Welcome to the July 19, 2021 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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As Spain's Beaches Fill Up, Seaside Resort Sends in Drones
Reuters
Horaci Garcia
July 15, 2021
Officials in the town of Sitges in northeastern Spain are using drones for real-time crowd monitoring along 18 km of beach as COVID-19 cases rise. Ricardo Monje of Annunzia, the company that developed the project, said, "We can take photos, pass them through some software and with the software we can count how many people are on the beach." Local official Guillem Escola said, "If we see the beach is very crowded, we can pass that information on to the beach monitors who will make checks and ensure people are keeping their distance. If people don't take notice, then we send in the police." Officials said the project complies with all data-protection laws, and images of people would remain anonymous.
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Encrypting Photos on the Cloud to Keep Them Private
Columbia Engineering News
July 15, 2021
Computer scientists at Columbia University have developed a system that allows mobile users to encrypt personal images on cloud photo services like Google Photos, in order to maintain their privacy. The system, Easy Secure Photos (ESP), encrypts photos uploaded to cloud services so hackers cannot access them, even if the user's account is breached. Columbia's John S. Koh said, "Our system adds an extra layer of protection beyond your password-based account security. The goal is to make it so that only your devices can see your sensitive photos, and no one else unless you specifically share it with them."
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How Germany Hopes to Get the Edge in Driverless Technology
The New York Times
Jack Ewing
July 14, 2021
A new law awaiting the signature of Germany's president would make driverless cars legal and allow companies to begin making money from autonomous driving services. However, the law requires humans to provide oversight for autonomous vehicles, and mandates these vehicles operate in approved, defined spaces. The law covers the entire nation, as opposed to U.S. policy, where the federal government has issued guidelines for autonomous driving but no overarching regulations. The law could give German automakers a competitive advantage; said German lawmaker Arno Klare, "Germany can be the first country in the world to bring vehicles without drivers from the laboratory into everyday use."
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AI System Developed to Diagnose Heart Problems
The Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2021
Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can diagnose cardiac issues based on hundreds of electrocardiograms (ECG). The AI system uses an augmented neural network trained on more than 1.5 million ECG tests on hundreds of patients worldwide. The system is more accurate in reading ECGs than humans, and can detect pathological conditions human cardiologists cannot. For instance, the system can identify patients at risk of arrhythmia, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes, even if the condition does not show up in the ECG. The AI explains its decisions using official cardiology terminology.
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Google to Help Insurers Measure Slip-and-Fall Risks in Buildings
The Wall Street Journal
Leslie Scism
July 13, 2021
Cloud computing services platform Google Cloud and building instrumentation company BlueZoo have partnered to help small-business insurers more accurately quantify slip-and-fall and other accident risks in buildings. BlueZoo will deploy sensors in buildings that will listen for Wi-Fi probes emitted by mobile phones, and transmit the resulting occupancy data to Google Cloud for analysis. BlueZoo's Bill Evans said the cloud servers review the data to produce occupancy metrics with 90% accuracy. Google Cloud's Henna Karna said, "BlueZoo measures risk continuously, making it possible to more accurately price risk or work with building owners to mitigate risk."
*May Require Paid Registration
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First 3D-Printed Steel Bridge Opens in Amsterdam
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
July 15, 2021
The world's first three-dimensionally (3D)-printed stainless steel bridge has opened to pedestrians and cyclists in Amsterdam. Deposited in layers by robot arms with welding torches over six months, the 12-meter (39-foot)-long MX3D Bridge spans the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal. Sensors attached to the structure will monitor strain, movement, vibration, and temperature, and will input that data into a digital model which engineers at the U.K.'s University of Cambridge will use to watch how the 3D-printed steel reacts to its use in this application. They also will employ machine learning to identify any signs that maintenance or modification is required. Said Cambridge's Mark Girolami, "What was in some sense surprising was that the baseline strength was what you would expect of just rolled steel, and it actually increased in some directions."
