Welcome to the January 18, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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How World Economic Forum Plans to Bring Leaders Together in the Metaverse
Time
Andrew R. Chow
January 17, 2023
The World Economic Forum (WEF) intends to unveil a metaverse-based meeting ground called the Global Collaboration Village at the Davos 2023 conference this week, ahead of a full deployment. The virtual village is modeled after a Swiss town, where leaders can interact as avatars, either through virtual reality tools like Oculus headsets or via phone or laptop. The village is being constructed using Microsoft Mesh, an immersive upgrade of Microsoft Teams. Meta and the International Monetary Fund are among the partners WEF's Klaus Schwab has lined up to populate the village by providing buildings to showcase products. Schwab hopes the environment will function as a gathering place for Davos' stakeholders, extending the event from a one-week conference to a year-round program.
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COVID Calculations Spur Solution to Old Problem in Computer Science
University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
January 16, 2023
Joachim Kock at Denmark's University of Copenhagen solved a 30-year-old computer science problem while attempting to calculate the outlook for the COVID-19 epidemic. The problem involves complex systems with interdependent components, which are modeled mathematically via Petri nets. In modeling the epidemic's progression, Kock faced the challenge of unifying a serial Petri net approach that treats processes as sequences of events with a graphical approach for outlining interdependent components and events. Kock said the solution entailed modifying a Petri net's definition to add information, "by allowing parallel arrows, rather than just counting them and writing a number." Added Kock, "One is amply rewarded as it becomes possible to combine the two approaches so that the advantages of both can be obtained simultaneously."
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JavaScript, Java, Python Skills Top Demand
InfoWorld
Paul Krill
January 14, 2023
Technology hiring platforms CodinGame and CoderPad predicted coding skills in JavaScript, Java, and Python will be most in demand from developers this year, even as demand for programmers proficient in TypeScript, Swift, Scala, Kotlin, and Go is expected to exceed supply. CodinGame-CoderPad's The State of Tech Hiring in 2023 report surveyed 14,000 professionals and found Node.js, React, and .NET Core are the development frameworks they know best and are in greatest demand. A third of responding developers said they feel more secure in their jobs than they did last year. Web development, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and game development are the three technical skills survey respondents said they want to learn most, while recruiters said they most value professionals skilled in Web development, devops, and database software development.
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Turning Robots into Skilled Waiters
Technical University of Munich (Germany)
January 16, 2023
Researchers at Germany's Technical University of Munich (TUM) adopted the pendulum's underlying mathematics to develop a model that could improve robots' drinks-serving skills. The researchers embedded the dynamics of a spherical pendulum into a robot arm's control software, which limits the machine's movements according to basic geometric principles. They also incorporated the proper angles, speeds, and accelerations into the model. As a result, TUM's Luis Figueredo said, the robot arm can grip, raise, and rock a glass filled to the brim with water without spilling a drop. "And it does it faster and more safely than a person," Figueredo added.
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Why Software Developer Is the No. 1 Job of 2023
U.S. News & World Report
Janica Ingram
January 10, 2023
U.S. News & World Report's 100 Best Jobs Rankings ranks software developer as the top job this year, up four spots from last year. Experts cite the importance of software to leverage emerging technologies, a global shortage of technologists, and the need for businesses to keep pace with this field. Software developers also play a central role when companies implement technological upgrades. Said Carnegie Mellon University's Thomas Longstaff, "Software development as a career is the best place for creative people to invent this future. The excitement of creating capability that changes the lives of people for the better makes a software career very attractive."
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Exxon Mobil Accurately Predicted Warming Since 1970s
Associated Press
Seth Borenstein; Cathy Bussewitz
January 12, 2023
Researchers at Harvard University and Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found scientists at oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil accurately forecast global warming since the 1970s, despite the company's contradictory public statements. The Exxon-funded researchers employed more than a dozen computer models that predicted warming with equal or better precision than federal and academic scientists. Between 63% and 83% of their projections aligned with strict standards for accuracy and predicted correctly that world temperature would increase about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) each decade. Harvard's Naomi Oreskes said the "astonishing" accuracy of the forecasts is equaled by Exxon's Mobil's hypocrisy, "because so much of the Exxon Mobil disinformation for so many years ... was the claim that climate models weren't reliable."
