Welcome to the June 2022 SIGCHI edition of ACM TechNews.

ACM TechNews - SIGCHI Edition is a sponsored special edition of the ACM TechNews news-briefing service focused on issues in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This service serves as a resource for ACM-SIGCHI Members to keep abreast of the latest news in areas related to HCI and is distributed to all ACM SIGCHI members the first Tuesday of every month. ACM TechNews is a benefit of ACM membership and is distributed three times per week on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays to over 100,000 ACM members from over 100 countries around the world. ACM TechNews provides timely coverage of established and emerging areas of computer science, the latest trends in information technology, and related science, society, and technology news. For more information on ACM TechNews and joining the ACM, please click. The Interactions mobile app is available for free on iOS, Android, and Kindle platforms. Download it today and flip through the full-color magazine pages on your tablet or view it in a simplified low-bandwidth text mode on your phone. And be sure to check out the Interactions website, where you can access current and past articles and read the latest entries in our ever-expanding collection of blogs.

New York Giving Elderly Population 'Companion' Robots
Forbes
Sai Balasubramanian
May 28, 2022

New York State and Israel-based Intuition Robots is planning to deploy ElliQ “empathetic care companion” robots to approximately 800 seniors. The New York State Office for the Aging's Greg Olsen said ElliQ "is a proactive tool, remembers the interactions with the individual, focuses on health and wellness, stress reduction, sleep, hydration, etc." Intuition said the robot "establishes a long-term relationship with its older adult users, unlocking unprecedented continuous engagement to promote a more active and connected lifestyle." The company said ElliQ can engage in small talk, daily conversations, music, jokes, and trivia, as well as setting reminders for tasks or connecting users with friends and loved ones via messaging and video.

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Suicide Prediction Method Combines AI, Face-to-Face Screening
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Paul Govern
May 13, 2022

A study by researchers at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) found that combining an artificial intelligence algorithm with face-to-face screening improved clinical predictions of suicide risk in adults. The study covered 120,398 patient visits during the 15-month period ending in September 2020, with a review of health records 180 days later for every encounter involving both the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) questionnaire and the Vanderbilt Suicide Attempt and Ideation Likelihood (VSAIL) algorithm. This "ensemble learning method" of prediction was found to outperform C-SSRS or VSAIL alone. VUMC's Colin Walsh said, "This study is a perfect example of the idea that smart humans plus machines are better than either one alone."

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Paralyzed Man Drives Race Car with Microchip in Brain
CBS4-Denver
Conor McCue
May 22, 2022

A brain implant enabled German Aldana Zuniga, a man paralyzed from the waist down nine years ago, to drive a NASCAR Cup race car outside Fountain, CO. A team of researchers trained Zuniga for more than a year to use the microchip in his brain to communicate with the car's computer. The technology allows Zuniga to use his thoughts to start the throttle and to hold a steady pace; he steers with a specialized helmet that registers his head movement, and brakes using a tube attached to the helmet known as a sip-n-puff input. Said Colorado neurosurgeon Scott Falci, “Our goal is not to make race car drivers out of spinal cord injured patients, it’s really to apply this to real-world situations.”

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Over the Lips, Through the Gums, Look Out Gamers, Here It Comes—So It Seems
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
Byron Spice
May 2, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers have developed haptic technology to stimulate the mouth virtually using airborne ultrasound waves. The acoustic waves can be harnessed to create sensations by focusing them into a small area using multiple ultrasound-generating modules, or transducers. CMU's Vivian Shen said, "If you time the firing of the transducers just right, you can get them all to constructively interfere at one point in space." The researchers targeted points of peak amplitude on the lips, teeth, and tongue, and subtly modulated the ultrasonic output to amplify the sensations. The phased, half-moon-shaped transducer array attaches to the bottom of virtual reality goggles, and has been used to produce haptic effects such as raindrops, mud splatter, and crawling bugs.

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Accused of Cheating by an Algorithm
The New York Times
Kashmir Hill
May 27, 2022

Companies such as Honorlock use algorithms to monitor test takers for signs of cheating. An Honorlock-monitored Black Florida teenager was flagged by Amazon's Rekognition facial detection tool while taking a test, although the ultimate accusation of cheating was made by her professor. Computer researcher and executive director of the Algorithmic Justice League Joy Buolamwini determined gender classification software, including Rekognition, works least well on darker-skinned females, implying bias. "Whether it is technically linked to race or gender, the stigma and presumption placed on students of color can be exacerbated when a machine label feeds into confirmation bias," Buolamwini said. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cooper Quintin suggests the biggest flaw with such systems may be educators who overreact when the software raises an alert.

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Consumers Embrace Milk Carton QR Codes, May Cut Food Waste
Cornell Chronicle
Blaine Friedlander
June 1, 2022

Cornell University researchers determined consumers will use quick response (QR) codes on milk cartons to better track the milk's drinkability and reduce agricultural and food waste. Cornell's Samantha Lau and the Cornell Dairy Bar offered patrons the choice of buying milk either with printed best-by dates, or with QR codes that display the best-by date when scanned by smartphone. Lau also deployed a dynamic pricing element where consumers were encouraged to buy milk with a shorter remaining shelf life by offering a discount as the best-by date approached. She said over two months, more than 60% of customers bought milk with the QR code, indicating "that the use of QR codes on food products can be an innovative way to address the larger issue of food waste."

