Welcome to the April 10, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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An Easier Way to Get Bugs Out of Programming Languages
MIT News
Steve Nadis
April 7, 2023
Last month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Ajay Brahmakshatriya and Saman Amarasinghe unveiled a tool for adding debugging functionality to any domain-specific language (DSL). The D2X tool works especially well with the researchers' BuildIt software package, which enables a process for paring down an all-purpose programming language into a DSL. D2X is a library compatible with existing debuggers like GDB or LLDB, so it can act as an interface while "your program can be debugged using popular debuggers without any modifications to the debuggers themselves," according to Brahmakshatriya. Writing DSL with BuildIt, said Brahmakshatriya, means a debugger is deployed with no additional coding. Amarasinghe said this and additional functions will make DSL creation more appealing.
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The Women Who Left Their Jobs to Code
BBC News
Shiona McCallum
April 8, 2023
Some U.K. women are defying the trend of lower female representation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) compared to men by becoming programmers. The U.K. Office for National Statistics estimated 15,000 more women in Britain were working as coders and software developers in 2022 compared to 2021, while the ranks of female Web designers swelled by nearly 10,000. The female-founded Code First Girls social enterprise offers free coding courses to women, and connects companies with newly trained female developers. Code First Girls' Anna Brailford says women should be offered the opportunity to dispel stereotypical perceptions of STEM careers, and such individuals "come with a wealth of experience to change things in technology for the better."
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Interactive Mosaic Uses NASA Imagery to Show Mars in Vivid Detail
NASA
April 5, 2023
The Global CTX Mosaic of Mars, developed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) using 110,000 images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), is the highest-resolution global image of Mars ever created at 5.7 trillion pixels (5.7 terapixels). CTX, one of three cameras on the MRO, offers an expansive view of terrain around the planet's surface features to show how they are related. Caltech's Jay Dickson developed an algorithm to match images based on the features displayed and manually connected the 13,000 images that were unmatched, with the gaps representing areas that have not been captured by CTX or are obscured by clouds or dust. The mosaic allows users to view different locations on Mars; it also highlights impact craters across the planet.
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Scientists Invent Virtual Post-Stroke Rehabilitation Assistant
Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania)
April 6, 2023
Scientists at Lithuania's Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) and Vilnius University have unveiled an interactive post-stroke assistant for rehabilitation. The iTrain game enables virtual patient care, while the BiomacVR system emphasizes rehabilitation. KTU’s Rytis Maskeliunas said patients wear virtual reality (VR) sensors on their hands and perform movements to generate a virtual replica that doctors can evaluate; patients can use the software to examine and adjust the exercises to effect rehabilitation. The system can visualize deviations and signal if patients are performing exercises incorrectly. Vilnius University's Aušra Adomaviciene said, "By monitoring the results of the virtual feedback, the rehabilitation specialist can discuss with the patient the difficulties experienced during the session, adjust the program, and correct mistakes."
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Are Robot Waiters the Future?
Associated Press
Dee-Ann Durbin
April 6, 2023
Many people envision robot waiters as a solution to the food service industry's labor shortages, with tens of thousands deployed in dining rooms globally. Some experts predict the technology will revolutionize the restaurant business, while others consider it a gimmick with limited capabilities. Robot waiters are nevertheless expanding, with U.S. developer Bear Robotics expecting to have 10,000 Servi units deployed by year's end in the U.S. and overseas, while China's Pudu Robotics counts more than 56,000 robots in use worldwide. Michigan State University's Karthik Namasivayam says perhaps 30% of restaurants ultimately will be staffed by humans, while the rest will deploy more automation in kitchens and dining rooms, especially as technology costs fall.
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Absolute Zero in the Quantum Computer
TU Wien (Austria)
April 3, 2023
A quantum version of the third law of thermodynamics formulated by scientists at Austria's Technical University of Wien (TU Wien) resolves contradictions between deleting information perfectly and cooling to absolute zero degrees Fahrenheit (-273.15 degrees Celsius). TU Wien's Marcus Huber said, "We found that quantum systems can be defined that allow the absolute ground state to be reached even at finite energy and in finite time—none of us had expected that." The infinite complexity of such systems makes cooling quantum objects to absolute zero in finite time with finite energy infeasible, but this is unnecessary for engineering a practical quantum computer, according to Huber. He said the fact that quantum states more easily break as temperatures rise "is precisely why it is so important to better understand the connection between quantum theory and thermodynamics."
