Welcome to the May 24, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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UCLA Computer Grad Constructs “Crown Jewel of Cryptography”
ACM
May 24, 2023
ACM named Aayush Jain from Carnegie Mellon University to receive the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation proving the feasibility of mathematically rigorous software obfuscation from thoroughly reviewed hardness postulations. Jain's dissertation constructs indistinguishability obfuscation, a mathematical object considered a theoretical "master tool" in terms of realizing cryptographic goals like functional encryption, as well as widening the field of cryptography itself. For example, indistinguishability obfuscation helps to reach software security goals that only software engineering could previously achieve. Jain, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, also received the Best Paper Award at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing 2021 for his dissertation.
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How Fake AI Photo of a Pentagon Blast Went Viral, Briefly Spooked Stocks
Bloomberg
Davey Alba
May 22, 2023
On the morning of May 22, the S&P 500 fell around 0.3% after a falsified photo of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral. This could be the first time the market has been moved by an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated image. Before the photo was discredited by officials, researchers like Nick Waters of the open source intelligence group Bellingcat took to social media to warn that it may have been an AI creation. Waters wrote on Twitter, "Check out the frontage of the building, and the way the fence melds into the crowd barriers. There's also no other images, videos, or people posting as first-hand witnesses." The image's origin has not been determined, but the original post on Facebook was given a "false information" label and later was blocked by the platform.
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Breakthrough in Computer Chip Energy Efficiency Could Cut Datacenter Electricity Use
Oregon State University News
Steve Lundeberg
May 23, 2023
Researchers at Oregon State (OSU) and Baylor universities have significantly cut the energy consumption of photonic chips used in datacenters and supercomputers. The technique offsets photonic chip-degrading temperature variations, potentially reducing the energy required to regulate temperature by a factor of more than 1 million. OSU's John Conley explained, "We were able to make working prototypes that show temperature can be controlled via gate voltage, which means using virtually no electric current." Conley said this innovation will help to increase the speed and power of datacenters "while using less energy so that we can access ever more powerful applications driven by machine learning, such as ChatGPT, without feeling guilty."
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High School Senior's Science Project Could One Day Save Lives
NPR
Abe R. Levine
May 20, 2023
Woodlands College Park High School senior Siddhu Pachipala in Houston, TX, created an application that scans text for indicators of suicide risk using artificial intelligence. By downloading the SuiSensor app, which Pachipala created as a science project, users could self-evaluate their suicide risk, which they could use to consult with heath providers. Pachipala said SuiSensor was 98% accurate in predicting suicide risk when using sample data from a medical study based on journal entries by adults. SuiSensor also could compile a contact list of local clinicians. Pachipala submitted his work to the Regeneron Science Talent Search, where it placed ninth overall.
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Small Change Leads to Big Results for Computer Security
UC San Diego Today
May 23, 2023
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Purdue University found that they could strengthen computer security by reverse-engineering the conditional branch predictor in Intel's flagship processors through a methodology called Half&Half. Serious vulnerabilities are rooted in modern processors sharing the branch predictor between all executing threads and processes. The researchers found they could split Intel's branch predictor into two parts by varying a single bit of the branch address. UCSD's Hosein Yavarzadeh said, "With a small change in how we generate code we can now run two threads together on the same processor core, and it is impossible to leak data through the branch predictor, or to induce mispredicts to launch a Spectre attack."
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Software Update for World's Wind Farms Could Power Millions More Homes
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
May 21, 2023
A software upgrade developed by researchers at France's Polytechnic Institute of Paris improves the efficiency of wind turbines by ensuring they spend more time facing directly into the wind. The researchers accomplished this by training a reinforcement-learning algorithm to track wind patterns and formulate a strategy to keep the turbine facing the appropriate angle. The current strategy of adjusting the turbine blades in accordance with wind patterns uses more energy and causes wear and tear on the components. In simulations, the new algorithm was more efficient than the current algorithm, reducing the amount of time spent readjusting turbine positions to 3.7% while generating power gains of 0.4%. The new model could increase electricity production by 5 terawatt hours per year if implemented globally.
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Researchers Develop Interactive 'Stargazer' Camera Robot That Can Help Film Tutorial Videos
University of Toronto News (Canada)
Krystle Hewitt
May 19, 2023
Stargazer, an interactive camera robot developed by researchers at Canada's University of Toronto (U of T), aims to help anyone without a camera person make dynamic tutorial videos. The system is comprised of a camera on a robot arm, seven independent motors that move with the video subject, and sensors that detect subtle cues from the instructor like body movements, gestures, and speech. A wireless microphone picks up the instructor's voice, which is transcribed by Microsoft Azure Speech-to-Text software. The GPT-3 large language model then receives the transcribed text and a custom prompt and labels the instructor's intention for the camera. U of T's Jiannan Li said, "The goal is to have the robot understand in real time what kind of shot the instructor wants."
