Welcome to the April 18, 2018 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Some Superconductors Can Also Carry Currents of 'Spin'
University of Cambridge
Sarah Collins
April 16, 2018
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. have demonstrated that certain superconductors are also capable of carrying currents of spin. The team thinks the successful combination of superconductivity and spin could lead to a revolution in high-performance computing by dramatically reducing energy consumption. The researchers discovered a set of materials that encourage the pairing of spin-aligned electrons, enabling spin current to flow more effectively in the superconducting state than in the normal state. The team used a multi-layered stack of metal films in which each layer was only a few nanometers thick, and determined when a microwave field was applied to the films, it caused the central magnetic layer to emit a spin current into the adjacent superconductor. "The surprising result was that when we added a platinum layer to the superconductor, the spin current in the superconducting state was greater than in the normal state," says Cambridge professor Mark Blamire.
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ANU Helping Build Cheaper, Greener Electricity Networks
Australian National University
Aaron Walker
April 12, 2018
New smart electricity technology called Network Aware Coordination (NAC) recently passed a major test in Tasmania, Australia, by proving it can help manage the supply of renewable energy and battery storage in households and the larger electric grid. The NAC technology, developed at the Australian National University (ANU), was successfully tested across 40 homes on Tasmania's Bruny Island, demonstrating it can be implemented across Australia to improve electricity security and reduce energy prices. NAC relies on a distributed algorithm, meaning each customer's system acts in their own best interest and privacy is retained, says ANU's Dan Gordon. ANU professor Sylvie Thiebaux notes the NAC approach can be used to solve wider grid problems, especially those that can arise through mass deployment of renewables and battery storage. "This paves the way for a more intelligent way to operate our grids reliably, while collaborating with consumers to make the best use of the resources they are installing," she says.
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Graphene Grown With the Same Band Gap as Silicon
IEEE Spectrum
Dexter Johnson
April 16, 2018
A team of researchers led by colleagues at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) in Spain have assembled nanoporous graphene from the ground up, giving the pores the size, density, and morphology to create a perfect band gap for digital electronics. The team then used this material to build a field-effect transistor (FET) device. "In addition, by simply modifying the width of the graphene strips between the pores [the number of carbon atoms], this band gap can be controlled," says ICN2 professor Aitor Mugarza. "The fabrication method is relatively simple and can be extended to wafer-scale growth." Mugarza also notes the bottom-up strategy "allows the fabrication of one-dimensional graphene nanoribbons and, as we show in this work, nanoporous structures with atomic precision and with lateral dimensions in the order of 1 nm. This is the crucial ingredient to obtain a sizable and homogeneous gap."
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Thousands of Apps in Google Play Store May Be Illegally Tracking Children, Study Finds
The Washington Post
Hamza Shaban
April 16, 2018
An analysis of 5,855 popular children's apps available on the Google Play Store has determined most may be in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), according to a new study. The researchers found thousands of the apps collected the personal data of children younger than 13 without a parent's consent. More than 1,000 apps collected identifying data on children using tracking software whose terms explicitly ban their use for children's apps, while almost 50 percent fail to always employ standard security measures to transmit sensitive data online, implying a breach of COPPA-stipulated reasonable data-security measures. Each of the studied apps had been installed more than 750,000 times, on average. "The rampant potential violations that we have uncovered points out basic enforcement work that needs to be done," says Serge Egelman with the University of California at Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute.
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Hack a VR System, Lead a Player Astray? Yes, Say Researchers
CNet
Alfred Ng
April 17, 2018
Researchers at the University of New Haven have demonstrated a controlled attack in which they could alter what a person sees in virtual reality (VR) on the Facebook Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The team infected a computer via email-attached malware to determine what safeguards VR had on a compromised computer system. The tests were performed on Valve's OpenVR software development kit, which both VR devices employ when they are playing games on the Steam platform. The University of New Haven's Ibrahim Baggili and Peter Gromkowski say the systems have no protection against these types of attacks, with Baggili noting the software "was created with little security in mind, and they're completely relying on the security of the operating system and the user." The team concentrated on testing the VR system's integrity, and did not account for antivirus software or other protections already installed on a user's computers.
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Two Robots Are Better Than One for NIST's 5G Antenna Measurement Research
NIST News
April 16, 2018
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is working on new antenna measurement methods for future 5G wireless communications systems. NIST's new Large Antenna Positioning System (LAPS) has two robotic arms designed to position "smart" or adaptable antennas. These antennas can be attached to base stations that manage signals to and from huge numbers of devices. The LAPS can test transmissions to and from antennas on fast-moving mobile devices, coordinating the timing of communication signals and robot motion. The new system will support the development of 5G wireless and spectrum-sharing systems by allowing researchers to understand the interference problems created by growing signal density.
