Welcome to the August 24, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Top Programming Languages 2022
IEEE Spectrum
Stephen Cass
August 23, 2022
IEEE Spectrum's 2022 ranking of the top programming languages found Python continued to be the most popular language, with C close behind. Both Java and Javascript also continued to be popular, supported by the growing complexity of websites and in-developed the ranking based on “nine metrics that we think are good proxies for measuring what languages people are programming in.” In looking just at metrics from the IEEE Job Site and CareerBuilder, the publication found SQL was the programming language most frequently mentioned in job advertisements on those sites, followed by Java,Python, and JavaScript.
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AI Model Can Detect Parkinson's from Breath Patterns
MIT News
Alex Ouyang
August 22, 2022
A multi-institutional group of researchers created an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can detect Parkinson's disease from a person's breathing patterns. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Yuzhe Yang and Yuan trained the AI model, which is a neural network, to determine the disease's presence from nocturnal breathing, and to rate its severity and track its progression over time. It was implemented in a device that emits radio signals, analyzes their reflections from its surroundings, and extracts the subject's breathing patterns without bodily contact; the researchers fed those patterns to the neural network, which then evaluates Parkinson's passively.
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Your Next Wooden Chair Could Arrive Flat, Then Dry into a 3D Shape
American Chemical Society
August 23, 2022
Researchers at Israel's Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a process in which flat wooden shapes produced by three-dimensional (3D) printers can be programmed to transform into complex 3D shapes. The researchers used a water-based “ink” comprised of wood-waste microparticles and plant-based binders in the printers; they found the pathway of the ink, print speed, and stacking of printed layers determined the final shape of the printed piece as its moisture content evaporates, and that these factors can be controlled to produce different shapes. Said Eran Sharon, one of the project’s principal investigators, “We hope to show that under some conditions we can make these elements responsive—to humidity, for example—when we want to change the shape of an object again.”
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China's Aviation Regulator Sets Goals for Drone Industry
Reuters
Brenda Goh
August 22, 2022
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has released a proposed roadmap for developing its civilian drone industry, detailing goals to be achieved by 2025, 2030, and 2035. CAAC said it plans to use drones in inner-city logistics and long-haul goods transport, and is calling for better regulations and expanded airspace capacity for civilian drones. The agency said the goal of the plan, which is open for public comment until Sept. 5, is to "enhance China's international competitiveness in the field of unmanned aviation as well as the country's right to speak on international civil aviation rules and standards...and reach the goal of becoming a global civil aviation power."
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Education Ministry to Nurture 1 Million Skilled Workers for Digital Industry
The Korea Herald (South Korea)
Im Eun-byel
August 22, 2022
South Korea's Ministry of Education said it will train 1 million skilled workers for the digital industry—which includes artificial intelligence, blockchain, general software, big data, metaverse, cloud, Internet of Things, 5G and 6G, cybersecurity, and more—by 2026. The government plans to accomplish this by doubling information technology curriculum hours for elementary and secondary schools, and requiring schools to offer computer programming language education. In addition, student quota restrictions on university departments related to digital technology will be eliminated, and the number of graduate schools with artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cybersecurity, and big data programs will be increased. The ministry also plans to launch boot camp programs offering "micro degrees" next year that combine digital technology with other majors, like humanities and social studies.
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Spatial-Network Modeling May Offer Path to Monitoring Political Hotspots
Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
Matt Swayne
August 18, 2022
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) say an enhanced computer model may help scientists better forecast maneuvers by political factions and pinpoint where they might engage with other groups, as an early warning system for conflict. The researchers suggest incorporating a variable called a dyadic predicted distance into a statistical model could more accurately predict such movements. They constructed this variable—the location of two or more parties from each other—via an algorithm that could project the whereabouts of moving actors. The researchers said the model also factors in political groups' average general location, recent movements, locations where they interact, and the number of events happening in each location.
