Welcome to the July 3, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

Please note: In observance of the U.S. federal holiday Independence Day, TechNews will not be published on Friday, July 5. Publication will resume Monday, July 8.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• U.S. to Fight Labor Shortage with Chips Act Worker Program
• 'Smart' Prosthetic Legs Help Create Natural Gait
• AI In an Age of Killer Robots
• America's Smartest Highway
• Human Eye Inspires Vision System
• Adani Joins Race for Elusive India Superapp
• 'Human-on-Chip' System Using Brain Matter Yields 'Organoid' Robot
• Pentagon to Launch Supercomputer Cloud Service for U.S. Military
• AI 'Friend' for Public School Students Falls Flat
• CDK Global Hack Shows Risk of One Software Vendor Dominating an Industry
• Drone Technology Aids Restoration, Resilience of Fishponds
• Are Rainy Days Ahead for Cloud Computing?

U.S. to Fight Labor Shortage with Chips Act Worker Program

The U.S. announced that a portion of the $5 billion in Chips and Science Act funding to be devoted to a new National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) will be earmarked for a program to develop the U.S. computer-chip workforce. The NSTC will provide grants for up to 10 workforce development projects in the coming months. Research indicates the U.S. could see a shortage of 90,000 technicians by 2030.
[ » Read full article ]

'Smart' Prosthetic Legs Help Create Natural Gait

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a procedure for agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI) surgery to reconnect muscles in the residual limb of an amputee, enabling patients to achieve a natural walking gait when combined with a robotic leg. Electrical signals from the leg muscles are transmitted to a robotic controller that assists the prosthetic in determining how much to bend the ankle, how much torque to apply, and how much power to deliver.
[ » Read full article ]

AI In an Age of Killer Robots

The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-design software, powerful automation algorithms, and specialized AI microchips is fueling the potential for an era of killer robots. Playing out in Ukraine, the start of this era is characterized by weapons such as drone systems that use autonomous target tracking and machine guns that can use AI-powered targeting, making human judgment increasingly tangential.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

America's Smartest Highway

A three-mile stretch of I-94 in Michigan designed by a subsidiary of Alphabet's Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners provides a glimpse of future highways. Its tech-enabled lanes provide real-time data and insights about traffic, weather, and other road conditions to Michigan's Department of Transportation. In the longer term, poles located along the roadway, which include a sensor pod, a compute pod, and advanced communications equipment, will feed information and advisories to connected and automated vehicles traveling in dedicated lanes.
[ » Read full article ]

Human Eye Inspires Vision System

A camera system developed by a team led by University of Maryland computer scientists mimics the involuntary movements used by the human eye to maintain clear and stable vision. A rotating prism inside the Artificial Microsaccade-Enhanced Event Camera (AMI-EV) redirects light captured by the lens. The continuous rotational movement of the prism simulates movements naturally occurring within a human eye, allowing the camera to stabilize the textures of a recorded object just as a human would.
[ » Read full article ]

Adani Joins Race for Elusive India Superapp

Seeing the success of "superapps" launched by China's Tencent and Alibaba, which enable everything from chatting and shopping to ordering food takeout and hailing taxis, India's conglomerates are trying to tap into India's growing pool of digital consumers. Adani Group's Gautam Adani, the second-richest man in Asia, wants the Adani One superapp to be installed by 500 million Indians by the end of the decade, even though the app has gained just 30 million users since its December 2022 launch.
[ » Read full article ]

'Human-on-Chip' System Using Brain Matter Yields 'Organoid' Robot

A "human-on-chip" system developed by researchers at China's Tianjin University and the Southern University of Science and Technology combines human brain matter with a neural interface chip. Cultivated in vitro, the artificial brain, when combined with electrode chips, can interact with external information via encoding, decoding, and stimulus feedback. The researchers used the technology to build a hybrid "organoid" robot that can avoid obstacles, track, and grasp via instructions from the brain-on-chip interface.
[ » Read full article ]

Pentagon to Launch Supercomputer Cloud Service for U.S. Military

An initiative rolled out by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) will provide remote access to supercomputers to U.S. military personnel to boost preparedness and operational efficiency. Solutions from Rescale and Parallel Works allow for seamless integration of DoD Defense Supercomputing Resource Centers with commercial cloud providers and upgrades the computing capabilities of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Modernization Program's Supercomputing Resource Centers.
[ » Read full article ]

AI 'Friend' for Public School Students Falls Flat

The AI startup AllHere collapsed just months after the Los Angeles school district hired it to build a chatbot for students. The "Ed" chatbot was intended to help students obtain academic and mental health resources, provide attendance information and test scores to parents, and detect and respond to students’ various emotions. Los Angeles had agreed to pay AllHere up to $6 million to develop Ed.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

CDK Global Hack Shows Risk of One Software Vendor Dominating an Industry

The recent cyberattack on CDK Global, which provides software for most U.S. car dealerships, has raised concerns about individual software providers dominating an entire industry. A small number of niche software providers also dominate the airline, banking, and healthcare sectors. While depending on a single vendor can derail an entire industry in the event of a cyberattack or outage, expanding the number of software suppliers servicing a specific industry also provides new entry points for cyberattacks.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

Drone Technology Aids Restoration, Resilience of Fishponds

University of Hawaii researchers demonstrated the use of drones to map coastal fishponds to obtain data about the timing and locations of flooding, and the impact of future sea level rise. The researchers used drones and underwater sensors to track water levels in real time, then compared flooding predictions made using drone-derived topography models and LiDAR-derived models to observed flooding in the drone images. They found drone-derived digital elevation models were more accurate than LiDAR flood models.
[ » Read full article ]

Are Rainy Days Ahead for Cloud Computing?

A survey by digital workspace firm Citrix revealed 94% of large U.S. companies have repatriated data or workloads from the cloud during the last three years, due to factors ranging from security and costs to issues with performance, compatibility, and downtime. Mark Turner (pictured) of Pulsant, a U.K. provider of co-located datacenters, said, "The cloud is going to continue to be the biggest part of IT infrastructure,” adding, “There is a repatriation going on of the things that should never have been in the cloud or that won’t work in the cloud.”
[ » Read full article ]