Welcome to the October 16, 2019 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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AI-Based Firefighter Safety Startup Wins IBM Call for Code Challenge
TechCrunch
Brian Heater
October 12, 2019
IBM named the winners of this year's Call for Code Global Challenge, with Spanish firefighter safety startup Prometeo receiving the top honor for an artificial intelligence solution based on IBM’s Watson question-answering computer. Prometeo developed a smartphone-sized device that straps to a firefighter’s arm to measure temperature, smoke, and humidity, with color signals reflecting the wearer's health. Green signals normal health, but yellow or red alert the command center to immediately take action. The $200,000 first-place award will help underwrite Prometeo's tests of the device in Spain. The Indian/Chinese/American company Sparrow was awarded second prize in the competition for its platform that addresses physical and psychological stress during natural disasters.
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Diversity May Be Key to Reducing Errors in Quantum Computing
Georgia Tech News Center
October 14, 2019
Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers have developed a technique to reduce errors in quantum computing by using different quantum bits to create a diversity of errors. Georgia Tech's Moinuddin Qureshi and Swamit Tannu's Ensemble of Diverse Mappings (EDM) technique combines results from diverse error sets so the correct answer emerges, even though each individual set got the incorrect answer. The researchers used a Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum computer to prove that EDM improves inference quality 2.3 times, versus cutting-edge mapping algorithms. Said Tannu, "The goal of the research is to create several different versions of the program, each of which can make a mistake, but they will not make identical mistakes. As long as they make diverse mistakes, when you average things out, the mistakes get canceled out and the right answer emerges."
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Coral Reef Starter Kit
UDaily (DE)
Karen B. Roberts
October 14, 2019
University of Delaware (UD) researchers have found that fish are comfortable living in three-dimensionally (3D)-printed coral reefs. The researchers studied the behavior of damselfish and mustard hill coral larvae in a laboratory, in the presence of a coral skeleton and four 3D-printed coral models made from different filaments. The team has deployed coral modeled on the coral skeleton and printed from biodegradable cornstarch filaments in Fiji, and are currently analyzing field data from the underwater structure. Said UD's Danielle Dixson, "Offering 3D-printed habitats is a way to provide reef organisms a structural starter kit that can become part of the landscape as fish and coral build their homes around the artificial coral."
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Autonomous Shuttles in Northern Virginia Suburb Show Why Future of Robot Cars Might Be Slow
The Washington Post
Ian Duncan
October 12, 2019
Boston-based Optimus Ride and real estate developer Brookfield Properties have partnered on an autonomous shuttle service to transport commuters between a Metro station and locations in Reston, VA. The low-speed, small-distance shuttles are envisioned as an alternative to traditional vehicles. Navigant Research's Sam Abuelsamid said vehicles traveling at less than 25 miles per hour reduce the risk of pedestrian fatalities, and shorter stopping distances make fewer sophisticated sensors necessary. Optimus' shuttles feature a safety driver and engineer in case of malfunction, but CEO Ryan Chin said the plan is to transition from an onboard crew to a remote operator managing a fleet of shuttles by next year. Chin, who sees such projects as a gradual move toward driverless cars, said, "Let's start with places we can get autonomous vehicles to work reasonably in the near term."
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Does Your Toothbrush Have an App Yet?
The New York Times
Janet Morrissey
October 11, 2019
New technologies are being introduced to the world of dental care, such as smart toothbrushes equipped with three-dimensional (3D) motion sensors and artificial intelligence to track the time, frequency, duration, and location of brushing, and alerts the user to areas that have been missed through a phone app connected via Bluetooth. Among other new dental technologies are digital wand-like scanners that capture real-time 3D images of teeth, bite, and surrounding tissue, as a substitute for cumbersome impression trays and plaster molds. The scanner images can be fed into a CAD/CAM system that virtually designs crowns, veneers, and bridges, which can be milled or 3D-printed in the dentist’s office on the same day. In the field of orthodontics, augmented reality, scanners, and 3D printers can show patients how they would look with new crowns or straightened teeth.
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Smart Cities: This City Runs on Its Own Operating System
ZDNet
Daphne Leprince-Ringuet
October 14, 2019
Hull, a city in the U.K., is now one of the few smart cities in the world, using what it calls its own operating system to centralize data management and manage resources more efficiently. The Hull City Council uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors placed around the city to access data in real time, allowing it to better control street lighting, refuse collection, parking, and traffic congestion, with the overall goal of providing better services at a reduced cost. The platform, called CityOS, was built on Cisco’s Kinetic for Cities platform. Said Hull City Councillor Daren Hale, "The system pulls together information that currently sits within separate council computer systems that enable city-wide management of the city's public assets in real time."