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Program Teaches U.S. Air Force Personnel the Fundamentals of AI
MIT News
Adam Zewe
January 11, 2023
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers assessing a program for teaching U.S. Air Force (USAF) staff the basics of artificial intelligence (AI) found the approach effective and well-received by employees. MIT Open Learning specialists used existing AI educational content and resources to craft a curriculum for USAF leaders, developers, and users, and produced more experimental courses for Air and Space Forces leaders. The researchers assessing the results of the program found participants responded well to hands-on learning and preferred asynchronous, time-efficient learning to fit their schedules. They also favored a team-based, learning-through-making experience, but desired more professional and soft skills-oriented content.
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Widespread Logic Controller Flaw Raises the Specter of Stuxnet
Ars Technica
Lily Hay Newman
January 11, 2023
Siemens has disclosed that a vulnerability in its SIMATIC S7-1500 series of programmable logic controllers could allow attackers to install malicious firmware and assume full control of the devices. Red Balloon Security researchers discovered the vulnerability, which is the result of a basic error in the cryptography's implementation. However, because the scheme is physically burned onto a dedicated ATECC CryptoAuthentication chip, a software patch cannot fix the vulnerability. Siemens recommended customers assess "the risk of physical access to the device in the target deployment" and implement "measures to make sure that only trusted personnel have access to the physical hardware."
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Canada Launches National Quantum Strategy to Create Jobs, Advance Quantum Technologies
Government of Canada
January 13, 2023
On Jan. 13, Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry François-Philippe Champagne announced the launch of Canada's National Quantum Strategy to enhance and expand the country's global quantum technology leadership. With a commitment of C$360 million (about US$268 million), the strategy aims to make Canada an international leader in continued development, implementation, and use of quantum technologies; establish a national secure quantum communications network and post-quantum cryptography support; and support domestic developers and early adopters of new quantum sensing technologies. In addition, the National Research Council of Canada will expand its Internet of Things: Quantum Sensors Challenge program and launch an Applied Quantum Computing Challenge program to turn quantum science and research into economically beneficial commercial innovations adopted by Canadian businesses.
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3D Printing Reaches New Heights with Two-Story Home
Reuters
Evan Garcia
January 12, 2023
A massive three-dimensional (3D) printer built what is thought to be the first 3D-printed two-story home in the U.S. Weighing more than 12 tons, the machine printed concrete layers into a 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom home in Houston, TX, which architect Leslie Lok at design studio Hannah said would take 330 hours to complete. The residence is a two-year collaboration between Hannah, Peri 3D Construction, and construction engineering firm Cive. Cive's Hikmat Zerbe said he hopes the 3D printing method will accelerate the construction of multifamily homes at less cost.
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Tool Detects Higher-Order Phenomena in Real-World Data
EPFL (Switzerland)
Celia Luterbacher
January 16, 2023
Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), Austria's Central European University, and Italy's CENTAI Institute have created "a method to detect and infer higher-order information from real data," according to EPFL's Enrico Amico. The network analysis tool has detected interactions between multiple factors in real-world datasets on brain activity, stock price fluctuations, and 20th-century epidemics, beyond the capability of standard pairwise statistics. Amico explained each time series measurement functioned as a type of three-dimensional data Polaroid, or a snapshot of the spatial arrangement of the given system. Amico said, "We are able to use ancient mathematics in new ways thanks to modern computing power, and access to big data."
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Researchers Develop Process for Creating Custom Enzymes
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
January 13, 2023
Researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a computational method for creating custom enzymes. With a focus on enzymes able to break down the cell wall component xylan, the researchers developed an algorithm to break down enzyme sequences into multiple fragments and generate dozens of mutations, to increase the compatibility of the various parts. The algorithm then produced numerous combinations of these fragments and identified the most stable encoded enzyme sequences. The researchers created 1 million enzymes, 3,000 of which were identified as active. After developing an activity predictor based on the 10 enzyme traits with the greatest potential and repeating the xylan experiment, the algorithm identified about 9,000 enzymes able to break down xylan and 3,000 more able to break down cellulose.
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Computer-Generated Models Mimic Human Recognition at Supersonic Speed
San Diego Supercomputer Center
Kimberly Mann Bruch
January 12, 2023
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers conducted research to process data and train models to find new DNA mosaic recognition techniques using the San Diego Supercomputer Center's Triton Shared Computing Cluster (TSCC) as a testbed. The researchers found computer-generated models can emulate human recognition at vastly greater speeds. Explained UCSD's Xiaoxu Yang, "TSCC allows us to plot models generated by a computer recognition program called DeepMosaic, and these simulations allowed us to realize that once we trained the supercomputer program to identify abnormal areas of cells, we were able to quickly examine thousands of mosaic variants from each human genome — this would not be possible if done with the human eye."
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