Welcome to the March 25, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Canada Struggles with Outsourcing Software Development
• Digital Dissection of Museum Animals with X-Ray Vision
• Vulnerability in Apple Chip Leaks Encryption Keys
• Algorithm Unlocks High-Resolution Insights for Computer Vision
• High-Resolution Brain Model Created with 3D Printer
• Hackers Open Keycard Locks in Seconds
• UAE on Mission to Become AI Power
• Flying Drone Can Roll on the Ground to Save Energy
• Stretchy Circuits Break Records for Flexible Electronics

Canada Struggles with Outsourcing Software Development

Canada announced measures to tighten oversight of government procurement, particularly for software services. The move came as Karen Hogan, auditor general of Canada, said she could not determine exactly what it had cost to create ArriveCAN, an app developed to collect contact and health information from international travelers during the height of the pandemic. The report found that within the government procurement system, millions of dollars flow to companies that serve as middlemen, finding software developers to do the actual work.
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Digital Dissection of Museum Animals with X-Ray Vision

The openVertebrate (oVert) project allows scientists and the general public to digitally "dissect" museum specimens, thanks to 3D reconstructions of more than 13,000 specimens so far by researchers at 18 institutions. Florida Museum of Natural History's David Blackburn, leader of oVert, said the project "is a way of reducing the wear and tear on samples while also increasing access, and it's the next logical step in the mission of museum collections."
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Vulnerability in Apple Chip Leaks Encryption Keys

A newly discovered vulnerability embedded in Apple’s M-series of chips allows attackers to extract secret keys from Macs when they perform cryptographic operations. Named GoFetch by the multi-institutional academic researchers who discovered it, the flaw cannot be patched directly because it stems from the microarchitectural design of the silicon itself. It can only be mitigated by building defenses into third-party cryptographic software, which could greatly degrade M-series performance when executing cryptographic operations.
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Algorithm Unlocks High-Resolution Insights for Computer Vision

The FeatUp algorithm, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, enables algorithms to capture high- and low-level scene details simultaneously. It prevents the loss of pixel clarity as algorithms work to summarize and understand images. FeatUp also can improve object detection, semantic segmentation, and depth estimation. FeatUp observes how algorithms respond to minor adjustments in an image, resulting in numerous, slightly different deep-feature maps that can be merged into one high-resolution set of deep features.
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High-Resolution Brain Model Created with 3D Printer

Researchers at Austria's TU Wien and the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna) developed a 3D-printed brain model based on the structure of brain fibers viewable using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. The cube-shaped "brain phantom" is smaller than an actual brain and features water-filled microchannels similar in size to individual cranial nerves. Said MedUni Vienna's Michael Woletz, "We can adjust the analysis software much more precisely and thus improve the quality of the measured data and reconstruct the neural architecture of the brain more accurately."
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Hackers Open Keycard Locks in Seconds

Lennert Wouters of Belgium's KU Leuven University and independent security researcher Ian Carroll identified a hacking technique that leverages security flaws in Dormakaba's Saflok-brand RFID-based keycard locks to unlock a hotel room in a matter of seconds using a new or expired keycard. The technique, dubbed Unsaflok, exploits vulnerabilities in Dormakaba's encryption and its underlying RFID system, MIFARE Classic. The researchers used a $300 RFID read-write device to read a code on the keycard and write two new keycards, one that rewrites a piece of the lock's data when tapped on the lock and another that opens it.
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UAE on Mission to Become AI Power

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) put itself on the AI map last year when an international team of 25 computer scientists completed the open-source large language model (LLM) Falcon, released in September. Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council contributed $300 million to the Falcon Foundation to oversee open-source development of large language models, an approach intended to attract top AI researchers looking to work on technologies that will serve the greater good.
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Flying Drone Can Roll on the Ground to Save Energy

Researchers at China's Zhejiang University have developed an autonomous aerial drone with wheels that extends its battery life by rolling on the ground for long distances and flying only to clear obstacles. The drone features four rotors and two large, passive wheels, along with an onboard stereo camera and tiny computer to help it navigate difficult terrain. The researchers found the drone used one-seventh the energy when driving compared to when it is flying, so switching to flying only to navigate obstacles extends its range.
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Stretchy Circuits Break Records for Flexible Electronics

Stanford University researchers developed a 28-square-millimeter (mm) stretchable integrated circuit featuring 1,056 transistors and 528 logic gates. The circuit operates at a speed of more than 1 megahertz and has an average field-effect mobility of more than 20 square centimeters per volt per second, even when stretched to double its normal size. The researchers incorporated the circuit into an 8-sq.-mm Braille-reading tactile sensor array that can be affixed to a finger; it can identify shapes smaller than 1 mm across.
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