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Eight-Year-Old Linux Kernel Vulnerability Uncovered
The Hacker News
Ravie Lakshmanan
August 22, 2022
Northwestern University researchers have discovered an eight-year-old vulnerability in the Linux kernel, dubbed DirtyCred, that exploits a previous unknown flaw to escalate user privileges to their maximum. The researchers described DirtyCred as “a kernel exploitation concept that swaps unprivileged kernel credentials with privileged ones to escalate privilege. Instead of overwriting any critical data fields on kernel heap, DirtyCred abuses the heap memory reuse mechanism to get privileged." They added that it "is like the dirty pipe that could bypass all the kernel protections, [but] our exploitation method could even demonstrate the ability to escape the container actively that Dirty Pipe is not capable of."
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Inexpensive Wi-Fi System Improves Fire Detection
University of New South Wales (Australia)
Neil Martin
August 23, 2022
A fire detection system developed by researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales Sydney (UNSW Sydney) monitors changes in Wi-Fi signals as they pass through the air to detect changes in air temperature and density due to smoke and various gases generated during a fire. The system uses artificial intelligence to look for distinctive patterns in the signal data to determine whether a fire actually is occurring. Comprised of low-cost Wi-Fi transmitters and receivers, the system can trigger an alarm or automatic sprinkler system in the event of a real fire. Said UNSW Sydney's Aruna Seneviratne, "Existing specialized fire detection cameras can cost around $10,000 to buy, whereas our transmitters and receivers are $100 or even less."
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Oracle Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Tracking 5 Billion People
PC Magazine
Matthew Humphries
August 23, 2022
A class-action lawsuit against U.S. multinational technology company Oracle claims it tracks and collects personal information on billions of people, generating over $40 billion in annual revenue as a result. The suit alleges Oracle has breached statutes including the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act by collecting without permission data such as names, home addresses, emails, online and physical purchases, physical movements, income, interests and political views, and online activity. The suit's class representatives include Johnny Ryan of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, who said, "This is a Fortune 500 company on a dangerous mission to track where every person in the world goes, and what they do. We are taking this action to stop Oracle's surveillance machine."
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Faster Fish Tracking Through the Cloud
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Alexandra Freibott
August 23, 2022
An acoustic receiver created by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) transmits fish-tracking data to the cloud in near-real time, supplying timely information to dam operators and decision-makers. The receiver can wirelessly upload information to the cloud while deployed underwater along waterways. Edge computing minimizes the amount of transmitted data, with the receiver transferring data as fish swim by to an onshore modem for upload to the cloud every hour. Said PNNL's Daniel Deng, "Our ultimate goal is to try and provide real-time information on fish location and health, and this receiver is a big step towards that goal, providing hourly data updates to dam operators."
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Banning Anti-Vaccine Groups on Facebook May Move Users to Twitter
New Scientist
Chris Stokel-Walker
August 22, 2022
Prohibiting anti-vaccine groups from Facebook may just drive those users to other platforms to share their views. Columbia University's Tamar Mitts and colleagues tracked 160 Facebook groups with 100-plus members each discussing COVID-19 vaccines between April and September 2021, as well as 384 users who shared a Twitter link to any of the Facebook groups. Facebook shut down 36 groups, 25 for apparently sharing anti-vaccine content; with each shutdown, the Twitter users' anti-vaccine rhetoric rose by up to 20% in the month afterward versus the previous month. Mitts thinks Facebook's push to limit exposure to anti-vaccine information on its platform failed to consider the effect such a limitation would have on other platforms.
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What Tech Reveals About Prehistoric Cephalopods
Smithsonian
Riley Black
August 22, 2022
Scientists used advanced visualization technology and micro computed tomography (CT) scans to gain insights about the prehistoric cephalopod Vampyronassa from fossils. Micro CT scans uncovered sections of the animal's internal organs, while Alison Rowe at France's Sorbonne University said its unique shape and sucker-attachment configuration of the organism "provides a small window on the diversity of character combinations that occurred in the Jurassic that are now lost." Meanwhile, University of Utah paleontologist David Peterman generated three-dimensional (3D) models of ammonoid shells and converted them into robots that mimic the extinct species' swimming behavior. "Thanks to computation advances and 3D prints, we were able to explore paleoecological and biomechanical questions with unprecedented levels of detail," he said.
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