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Some Scientists Believe the Future of Medicine Lies in Digital Twins
Time
Peter Coveney; Roger Highfield
April 5, 2023
A global initiative to predict patients' health through computer simulations or digital twins of biological systems will transform medicine, according to some scientists. Examples include virtual hearts used to test treatments hosted on the MareNostrum supercomputer at Spain's Barcelona Supercomputer Center. The institution's Alya Red digital twin heart model is defined by roughly 50 equations, and can be used to position, fine-tune, and simulate the effects of pacemakers. Meanwhile, Reza Razavi at the U.K.'s King's College London has developed digital twin hearts based on patient data to anticipate tachycardia. French scientists also are engaged in simulating the human brain to plan epilepsy surgery as part of a clinical trial.
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3D-Printed Ferroelectric Materials Eliminate Harmful Bacteria
University of Bath (U.K.)
April 6, 2023
Engineers at the U.K.'s universities of Bath and Ulster have three-dimensionally (3D)-printed a ferroelectric composite material that kills harmful bacteria. The material responds to changes in mechanical energy or temperature with an electrical charge that generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) that selectively destroy bacteria. The researchers embedded ferroelectric barium calcium zirconate titanate micro-particles within polycaprolactone, then fed the composite into a 3D bioprinter to fabricate a porous scaffold that promotes ROS formation via a high surface area. The material totally eradicated cells of E. coli. The researchers said such materials could confer medical implants with antimicrobial properties.
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Big Tech Internships Can Be Hard for Lower-Income Students to Get
The New York Times
Natasha Singer
April 5, 2023
Lower-income students often face insurmountable barriers to high-profile technology internships, with critics blaming a recruitment policy that usually favors students at leading computing colleges and those with industry connections. Ruthe Farmer at the nonprofit Last Mile Education Fund said the system is "biased toward students who have more free time to devote to side projects, hackathons, and studying for technical interviews—characteristics that conflate privilege with student potential." Some also found socioeconomic disparities evident throughout the application process, with students at lesser-known institutions often lacking industrial, familial, or elite university associations that can result in employee referrals.
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Using ML for Robust Fluid Dynamics Simulations
Imperial College London (U.K.)
Gemma Ralton
April 3, 2023
A new workflow developed by researchers at the U.K.'s Imperial College London leverages advanced machine learning techniques to generate more accurate predictions from computational fluid dynamics simulations. The researchers used adversarial training to develop more accurate and efficient surrogate models than typically are created using traditional methods, even with limited training data, at a lower computational cost. Surrogate models offer simplified versions of computationally expensive models, but still generate accurate predictions or simulations of the behavior of fluids. The researchers used real-world scenarios of air pollution flows to demonstrate the model's effectiveness. Imperial College London's César Quilodrán Casas said the new workflow can “assist engineers and modelers towards creating cheap and accurate model surrogates of expensive computer fluid dynamics simulations, not necessarily just for air pollution."
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Meta AI Model Can Identify Items Within Images
Reuters
Katie Paul
April 6, 2023
Meta last week released the Segment Anything Model (SAM), an artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of identifying individual objects in images and videos using a click or text prompt, even if those items were not included in its training. The company also published what it called the largest-ever dataset of image annotations. Meta already uses technology similar to SAM to tag photos, moderate content, and select recommended posts for Facebook and Instagram users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a priority for Meta this year is to add generative AI "creative aids" to the company's apps.
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AUTOHOLO Shows Potential as Red Tide Warning System
Florida Atlantic University News Desk
Gisele Galoustian
April 4, 2023
The AUTOHOLO system developed by a team led by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) researchers can detect red tide blooms, which can kill fish and other animals and cause respiratory issues in humans, better than current methods. The autonomous, submersible, three-dimensional holographic microscope and imaging system is the first to use holography to identify red tides in the field. The researchers used holographic images to create a training dataset of red tide cells, which was used to train a convolutional neural network for automated classification. They also used a custom-built towing system to enable AUTOHOLO to capture data over large spatial ranges.
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