Welcome to the February 2, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Yoshua Bengio Urges Canada to Build Public Supercomputer
• Researchers 3D-Print Functional Human Brain Tissue
• Google Partners with New Mexico to Save Water
• Robots to Help Patients in Hospitals Pass Tests
• Japan Bids Sayonara to the 3.5" Floppy Disk
• U.S. Energy Data Agency to Track Crypto Mining Power Use
• Smart Hat Senses When Traffic Lights Change
• Practical Quantum Computing Potential in Graphene Layers
• TypeScript 5.4 Beta Arrives
• Using AI, Hollywood Agency, Tech Start-Up Aim to Protect Artists
• Marten Van Dijk, Colleagues Win ACM CCS 2023 Test of Time Award
• Japan's NTT, Intel to Collaborate on Cutting-Edge Chips Using Optical Tech

Yoshua Bengio Urges Canada to Build Public Supercomputer

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio is calling on Canada to build a supercomputer available to public entities so they can keep pace with private tech companies in AI development. Canada currently has five public supercomputer clusters. Nonprofit Calcul Québec's two supercomputers now give university researchers access to 1,300 GPUs, and Meta expects to have a supercomputer equal to 600,000 GPUs by the end of this year. "I think government will need to understand at some point, hopefully as soon as possible, that it's important for them to have that muscle," said Bengio.
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Researchers 3D-Print Functional Human Brain Tissue

University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists 3D-printed tissue that grows and functions like human brain tissue. They situated neurons grown from induced pluripotent stem cells in a softer “bio-ink” gel than previous attempts had employed, and stacked layers horizontally rather than vertically, the traditional 3D-printing approach. The printed cells reach through the medium to form connections inside each printed layer as well as across layers, forming networks comparable to human brains.
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Google Partners with New Mexico to Save Water

New Mexico officials announced a partnership with Google as part of a 50-year plan to address the future of the state’s drinking water supplies. Google will use satellite imagery to identify leaky water pipes, and an inventory of water loss across more than 1,000 of the state's public water systems will be conducted this year using remote sensing and other technologies. The goal is for real-time leak detection and prioritization of repair and replacement projects.
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Robots to Help Patients in Hospitals Pass Tests

Researchers at several universities in Europe and the Middle East tested eight robots developed by Spain’s PAL Robotics and found they were capable of performing routine tasks in the healthcare environment, such as greeting patients, giving directions, and answering questions. During initial trials at France's Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris, the SPRING (Socially Assistive Robots in Gerontological Healthcare) robots also showed an understanding of group conversations and the needs of patients.
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Japan Bids Sayonara to the 3.5" Floppy Disk

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has amended that nation’s rules for the submission of official documents to the government so they no longer mention physical media like floppy disks and CD-ROMs or other "electronic recording media." The new policy brings decades of physical media submission requirements in Japan to an end. Japanese Minister for Digital Transformation Taro Kono first confirmed plans to revise the law in 2022, describing his campaign to eliminate physical media as "a war" on floppy disks that would shift submissions to the cloud.
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U.S. Energy Data Agency to Track Crypto Mining Power Use

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will survey select bitcoin miners as part of an emergency data collection request to better track electricity consumption by U.S. cryptocurrency mining companies. Miners of digital coins have come under scrutiny in recent years for their electricity use and the resulting impact on power grids and carbon emissions. The nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute estimated last year that bitcoin globally consumes a yearly 127 terawatt-hours of energy, more than is used by the entire country of Norway.
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Smart Hat Senses When Traffic Lights Change

Flexible conductive fibers developed by researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University can cool and contract without producing stress cracks, permitting them to be woven into cotton clothing. Prototypes made with the fiber, which can stretch up to 10 kilometers, include a hat that can sense when traffic lights change color and notify a smartphone app, and a watch strap capable of detecting the user's heart rate.
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Practical Quantum Computing Potential in Graphene Layers

Researchers at Switzerland's ETH Zurich have identified qubits that exist for longer periods of time in bilayer graphene (BLG), suggesting the material could have potential as a quantum computing platform. These "valley" qubits are notable for the additional degree of freedom for electrons, and with BLG, how fast the two valley states’ split apart can be controlled. Additionally, relaxation times in valley states were observed to exceed 500 milliseconds, versus less than 25 milliseconds for spin qubits and around 25 milliseconds for quantum dots in conventional semiconductors.
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TypeScript 5.4 Beta Arrives

The beta version of TypeScript 5.4, an update to Microsoft's JavaScript variant, is now available. New capabilities include preserved narrowing within function closures created after the last assignment and a NoInfer type to block inferences to valid but unwanted types. The beta version can be accessed via NuGet or NPM.
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Using AI, Hollywood Agency, Tech Start-Up Aim to Protect Artists

A partnership between the talent agency WME and the technology firm Vermillio is intended to protect clients from the misuse of AI-generated images. Vermillio's Trace ID platform uses AI to track deepfakes and could be leveraged to allow clients to monetize their images and likenesses. Through the partnership, WME clients will provide Vermillio with their identifying digital data, which will be recorded and protected on the blockchain.
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Marten Van Dijk, Colleagues Win ACM CCS 2023 Test of Time Award

The ACM CCS 2023 Test of Time Award has been given to Marten van Dijk, head of the Computer Security research group at the Netherlands' Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, and his colleagues for their work on the Path ORAM algorithm. Path ORAM prevents adversaries from using access patterns to computer memory to infer confidential information. The prize was awarded at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security of the Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) in Copenhagen.
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Japan's NTT, Intel to Collaborate on Cutting-Edge Chips Using Optical Tech

In a partnership with Intel and other semiconductor companies, Japanese telecom NTT and South Korean memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix will take part in an initiative to develop next-generation semiconductors using optical technology. The goal is to develop production technology for optical semiconductor devices and memory technology that can store data processed at terabit-class speeds by fiscal 2027, with 30% to 40% reductions in power consumption compared with conventional products. The Japanese government will provide about 45 billion yen ($305 million) to support the effort.
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