Welcome to the July 16, 2021 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate Receives ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award
ACM
July 14, 2021
ACM has named University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate Chuchu Fan the recipient of the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for contributing to the verification of embedded and cyber-physical systems. Fan’s work showcases industrial-scale application of developed verification technologies; furthers the theory for sensitivity analysis and symbolic reachability; presents verification algorithms and software tools; and highlights the utility of industrial-scale autonomous systems. Fan's contributions in the dissertation include the first data-driven algorithms for verifying nonlinear hybrid systems through sensitivity analysis, which demonstrated scalability. Her nonlinear vehicle model system controller synthesis algorithms also demonstrated broad applications, with the RealSyn approach detailed in the dissertation outperforming current tools and facilitating real-time motion planning software for autonomous vehicles.
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Tapping into the Brain to Help a Paralyzed Man Speak
The New York Times
Pam Belluck
July 14, 2021
A paralyzed man nicknamed Pancho has been granted the power of speech thanks to a brain implant that transmits his words to a computer screen. Neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco, implanted into his brain a sheet of 128 electrodes engineered to detect signals from speech-related sensory and motor processes connected to Pancho's mouth, lips, jaw, tongue, and larynx. Over 81 weeks, the researchers mated the device to a computer by a cable plugging into a head port, and asked Pancho to utter words from a list of 50 common terms; the electrodes routed the signals through an algorithm that attempted to identify intended words. The algorithm's results are channeled through a language-prediction system, enabling the computer to recognize individual words in sentences with nearly 75% accuracy, and to decode complete sentences perfectly more than half the time.
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After Backlash, Predictive Policing Adapts to a Changed World
The Wall Street Journal
David Uberti
July 8, 2021
Pushback against law enforcement's use of predictive software has forced reconsideration, with officials in Santa Cruz, CA, recently warning the technology contributes to racial profiling. Predictive-policing companies are beginning to deprioritize "forecasting" crime and concentrate more on tracking police, in order to ensure greater oversight and identify behaviors corresponding with reduced crime. The University of Texas at Austin's Sarah Brayne cited inconsistent evidence that predictive software can outperform human analysts in reducing crime, given a lack of data needed to make independent assessments. She and some software company executives expect police increasingly will employ global positioning system-based heat maps to track officers' movements and enhance accountability, as well as predicting crime hot spots.
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Opening the Gates to the Next Generation of Information Processing
UChicago News
Joseph Harmon
July 14, 2021
A new information processing method called electromagnonics could lead to next-generation classical electronic and quantum signal devices. Engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering developed the approach, which enables real-time gating control, or information transfer between microwave photons and magnons (wave-like disturbances in microscopically aligned spins in certain magnetic materials). The team used energy-level tuning to rapidly flip between magnonic and photonic states over a period shorter than the magnon or photon lifetimes, ranging between 10 and 100 nanoseconds. The researchers said the mechanism functions in the classical electronics model, and also can be configured for the quantum regime.
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ECB Starts Work on Digital Version of the Euro
CNBC
Silvia Amaro
July 14, 2021
The European Central Bank (ECB) has launched an initiative to produce a digital euro currency. The ECB expects the design and investigation stage to take two years, while the currency's actual implementation could add two more years to the project. ECB’s Fabio Panetta said, "Private solutions for digital and online payments bring important benefits such as convenience, speed, and efficiency. But they also pose risks in terms of privacy, safety, and accessibility. And they can be expensive for some users." The digital euro would let consumers make payments electronically, but also would "complement" the existing monetary system rather than supplanting physical cash and eliminating the commercial lending business.
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Chinese Phone Games Now Require Facial Scans to Play at Night
Ars Technica
Sam Machkovech
July 7, 2021
Chinese video game publisher Tencent has added a facial recognition system to more than 60 of its China-specific smartphone games, in order to comply with government rules to limit access to video games by minors. Users will receive a prompt to scan their face once a gameplay session exceeds an unspecified amount of time during the nation's official gaming curfew hours of 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. If adult users decline or fail the facial check, the "Midnight Patrol" system will disable gameplay. Game publishers that do not comply with the rules, which also require real-name registration systems and in-game spending caps for minors, could have their business licenses revoked.
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Autonomous Drone Swarm Can Localize Gas Leaks
TU Delft (Netherlands)
July 14, 2021
Scientists at the Netherlands' Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Spain's University of Barcelona, and Harvard University have engineered a swarm of tiny drones capable of autonomously detecting and localizing gas sources in cramped indoor settings. TU Delft's Guido de Croon said, "The drones' tiny size makes them very safe to any humans and property still in the building, while their flying capability will allow them to eventually search for the source in three dimensions." The team implemented bio-inspired navigation and search methods to localize sources while using extremely limited onboard sensing and processing capabilities. The drones deploy Snuff Bug, a navigation algorithm that lets the swarm spread out until a drone detects gas and alerts the others. Each drone will then collaborate to localize the gas source using a particle swarm optimization algorithm.
