Welcome to the February 13, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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More Than 30% of Girls in Tech Don't Become Tech Undergrads
Computer Weekly
Clare McDonald
February 10, 2023
A study by consulting firm McKinsey found 31% of schoolgirls in Europe studying information science, computer science, and technology do not continue with these subjects in university, and neither do the 18% of schoolgirls taking science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects. McKinsey estimated the number of girls taking STEM subjects falls 18% between school and university, and another 15% between university and the workplace. The firm found a lack of encouragement by teachers, peers, or parents, as well as conscious and unconscious bias, cause girls' interest and confidence in pursuing such subjects to flag. McKinsey suggests addressing workplace bias, focusing on retention, reskilling, and encouraging girls to pursue STEM classes could grow Europe's female tech workforce by 3.9 million in the next five years.
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Deep Learning for Quantum Sensing
SPIE Newsroom
February 7, 2023
Researchers at Italy's Sapienza University of Rome (SUR) and the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies developed and implemented a model-free quantum sensing framework within a reconfigurable integrated photonic platform. The researchers use the reinforcement learning algorithm to optimize multiple-parameter estimation, and integrate it with a deep neural network that updates the Bayesian posterior probability distribution following each measurement. They confirmed the protocol's augmented performance on experimental data in a resource-limited environment, realizing improved estimations compared to nonadaptive approaches. SUR's Fabio Sciarrino said, "The protocol developed by our team provides a significant step toward fully artificial intelligence-based quantum sensors."
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Croatian Restaurant Offers One-Pot Menu Cooked by Robotic Chef
Reuters
Antonio Bronic
February 10, 2023
At the BOTS&POTS Sci-Food bistro in Zagreb, Croatia, diners can choose from around 70 one-pot meals cooked by a robotic chef. The bistro's five GammaChef robots can make an entire one-pot meal from fresh ingredients, which are loaded into the devices by humans. The rest of the process, including adding oil and seasoning, is handled entirely by the robots. BOTS&POTS co-owner Hrvoje Bujas said, "We're considering expanding our business model via franchise. One such restaurant with five robots can be run by a single person. Our final goal is to create a 'no waiter, no chef, no cash' space where you order, get, and pay for food without human contact."
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Creating 3D Objects with Sound
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Germany)
Elisabeth Fuhry
February 9, 2023
Scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Medical Research, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Heidelberg University, and Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering have created a technique for assembling three-dimensional (3D) objects using ultrasound. The concept applies multiple acoustic holograms to generate pressure fields for printing solid particles, gel beads, and even biological cells. The method involves capturing particles and cells floating in water and configuring them into 3D objects. MPI’s Heiner Kremer, who produced the algorithm for optimizing the hologram, explained, "The digitization of an entire 3D object into ultrasound hologram fields is computationally very demanding and required us to come up with a new computation routine."
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Most Advanced Bay Area Earthquake Simulations Will Be Publicly Available
Berkeley Lab News Center
Aliyah Kovner
February 8, 2023
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) plan to release to the public the most accurate, detailed, and up-to-date earthquake simulations for the San Francisco Bay Area. The collaboration's simulation software, EQSIM, developed using Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) Summit supercomputer and Berkeley Lab's Perlmutter supercomputer, produces "ground motion simulations of unprecedented fidelity and unprecedented spatial coverage," according to Berkeley Lab's David McCallen. Said PEER's Khalid Mosalam, "The upcoming simulation-based dataset will be instrumental for facilitating deeper understanding of the hazard, performance, and overall resiliency of California, allowing officials to identify the infrastructure systems and structures that pose the largest risk in an effective and accurate manner, and properly allocate resources."
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3D Modeling Tool Recreates a Landscape's Digital Twin
Concordia University (Canada)
Patrick Lejtenyi
February 7, 2023
An automated framework developed by Charalambos Poullis and Qiao Chen at Canada's Concordia University can three-dimensionally (3D)-simulate large-scale landscapes. HybridFlow replicates an area's geometry, structure, and appearance from images captured by aircraft typically flying above 30,000 feet. The tool renders these images, which usually exceed 200 pixels each, into digital twins. Poullis explained, "This digital twin can be used in typical applications to navigate and explore different areas, as well as virtual tourism, games, films, and so on. More importantly, there are very impactful applications that can simulate processes in a secure and digital way. So, it can be used by stakeholders and authorities to simulate 'what-if' scenarios in cases of flooding or other natural disasters."