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U.S. Army Develops Face Recognition Technology That Works in the Dark
Army Research Laboratory
April 16, 2018
A new machine learning and artificial intelligence technique developed by U.S. Army Research Laboratory researchers generates a visible face image from a thermal image of a person's face taken at night. Automatic face recognition at night using thermal cameras can help soldiers recognize that an individual is on a watch list, for example. Conventional cameras cannot capture facial imagery at night without active illumination, which would give away the camera's position. This is not the case with thermal cameras that capture the heat signature naturally emanating from living skin tissue. The new approach uses advanced domain adaptation techniques based on deep neural networks. The team found that merging global information, such as the features from the entire face, and local information, such as eyes, enhanced the visible face image. The new approach achieved better verification performance than a generative adversarial network-based approach.
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Stanford, Berkeley Boost Female Computing Grads
Mercury News
Ethan Baron
April 16, 2018
Although more women are obtaining computer science and electrical engineering degrees from Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), some are concerned about their future workplace. Stanford reports a steady increase since 2010 in the proportion of undergraduate women receiving degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from 11 percent to a record 31 percent in 2017. UC Berkeley says it has doubled the percentage of women receiving degrees in those disciplines, from 11 percent in 2010 to 22 percent in 2017. Nationwide, in contrast, the proportion of women receiving degrees in computer and information sciences has dropped from 37 percent in 1984 to about 18 percent in 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The two universities have taken several steps to encourage women, including changing introductory computer science classes to attract students with varying experience levels. Some students are concerned about starting a class with less experience than others; “We’re still in the process of figuring out how to address that," said UC Berkeley professor John DeNero.
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Nanobots Glide Through Living Cells
IEEE Spectrum
Megan Scudellari
April 13, 2018
Using small, rotating magnetic fields, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, have been able to control nanomachines inside of living cells to trace the letters "N" and "M." They developed a strategy for moving the devices in a controlled fashion, says the Indian Institute of Science's Malay Pal. He notes the team created nanomotors out of silica, and then coated them with iron. The researchers placed a dish with the cells within a magnetic coil under a microscope, and were able to control and track the movement of the nanomotors inside the cells by rotating the magnetic field. Pal says the tiny machines “have tremendous potential in applications like targeted drug delivery, nano sensing, therapeutic(s) and nano surgery.”
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Using an Algorithm to Reduce Energy Bills—Rain or Shine
Chinese Association of Automation
April 13, 2018
Researchers at Guangdong University of Technology in China have developed a residential energy scheduling algorithm by training three action dependent heuristic dynamic programming (ADHDP) networks. The researchers say households could use the algorithm to optimize variable sources of power that do not generate electricity at a stable rate, including windmills, solar panels, and biogenerators. These variable power sources can be improved with smarter algorithms to manage or schedule them. Once the network determines the weather type based on the forecast and processes energy for use or battery storage, the algorithm can then determine the cost of buying electricity from the grid, the benefit of selling power, and the penalty cost of buying when demand is high. The goal is to optimize energy use by integrating more renewable resources and limiting the use of non-renewable resources.
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How Social Media Helps Scientists Get the Message Across
Folio (Canada)
Jennifer-Anne Pascoe
April 12, 2018
Researchers at the University of Alberta (U of A) in Canada have found social media, primarily Twitter, can provide an accessible and efficient platform for scientists to communicate their new research discoveries. "The good papers that get pushed on social media are what end up on people's minds and eventually as PDFs in their reference manager," says U of A's Clayton Lamb. The researchers studied the phenomenon of science communication in the social media age, measuring the association of altmetrics, which consider factors such as social media attention surrounding science discoveries, with eventual citation of 8,300 papers published between 2005 and 2015. Lamb notes although much of scientists' communication on social media is directed at other scientists, by virtue of the medium, information is making its way to the broader community. "In this era of alternative facts and some mixed messaging surrounding science, data-driven scientific information offers a light of truth," he says.
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Could Holey Silicon Be the Holy Grail of Electronics?
University of California, Irvine
April 12, 2018
University of California, Irvine (UCI) researchers have verified a new material configuration to facilitate cooling, as integrated circuits grow ever smaller, driving the need for new ways to avoid component overheating. UCI's Nano Thermal Energy Research Group used holey silicon, thin silicon membranes with small, vertically etched orifices that work to shuttle heat to desired locations. Holey silicon encourages heat to travel vertically through but not laterally across, allowing the material to effectively move the heat from local hot spots to on-chip cooling systems in the vertical direction while sustaining the necessary temperature gradient for thermoelectric junctions in the lateral direction, the researchers say. Lab simulations proved holey silicon is at least 400 percent more effective at cooling than chalcogenides, compounds commonly used in thermoelectric cooling devices.
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Advancing Cancer Research Through Artificial Intelligence
University of Montreal
Mathieu-Robert Sauve
April 12, 2018
Researchers at the University of Montreal in Canada are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help analyze samples taken from 482 patients with acute myeloid leukemia to try to identify the genetic profile of cancer cells. They think this research could help scientists perfect tools that can help clinicians decide on a course of treatment. Due to the high number of genes involved, the AI algorithms are used to teach computers to learn on their own so they can detect early signs of cancer. The researchers want to focus on the rare subgroups of acute myeloid leukemia and the subtler biological mechanisms involved, says the University of Montreal's Sebastien Lemieux. "We're still a long way from developing a clinical application for the tools we're building, which combine artificial intelligence with genetics, but we hope to better understand the disease's genetic makeup," he notes.
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