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Meet the Open Source Software Powering NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
NASA
July 8, 2021
The open source F Prime software that drives the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is also finding use at universities as a flight software option for university and student projects. JPL's Aadil Rizvi said F Prime is an out-of-the-box solution for several flight software services, including commanding, telemetry, parameters, and sequencing for spacecraft. A team at the Georgia Institute of Technology is using F Prime in its GT1 CubeSat, while a Carnegie Mellon University team chose to use the software to run its Iris Lunar Rover robot. JPL’s Jeff Levison said university partnerships such as these benefit all parties, as his organization supplies flight systems expertise to young engineers, who could eventually bring their talents and experience with F Prime to a career at JPL.
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Physicists Take Big Step in Race to Quantum Computing
The Harvard Gazette
Juan Siliezar
July 7, 2021
A multi-institutional team of physicists has designed a programmable quantum simulator that can function with 256 quantum bits (qubits), in a key step toward large-scale quantum computers. Led by Harvard University scientists, the system upgrades an earlier 51-qubit simulator, allowing rubidium atoms to be configured in two-dimensional arrays of optical tweezers, which are used to assemble programmable structures and devise different interactions between the qubit. Harvard's Sepehr Ebadi said, "The workhorse of this new platform is a device called the spatial light modulator, which is used to shape an optical wavefront to produce hundreds of individually focused optical tweezer beams." The simulator has enabled researchers to observe exotic quantum states of matter previously unrealized experimentally, and to conduct a precise quantum phase transition study of quantum-level magnetism.
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Stumble-Proof Robot Adapts to Challenging Terrain in Real Time
TechCrunch
Devin Coldewey
July 9, 2021
A new robotic locomotion model capable of real-time terrain adaptation has been developed by a multi-institutional research team. Engineers at Facebook AI, the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and Carnegie Mellon University based Rapid Motor Adaptation (RMA) on the ability of humans and other animals to quickly and unconsciously adjust their locomotion to different conditions. The team trained the system in a virtual model of the real world, where the robot's brain learned to maximize forward motion with the least amount of energy, and to avoid falls by responding to incoming data from physical sensors. UC Berkeley's Jitendra Malik said the robot employs absolutely no visual input, instead closely monitoring itself. The RMA system uses a constantly running main gait-control algorithm and a parallel adaptive algorithm that watches internal readings and provides the main model adjustment data in response to terrain changes.
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Chatbot Can Explain Apps, Show How They Access Hardware or Data
Aalto University (Finland)
July 1, 2021
Researchers at Finland's Aalto University, the University of Luxembourg, and Germany's University of Bayreuth developed a chatbot that can help designers and developers create new apps and explain apps to end-users. Hey GUI (Graphical User Interface) answers questions with images, screenshots, and simple text phrases. Aalto's Kashyap Todi said, "Hey GUI eliminates the need for coding skills or technical expertise. Anyone can use it to search for information on, for example, which one of my apps is asking for permission to use the camera, or where is the search button on this screen." The researchers surveyed more than 100 people to determine the most desirable chatbot features, and how users preferred to interact with chatbots. Said Todi, "This is an important first step towards developing chatbots that can help users find information about apps using simple conversations."
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How Children Integrate Information
Max Planck Gesellschaft (Germany)
July 1, 2021
Scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University used a computer model to help define how children integrate different types of information when learning words. The team conducted experiments to measure children's sensitivity to different information sources, then built an algorithm to predict the information integration process when those sources were combined rationally. The algorithm considers language learning as social inference, in which the child attempts to learn the speaker's intention; the distinct information sources are systematically linked to this intention, which supports natural integration. In converting the model's predictions into real experiments, MPI EVA's Manuel Bohn said, "It is remarkable how well the rational model of information integration predicted children's actual behavior in these new situations. It tells us we are on the right track in understanding from a mathematical perspective how children learn language."
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3D Printable Phase-Changing Composites Can Regulate Temperatures Inside Buildings
Texas A&M Today
Dharmesh Patel
July 9, 2021
Texas A&M University (TAMU) scientists have engineered novel three-dimensional (3D) printable phase-change material (PCM) composites for regulating interior building temperatures cost-effectively. The method eliminates the plastic capsules that surround each PCM particle in conventional manufacturing by blending light-sensitive liquid resins with a phase-changing paraffin wax powder. The resin ensures the 3D-printable paste will solidify under ultraviolet light, which does not affect the embedded wax. The TAMU team 3D-printed a small-scale model and found its inside temperature differed by 40% compared to outside temperatures, versus models composed of traditional materials. Said TAMU's Emily Pentzer, "The ability to integrate phase-change materials into building materials using a scalable method opens opportunities to produce more passive temperature regulation in both new builds and already existing structures."
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