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Virtual Is the New Reality for MBA Students
The Wall Street Journal
Lindsay Ellis
May 20, 2022

Business schools are exploring the use of virtual reality (VR) education in Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs. For example, Emory University MBA students virtually tour Delta Air Lines hangars to learn how operational complexity and culture impact business performance, and Temple University students have logged into VR classes on financial technology, blockchain, and digital disruption. Other schools are considering the use of VR to teach the art of negotiation. Dartmouth College students use VR headsets to virtually travel to other countries as part of their coursework. Ithai Stern at France's INSEAD business school said environments showing internal discussions or placing students in hard-to-access locations are good candidates for VR.

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Soft Assistive Wearables Get Boost from Rapid Design Tool
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Rachel Gordon
May 2, 2022

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a scalable method for the computational design and digital fabrication of soft pneumatic actuators. The tool, called PneuAct, uses an autonomous knitting machine that can be attached to an off-the-shelf rubber silicone tube. The stitch and sensor design patterns are input to program how the actuator will move, with simulation possible prior to printing. The researchers integrated conductive yarn into the knitted actuator to provide the sense of touch, along with resistive pressure sensing and capacitive sensing. The researchers used PneuAct to produce several prototypes, including an assistive glove, a soft hand, an interactive robot, and a pneumatic quadrupedal robot. CSAIL's Yiyue Luo said, "Using a digital machine knitting, which is a very common manufacturing method in today's textile industry, enables 'printing' a design in one go, which makes it much more scalable."

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Subtle Signals Can Influence Whether People Trust Online Recommendations
Penn State News
Matt Swayne
May 2, 2022

A team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and the University of California, Santa Barbara probed whether people trust content, collaborative, and demographic filters for movie recommendations, to ascertain whether subtle labels can influence trust. Penn State's S. Shyam Sundar said users were more likely to trust collaborative filtering, which applies choices made by other users with similar tastes, even when it did not deliver the best recommendations. Users trusted content-based filtering more than demographic filtering because they saw the movie suggestions as reflecting their personal identities. Users credited themselves when a collaborative or content-based system suggested good movies, and also blamed themselves when the systems suggested bad films.

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App Identifying Jaundice from Babies' Eyes 'Could Save Lives'
Bloomberg
Catherine Lough
June 3, 2022

Researchers at the U.K.'s University College London (UCL) and the University of Ghana found that a smartphone application can identify jaundice from newborns' eyes, suggesting it could save lives in impoverished regions. The researchers used UCL's neoSCB app to scan the eyes of more than 300 Ghanaian newborns, following an initial study on 37 newborns in 2020. The app helps analyze yellowness in the whites of the infants' eyes, which is an indicator of neonatal jaundice. The app correctly identified 74 of 76 severely jaundiced newborns out of 336 babies, which correlated with the accuracy of the most common screening method. UCL Hospitals' Judith Meek said the app "has the potential to prevent death and disability worldwide in many different settings."

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Adding a Line of Code Makes Interactive Visualizations Accessible to Screen-Reader Users
University of Washington News
Sarah McQuate
June 1, 2022

University of Washington (UW) researchers worked with users of screen-readers to design VoxLens, a JavaScript plugin that enables people to interact with online visualizations by adding a single line of code. Users of the technology can obtain a high-level abstract of information described in a graph, listen to a graph translated into sounds, or ask questions about data via voice-activated commands. UW's Ather Sharif said rendering VoxLens as a public library means users will receive the same type of summary for all visualizations. Sharif said, "The goal of our project is to give screen-reader users a platform where they can extract as much or as little information as they want."

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Rutgers Expert Creates Free Comment Moderation Software for YouTube
Rutgers University
Greg Bruno
May 3, 2022

Researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Washington have developed an open source comment moderation tool to prevent online harassment on YouTube. FilterBuddy was created in response to a Brazilian YouTuber who shut down his channel after he was hospitalized due to a nervous breakdown resulting from online harassment. The tool can tag and quarantine potentially offensive comments before they are made public. Said Rutgers' Shagun Jhaver, "We used standard development tools to create FilterBuddy, but the features are so appreciated by the community and so desperately needed. The fact that we built this service on a shoestring budget demonstrates that, at the moment, the platforms aren't paying enough attention to creators' needs."

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Robotic Rehabilitation Glove Wins Microsoft Imagine Cup for Student Inventors
Tech Crunch
Devin Coldewey
May 24, 2022

The V Bionic team from Saudi Arabia won this year’s Microsoft Imagine Cup with a robotic glove that aims to speed up the recovery process for patients with neurological damage. The global competition showcases early-stage projects from students and young entrepreneurs, with the winners receiving $100,000, $50,000 in Azure credits, and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The ExoHeal mechanized exoskeleton glove is intended to be more portable and affordable than pneumatic or hydraulic mechanisms. Said V Bionic's Zain Samdani, "Flexor linkage-driven movement gives us the flexibility to individually actuate different parts of each finger (phalanges) whilst keeping the device portable.”

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Some Muslims Using Digital Rings to Track Their Praises to God
The New York Times
Raja Abdulrahim
May 1, 2022

Many Muslims use prayer beads to keep track of their religious recitations and praises, and some have turned to digital prayer counters, similar to Fitbits. Users say the digital counters, many in the form of rings, make it easier to keep track of how many recitations they complete per day. In Jerusalem's Old City, the digital counters range in price from slightly more than $1 to about $10. Shopkeepers say a new model and design is released about every year, with the latest shaped like a fish that is held in the palm and featuring a ridged wheel that is turned with the thumb to replicate the feel of prayer beads. “If you wanted to say 1,000 praises, it is hard to keep track,” said Ahmad Natsha, 35. “Some would buy 10 prayer beads and use each one to keep track,” he said, but “it’s much easier with the counter.”

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