Welcome to the April 13, 2020 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Hackathons Target Coronavirus
The Wall Street Journal
Agam Shah; Catherine Stupp
April 9, 2020
Thousands of technology enthusiasts and others worldwide are participating in hackathons to combat the coronavirus pandemic. For example, the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design ran a five-day hackathon during the last week of March whose targets included communicating effectively about COVID-19, prevention of transmission within communities, and healthcare equipment shortages. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a two-day Beat the Pandemic hackathon in which 1,500 participants worked in 238 teams to produce a mobile machine learning app to score individuals' COVID-19 immunity according to as location, age, interactions, and health history. Said Sam Lessin of venture capital firm Slow Ventures, which helped organize a hackathon last month, “Doctors are leading the fight, but a lot of people would love to find ways to engage and help.”
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3D-Printed Corals Could Improve Bioenergy, Help Coral Reefs
University of Cambridge (UK)
April 9, 2020
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have three-dimensionally (3D)-printed coral-inspired structures that can grow dense populations of microscopic algae. The team used a rapid 3D bioprinting method capable of replicating detailed structures at micrometer-scale resolution that mimic the designs and functions of organic tissues. UCSD's Shaochen Chen said the high-throughput 3D printing process ensures compatibility with living cells. The researchers employed an optical analog to ultrasound, called optical coherence tomography, to scan living corals and use the models for 3D-printed designs; the 3D bioprinter applies light to print coral microscale structures in seconds. The structures can efficiently redistribute light, and the researchers hope their work can improve bioenergy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions causing coral reef death.
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You Can't Spell Creative Without AI
The New York Times
John Markoff
April 8, 2020
Innovations in language-processing software form the core of the debate over whether artificial intelligence (AI) will augment or even supplant human creativity. Last year, the OpenAI research group announced the GPT-2 (generative pretrained transformer) language model, which Temple University's Hector Postigo tweaked with a collection of human-written material to compose a short statement about ethics policies for AI systems, and later classical music, poetry, and rap lyrics. More recently, AI research groups and the National Library of Medicine have organized more than 44,000 scientific research papers on the coronavirus so a machine learning algorithm could help scientists extract meaning to aid research. AI experts cautioned that such programs are assistive, and not creating artistic works or independently realizing other intellectual achievements. However, Brian Smith at Canada's University of Toronto suggests that these tools could assume many creative tasks.
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Reducing Delays in Wireless Networks
MIT News
Rob Matheson
April 9, 2020
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a congestion-control scheme for wireless networks designed to help reduce lag times and increase quality in video streaming, video chat, mobile gaming, and other Web services. The Accel-Brake Control (ABC) system achieves about 50% higher throughput, and about half the network delays, on time-varying links. The scheme relies on an algorithm that enables the routers to explicitly communicate how many data packets should flow through a network to avoid congestion, but fully utilize the network. ABC provides that information by repurposing a single bit already available in Internet packets. Said MIT's Prateesh Goyal, "Existing schemes get low throughput and low delays, or high throughput and high delays, whereas ABC achieves high throughput with low delays."
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Linux Security: Chinese State Hackers May Have Compromised 'Holy Grail' Targets Since 2012
Forbes
Davey Winder
April 7, 2020
A BlackBerry research and intelligence team said five Chinese advanced persistent threat groups have long been attacking Linux servers that "comprise the backbone of the majority of large data centers responsible for the some of the most sensitive enterprise network operations." Particularly worrying is evidence of the attackers using a previously undocumented Linux malware toolkit including at least two kernel-level rootkits and three backdoors, actively deployed since March 13, 2012. Analysis associated this toolkit with one of the largest Linux botnets ever found, with a significant number of organizations likely infected. Targets include Red Hat Enterprise, CentOS, and Ubuntu Linux environments for purposes of cyberespionage and intellectual property theft, with researchers describing Linux defensive capabilities as immature at best. Former U.K. Military Intelligence Colonel Philip Ingram said mitigating such exploits entails "treating [the threats] as if they are ... as much a threat as any other operating system."
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Mirror Arrays Make Augmented Reality More Realistic
IEEE Spectrum
Michelle Hampson
April 9, 2020
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a compact augmented reality (AR) system that uses an array of miniature mirrors to create virtual images that appear more "solid" in front of real-world objects. The miniature mirrors in Stanford's system change positions tens of thousands of times per second, enhancing the system's occlusion. The system combines virtual projection and light-blocking abilities into one element, relying the dense array of miniature mirrors to switch between a see-through state and a reflective state. It computes the optimal arrangement for the mirrors and adjusts accordingly. Stanford’s Brooke Krajancich said the system uses a lot of computing power, and may require more power than other AR systems.