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Insect Ears Inspire Superefficient Microphones
IEEE Spectrum
Charles Q. Choi
May 22, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s University of Strathclyde have developed tiny, three-dimensionally (3D) printed microphones that can determine a sound's direction. The nocturnal moth Achroia grisella does this with a tympanum, a thin sheet of tissue similar to the human eardrum, which is only around a half-millimeter wide. The researchers 3D-printed a range of membranes similar to insect tympana using a flexible hydrogel as a base, a piezoelectric material to convert acoustic energy to electric signals, and electrically conductive silver-based compounds. The 3D-printed tympana differ in thickness, porosity, density, and pliability, resulting in highly sensitive, efficient acoustic sensors. They also automatically filter sound without additional power or computation needs.
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A Better Way to Match 3D Volumes
MIT News
Adam Zewe
May 24, 2023
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers mapped the volumes of objects rather than their surfaces via a new algorithm, in a step toward addressing computer graphics challenges in animation and computer-aided design. The method configures shapes as tetrahedral meshes that include the mass within three-dimensional objects. The algorithm works out how to manipulate the tetrahedra's corners in a source shape in order to align with a target shape. The algorithm applies a mathematical framework that scientists can use to view the behavior of different energies, and to determine those they should select to produce a symmetric map between two objects. This approach can better simulate fine parts of an object by incorporating volumetric information, generating high-quality shape maps with less deformation than alternative techniques.
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Silicon Valley, Cradle of Computer Chips, Gains Big New Research Center
The New York Times
Don Clark
May 22, 2023
Leading semiconductor manufacturing equipment supplier Applied Materials said it will build a massive research center near Santa Clarita, CA, to develop more powerful processors through academic-industrial collaboration. The company intends to invest up to $4 billion in the Epic center over seven years, while creating up to 2,000 engineering positions; it anticipates receiving subsidies under the $52-billion Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act. Applied Materials expects nearby universities and local chip designers to supply technical talent, offsetting cost differences with other locations. The center will feature an ultraclean production space so university researchers and other engineers can experiment with new materials and techniques for producing advanced processors.
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Soft 'E-Skin' Generates Nerve-Like Impulses That Talk to the Brain
Stanford News
Andrew Myers
May 18, 2023
Soft integrated circuits developed by Stanford University researchers can convert sensed pressure or temperature to electric signals akin to the nerve impulses that communicate with the brain. A single sheet of skin-like material, or "e-skin," runs on just 5 volts and eventually could be used in implantable or wearable devices or to create prosthetic limbs that both move and provide sensory feedback. The tri-layer dielectric structure integrates into each layer networks of organic nanostructures that can transmit electric signals when stretched; the finished material is less than 1 micron thick. "The hurdle was not so much finding mechanisms to mimic the remarkable sensory abilities of human touch, but bringing them together using only skin-like materials,” said Stanford’s Zhenan Bao.
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French Open Offers Players Protection Against Online Harassment
Associated Press
May 22, 2023
The organizers of the French Open are allowing all Grand Slam tournament players to access an online tool designed by French company Bodyguard.ai to shield them from cyberbullying and social media-based harassment on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Discord. The French tennis federation said the tool "aims to preserve the players, their mental health, the values of sport and tennis, and to banish people who come to spread their aggression and hatred on social networks." The federation explained the technology is an artificial intelligence-powered moderator that analyzes comments in less than 200 milliseconds, while a linguist team updates the tool in real time from online postings to analyze context. Players and tennis officials can link their social networks to the tool ahead of the Grand Slam and keep it in place for at least seven days after the tournament's end.
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Apps for Older Adults Contain Security Vulnerabilities
Concordia University (Canada)
Patrick Lejtenyi
May 23, 2023
Researchers at Canada's Concordia University found security bugs in 95 of 146 popular Android applications designed for older adults. The researchers discovered that many apps failed to properly authenticate server application programming interface endpoints, which attackers could exploit to access sensitive personal data. Other apps had easily penetrable accounts, with some sending unencrypted information to either client-side servers or third-party domains. The researchers found multiple other flaws in dozens of other apps. Only seven of the 35 app developers the team contacted about the bugs responded, while Concordia's Pranay Kapoor said the vulnerabilities could be remedied by following best practices for basic security.
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