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Smart Microscopes Spot Fleeting Biology
Nature
Jyoti Madhusoodanan
February 7, 2023
Smart microscopes use adaptive optics and machine learning to delve deeply into tissues and to capture extremely fast biological processes without damaging samples. In 2021, Robert Prevedel and colleagues at Germany's European Molecular Biology Laboratory created a microscope that uses software to reconfigure deformable membranes in response to variations in samples, bending light to peer through surface structures. Ilaria Testa at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology mated a fluorescent wide-field microscope with stimulated emission depletion (STED) to image subcellular vesicles discharging calcium at neural synapses when neurons fire. Software switches the microscope to the higher-resolution STED mode when detecting fluorescence changes. Said Testa, "We're actually delegating something that the computer can do much better than a human."
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Virtual Tool for Treating Epilepsy
CORDIS
February 10, 2023
A virtual tool developed by researchers at the European Union-co-funded Human Brain Project (HBP) uses personalized modeling to help physicians more reliably pinpoint where epileptic seizures originate in patients' brains. The researchers used the open source The Virtual Brain simulation platform to model the spread of abnormal brain activity during seizures. A news item posted on the HBP website said the individualized brain models are generated from "individually measured anatomy, structural connectivity, and brain dynamics data." This basically produces a virtual epileptic patient to match the actual patient, with good precision in detecting target areas for surgery compared with state-of-the-art model-free methods. Researchers are testing the tool as a predictive surgical preparation instrument in a large-scale clinical trial.
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Sensors Built into Wearable Patches Could Signal the Future
Northumbria University (U.K.)
February 9, 2023
British and Chinese researchers have developed a wearable patch that can wirelessly transmit data via acoustic waves. Richard Fu at the U.K.'s Northumbria University, along with colleagues at China's Zhejiang University engineered the wearable sensor from flexible surface materials that can tolerate vibrations capable of transmitting and receiving information. Said Fu, “We feel it is a real breakthrough to have used a multifunctional and flexible sound wave device, operated based on electricity resulting from pressure and heat [piezoelectricity], for achieving integrated sensing, acoustic communication, and positioning functions.” Zhejiang’s Jin Xie said the acoustic waves’ low velocity enables direct acoustic ranging and positioning to enhance precision compared to those based on Bluetooth and radio-frequency identification (RFID).
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Researchers' 3D-Printed Models Help Preserve Endangered Languages
Interesting Engineering
Nergis Firtina
February 10, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s University College London (UCL) have leveraged three-dimensional (3D) printing to preserve ancient and endangered languages. Their method of producing 3D-printed objects is based on language patterns and syntax, with a focus on the evidential grammatical system. The researchers concentrated on the Amazonian language Tariana, in which speakers must explain the type of evidence being transmitted, with a hierarchy ranging from direct observation to information repeated from another person. To create a 3D shape, the researchers plotted the numerical values derived from evidential on the Z axis, the number of syllables on the Y axis, and the timeline on the X axis. Said UCL's Alex Pillen, "By producing the geometry of grammar in 3D, we allow people to have an immediate intuitive relationship to these languages that are under threat — or that might disappear."
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Sports Illustrated Publisher Taps AI to Generate Articles, Story Ideas
The Wall Street Journal
Alexandra Bruell
February 3, 2023
Sports Illustrated publisher Arena Group is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to help produce articles and suggest story ideas through partnerships with AI startups Jasper and Nota, as well as ChatGPT creator OpenAI. The company said AI had already been used to compose articles in Men's Journal; a disclosure at the top of the articles describes them as "a curation of expert advice from Men's Fitness, using deep-learning tools for retrieval combined with OpenAI's large language model for various stages of the workflow." Arena Group's Ross Levinsohn said AI will not replace content creation but will give authors "real efficiency and real access to the archives we have." He also said AI might help suggest emerging topics on social media for journalists to investigate.
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Training Algorithms to Make Fair Decisions Using Private Data
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Julia Cohen
February 7, 2023
Researchers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering have augmented group fairness in federated learning via their FairFed algorithm. Each individual entity debiases their algorithm using local population data to estimate a local fairness metric. They then enhance local debiasing performance by assessing the global model's fairness on their local datasets and working with the server to tweak its model aggregation weights. The researchers found FairFed beat state-of-the-art fair federated learning frameworks under high data heterogeneity, ensuring the results yield fairer performance for different demographic groups. Viterbi's Shen Yan said, "FairFed provides an efficient and effective approach to improve federated learning systems."
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