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iOS Zero-Day Let SolarWinds Hackers Compromise Fully Updated iPhones
Ars Technica
Dan Goodin
July 14, 2021
Google and Microsoft researchers found that the Russian state hackers behind last year's SolarWinds supply chain hack also exploited a then-unknown iOS zero-day vulnerability in a separate malicious email campaign. The goal was to steal Web authentication credentials from Western European governments via messages to government officials through LinkedIn. Google's Shane Huntley confirmed that the attack involving the iOS zero-day were connected to an attack reported by Microsoft in May in which the SolarWind hackers, known as Nobelium, compromised an account belonging to U.S. foreign aid and development assistance agency USAID. Google's Project Zero vulnerability research group found 33 zero-day exploits used in attacks during the first half of 2021, 11 more than from the total for last year.
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Japan Shatters Internet Speed Record
Interesting Engineering
Brad Bergan
July 14, 2021
Japanese engineers have broken the world Internet speed record with a 319 TB per second data transmission rate across more than 3,001 kilometers (1,864.7 miles) of existing fiber-optic infrastructure. The achievement nearly doubles the previous record of 178 Tb/s. The researchers used four cores, or glass tubes housed within data-transmission fibers, to send signals segmented into several wavelengths simultaneously via wavelength-division multiplexing, while a seldom-used third band extended the distance of the transmissions through optical amplification. The four-core optical fiber is the same diameter as conventional single-core fiber, so integrating the new method into existing infrastructure should be far simpler than other technological overhauls.
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NIST Evaluates Face Recognition Software's Accuracy for Flight Boarding
U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology
July 13, 2021
Tests of face recognition (FR) software at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) indicate the most accurate algorithms are able to confirm airline passenger identities at boarding while committing few errors. The NIST researchers assessed the algorithms' performance in matching images of travelers to previously acquired photos stored in a database. They found the seven top-performing FR algorithms could find a match based on a single scan of a passenger's face with 99.5% or higher accuracy, particularly if several passenger images were in the database. Explained NIST’s Patrick Grother, “We found that accuracy varies across algorithms, but that modern algorithms generally perform better. If airlines use the more accurate ones, passengers can board many flights with no errors.”
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Seattle Leads Nation in 'Brain Gain,' Adds Tech Jobs Faster Than Any Other Big U.S. Market Over 5 Years
GeekWire
Todd Bishop
July 13, 2021
A report by real estate firm CBRE reveals that more than 48,000 technology jobs were added in the Seattle region from 2016 to 2020. Only the Canadian tech markets in Toronto and Vancouver posted faster growth rates in North America, the study found. Seattle ranked second, behind the San Francisco Bay Area and ahead of Washington, D.C., in the overall scorecard, which assessed each region's "depth, vitality and attractiveness to companies seeking tech talent and to tech workers seeking employment." Seattle came in second, behind Toronto, with regard to the number of new tech-related college degrees in comparison to overall tech jobs added in each region. In average wages, the San Francisco Bay Area ranked first and Seattle second, and for total costs of running a tech business, the Bay Area ranked first, New York second, and Seattle third. Seattle was in the middle of the pack for overall diversity.
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Computational Modeling Results in New Findings for Preeclampsia Patients
UC San Diego News Center
Kimberly Mann Bruch
July 12, 2021
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) used computational modeling to better understand preeclampsia (pregnancy-related hypertension). UCSD's Mariko Horii said the researchers analyzed and reprogrammed placental cells acquired at delivery into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), then differentiated the iPSC into cells similar to placental cells in early pregnancy in order "to examine the underlying pathophysiology of preeclampsia." Analysis found an association between preeclampsia and a low-oxygen microenvironment in the uterus, and UCSD's Comet supercomputer yielded a cellular model that accurately mirrored this scenario in vitro. Horii said, "Using Comet allowed us to direct our resources toward modeling preeclampsia, instead of diluting our efforts because we needed to determine details of compute resources."
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TSUBAME Supercomputer Predicts Cell-Membrane Permeability of Cyclic Peptides
Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan)
July 13, 2021
Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations have yielded a computational technique to forecast the cell-membrane permeability of cyclic peptides. Scientists at Japan's Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) employed the institute's TSUBAME 3.0 supercomputer to run models of 156 different cyclic peptides. The team determined a strong association of the strength of electrostatic interactions between the atoms constituting the cyclic peptide and the surrounding media, and the membrane permeability value. Said Tokyo Tech's Masatake Sugita, "Our results shed some light on the mechanisms of cell-membrane permeability and provide a guideline for designing molecules that can get inside cells more efficiently. This will greatly contribute to the development of next-generation peptide drugs."
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