Welcome to the September 27, 2021 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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3D-Printed Vaccine Patch Offers Vaccination Without a Shot
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
September 23, 2021
Scientists at Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) have engineered a three-dimensionally (3D)-printed vaccine patch that offers more protection than a typical shot in the arm. The microneedle-studded polymer patch is applied directly to the skin, with a resulting 10-fold greater immune response and a 50-fold greater T-cell and antigen-specific antibody response compared to injection. UNC's Shaomin Tian said the microneedles are 3D-printed, which makes it easy to design patches specifically for flu, measles, hepatitis, or COVID-19 vaccines. Entrepreneur Joseph M. DeSimone said, "In developing this technology, we hope to set the foundation for even more rapid global development of vaccines, at lower doses, in a pain- and anxiety-free manner."
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Toward a Smarter Electronic Health Record
MIT News
Adam Zewe
September 23, 2021
A system developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center aims to improve the electronic health record by combining machine learning and human-computer interaction. The MedKnowts system automatically displays customized, patient-specific medical records, offers autocomplete for clinical terms, and auto-populates fields with patient information, among other things. Said MIT's Luke Murray, "[Doctors] will look through a medications page and only focus on the medications that are relevant to the current conditions. We are helping to do that process automatically and hopefully move some things out of the doctor's head so they have more time to think about the complex part, which is determining what is wrong with the patient and coming up with a treatment plan."
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Robots Scurry Through Underground Scavenger Hunt to Advance Technology
Investor's Business Daily
Patrick Seitz
September 24, 2021
Eight teams directed robots through an underground scavenger hunt in the final segment of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)'s Subterranean Challenge in Louisville, KY. The competition was designed to evaluate systems for use in underground search-and-rescue missions and military reconnaissance in dark, dangerous surroundings. DARPA's Timothy Chung said the objective was for robots to supply "actionable situational awareness in unknown underground environments" before humans go in. Participants were judged on how many key artifacts they could identify in an hour over a course winding through a cavern; the international Cerberus team earned the $2-million first-place prize for finding the most relevant objects in the shortest amount of time.
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States at Disadvantage in Race to Recruit Cybersecurity Pros
Associated Press
Kathleen Foody
September 25, 2021
U.S. states face a shortage of cybersecurity professionals and lack the deep pockets to compete with federal, global, and specialized cybersecurity companies. State governments are increasingly targeted for the data contained within their agencies and computer networks that is vital to critical infrastructure. Although the federal government and individual states have started training programs, competitions, and scholarships to cultivate more cybersecurity pros, such efforts may not pay off for years. Drew Schmitt at cybersecurity firm GuidePoint Security said state and local governments cannot compete with private organizations in terms of salaries. Michael Hamilton with the PISCES Project said state governments can nurture cybersecurity pros, but often end up "getting into the fistfight with all the others that want to hire these people and losing."
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Quantum Cryptography Records with Higher-Dimensional Photons
TU Wein (Austria)
September 21, 2021
A new type of quantum cryptography protocol developed by researchers at Austria's Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) speeds up the generation of quantum cryptographic keys and makes them more robust against interference. With the new protocol, photon pairs can be generated at eight different points in a special crystal, and each can move along eight different paths, or several paths at the same time. TU Wien's Marcus Huber said, "The space of possible quantum states becomes much larger. The photon can no longer be described by a point in two dimensions; mathematically, it now exists in eight dimensions." The researchers set a record in entanglement-based quantum cryptography key generation at 8,307 bits per second and over 2.5 bits per photon pair.
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Simple Make-Up Tips Can Help You Avoid Facial Recognition Software
New Scientist
Chris Stokel-Walker
September 24, 2021
Researchers at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev developed artificial intelligence software that can provide makeup advice to foil facial recognition systems. Tests showed the software's recommendations tricked real-world facial recognition systems 98.8% of the time, with the success rate in identifying women wearing its recommended makeup declining from 42.6% to 0.9%, and from 52.5% to 1.5% for men. The adversarial machine learning system identifies which elements of a person's face are considered unique by facial recognition systems and highlights them on a digital heat map, which is used to determine where makeup can be applied to change the person's perceived face shape. The system recommends only natural makeup hues, so people potentially could protect their privacy without drawing attention to themselves.
