Welcome to the March 28, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Deepfakes Trying to Change the Course of War
CNN Business
Rachel Metz
March 25, 2022
Deepfake videos, including doctored appeals by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, are being used to manipulate the course of the war in Ukraine. Experts cite them as examples of how quickly disinformation can spread, and their growing presence further blurs the line between fact and fiction. They say deepfakes' use as tools to influence people during a war is especially insidious, because the confusion they inflict can be catastrophic. "When people really can't think very rationally and they only have a very truly short span of attention, and they see something like this, that's when it becomes a problem," explained the University at Albany's Siwei Lyu.
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Software-designed Miniproteins Could Create New Class of Drugs
Science
Robert F. Service
March 24, 2022
Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have designed mini-antibodies using Rosetta software to predict protein-folding, which could lead to a new class of drugs. The researchers identified strong binding sites on proteins and constructed the antibodies around them, with the software predicting protein structures based on their amino acid sequences. They mapped out potential binding sites by directing the program to calculate how tightly specific amino acids would bind to different spots across the target protein's surface. The software then sought clusters of neighboring sites and ascertained how to assemble a stable miniprotein that would bind to the most possible sites in a cluster. The result, UW's Longxing Cao said, is that "We can design proteins to bind to any target."
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U.S., EU Sign Data Transfer Deal to Ease Privacy Concerns
Associated Press
Kelvin Chan; Chris Megerian
March 25, 2022
The U.S. and EU have signed a preliminary agreement that paves the way for the storage of Europeans' personal data in the U.S., easing concerns about privacy. "This new arrangement will enhance the Privacy Shield framework, promote growth and innovation in Europe and the U.S., and help companies—both small and large—compete in the digital economy," said President Biden. Alexandre Roure, an official with the tech trade group CCIA, said the data includes "any information that we voluntarily provide or generate when using services and products online." The U.S. and EU said the agreement addresses issues raised by Europe's top court, with the U.S. incorporating reforms to strengthen privacy and civil liberties safeguards "applicable to signals intelligence activities." The deal followed EU officials' agreement on new digital rules designed to check the power of technology giants.
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Researchers Make Quantum Storage Breakthrough by Storing Qubit for 20 Milliseconds
Interesting Engineering
Chris Young
March 23, 2022
Researchers at Switzerland's University of Geneva (UNIGE) stored a qubit in a crystal for 20 milliseconds, setting a new record for quantum memory based on a solid-state system, which could help pave the way for long-distance quantum telecommunications networks. UNIGE's Mikael Afzelius said the team also "managed to reach the 100-millisecond mark with a small loss of fidelity." To avoid disturbing the effect of entanglement, the crystals were kept at temperatures of absolute zero (-273.15°C). UNIGE's Antonio Ortu explained, "We applied a small magnetic field of one thousandth of a Tesla to the crystal and used dynamic decoupling methods, which consist in sending intense radio frequencies to the crystal. The effect of these techniques is to decouple the rare-earth ions from perturbations of the environment and increase the storage performance we have known until now by almost a factor of 40."
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A Tool for Predicting the Future
MIT News
Adam Zewe
March 28, 2022
A group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, Berkeley have developed a system that allows nonexperts to generate predictions in just a few seconds. The time series predict database (tspDB) integrates prediction functionality atop an existing time-series database. MIT's Abdullah Alomar said a novel time-series-prediction algorithm is key to tspDB's success, and is particularly effective at basing predictions on multivariate time-series data, as well as at estimating its volatility to generate a confidence level for its predictions. The multivariate singular spectrum analysis (mSSA) algorithm can forecast future values and fill in missing data points with greater accuracy and efficiency than state-of-the-art deep learning techniques. Alomar said, "One reason I think this works so well is that the model captures a lot of time series dynamics, but at the end of the day, it is still a simple model."
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Robotized Insects May Search Collapsed Buildings for Survivors
The Economist
March 26, 2022
Researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have developed robotized insects that could be used to search for survivors in collapsed buildings. The researchers outfitted Madagascar hissing cockroaches with backpacks featuring a communications chip, a carbon dioxide sensor, a motion sensor, an infrared camera, and a small battery. The cockroaches are controlled by algorithms that respond directly to the backpack sensors. The researchers tested the so-called cyber-roaches in a simulated disaster zone spanning 25 square meters, which contained concrete blocks, people, and decoys like a microwave oven and a laptop. Artificial intelligence programmed into the camera identified signs of life such as movement, body heat, and elevated carbon dioxide levels, sending alerts to rescuers if a survivor has been detected. The researchers found the software correctly recognized humans 87% of the time.