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Summit Simulates How Humans Will 'Brake' During Mars Landing
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
October 10, 2019
U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) researchers are using the Summit supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to model retropropulsion (using rocket engines to decelerate) for landing manned spacecraft on Mars. The team employs a computational fluid dynamics code called FUN3D to model the craft's descent, applying systems of equations to simulate small-scale fluid interaction during flow and turbulence generated by the vehicle’s flight through Mars’ atmosphere. NASA's Ashley Korzun said, "This is really the first opportunity—at this level of fidelity and resolution—that we've been able to see what happens to the vehicle as it slows down with its engines on."
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Russia's Pizza King Wants to Use the Cloud to Take Over the World
Bloomberg
Ilya Khrenikov; Jake Rudnitsky
October 14, 2019
Russian pizza magnate Fyodor Ovchinnikov has plans to open 1,000 Dodo Pizza outlets in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the next five years, using a proprietary combination of application software and analytics based in the cloud. Dodo IS technology enables instant monitoring of cash flows, inventories, and service times at all pizzerias in the network, viewable via a tablet. Dodo IS' utility includes the ability to automatically generate marketing campaigns for individual franchises when sales fall under a certain threshold. Dodo also drew attention with what was advertised as the first pizza delivery by drone in 2014, to customers in the central square of the Russian city of Syktyvkar. "We're a cyborg company,” said Ovchinnikov. "We're half food and half tech. That's our advantage."
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Combination of Techniques Could Improve Security for IoT Devices
Penn State News
Sara LaJeunesse
October 10, 2019
Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) researchers have integrated techniques to enhance the security of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. The team demonstrated the application of statistical data, machine learning, and other data analysis methodologies to strengthen IoT systems, then used intrusion detection/visualization to ascertain whether an attack had already happened or was in progress. The researchers used the open source R statistical suite to define IoT systems in use on the University of New South Wales Canberra network in Australia, and machine learning solutions sought out patterns in the data that R overlooked. With the addition of the Splunk intrusion detection tool, the team identified three Internet Protocol addresses attempting to penetrate the network's devices, signaling a distributed denial-of-service attack. Penn State's Melanie Seekins said, "These predictive patterns and the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence can help us anticipate and prepare for major attacks using IoT devices."
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India's HIV-Positive Trans People Find 'New Strength' in Technology
Reuters
Annie Banerji
October 15, 2019
India has the world's third-largest population living with HIV (about 2.1 million people, according to UNAIDS) and help is especially needed in the transgender community, where the prevalence is 3.1%, compared with 0.26% among all Indian adults. A counseling program and a new app are helping health workers identify HIV-positive transgender people, monitor their treatment, and connect them with doctors who can provide antiretroviral therapy to suppress the AIDS virus. The eMpower app, developed by IBM in partnership with the India HIV/AIDS Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, monitored more than 1.2 million people between January 2018 and March 2019. HIV-positive transgender outreach workers use tablets to track others in their community living with HIV, provide them with counseling, and accompany them to doctors.
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America's Got Talent, Just Not Enough in IT
The Wall Street Journal
Angus Loten
October 15, 2019
Most large U.S. enterprises are struggling to find enough information technology (IT) talent to meet their needs. Gartner's James Atkinson estimates almost a third of the most essential tech roles remain vacant after five months, costing employers millions in lost productivity each year. Demand for tech professionals is expanding as businesses the world over seek competitive advantage. IT trade group CompTIA calculated that U.S. tech job postings climbed 32% in the first half 2019 compared to the same period a year ago, and U.S. employers have had about 918,000 unfilled IT jobs since August. Companies are trying to entice IT talent with incentives like signing bonuses, remote-work arrangements, and subsidized tuition for advanced education.
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The Deep Learning Way to Design Fly-Like Robots
EPFL (Switzerland)
October 11, 2019
Researchers at Switzerland's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) have developed motion-capture software that uses deep learning to model a fruit fly's movements in three dimensions (3D), in the hope of designing fly-like robots. The DeepFly3D system uses multiple cameras to record images of a fly crawling atop a small floating ball, which the software processes. DeepFly3D can infer the insect's pose in three dimensions, predicting and calculating behavioral measurements at ultra-fine resolution without the need for manual calibration. The system also employs active learning to improve its own performance. EPFL's Pavan Ramdya said, "If we learn how [the fly] does what it does, we can have important impact on robotics and medicine and, perhaps most importantly, we can gain these insights in a relatively short period of time."
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