Welcome to the November 22, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
Please note: In observance of Thanksgiving Day, ACM TechNews will not be published on Friday, Nov. 24. Publication will resume Monday, Nov. 27.
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Cambridge University Launches Institute for Technology and Humanity
BBC News
Mariam Issimdar
November 21, 2023
The U.K.'s University of Cambridge has launched the Institute for Technology and Humanity, which aims to ensure rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) benefit humanity. Said Director Stephen Cave, "Previous waves of technological transformation helped us thrive as a species, with higher incomes and life expectancy, and more people alive than ever before. But those waves also had huge costs." The Institute brings three Cambridge centers together under one banner and will include historians and philosophers, as well as computer scientists and robotics experts. Its current work includes design toolkits for ethical AI, computer vision systems that could help self-driving cars spot hidden pedestrians, and research on the effect of volcanoes on global communications systems.
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Breakthrough in Tackling Increasing Demand by IoT on Mobile Networks
University of Leicester (U.K.)
November 20, 2023
Computer scientists at the U.K.'s University of Leicester developed a technique to manage mobile network demand by multiple Internet of Things (IoT) devices using terahertz frequencies. The multicarrier-division duplex (MDD) technique uses fast Fourier transform (FFT) processing to virtually eliminate self-interference among network receivers in the digital domain. The proposed technology optimizes subcarrier set assignment and the number of access point clusters to enhance communication quality. Simulations based on real-world industrial settings demonstrated that the new technique outperforms existing technologies while reducing power consumption by 10%. Said the University of Leicester's Huiyu Zhou, "With our proposed technology, 5G/6G systems require less energy consumption, have faster device selection, and less resource allocation. Users may feel their mobile communication is quicker, wider, and with reduced power demands."
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Supercomputer Decodes Supergalactic Plane's Spiral Galaxy Mystery
Interesting Engineering
Mrigakshi Dixit
November 20, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s Durham University used the SIBELIUS (Simulations Beyond the Local Universe) supercomputer simulation to study the lack of spiral galaxies in the Supergalactic Plane. The researchers determined that the "different distributions of elliptical and disk galaxies arise naturally due to the contrasting environments found inside and outside the Plane." The simulation allowed the researchers to observe the evolutionary history of galaxies within the Supergalactic Plane, which could help explain why elliptical galaxies are more common there. Said Durham's Carlos Frenk, "It is rare but not a complete anomaly: our simulation reveals the intimate details of the formation of galaxies, such as the transformation of spirals into ellipticals through galaxy mergers."
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Infection-Resistant 3D-Printed Metals Developed for Implants
WSU Insider
Tina Hilding
November 20, 2023
A surgical implant developed by Washington State University (WSU) researchers with the help of three-dimensional (3D) printing killed 87% of the bacteria that cause staph infections in laboratory tests, while retaining strength and compatibility with surrounding tissue. Bacterial colonization of implants is one of the leading causes of their failure post-surgery. Using 3D printing, researchers added 10% tantalum, a corrosion-resistant metal, and 3% copper to the titanium alloy typically used in implants. When bacteria come into contact with the copper, their cell walls rupture, while the tantalum encourages healthy cell growth with surrounding bone and tissue.
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Scientists Turn Invasive Carp into Traitors
Associated Press
Todd Richmond
November 19, 2023
Agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources are using "traitors" to find hotspot hideouts of invasive carp that are threatening the Great Lakes. Agency workers turn carp into spies by capturing them, implanting transmitters, and putting them back in the water. Floating receivers send real-time notifications when a tagged carp swims past. The receivers consist of a raft supporting three solar panels and a locked box with a modem and a computer that records contacts with tagged carp. Taking advantage of the fact that carp often clump in schools in the spring and fall, agency workers and commercial anglers can then head to that spot and remove multiple fish from the ecosystem.
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Big Data Study Explores Social Factors Affecting Child Health
Weill Cornell Medicine
November 20, 2023
A team led by researchers at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University used big data to explore the social determinants of health (SDoH) influencing children. The researchers analyzed data on more than 10,500 U.S. children across 17 states. Each child’s record was scored on 84 different SDoH variables relating to educational resources, physical infrastructure, perceived bias and discrimination, household income, neighborhood crime, and drugs. A machine learning algorithm identified underlying patterns in the children’s SDoH profiles and looked for statistical associations between these patterns and health outcomes. Said Weill's Chang Su, “Our approach is data-driven, allowing us to see what patterns there are in large datasets, without prior hypotheses and other biases getting in the way."
