Welcome to the January 2023 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.

Social Media Use Linked to Brain Changes in Teens
The New York Times
Ellen Barry
January 4, 2023

A study of 169 sixth- and seventh-graders by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina (UNC) found that 12-year-olds who habitually checked their social media feeds showed a heightened sensitivity to social rewards from peers over time. The subjects received full brain scans three times at approximately one-year intervals, as they played a computerized game that delivered rewards and punishment in the form of smiling or scowling peers. While carrying out the task, the frequent checkers showed increasing activation of reward-processing circuits in the brain, regions of the brain that determine salience, and the prefrontal cortex, which helps with regulation and control. UNC's Eva H. Telzer described the hypersensitivity as neither good nor bad, as “It's helping them connect to others and obtain rewards from the things that are common in their social world, which is engaging in social interactions online."

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Smart Device Is Living Organism That Changed User Interaction
Forbes
Jennifer Kite-Powell
December 19, 2022

Jasmine Lu and Pedro Lopes at the University of Chicago's Human-Computer Integration Laboratory embedded a living organism within a smart device that transformed the user-device relationship. The researchers assembled a smartwatch that runs on a species of Physarum Polycephalum slime mold to tell time and measure the user's heart rate. Accurate heart-rate measurement relies on the slime mold's health, which the wearer sustains by feeding it oats and water. Lu said participants who wore the smartwatch had to rethink their relationship to the device, and "also had some sort of attachment to it because it's living."

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Better Digital Tools Could Help Immigrants Access Benefits
Cornell Chronicle
James Dean
December 15, 2022

Cornell University researchers found immigrants in the U.S. require better digital tools to access online resources and benefits, with their concerns about being tracked and other issues constituting major obstacles. The researchers say websites, applications, social media, and other digital tools that provide information to immigrants should accumulate the minimum personal data necessary and transparently communicate their privacy policies. To overcome language barriers, they recommend the use of simple, clear, and consistent language and icons, and possibly replacing blocks of text with images. The researchers crafted the Rights for Health website, which is committed to sharing accurate and accessible data about health and legal benefits for immigrants.

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Audio Astronomy Unlocks a Universe of Sound
Scientific American
Timmy Broderick
January 5, 2023

Visually impaired astronomical researchers could benefit from efforts to convert scientific data into sound. Last month, leading scientists, sound engineers, and educators in the field of astronomical sonification detailed current projects and mapped a path for developing a data sonification framework. One of the biggest challenges is standardizing how astronomical data should sound. Said Kimberly Arcand, a science communicator who sonifies data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, “Standardization is hard! There’s no handbook saying, ‘You want to sonify data? Start here’.” Said Sarah Kane, a legally blind astronomer, “A lot of the time astronomers are just doing data analysis on computers. Computers can be made accessible."

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Next-Generation Wireless Tech May Leverage Human Body for Energy
University of Massachusetts Amherst
January 4, 2023

Using the human body as a sort of antenna, University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) researchers have created a low-cost method of harvesting leaked energy from Visible Light Communication (VLC), a wireless version of fiberoptics that uses flashes of light to transmit information. UMass Amherst's Jie Xiong said, "Instead of using radio signals to send information wirelessly, it uses the light from LEDs [light-emitting diodes] that can turn on and off up to one million times per second." The researchers built an antenna from coiled copper wire to collect the leaked radio-frequency energy, then fashioned it as a "Bracelet+" device worn on the upper forearm. Using a design costing less than 50 cents, they said, "Bracelet+ can reach up to micro-watts, enough to support many sensors such as on-body health monitoring sensors that require little power to work owing to their low sampling frequency and long sleep-mode duration."

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Sony Unveils Controller for Disabled Gamers
BBC News
Tom Gerken
January 5, 2023

Sony unveiled a PlayStation 5 controller for disabled gamers called Project Leonardo at the 2023 Consumer Electronic Show. The company developed the controller in partnership with accessibility experts from charities that include U.S.-based AbleGamers and U.K.-based SpecialEffect. Project Leonardo is promoted as a "highly customizable kit" of various buttons, triggers, and sticks that allow players to create an individualized gameplay framework. A Sony Interactive Entertainment official said the controller would work "out of the box" to help gamers play "more easily, more comfortably, and for longer periods." They said Project Leonardo “is a true passion project for our team. We've drawn on 28 years of design expertise at PlayStation to create a controller kit that we hope many players with disabilities will find useful."

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Research Improves Robot/Human Relations Using Augmented Reality
Binghamton University
Chris Kocher
December 19, 2022

Binghamton University's Shiqi Zhang, Jack Albertson, and Kishan Chandan investigated the use of augmented reality (AR) to create what Zhang calls "a new communication modality between human and robots. Humans can hold up a tablet or cellphone, or wear AR glasses, and see what the robots are currently working on." The researchers used a machine learning algorithm that mimics a human expert by employing a simulation platform, and the robots and human avatar collaborate on a delivery task in a virtual warehouse. "The imitation learning algorithm works out a policy and in time can dynamically design what's useful to display," he explained.

