Welcome to the April 10, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Wigderson Named Turing Awardee for Decisive Work on Randomness
• Human Body Can Help Power Smart Textiles
• PHP Sinks in Tiobe Language Popularity Index
• 3D Printer Figures Out How to Print with Unknown Material
• 'Social Order Could Collapse' in AI Era, Japanese Companies Say
• Hyundai Coffee Delivery Robot Rides Elevators Alone
• Texas Will Use Computers to Grade STAAR Tests
• How Virtual Reality Might Ease Cancer Pain
• Better Biosensors Need a Touch of Cheap Plastic
• Tool Makes AI Models Hallucinate Cats to Fight Copyright Infringement
• How Cryptographers Finally Cracked One of the Zodiac Killer's Hardest Codes
• Researchers Engineer 'Smart Swarms' of Miniature Robots
• Knocking Cloud Security Off Its Game

Wigderson Named Turing Awardee for Decisive Work on Randomness

Avi Wigderson (pictured) has been named the 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate for his contributions to the theory of computation, in particular by expanding understanding of the role that randomness plays in computation and mathematics. Wigderson, currently a professor at the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, also advanced understanding of zero-knowledge proofs, which allow someone to show they know some information while keeping that information secret.
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Human Body Can Help Power Smart Textiles

Researchers in China created fiber-based electronics that harness electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere, using the human body as part of the circuit. Explained Chengyi Hou at Donghua University in Shanghai, “When electromagnetic energy travels through the fiber, it is converted by fibers into other forms of energy, including visible light and radio waves." By controlling various aspects of the system, such as the area of fiber in contact with the body or the diameter of the fibers, the resulting wireless signals can be programmed.
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PHP Sinks in Tiobe Language Popularity Index

PHP fell to its lowest-ever position in the Tiobe index of programming language popularity for April, ranking 17th. Tiobe's top 10 most popular programming languages for April are Python, C, C++, Java, C#, JavaScript, Go, Visual Basic, SQL, and Fortran. Meanwhile, the Pypl Popularity of Programming Language Index's top 10 for April are Python, Java, JavaScript, C/C++, C#, R, PHP, TypeScript, Swift, and Rust.
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3D Printer Figures Out How to Print with Unknown Material

A 3D printer developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Greece's National Center for Scientific Research automatically generates printing parameters for unknown materials. The researchers modified the printer's extruder to measure a material's forces and flow, then feed that data into a mathematical function that automatically generates parameters. The automated method replaces around half of traditionally hand-tuned parameters required for 3D printing.
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'Social Order Could Collapse' in AI Era, Japanese Companies Say

In an AI manifesto published April 8, Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and Yomiuri Shimbun Group Holdings called for legislation to rein in generative AI. Despite acknowledging the productivity benefits afforded by generative AI, the manifesto said that if AI remains unchecked, "in the worst-case scenario, democracy and social order could collapse, resulting in wars." The companies called for laws to safeguard elections and national security from generative AI abuse.
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Hyundai Coffee Delivery Robot Rides Elevators Alone

The Hyundai/Kia Robotics Lab developed the autonomous DAL-e Delivery robot for use in office buildings. The robot is equipped with onboard sensors that allow it to avoid obstacles while navigating complex environments, as well as real-time optimal route calculation capabilities, and an AI facial recognition system to ensure deliveries reach the correct individual. The DAL-e robot can carry up to 22 pounds of packages, or up to 16 cups of coffee.
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Texas Will Use Computers to Grade STAAR Tests

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) this year will use an “automated scoring engine” that uses natural language processing technology to assess and grade open-ended questions on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) for reading, writing, science, and social studies. TEA gathered 3,000 responses that went through two rounds of human scoring, and used them to teach the automated scoring engine the characteristics of responses. It is programmed to assign the same scores a human would have given.
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How Virtual Reality Might Ease Cancer Pain

A short virtual reality session significantly lessened the pain of patients with cancer, researchers at Georgetown University School of Medicine and MedStar Health found. For the study, 128 adults with cancer with moderate or severe pain were provided either an immersive virtual reality intervention involving calm, pleasant environments (as seen above), or a two-dimensional guided imagery experience on an iPad. Although both interventions relieved pain, according to patient responses, the virtual reality sessions had a greater impact.
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Better Biosensors Need a Touch of Cheap Plastic

Researchers at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University demonstrated that adding polystyrene to an organic semiconductor can boost electrical performance while using one-sixth the amount of organic material. This could allow for easier, more affordable production of bioelectronic devices. The researchers found that diluting the semiconducting material with an insulator improved electrical performance by three times compared to an undiluted semiconductor.
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Tool Makes AI Models Hallucinate Cats to Fight Copyright Infringement

A tool called Nightshade, developed by University of Chicago (UoC) researchers, changes images in ways that are nearly invisible to the human eye but which look dramatically different to AI models, as a means of protecting artworks from copyright infringements. Nightshade alters thousands of pixels, a small amount compared to images that contain millions of pixels but enough to trick an AI into seeing “something that's completely different,” explained UoC's Shawn Shan.
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How Cryptographers Finally Cracked One of the Zodiac Killer's Hardest Codes

A whitepaper from an international team of cryptographers provides a detailed look at the efforts, including crowdsourcing and computational programming, required to decipher the code of one of the Zodiac Killer's messages. The 340-character cipher published in newspapers on Nov. 12, 1969 was deciphered in December 2020 by adapting AZDecrypt, developed by research team member Jarl Van Eycke, to decode the message. AZDecrypt, which can solve up to 200 homophonic substitution ciphers per second, was altered to add transposition options.
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Researchers Engineer 'Smart Swarms' of Miniature Robots

University of Texas at Austin researchers have developed "smart swarms" of mini robots inspired by fish schools, beehives, and ant colonies. Engineered social interactions allow the microrobots to collaborate, working as a cohesive unit to navigate obstacles more effectively than those operating independently or at random. The system has an adaptive time delay feature that facilitates collaboration using an optical feedback system with controlled light patterns, enabling each microrobot in the swarm to respond to environmental changes by modifying its mobility.
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Knocking Cloud Security Off Its Game

Computer scientists at Switzerland's ETH Zurich have identified a vulnerability in confidential computing systems, which are used by shared cloud computing resources to process sensitive data securely. The vulnerability in cloud server hardware used in AMD and Intel processors could allow hackers to access data stored in the memories of other active cloud users working with the same hardware. The researchers gained root access to a trusted execution environment (TEE)-secured system by sending coordinated interrupt heckles to confuse it.
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