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Supercomputers Assist International Engineering Team on Wave Energy Project
UC San Diego News Center
Kimberly Mann Bruch
April 7, 2020
An international team of engineers tested a wave energy simulation tool and validated their results with the San Diego Supercomputer Center's Comet system and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Bridges system. The researchers modeled heavy rigid structures interacting with high winds, breaking waves, and other intricate marine characteristics. Computational time on Comet and Bridges allowed the team to demonstrate their tool’s parallel scalability and validate large-scale three-dimensional test cases. San Diego State University's Amneet Pal Bhalla said, "The supercomputers helped us demonstrate that our technique is robust and can be used for complex engineering problems."
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Video Game Enlists Players to Help Advance Scientific Research
McGill University (Canada)
April 7, 2020
An interactive video game enables players to help map the human gut microbiome in exchange for rewards that can be used in the game, saving medical researchers hundreds of thousands of hours that it would take to train computers to do the job. The DNA of each microbe is encoded as a string of bricks, each with one of four different shapes and colors, and players help scientists estimate the similarity between each microbe by connecting these blocks to each other. The game, Borderlands Science, is a collaboration among Jerome Waldispuhl of McGill University's School of Computer Science in Canada, video game companies Gearbox Software and 2K, along with Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS) and the Microsetta Initiative at the University of California San Diego's School of Medicine. Said MMOS’s Attila Szantner, "I believe that Borderlands 3 players advancing microbiome research will change how we think about videogames."
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California Allows Startup Nuro to Test Driverless Delivery Vehicles
Reuters
Munsif Vengattil; Ayanti Bera
April 7, 2020
California's Department of Motor Vehicles has authorized an autonomous technology startup to test two driverless delivery vehicles in nine cities. Startup Nuro will use its driverless low-speed R2 vehicle to begin conducting deliveries with local retail partners. The startup has been testing autonomous vehicles with safety drivers on the state's roads since 2017. Said Nuro's David Estrada, "Our R2 fleet is custom-designed to change the very nature of driving, and the movement of goods, by allowing people to remain safely at home while their groceries, medicines, and packages, are brought to them." In February, Nuro was granted permission by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to deploy up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles without any human controls in Houston.
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Grocery Stores Turn to Robots During the Coronavirus
CNN Business
Nathaniel Meyersohn
April 7, 2020
Local grocers and large supermarket chains are deploying robots to clean floors, stock shelves, and deliver groceries during the coronavirus pandemic. Broad Branch Market in Washington, DC, acquired six-wheel self-driving robots with sensors and artificial intelligence to shuttle deliveries to local customers. Meanwhile, Brain Corp., which provides autonomous floor-scrubbing robots to grocers, witnessed a 13% year-over-year increase in its products' use in stores during March. Walmart plans to deploy Brain Corp. robots in 1,860 U.S. stores, with robots that scan shelf inventory to be deployed at 1,000 stores, and bots that automatically scan boxes as they come off trucks and sort them by department onto conveyor belts at 1,700 outlets by year's end. Other grocers are testing automated micro-fulfillment centers in which robots prepare and fulfill orders, which gives rise to concerns that such automation will cause low-wage jobs to disappear.
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DeepMind AI Can Understand the Unusual Atomic Structure of Glass
New Scientist
Jason Arunn Murugesu
April 6, 2020
Researchers at artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepMind used machine learning to simulate how atomic particles in a piece of glass respond to different temperatures and pressures. The AI ran the software several times to account for all the various combinations of particles and neighbor particles, and to model how the entire piece of glass would react to different conditions. The AI's predictions of initial particle movements under different pressures and temperatures achieved an average accuracy of 96%, which fell to 64% over longer time scales, but was still more accurate than current computer modeling techniques. The researchers hope to use this AI to model traffic flow, treating cars as particles and using the same neighbor-particle concept to forecast vehicles' behavior in traffic jams.
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Zero-Day Exploits Increasingly Commodified, Say Researchers
Computer Weekly
Alex Scroxton
April 6, 2020
FireEye Threat Intelligence researchers warned of increasing commodification of the cybercriminal underworld, as evidenced by access to and exploitation of "valid" zero-day vulnerabilities. FireEye documented more zero-day exploits last year than in the previous three years, and a broader spectrum of tracked actors appear to have gained access to these capabilities. The researchers noticed an uptick in the number of zero-days leveraged by malefactors suspected of being "customers" of private firms that supply cyber capabilities to governments or law enforcement agencies. The FireEye researchers said state groups will continue backing internal exploit discovery and development, but "the availability of zero-days through private companies may offer a more attractive option than relying on domestic solutions or underground markets."
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