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Stumbling with Their Words, Some People Let AI Do the Talking
The Washington Post
Drew Harwell; Nitasha Tiku; Will Oremus
December 10, 2022

Artificial intelligence-generated text tools like OpenAI's new ChatGPT increasingly are being used to compose professional-sounding emails, craft poetry, complete homework, write papers, and even generate responses for real-world conversations. Some believe these systems potentially could make search engines obsolete by answering questions directly. ChatGPT can build on previous comments, explain its responses, and apologize for errors. OpenAI's Mira Murati said, "Essentially it's learning like a kid. ... You get something wrong, you don't get rewarded for it. If you get something right, you get rewarded for it." However, while Princeton University computer scientist Arvind Narayanan said that "ChatGPT is shockingly good at sounding convincing on any conceivable topic," he noted its "authoritative text is mixed with garbage."

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Pop'Balloons, the First Serious Mixed Reality Game for Autistic Children
University of Montreal (Canada)
Virginie Soffer
December 8, 2022

A multi-institutional collaboration led by researchers at Canada's University of Montreal (UdeM) developed the first mixed reality game for helping autistic children develop their motor skills. Pop'Balloons requires players to burst holograms of balloons virtually inserted into a room, with a higher score achieved the faster they are popped; autistic children can explore the room and repeat the experience as many times as necessary. Pop'Balloons is based on a machine-assisted method for neuropsychologically assessing autistic spectrum disorder devised by UdeM's Guillaume Dumas. He developed a more refined version with Canadian videogame studio Eidos, and enhanced it with more advanced machine learning techniques via the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute.

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Researchers Develop 'Skin VR' to Provide 'Personalized' Touch Experience
City University of Hong Kong
December 15, 2022

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) researchers led a multi-institutional effort to create a hand-worn wireless haptic interface that can support a personalized electrotactile experience in virtual reality. The ultrathin WeTac system consists of a miniaturized soft driver unit attached to the forearm and a hydrogel-based electrode hand patch serving as a skin-integrated haptic interface. WeTac's ultra-soft elements allow easy mapping of threshold currents to determine optimized parameters for each part of the hand. Electrotactile feedback can be transmitted to any part of the hand on demand without causing pain or being too faint. Said CityU's Yu Xinge, "We believe that this is a powerful tool for providing virtual touching, and is inspiring for the development of the metaverse, human-machine interface, and other fields."

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Low-Cost Test for Hearing Loss Lives on Smartphone
Wired
Maggie Chen
December 6, 2022

A team of researchers at the University of Washington has developed an inexpensive test for hearing loss that uses a conventional smartphone, earbuds, and microphone. Testers send a pair of tones into subjects' ears via the earbuds, while the external microphone detects and passes the cochlea's response emissions to a phone application. The app measures those emissions with signal processing algorithms, checking four frequencies commonly used for hearing tests and assigning a passing grade if at least three frequencies are detected. The researchers twice tested 201 people ranging in age from a week to 20 years using their system and a commercial system; their system demonstrated 100% sensitivity to the commercial system's 98%, while their respective specificity was about 88% and about 89%.

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Turning Video On, Seeing Others May Boost Remote Classroom Experience
Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
Matt Swayne
December 5, 2022

Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) researchers found the remote class experience could be enhanced by activating a video camera and seeing more students with their own cameras on. Students who turned their cameras on reported better engagement, interaction, and satisfaction, which also ensued when other classmates used their cameras. Penn State's S. Shyam Sundar said video may help communicate as well as detect subtle nonverbal cues, making remote classes potentially more appealing than physical attendance. "On videoconferencing platforms, such as Zoom, [students] see [classmates] front and center on a wall of images of all their classmates, and they can tell who's involved and who's not, who's on video, who has turned on audio and so forth," Sundar explained.

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CVS Tries Remote System to Help Fill Prescriptions
The Wall Street Journal
Sharon Terlep
December 4, 2022

A system being tested by the CVS pharmacy chain would enable pharmacists to process prescriptions remotely while adhering to patient-privacy rules. The technology has been deployed at about 8,000 of the company's 9,000-plus U.S. drugstores, and around 400 of its 30,000 pharmacists are preparing prescriptions from their homes or stores other than the one dispensing the medicine. CVS said the remote prescribing process would free up store pharmacists to provide vaccinations, health screenings, and other services to customers amid chronic staffing shortages. However, the initiative faces challenges, given that some states require a certain number of pharmacists on-site and prohibit remote drug verification or remote work among pharmacists.

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Study Shows Choices of Virtual Environments, Avatars Can Promote Positive Psychological Outcomes in the Metaverse
Stanford University
Adam Hadhazy
December 14, 2022

Stanford University researchers found avatar appearance and type of digital environment impacts the virtual reality (VR) user experience. The study involved 272 participants who met in virtual environments via VR headsets once a week for 30 minutes over eight weeks. Researchers developed 192 unique environments for participants to explore, and found that participants reported more restorative, enjoyable experiences in outdoor VR environments rather than in indoor virtual settings. Wide open virtual spaces also were assessed more positively than constrained spaces. The researchers also observed that participants enjoyed interacting as generic avatars but were more active and engaged when represented by avatars that looked like themselves. Said Stanford's Eugy Han, "Our ongoing work reported in this study is showing who you are and where you are matters tremendously for learning, collaborating, socializing, and other metaverse activities."

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