burden” of online safety from parents to digital services, while curbing how platforms may use and monetize children’s data. The new rules would, among other things, prohibit online services from using personal details to induce youngsters to stay on their platforms longer. The updates also would limit the collection of student data by education tech providers.
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Blind Engineer Opens Up Vistas with Computer Game Design
Xinhua
December 21, 2023
An online computer game created by Shen Guangrong, a blind engineer working at the Accessibility Research Association in Shenzhen, China, features no graphic elements, no special visual effects, and no background music. Players judge the surroundings of the game world based on different sound cues converted from text information that appears on the screen. The players perform different tasks in an imaginary world and interact with each other by doing crafts and writing their own creative ideas. While the game is still in the beta stage, it already has more than 1,000 visually impaired players.
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Contact-Tracing Software Gauges COVID-19 Risk
Ars Technica
Diana Gitig
December 20, 2023
Computer scientists and other researchers in the U.K. analyzed data from 7 million people in England and Wales between April 2021 and February 2022 who were notified they had been exposed to COVID-19 by the National Health Service’s COVID-19 app. The app used Bluetooth signals to estimate the distance between smartphones, then alerted people who spent 15 minutes or more at a distance of 2 meters or less from a confirmed COVID-19 case. The researchers found the app accurately translated the duration and proximity of a COVID-19 exposure to a relevant epidemiological risk score.
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Mercedes Adds Blue Car Light for Self-Driving
CNN
Peter Valdes-Dapena
December 19, 2023
Mercedes-Benz has received approval to add external turquoise blue lights to its vehicles that indicate when they are in self-driving mode. California and Nevada, the only states where Mercedes’ “conditionally autonomous” Drive Pilot technology is legal, have approved the new light color. The lights are needed, according to Mercedes, to alert other drivers and police that the vehicle is under fully automated control.
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Synaptic Transistor Mimics Human Intelligence
Interesting Engineering
Sejal Sharma
December 20, 2023
Scientists from several U.S. institutions created a transistor that can think and remember things the way the human brain does. The researchers used moiré patterns, stacking and twisting ultra-thin materials, to give the transistor special electronic properties. The resulting device, called a synaptic transistor, was trained to recognize patterns. The device successfully recognized the patterns, demonstrating associative learning, even when incomplete patterns were provided.
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Drones Help Solve Forest Carbon Capture Riddle
France 24
December 18, 2023
Researchers at Thailand's Chiang Mai University are using drones to determine how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by forests, to inform initiatives to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The drones collect height, girth, and wood density measurements to calculate a tree's absorptive capacity. The drones capture images every three seconds, and overlapping images are used to develop a 3D model. Chiang Mai University's Stephen Elliott explained, "Once you've got the model, you can measure the height of every tree in the model. Not samples, every tree."
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Deep Learning Can Identify Teens Most in Need of Mental Health Support
The University of Tokyo (Japan)
December 14, 2023
Researchers at Japan's University of Tokyo using deep learning to analyze the results of a six-year study of adolescent mental health found 60.5% of the 2,344 surveyed were unaffected by suicidal behavior. Nearly 10% of respondents, who experienced depressive symptoms and "psychotic-like experiences" but whose caregivers did not identify such problems, were seen to have the greatest risk of self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
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Scientists Decode How to Detonate a Nuclear Device to Deflect Asteroids
The Independent (U.K.)
Vishwam Sankaran
December 20, 2023
Scientists have simulated the use of a nuclear device to alter the trajectories of potentially catastrophic asteroids and prevent them from impacting the Earth. Developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, the model covers a wide range of physical factors, and accounts for complex processes like reradiation and the penetration of light into asteroid materials. The researchers said that "should a real planetary defense emergency arise, decisions around launching reconnaissance and/or mitigation missions will need to be informed by state-of-the-art modeling and simulation capabilities."
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Splitting a Large AI Across Several Devices Lets You Run It in Private
New Scientist
Jeremy Hsu
December 15, 2023
An AI system based on large language models (LLMs) developed by University of California, Irvine researchers can be used locally via smartphone, eliminating reliance on a cloud service's datacenters and permitting LLM queries without having to share sensitive personal information. The LinguaLinked system splits the LLM's computations among several smartphones based on the phones' available memory and network connectivity. The researchers used the system to run BLOOM LLMs on four commercial phones, with an average AI processing speed per token of 2 seconds on a small AI model with 1.1 billion parameters, and 4 seconds on a larger model with 3 billion parameters.
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Algorithm Cuts Unnecessary Antibiotic Use in Kids
LiveScience
Nicoletta Lanese
December 18, 2023
An algorithm helped doctors in Tanzania cut back on children’s antibiotics prescriptions, without compromising the children's recoveries. The ePOCT+ algorithm guides health care providers through signs and symptoms to look for, tests to run, and likely diagnoses, then helps determine the best course of treatment. It incorporates data from quick-turnaround tests that can be conducted during a doctor's appointment. In a trial that included 40 healthcare facilities across Tanzania and 44,300 kids younger than age 15, about 23% of initial consultations at facilities using the algorithm resulted in an antibiotics prescription, compared with more than 70% at the other facilities.
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CyberRunner Outmaneuvers Humans in Maze Run Breakthrough
Bloomberg
December 19, 2023
The CyberRunner AI robot created by researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland surpassed humans at the game Labyrinth. According to its creators, CyberRunner learned to navigate a small metal ball through a maze by tilting its surface to avoid holes across the board, mastering the toy in just six hours. During the process, CyberRunner found ways to “cheat” by skipping parts of the maze, requiring the researchers to explicitly instruct it not to take shortcuts.
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FBI Takes Down BlackCat Ransomware, Releases Decryption Tool
The Hacker News
December 19, 2023
The U.S. Justice Department announced the disruption of the BlackCat ransomware operation and released a free decryption tool that its more than 500 victims can use to regain access to their encrypted files. The multinational effort involved the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) using a human source to gain access to a Web panel used for managing the gang's victims. The FBI said it also collected 946 public/private key pairs used to host TOR sites operated by the group, and dismantled them. BlackCat is estimated to have compromised more than 1,000 victims around the world, at a cost to them of nearly $300 million.
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