Welcome to the February 17, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
Please note: In observance of the U.S. Presidents' Day holiday, TechNews will
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Underwater Robot Helps Explain Antarctic Glacier's Retreat
Cornell Chronicle
James Dean
February 15, 2023
An international research team led by Cornell University scientists used the Icefin underwater robot to observe the dynamics of a retreating Antarctic glacier. The researchers remotely routed the robot through a hole drilled into the ice to record close-up views of the point near the grounding line where Thwaites Glacier meets the Amundsen Sea. The Icefin robot is equipped with thrusters, cameras, mapping tools, and sensors for reading ocean current speeds, temperature, salinity, and oxygen levels. The robot's observations yielded insights into the melting processes at glaciers exposed to relatively warm ocean water. Cornell's Peter Washam said Icefin is "showing us that this system is very complex and requires a rethinking of how the ocean is melting the ice, especially in a location like Thwaites."
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3D-Printed Organs May Soon Be a Reality
Fortune
Carolyn Barber
February 15, 2023
Progress is being made in the development of three-dimensionally (3D)-bioprinted organs, with Tal Dvir at Israel's Tel Aviv University anticipating transplantation-viable organs to become available in a decade. Milestones to date have included Poland-based researchers’ bioprinting of a functional prototype of a pancreas that realized stable blood flow in pigs, and U.S.-based United Therapeutics’ 3D-printing of a human lung scaffold. Stanford University's Mark Skylar Scott said, "The ability to place different cell types in precise locations to build up a complex tissue, and the capability of integrating blood vessels that can deliver the necessary oxygen and nutrients to keep cells alive, are two [3D] techniques that are revolutionizing tissue engineering."
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App Helps Parents Visualize Child's Heart Disorder
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Beth Hart
February 13, 2023
Students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Carle Illinois College of Medicine have developed an app that aims to help parents make better treatment decisions by allowing them to visualize their child's congenital heart defect (CHD). The app uses three-dimensional (3D) images and a 3D block diagram of the heart to show how defects impact the heart's function. It can be customized to show defects of different sizes and a combination of heart defects. Carle Illinois College of Medicine's Prachi Keni said, "We believe this app will allow parents to review and refer back to information about their child's specific diagnosis, ultimately decreasing the frequency of repetitive in-office explanations by the specialist."
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CS Majors Will Earn Less This Year After Tech Layoffs
Bloomberg
Paulina Cachero
February 15, 2023
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) forecasts a year-over-year 4% drop in starting salaries for 2023 graduates with bachelor's degrees in computer science (CS) to $72,843. Graduates in majors like math and engineering should only see salary gains of 0.7%, likely due to "the recent recalibration among tech companies, which have traditionally offered top dollar," according to NACE's Shawn VanDerziel. Job loss tracker Layoffs.fyi said technology firms have cut more than 100,000 jobs since Jan. 1 due to decelerating growth. Although NACE expects CS majors will be offered the second-highest average starting salaries after engineering grads, it predicts 2023 grads will start out, on average, at the same wage level as 2021 graduates.
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Software Assembles Complete Genome Sequences On-Demand
National Human Genome Research Institute
Anna Rogers
February 16, 2023
The Verkko software created by U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers can construct complete genome sequences from diverse species. Sergey Koren at NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) said Verkko automates the process used in last year's assembly of the first gapless human genome sequence by the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium. The consortium took years to manually assemble the remaining 8% to 10% of the sequence, which Verkko can accomplish in days. The software pieces together small fragments to produce partial components, then compares the constructed regions with larger fragments; the latter become a scaffold for arranging the more detailed regions into a complete sequence. NHGRI's Adam Phillippy said, "Verkko can democratize generating gapless genome sequences," and "will make assembling complete genome sequences as affordable and routine as possible."
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Israeli Firm Deploys Robots to Speed Online Shopping
France 24
February 15, 2023
Israeli firm 1MRobotics has built a 320-square-foot storefront in Tel Aviv, where staff have been replaced by robots to speed up online shopping fulfillment. The robots can maneuver around the small space, grabbing and packaging items. The building is equipped with a streetside hatch where couriers and shoppers can pick up online orders. 1MRobotics' Eyal Yair said a small robot-staffed storefront is more economical for businesses that handle dozens of orders a day. Yair said meeting increased demand for fast order processing and deliveries "requires small warehouses, very close to the clients, and at the end of the day, these small warehouses have to be automated." Yair said the robots and the custom containers that serve as mini-warehouses will soon be deployed in Brazil for an alcohol shop, in Germany for minimarkets, and in South Africa for a cellphone company.