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NASA Probe Transmits Laser Message from 10 Million Miles Away
Gizmodo
Passant Rabie
November 17, 2023
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment successfully beamed data encoded within a near-infrared laser from nearly 10 million miles in deep space to the Hale Telescope of the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory. The test marks the farthest distance covered by the laser beams, as NASA seeks to fine tune its communication skills ahead of upcoming missions. The DSOC transceiver launched on board the Psyche spacecraft on October 13 as the first demonstration of laser, or optical, communications from as far away as Mars. After achieving initial success, the team will now work on refining the systems that control the pointing of the downlink laser aboard the transceiver.
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Computer Code for Mechanics of Tissues and Cells in Three Dimensions
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Germany)
November 20, 2023
An open-source supercomputer algorithm developed by researchers in Germany predicts patterning and dynamics of living materials and enables the study of their behavior in three dimensions (3D). Said Abhinav Singh of Germany’s Technische Universität Dresden, "Even when the data points are not regularly distributed, our algorithm employs a novel numerical approach that works seamlessly for complex biologically realistic scenarios to accurately solve the theory's equations." The researchers developed a custom computer language that allows computational scientists to write supercomputer codes by specifying the equations in mathematical notation and allowing the computer to do the work of creating a scalable program code. Although the application is designed to run on supercomputers, it can also run on regular office computers to study two-dimensional materials.
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AI to Build and Fix Roads and Bridges
The New York Times
Colbi Edmonds
November 19, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to build and repair U.S. transportation infrastructure at a time when government spending on such projects accounts for only a fraction of the cost needed to repair or replace the nation’s aging bridges, tunnels, and roads. In Pennsylvania, for example, engineers are using AI to create lighter concrete blocks for new construction. Another project is using the technology to develop a highway wall that can absorb noise and greenhouse gas emissions. AI also is being used to prevent and detect damage to existing infrastructure. The technology can analyze what is happening in real time, and could be developed to deploy automated emergency responses, said Seyede Fatemeh Ghoreishi, a computer science professor at Northeastern University.
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Slip Prevention of Unmanned Rovers
Shibaura Institute of Technology (Japan)
November 15, 2023
Researchers at Japan's Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT) developed a system that allows a rover to detect its traveling state by changes in the shape of its chassis. Drawing parallels with human muscles, the researchers classified the change in the shape of the chassis of the rover, which manifests as strain, into displacement of strain and vibrational change in strain. Using the data, the system can determine the rover's condition in real time, enabling it to compensate with real-time maneuvers to avert potential slipping incidents. The research also demonstrated the system’s capabilities to detect environmental obstacles.
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Using Deep Learning to Process Data, Guide Cardiac Interventions
SPIE
November 13, 2023
A new approach using machine learning for cardiac catheter localization through photoacoustic imaging was developed by a team led by Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell at Johns Hopkins University. The team used simulated data to reduce the hours of manual image acquisition and annotation that would have been required to train a deep convolutional neural network (CNN). Bell explained, “We trained the network with simulated channel data frames which we formatted to accommodate the field of view of the photoacoustic transducer, including multiple noise levels, signal amplitudes, and sound speeds, to ensure robustness against channel noise, target amplitude, and sound speed differences.” The researchers added an additional processing step called “histogram matching” to further improve the performance of the model. They then verified the CNN's effectiveness through experimentation on pig hearts.
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Outdated Password Practices are Widespread
Georgia Tech Research
November 17, 2023
A majority of the world’s most popular websites are putting users and their data at risk by failing to meet minimum password requirement standards, according to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). The researchers analyzed 20,000 randomly sampled websites from the Google Chrome User Experience Report, a database of 1 million websites and pages. Using a novel automated tool that can assess a website’s password creation policies, they found that many sites permit very short passwords, do not block common passwords, and use outdated requirements like complex characters. Georgia Tech’s Frank Li said security researchers have “identified and developed various solutions and best practices for improving Internet and Web security. It's crucial that we investigate whether those solutions or guidelines are actually adopted in practice to understand whether security is improving in reality."
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The Mind’s Eye of a Neural Network System
Purdue University News
November 16, 2023
David Gleich, a professor of computer science at Purdue University, led the development of a tool that makes it possible to visualize the relationship that a neural network sees among images in a database. Gleich's team first developed a method of splitting and overlapping image classifications to identify where images have a high probability of belonging to more than one classification. The team then mapped those relationships. Each group of images the network thinks are related is represented by a single dot, and dots are color coded by classification. The closer the dots, the more similar the network considers groups to be. Zooming in on overlapping dots shows an area of confusion. Said Gleich, "What we're doing is taking these complicated sets of information coming out of the network and giving people an 'in' into how the network sees the data at a macroscopic level."
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