Welcome to the March 11, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.

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A network panel, switch, and cables. U.S. Internet Carrier Lumen Pulls Out of Russia, Joining Cogent
The Washington Post
Craig Timberg; Ellen Nakashima; Joseph Menn
March 11, 2022


Lumen announced that it is ending business relations in Russia, making it the second top U.S.-based Internet carrier to make such a move following Friday’s announcement by Cogent Communications. U.S. technology and telecommunications companies have been cutting services in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, while Russia’s government has throttled or blocked popular U.S.-based services such as Twitter and Facebook. With Cogent and Lumen leaving, the remaining top sources of international data in Russia are Western companies based in Sweden, Italy, and the U.K., according to an analysis by Internet monitoring firm Kentik. Said Kentik's Doug Madory, “We're in uncharted territory here."

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Tumbling dice. Can AI Help Casinos Cut Down on Problem Gambling?
The New York Times
Bradford Pearson
March 8, 2022


Researchers are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to potentially identify and predict problem gambling. One program from Mindway AI, a company with ties to Denmark's Aarhus University, relies on psychologists to train AI algorithms to detect behaviors associated with problem gambling. The program scores 14 risk factors from 1 to 100 and generates a risk assessment for each player. However, there are concerns about how to explain such data to players. While some online gaming companies use pop-up messaging, texts, or emails, Mindway's Rasmus Kjærgaard said the data could be used to personalize phone calls to players.

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Thousands of Tech Jobs Spring Up Far From Silicon Valley
The Wall Street Journal
Katherine Bindley
March 9, 2022


A report by the Brookings Institution found new technology jobs are showing up increasingly in smaller U.S. cities far from Silicon Valley. Brookings' Mark Muro says the smaller the city reporting tech job growth, the more likely the connection to remote work. Jobs in nine cities considered rising tech stars initially shrank in the early days of the pandemic, but by the end of 2020, tech employment in those cities had climbed at least 3% on average. Muro says spiking numbers of tech roles posted in those cities suggests employees are drawn to regions with a lower cost of living compared with the East and West coasts, while companies are tapping labor markets in cities with greater worker diversity.

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A representation of encrypted data. Encryption Meant to Protect Against Quantum Hackers Is Easily Cracked
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
March 8, 2022


Ward Beullens at IBM Research Zurich in Switzerland easily cracked a cryptography algorithm touted as one of three contenders for a global standard against quantum hacking. Rainbow is a signature algorithm submitted to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s Post-Quantum Cryptography competition, and Beullens extracted Rainbow's secret key from a public key in just 53 hours on a standard laptop. He said this flaw would enable attackers to wrongfully "prove" they are someone else, rendering Rainbow "useless" for message verification. NIST's Dustin Moody said the Rainbow hack had been confirmed, and the algorithm will not likely be selected as the final signature algorithm.

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Next-Gen 3D-Printed Catalysts to Propel Hypersonic Flight to Speeds Over 3,800 mph
SciTechDaily
March 7, 2022


Researchers at Australia's RMIT University have developed next-generation three-dimensionally (3D)-printed catalysts that could be used to power hypersonic flights exceeding 3,800 mph, while cooling the system at the same time. RMIT's Selvakannan Periasamy said the team worked out how to control the staggering heat that accumulates in hypersonic aircraft. Researchers 3D-printed minuscule heat exchangers from metal alloys, and coated them with synthetic minerals called zeolites. The team then reproduced the extreme temperatures and pressures that the fuel undergoes at hypersonic speeds, at laboratory scale. RMIT's Roxanne Hubesch said, "Our 3D-printed catalysts are like miniature chemical reactors, and what makes them so incredibly effective is that mix of metal and synthetic minerals."

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The monitor displays the work of the medical professional wearing virtual reality goggles. How VR Is Expanding Healthcare
Time
Sascha Brodsky
March 4, 2022


Virtual reality (VR) technology increasingly is being used in the healthcare sector, in applications ranging from telemedicine to training. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) developed the Motus system, which aims to make physical therapy rehabilitation exercises fun, immersive, and challenging through VR games. Georgia Tech's Nick Housley said, "The headset tells you really critical things, like how much force someone's muscle can put out. It can also tailor an intervention—for example, if someone has difficulty picking up a cup of coffee, you can guide them in real time." Meanwhile, neurosurgeons at the Cleveland Clinic are using VR to practice surgery, and Ohio State University's College of Medicine is using VR to train physicians and first responders to assist in emergencies. Yet some challenges associated with VR use in healthcare remain, such as Mount Sinai Hospital's Daniel Katz decrying the lack of an "app store" for medical education.