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Deep Learning Tool Boosts X-Ray Imaging Resolution, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Performance
UNSW Sydney Newsroom (Australia)
Neil Martin
February 15, 2023
A deep learning algorithm developed by researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales, Sydney (UNSW Sydney) converts low-resolution micro X-ray computed tomography images of hydrogen fuel cells into higher-resolution imagery. The DualEDSR algorithm can produce a three-dimensional model of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) from the X-ray image, while using a high-resolution scan of a small segment to extrapolate data. UNSW Sydney's Ying Da Wang said DualEDSR improves the field of view approximately 100-fold compared to the high-resolution image. The researchers think the algorithm could enable manufacturers to boost PEMFC efficiency by improving management of cell-generated water.
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The Whale Prosthetics Blaze Trails with Technology
The Los Angeles Times
Bob Strauss
February 15, 2023
Makeup artist Adrien Morot used digital sculpting and three-dimensional (3D) printing to transform actor Brendan Fraser into the 600-pound protagonist of the movie The Whale. Morot sculpted the body suit on a computer over a scan of Fraser; resin-based 3D-printed positives of digital body parts with and without the sculptures were cured via ultraviolet light. Artists then injected silicone between negative casts of the sculptures and the positives, creating highly realistic prosthetics that bore the weight of water and moved like human flesh. Morot said, "I think The Whale is a perfect vehicle to bring [3D-printed prosthetics] out, and hopefully people will remember [the process] in the future.”
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Text Generators May Plagiarize Beyond 'Copy, Paste'
Penn State News
Francisco Tutella
February 16, 2023
A team led by researchers at Pennsylvania State University found plagiarism to be rife among large language models that produce text in response to user prompts. The researchers focused on "copy and paste" plagiarism, paraphrasing, and tapping the main idea without correct attribution. They built and tested an automated plagiarism detection pipeline against OpenAI's GPT-2 language model. Tests of pre-trained language models and fine-tuned language models uncovered all three types of plagiarism, whose frequency increased as the models' training dataset and parameters grew. The researchers also found fine-tuned language models tended to produce less verbatim plagiarism but committed more paraphrasing and idea plagiarism.
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Amazon's Zoox Tests Robotaxi on Public Road with Employees as Passengers
Reuters
Abhirup Roy
February 13, 2023
Zoox, Amazon's self-driving vehicle unit, successfully tested a robotaxi on a public road. The Feb. 11 test featured employees as passengers for a one-mile trip between two Zoox buildings in Foster City, CA. The test was part of the unit's launch of a free employee shuttle service. Zoox's Aicha Evans said, "Putting the vehicle on (an) open public road and validating our approach to all of the different requirements, including regulatory, is a big step and we would not have done it unless internally we were already looking at the line of sight for going commercial." Zoox's robotaxi was built as a fully autonomous vehicle from scratch, rather than a retrofit of an existing car. The vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, can fit four passengers.
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Securing Supply Chains with Quantum Computing
Sandia Labs News
February 14, 2023
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories developed a new framework for programming quantum computers that could solve massive optimization problems and help secure the global supply chain. With the new framework, called FALQON (Feedback-based Algorithm for Quantum Optimization), optimization is performed by a quantum computer rather than a classical computer. The idea is that the quantum computer will adapt its structure repeatedly as it completes a calculation. Said Sandia's Alicia Magann, "After I run the first layer of the algorithm, I measure the qubits and get some information from them. I feed that information back to my algorithm and use that to define the second layer. I then run the second layer, measure the qubits again, feed that information back for the third layer, and so on and so forth." Currently, the framework can be tested only on problems that can be solved by classical computers.
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Software Gives Police Real-Time Access to 911 Calls
Government Technology
David Aaro
February 14, 2023
California-based HigherGround's Live911 software allows police to access 911 emergency calls in real time, reducing their response time. Officers can hear every detail of an incoming call for help through the software, which also pinpoints the caller's location on a map via global positioning system technology. Officers can establish an area or geofence around their patrol car so they only receive calls from within that area. Brookhaven, GA, police officer Quentin Brown said the software also can determine the jurisdiction a call is coming from, to avoid conflicts with neighboring police departments. HigherGround's Jake White said at least 89 U.S. law enforcement agencies have implemented Live911 since its summer 2020 rollout.
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Bionic Finger Renders 3D Images of What Lies Beneath
New Atlas
Michael Franco
February 15, 2023
Scientists at China's Wuyi University have engineered a bionic finger that can detect and generate three-dimensional images of structures beneath the skin. The device repeatedly jabs a surface with a carbon-fiber tip while scanning along the area. The tip's carbon fibers compress to a greater or lesser degree in response to softer and harder materials. When using the finger to probe artificial bones and silicone "muscles," the researchers found it was sufficiently sensitive to detect simulated blood vessels within the synthetic tissue. According to the researchers, the bionic finger “can recognize the simple tissue structures of the human body, but some work remains to be done for the recognition of complex 3D structures.”
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