Welcome to the September 23, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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'Father of Quantum Computing' to Receive $3-Million Physics Prize
The Guardian (U.K.)
Ian Sample
September 22, 2022
Theoretical physicist David Deutsch will share this year's $3-million Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics with three other recipients for their contributions to quantum computing. Deutsch became known as the "father of quantum computing" by proposing an exotic machine to test the existence of parallel universes; this cleared a path for the quantum computers currently under development. "It was a thought experiment that involved a computer, and that computer had some quantum components in it," he explained. "Today it would be called a universal quantum computer." Deutsch advanced quantum computing with descriptions of quantum bits, and wrote the first quantum algorithm to best its classical counterpart.
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3D Printing Drones Work Like Bees
Imperial College London (U.K.)
Caroline Brogan
September 21, 2022
An international team of scientists led by the U.K.'s Imperial College London (ICL) and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) developed a fleet of three-dimensional (3D) printing drones that can build and repair structures in flight. The bee-inspired Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM) fleet operates cooperatively from a blueprint, adjusting on the fly. The fleet includes material-depositing BuilDrones and quality-controlling ScanDrones, as well as a controller that monitors their progress and can intervene based on real-time feedback from the drones. Said ICL's Mirko Kovac, "We believe our fleet of drones could help reduce the costs and risks of construction in the future, compared to traditional manual methods."
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Autonomous, Wireless Robots Could Dance on a Human Hair
TechCrunch
Devin Coldewey
September 21, 2022
Cornell University researchers have created wireless robots small enough to sit on a human hair that operate autonomously by using light as a power source. The Antbots combine a photovoltaic cell, an integrated circuit for controlling and directing power, and hinged legs to provide locomotion. The researchers manufactured the Antbots' integrated circuits using a 180-nanometer silicon fabrication process. The researchers said the Antbots could be employed for environmental cleanup and monitoring, targeted drug delivery, cellular monitoring or stimulation, or microscopic surgery.
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Chaos Theory Can Be Used to Detect Diving Patterns in Marine Life
The Jerusalem Post
Sara Weinstein
September 21, 2022
Evgeny A. Podolskiy and Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen at Japan's Hokkaido University used chaos theory to analyze the diving patterns of marine animals. The researchers tracked an electronically tagged narwhal for 83 days, and analyzed the data with chaos theory equations to find the cause of odd diving and surface-resting behaviors. Their analysis revealed previously unseen behaviors indicating a daily pattern of activity that changes seasonally. Said Podolskiy, "Extending this effort to all observed species may enable systematic and generalized investigations, as recently proposed for chaotic dynamic systems. This may allow a dynamic view of life, not only in the ocean.”
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HiPerGator Simulations 'Solve Mother Nature' to Address Real-World Problems
University of Florida News
Eric Hamilton
September 20, 2022
University of Florida (UF) researchers reproduced the turbulence and complexity of thermal wall plumes using the university's HiPerGator supercomputer. The complexity of air movements long made it impossible to perform detailed simulations of hot air rising along a vertical surface, but the supercomputer enabled researchers to track air movements on the sub-millimeter level. The simulation utilized 125 of the HiPerGator AI cluster's 140 nodes, each of which hosts eight graphics processing units and 128 central processing units. Said UF's Sivaramakrishnan Balachandar, "Using computers, we solve Mother Nature, and what the computer simulation gives us is unprecedented access into all the details of what happens inside. With our simulation, we can go into the wall plume and see every nook and cranny."
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The Robots Are Here, and They Are Making You Fries
The Washington Post
Laura Reiley; Lee Powell
September 20, 2022
Fast-food restaurants are turning to robotic technology amid the prolonged labor shortage. Miso Robotic initially designed its Flippy robot to flip burgers, but made changes after restaurant executives said a more pressing need was for a robot that could handle the fryer station, where most workplace accidents happen. Fast-food chain Jack in the Box has installed a Flippy at its Chula Vista, CA, location at a cost of $5,000, plus $3,500 per month in rental fees. Miso Robotics also offers Skippy, a drink fulfillment robot, and Chippy, a robot that Chipotle plans to use for frying and seasoning tortilla chips. Mike Bell at Miso Robotics said, "We realized for a robotic solution to be a real solution for our customers, it had to have a really high customer return on investment, which meant it had to take a meaningful amount of labor off the table."