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Dell BIOS Bugs Affect Millions of Inspiron, Vostro, XPS, Alienware Systems
The Hacker News
Ravie Lakshmanan
March 22, 2022
Five security vulnerabilities identified in Dell BIOS by researchers at the firmware security firm Binarly could allow code execution on affected systems. According to a report by the researchers, "The active exploitation of all the discovered vulnerabilities can't be detected by firmware integrity monitoring systems due to limitations of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) measurement. The remote device health attestation solutions will not detect the affected systems due to the design limitations in visibility of the firmware runtime." The security issues are associated with improper input validation vulnerabilities affecting the firmware's System Management Mode. The affected products include the Alienware, Inspiron, Vostro, and Edge Gateway 3000 Series systems. Dell is urging customers to upgrade their BIOS as soon as possible.
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In Step Toward Metaverse, Meta Inks Partnership for 3D Ads
Reuters
Sheila Dang
March 24, 2022
Through a new partnership with e-commerce technology firm VNTANA, Meta Platforms Inc. will simplify the process for brands to run three-dimensional (3D) ads on Facebook and Instagram. Brands can upload 3D models of their products to the social platforms for conversion into ads, eliminating the need to reformat 3D files to be compatible with Meta's ad systems. VNTANA's Ashley Crowder said the metaverse "is a whole world of possibility that starts with having the right 3D models of your products." The 3D ads will allow users to interact with the image from all angles. Said Meta's Chris Barbour, "In a way, this offers a glimpse of what you might expect on future devices like AR [augmented reality] glasses."
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Astronomers Reveal Remarkable Simulations of the Early Universe, from the Dark Ages Through First Light
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
March 24, 2022
Using the SuperMUC-NG supercomputer, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have created a series of simulations of the early universe. The Thesan simulations cover the period of reionization 13 billion years ago, which involved the transformation of neutral hydrogen atoms in space into ionized hydrogen, resulting in a gradual change in the universe from total darkness to light. The detailed simulations combine a realistic model of galaxy formation, an algorithm that tracks the interaction of light with gas, and a model for cosmic dust. The Center for Astrophysics' Rahul Kannan said the simulations "are going to help us interpret real observations of this period and understand what we're seeing."
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Inoculating Deep Neural Networks to Thwart Attacks
University of Michigan News
March 24, 2022
University of Michigan (U-M) scientists have developed the Robust Adversarial Immune-inspired Learning System (RAILS) to defend deep neural networks. "RAILS represents the very first approach to adversarial learning that is modeled after the adaptive immune system, which operates differently than the innate immune system," said U-M's Alfred Hero. RAILS was modeled after how adaptive immune systems in mice respond to an antigen, in order to emulate immune-system defenses to identify and address suspicious network inputs. The system achieved effective biomimicry, outperforming two of the most common machine learning countermeasures for adversarial attacks—Robust Deep k-Nearest Neighbor and convolutional neural networks. Using image identification as the test case, the researchers showed RAILS improved protection, including against the especially damaging Projected Gradient Descent attack.
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AI to Bring Museum Specimens to the Masses
Cardiff University News (U.K.)
March 24, 2022
Scientists at Cardiff University in the U.K. are using cutting-edge artificial intelligence methods to automatically segment and capture data from museum specimens throughout Europe and conduct data quality improvement without human input. The image segmentation technique can easily and automatically locate and bound visual regions on images ranging from microscope slides to herbarium sheets with high accuracy. Automatic segmentation can be used to concentrate data capture from specific regions of a slide or sheet, and to conduct quality control on images to ensure digital copies of specimens are as accurate as possible. Cardiff's Paul Rosin said this approach "could help improve the workflows of staff working with natural history collections to drastically speed up the process of digitization in return for very little cost and resource."
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Food Businesses Lose Faith in Instagram After Algorithm Changes
The New York Times
Becky Hughes
March 22, 2022
The change of Instagram's algorithm to prioritize videos (Reels) over photos has put a damper on the social media strategies of small food businesses. Many of these businesses used Instagram as a low-cost advertising tool by sharing food photos (after adding a caption and relevant hashtags), and receiving thousands of likes per post in response. The algorithm’s shift to video has lowered traffic for many business Instagram accounts and, in turn, their Websites, as accounts that do not post Reels regularly appear below those that have taken advantage of videos in users' feeds. To succeed with Reels, users need some video production experience, requiring business owners to pay for freelancers or learn new skills. Some are moving to other platforms, like TikTok.
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