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Companies Tweeted for International Women's Day; This Account Called Out Their Pay Gaps
The Washington Post
Julianne McShane
March 8, 2022


The @PayGapApp Twitter account of U.K. software developer Ali Fensome and freelance copywriter Francesca Lawson called out British companies tweeting about International Women's Day for their gender pay gaps. The account, which was built as a bot, scanned Twitter accounts for various keywords and hashtags associated with International Women’s Day, before matching the accounts to data from a U.K. government database, then writing a quote retweet of a company’s posts with information on its gender pay gap. The bot accrued over 120,000 followers by Tuesday, and sent out hundreds of tweets containing information about companies' hourly median gender pay gaps. Lawson said the bot's booming popularity mirrors growing consumer demand for transparency from companies who publicly lobby against inequality, yet may uphold it within their own workplaces.

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Open-Source Code Generator Is Very Good at Writing in C
ZDNet
Liam Tung
March 7, 2022


Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers have launched an automated code generator model trained on multiple programming languages, which they said they found was very good at writing code in C. The researchers hope the open-source PolyCoder can democratize research into artificial intelligence (AI) code generation, which companies like Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind and Open AI now dominate. Underlying auto code generation is the premise that the process can save developers time, assuming the output is accurate and lacks security flaws. The CMU researchers said PolyCoder has "2.7 [billion] parameters based on the GPT-2 architecture, that was trained on 249 [gigabytes] of code across 12 programming languages on a single machine."

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Doctoral Student Offers Insight into ML Error Estimation
Texas A&M University Engineering
Rachel Rose
March 4, 2022


Texas A&M University doctoral student Omar Maddouri used transfer learning principles to evaluate machine learning (ML) models and developed an error estimator for the accuracy of the models in classifying datasets. The process involves creating a model with initial inferences about the model parameters in the target and source domains, then updating the model as more information about the datasets is learned. Maddouri said, "In transfer learning, we try to transfer knowledge or bring data from another domain to see whether we can enhance the task that we are doing in the domain of interest, or target domain."

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An illustration showing a doctor using futuristic technology in practice. Medical, IoT Devices Vulnerable to Attack
Dark Reading
Jai Vijayan
March 8, 2022


Researchers at Forescout's Vedere Labs cybersecurity intelligence team and CyberMDX cybersecurity service provider discovered seven vulnerabilities, known collectively as "Access:7," in more than 150 Internet of Things (IoT) devices made by more than 100 companies. Three of the bugs, rated critical, allow attackers to gain full control of devices by remotely executing malicious code. The remainder, rated moderate to high in severity, allow attackers to steal data or execute denial-of-service attacks. The flaws were found in multiple versions of PTC Axeda agent and PTC Desktop Server, which are used in many IoT devices to enable remote access and management. All versions of the Axeda technology below 6.9.3 are affected. PTC has released patches for the vulnerabilities.

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Fitness landscapes rendered in the shape of fossilized birds and fish created by a neural network model. An 'Oracle' Predicting the Evolution of Gene Regulation
MIT Department of Biology
Raleigh McElvery
March 9, 2022


Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a neural network model to predict gene expression by focusing on "regulatory" or non-coding DNA, which can help turn genes on or off. The researchers created a dataset to train the model by inserting millions of random non-coding DNA sequences into yeast and determining how each sequence affected gene expression. Said MIT's Aviv Regev, "We now have an 'oracle' that can be queried to ask: What if we tried all possible mutations of this sequence? Or, what new sequence should we design to give us a desired expression?"

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This schematic shows a solid-state LiDAR chip emitting laser light from an optical antenna connected to a tiny switch. Tiny Switches Give Solid-State LiDAR Record Resolution
Berkeley Engineering
Alan S. Brown
March 9, 2022


A high-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) chip developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) could pave the way for smaller, less-expensive LiDAR navigation systems. The new LiDAR is based on a focal plane switch array, which can channel all available laser power through a single antenna at once. The researchers also used microelectromechanical system switches that physically move the waveguides from one position to another; this allows 16,384 pixels to be placed on a 1-centimeter-square chip, with each pixel equivalent to 0.6 degrees of the array's 70-degree field of view. A 360-degree view around a vehicle could be achieved by mounting several of these chips in a circular configuration. Said UC Berkeley's Ming Wu, "There will be so many more potential applications once we shrink LiDAR to the size of a smartphone camera."

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Mapping Exposed Water Tanks, Swimming Pools in Aerial Images Can Help Control Dengue
Agencia FAPESP
Theo Ruprecht
March 9, 2022


A computer model developed by researchers in Brazil identifies swimming pools and rooftop water tanks in aerial photographs, in order to locate areas potentially vulnerable to infestations of the mosquito that causes dengue and other diseases. The model could be used as a public policy tool for dynamic socio-economic mapping of urban areas. The researchers focused on four areas of Campinas, the third-largest city in Brazil’s São Paulo state, by using a drone equipped with a high-resolution camera to take aerial photos. The model was found to be 90.23% accurate in identifying pools, and 87.53% accurate in identifying water tanks. The Federal University of Minas Gerais' Jefersson Alex dos Santos said the model "could serve as a basis for a relatively simple practical application such as developing software to map city districts with a high risk of dengue outbreaks."

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