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Finding the Needles in a Haystack of High-Dimensional Datasets
University of Groningen (Netherlands)
September 23, 2021
An algorithm developed by computer scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands enables the smallest, most relevant subset of features to be selected from high-dimensional datasets. The "FeatBoost" algorithm allows for faster, more scalable analysis, more affordable data acquisition and storage, and improved explainability in the interaction between the selected features. Said the University of Groningen's Ahmad Alsahaf, "We use a decision tree-based model to select the most relevant features. We subsequently create and evaluate a classification model using the selected features so far. Any samples that are wrongly classified will be given more emphasis in determining the next set of most relevant features, a process called boosting. These steps are repeated until the performance of the classification model cannot improve any further."
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For Self-Driving Cars, the Hot New Technology Is Radar
The Wall Street Journal
Christopher Mims
September 25, 2021
Radar is one of the most popular new technologies for next-generation auto-safety systems, with hardware and software companies incorporating it into their products. Intel subsidiary MobilEye is developing chips equipped with radar antennas, while General Motors has invested in Oculii, a math-and-software startup that configures signals from automotive radar systems through machine learning. Software firm MathWorks is developing algorithms that enable automakers to combine data from radar and other sensors into an accurate picture of a vehicle's surroundings. Oculii's technology upgrades the resolution of radar images by changing the waveform of radar signal transmissions from the car; MobilEye said its systems leverage artificial intelligence software to process the noisy signals received by chips to identify pedestrians.
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Peering into the Moon's Shadows with AI
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany)
September 23, 2021
A research team led by Germany's Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research has generated the highest-resolution images so far of 17 craters in the Moon's polar regions that never receive sunlight. These craters could be targeted by future lunar missions because they may contain frozen water. The researchers generated images at 1-2 meters per pixel using a novel image processing method and taking advantage of sunlight reflected from nearby hills. The HORUS (Hyper-effective nOise Removal U-net Software) machine learning algorithm can clean up noisy images using over 70,000 calibration images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter taken on the dark side of the Moon, along with information about camera temperature and the spacecraft's trajectory. Said Ben Moseley at the U.K.’s University of Oxford, "With the help of the new HORUS images, it is now possible to understand the geology of lunar shadowed regions much better than before."
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Research Finds Security Flaws in Apps for Popular Smart Home Devices
Florida Institute of Technology
Adam Lowenstein
September 23, 2021
Researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology discovered "critical cryptographic flaws" in the smartphone companion apps of 16 popular smart home devices. The researchers performed "man-in-the-middle" attacks on 20 Internet of Things (IoT) devices and found that 16 device vendors have not implemented security measures to prevent attackers from intercepting IoT communications. Affected devices identified include the Amazon Echo, Blink camera, Google Home camera, Hue lights, Lockly lock, Momentum camera, Nest camera, NightOwl doorbell, Roku TV, Schlage lock, Sifely lock, SimpliSafe alarm, SmartThings lock, UltraLoq lock, and Wyze camera, among others. The researchers found that Arlo, Geeni, TP-Link, and Ring devices were not susceptible to these attacks.
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Light Computes Any Desired Linear Transform Without Digital Processor
UCLA California NanoSystems Institute
September 24, 2021
Engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)'s California NanoSystems Institute have enabled all-optical computation of arbitrary linear transforms using deep learning-based design. An all-optical processor manipulates optical waves using spatially-engineered diffractive surfaces, and computes any desired linear transform as light passes through its surfaces. This ensures the computation's completion at the speed of light, with input light transmitted through the diffractive surfaces; the processors only need to consume the illumination light. The research team’s analyses indicate this approach can accurately synthesize any arbitrary linear transformation between an input and output plane, and can improve the accuracy and diffraction efficiency of the resulting optical transforms by adding more diffractive surfaces.
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World Premiere for Virtual Laser Lab 'FemtoPro'
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (Germany)
September 24, 2021
The femtoPro virtual reality (VR) laser laboratory can model optical setups in real time and facilitate eye-safe training for operating short-pulse lasers. Developed over two years by scientists at Germany's Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) of Würzburg, the first version of femtoPro will premier publicly on Sept. 28 at the Highlights der Physik exhibition. Femtopro users wear VR goggles and manipulate optical elements on a VR laser table, ensuring intuitive swapping of the coarse and fine positioning of mirrors, lenses, iris apertures, or other devices. These components' effects on the laser beam are calculated and displayed in real time. JMU's Sebastian von Mammen said, "In order to realize an interactive learning lab for such optical systems in VR, we had to accelerate the necessary calculations so that they run in real time on a commercially available consumer VR platform."
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