Welcome to the October 18, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• ACM Fellows Among Selections for National Science Board
• Robot's Alan Turing Portrait to be Auctioned by Sotheby's
• South Korea Vows to Prevent Technology Leaks
• World’s Smallest Quantum Computer Solves Problems with One Photon
• China Cybersecurity Group Seeks Review of Intel Products
• Speed Record for Wireless Data Transfer Smashed
• Toyota Joins with Hyundai's Boston Dynamics on AI-Powered Robots
• PLCHound Algorithm Aims to Boost Critical Infrastructure Security
• Wearable Sensors Monitor Factory Worker Fatigue
• AI Gives Voice to Dead Animals in Cambridge Exhibition
• How to Prepare for SailGP? Study the Data
• Hackers Use Linux Malware to Raid ATMs
• Supercomputer Achieves Record Aircraft Turbulence Simulations

ACM Fellows Among Selections for National Science Board

President Joe Biden plans to appoint eight people to the National Science Board, including ACM Fellows Yolanda Gil and Juan Gilbert. Gil is a fellow and senior director for AI and data science strategy at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute and director of AI and data science initiatives in the university’s Viterbi School of Engineering. Gilbert is a professor at the University of Florida, chair of the university’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Department, and leader of the Computing for Social Good Lab.
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Robot's Alan Turing Portrait to be Auctioned by Sotheby's

Auction house Sotheby's next month will auction a portrait of Alan Turing painted by a robot; it is expected to fetch as much as £150,000 ($196,000). The piece, created by humanoid robot Ai-Da, is entitled "AI God" and was exhibited at the United Nations in May 2024. Gallery owner and founder of the Ai-Da Robot studio, Aidan Meller, headed the team that created the robot with experts at the U.K. universities of Oxford and Birmingham.
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South Korea Vows to Prevent Technology Leaks

South Korea will prepare stronger measures in a bid to prevent overseas leaks of advanced technology secrets, according to Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok. The government will set up a “big data” system aimed at preventing technology leaks at the patent agency and introduce new regulations to ensure stronger punishment for culprits, Choi said.
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World’s Smallest Quantum Computer Solves Problems with One Photon

Researchers at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University created what they call the smallest single-photon quantum computer in the world, which does not require low-temperature conditions or need great amounts of energy. A single high-dimensional photon has a wave packet that contains “32 time-bins or dimensions” of information that can be encoded by the researchers’ computer. The team demonstrated the use of Shor’s algorithm to solve prime factorization on their device.
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China Cybersecurity Group Seeks Review of Intel Products

A Chinese cybersecurity group has called for a review of Intel products sold on the mainland, alleging the company's chips pose a threat for “frequent vulnerabilities and high failure rates." The Cyber Security Association of China said Intel’s central processing units have shown multiple vulnerabilities in the past and that certain chip series from the firm caused video games to crash.
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Speed Record for Wireless Data Transfer Smashed

Using a frequency range of 5-150GHz, a team from the U.K.'s University College London demonstrated wireless data transfer at speeds of 938 Gigabits per second. The total bandwidth used, 145GHz, is over five times greater than the previous wireless transmission world record. The researchers said the wide bandwidth range was key to allowing data to be transferred by radio and optical technologies.
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Toyota Joins with Hyundai's Boston Dynamics on AI-Powered Robots

Toyota Motor’s research unit and Hyundai Motor’s Boston Dynamics are working together to speed development of AI-enabled humanoid robots. The partnership will team Toyota Research Institute’s expertise in large behavior model learning for machines with Boston Dynamics’ humanoid Atlas robot. Toyota’s Gill Pratt said a long-term goal of the partnership is to bring robots onto factory assembly lines and into homes for elder care.
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PLCHound Algorithm Aims to Boost Critical Infrastructure Security

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Cyber-Physical Security Lab say an algorithm they developed boosts critical infrastructure security by more accurately identifying devices vulnerable to remote cyberattacks. The PLCHound algorithm uses advanced natural language processing and machine learning techniques to sift through databases of Internet records and log the IP addresses and security of connected devices.
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Wearable Sensors Monitor Factory Worker Fatigue

A system of wearable sensors designed by a team at Northwestern University uses machine learning to monitor workers for signs of physical strain and tiredness. The system consists of an interconnected array of six wearable sensors placed across a wearer’s torso and arms, coupled with two depth cameras to measure joint movements and an HD webcam to analyze movement intensity, repetition, and diminished strength over time.
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AI Gives Voice to Dead Animals in Cambridge Exhibition

More than a dozen exhibits of dead animals have been granted the gift of conversation at Cambridge University’s Museum of Zoology, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). Equipped with personalities and accents, the dead creatures and models can converse by voice or text through visitors’ mobile phones. The technology allows the animals to describe their time on Earth and the challenges they faced, in the hope of reversing apathy towards the biodiversity crisis.
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How to Prepare for SailGP? Study the Data

Contestants preparing for the new season of SailGP, an international sailing competition, rely on data to propel them first to the finish line. In SailGP the boats are identical. The competition is unique in collecting massive streams of data and sharing all of it equally among the competing teams, which must put into practice insights gathered from simulator training, data analysis, and visualization.
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Hackers Use Linux Malware to Raid ATMs

A researcher reported finding two samples of FASTCash malware for switches running on Linux. FASTCash is a remote access tool that gets installed on payment switches inside compromised networks that handle payment card transactions. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned of it in a 2018 advisory that said it was being used to infect switches inside retail payment networks powered by AIX, IBM’s proprietary version of Unix. In 2020, the agency reported FASTCash was now infecting switches running Windows.
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Supercomputer Achieves Record Aircraft Turbulence Simulations

Using Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology simulated turbulence at a record-breaking resolution of 35 trillion grid points. The GESTS code suite, created specifically for Frontier, allows for the simulation of extreme-scale turbulence. The researchers say their work also showcases key principles of advanced GPU programming, which could be valuable in other fields, particularly those that rely on pseudo-spectral methods.
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