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Key Element for a Scalable Quantum Computer
Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany)
September 22, 2022
Physicists at German national research institution Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) and Germany’s RWTH Aachen University have taken a step toward realizing a scalable quantum computer by transferring electrons across several micrometers on a quantum chip. The researchers' goal is to combine elements of control electronics directly on the chip. Their solution, effectively a “quantum bus,” was able to transport an electron 5,000 times over a distance of 560 nanometers (2.8 millimeters) without major errors. The electrons were driven by simple control signals, which do not grow more complex over longer distances. Said FZJ’s Lars Schreiber, "We generate a potential wave on which the electrons simply surf over various sources of interference."
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New York AI Bias Law Prompts Uncertainty
The Wall Street Journal
Richard Vanderford
September 21, 2022
A law that goes into effect in New York City in January requires companies to audit their artificial intelligence (AI) hiring systems to assess whether they incorporate racial and gender biases. The law holds hiring companies liable for any biases and could impose fines for violations, but lacks clear guidelines for the AI audit process. While the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has not offered a timeline for when it will publish rules to implement the law, some companies already are taking steps to comply. Said Anthony Habayeb of AI governance software company Monitaur Inc., "Instead of waiting for someone to tell me what to do…I built controls around these applications because I know like with any software, things can and do go wrong."
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15-Year-Old Python Bug Allows Code Execution in 350k Projects
BleepingComputer
Ionut Ilascu
September 21, 2022
An unpatched 15-year-old bug in the Python programming language could affect more than 350,000 open-source repositories, and could lead to code execution. The path traversal vulnerability, disclosed in 2007, resides in the Python tarfile package, and can allow hackers to overwrite arbitrary files. The flaw exists because the code in the extract function in Python's tarfile module trusts data in the TarInfo object "and joins the path that is passed to the extract function and the name in the TarInfo object." Analyst Charles McFarland at extended detection and response solutions provider Trellix rediscovered the bug while probing another security issue. No reports indicate the bug has been exploited in attacks, although it remains a threat in the software supply chain.
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Skills Gap at All-Time High Despite Increase in Computer Science Students
ITPro
Bobby Hellard
September 22, 2022
Global technology company OKdo found the U.K.'s computing skills gap is at a record high, despite growing student enrollment in computer science (CS) courses. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service saw increases in applications for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and undergraduate CS courses this year, while U.K. technology entrepreneur network Tech Nation said tech vacancies are currently at a 10-year high worldwide, up 191% from 2020 in Britain alone. OKdo also cited a persistent gender gap, with nearly four times more current male GCSE CS enrollees than female. Meanwhile, Paul Rivers at U.K. automation firm Guidance Automation said the government appears to prioritize automation and robotics, but has not committed to cultivating skills in these fields at the education level.
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Motion Planner Promises Wheeled Robots That Bypass Obstacles Faster
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia)
September 20, 2022
Researchers at Russia's Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) have enabled wheeled robots to circumvent obstacles faster and more naturally in crowded settings via a new motion planner. Skoltech's Mikhail Kurenkov said the motion planner coordinates with non-omnidirectional robots, and applies the neural field concept to two-dimensional motion planning. Neural fields store values for each point in space and define things like "what the distance to the nearest obstacle is," or "to what extent that point is empty or occupied by obstacles." The new approach outperformed a conventional Gaussian process motion planner and a rapidly exploring random tree algorithm by building shorter and smoother trajectories, and requiring fewer cumbersome turns in place.
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Open-Source Software That Lasts a Thousand Years?
ZDNet
Liam Tung
September 21, 2022
GitHub has completed the construction of its Arctic Code Vault, a 21-terabyte snapshot of all public software repositories mainly encoded in quick response codes and located 250 meters (820 feet) within a mountain in Svalbard, Norway. The GitHub Archive Program's Jon Evans said, "Our hope is that by storing and indexing millions of repositories, we have captured a valuable cross-section of the world of modern software." The archive is designed to last a millennium, with the snapshot stored on more than 180 film reels. A nearly 1.5-ton steel box contains the archive, and is decorated with artificial intelligence-generated etchings to entice future generations. Evans said the vault could potentially help someone who may need software that is otherwise lost, and also will serve as a historical record.
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