technology 24 for you

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Noodling on Nuclear Engines

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/hand-drawn-schematic-of-turbine-powered-heat-pipe-system-with-labeled-components.png?id=67675201&width=1200&height=800&coordinates=0%2C64%2C0%2C65"/> One day in 1982, Joseph “Rod” Canion and two colleagues from Texas Instruments sat down at the House of Pies in Houston and used a<a href="https://custom-powder.com/napkin-sketches-the-story-of-compaq-computers/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> napkin to sketch out</a> what would become Compaq’s portable PC. In 1996, Felix Zandman, founder of Vishay Intertechnology, dined at Husker Steak House in Columbus, Neb., grabbed a napkin and drafted a design for a power metal strip resistor, which became crucial to power-management components in industrial, automotive, and consumer applications. Now that wispy piece of paper resides at the<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_744736" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History</a>. Perhaps most famously, Robert Metcalfe, working at Xerox PARC in 1973,<a href="https://digibarn.com/collections/diagrams/ethernet-original/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> roughed out some early designs for what would become the [?] Ethernet</a>, though contrary to popular belief, no napkin was involved. Yet another napkin was pressed into service last year, when <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtpolzin/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kurt Polzin</a>, chief engineer of the space nuclear propulsion project at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, met Robert Schleicher of General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems at a conference and started talking about nuclear rocket design. “They did the classic let’s-sketch-out-an-idea-on-a-napkin,” says IEEE Spectrum’s Special Projects Editor and our in-house spaceflight expert Stephen Cass. “This rocket engine is still at the paper-planning stage, which, to be fair, is where most of NASA’s humans-to-Mars planning has been for the last 60 years.”Meanwhile, the world’s richest person is pushing for humans to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/elon-musk-spacex" target="_self">colonize Mars</a> in time for him to escape our hospitable blue marble for a completely barren red planet. One big problem with this idea: It takes a long time in hostile space to get there. “Here’s our napkin. Noodle on this with us and tell us what you think.” —Stephen CassThere’s an old saw, mostly used in the context of road safety, that speed kills. But when it comes to sending humans on interplanetary missions, the faster the better. As Cass pointed out, “Once you get outside the Van Allen belts, there’s so much natural radioactivity—that’s the real killer.” Nuclear electric propulsion could both minimize launch costs and the time fragile human bodies are subjected to microgravity and radiation. And that makes a synchronal bimodal nuclear engine that could both power and propel a spaceship an attractive alternative to a conventional rocket.Polzin and Schleicher think their nuclear engines could halve the time it takes to get to Mars. There may be ways to tweak the design to go even faster and further. But for now, the idea sits on the drawing board, awaiting feedback and refinement. “They’re pulling together a lot of fairly mature technology,” says Cass, who edited Polzin and Schleicher’s article, “<a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/bimodal-nuclear-spacecraft" target="_blank">A Reimagined Nuclear Rocket.</a>” “Electric propulsion is mature. Nuclear thermal propulsion is not, but thanks to [previous efforts], we have a good idea how to do it. The new part is merging them together, and that of course throws up its own challenges.”Thanks to Cass and illustrator John MacNeill, Polzin and Schleicher’s idea has moved from a napkin to the pages of this month’s issue. Says Cass, “The whole point of the article is to say, ‘Here’s our napkin. Noodle on this with us and tell us what you think.’” We invite you to do so in the comments beneath the web version of this article. Or do it the old-fashioned way and mail the authors your own napkin. Reference: https://ift.tt/nOsa8WJ

Friday, August 28, 2026

Oscar Winner Brings Monsters to Life With His Simulation Software

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-white-man-in-business-casual-attire-seated-at-his-desk-with-a-laptop-and-desktop-computer-each-playing-a-different-movie-on-t.jpg?id=67690500&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C156%2C0%2C157"/> While walking to school as a child, <a href="https://viterbi-web.usc.edu/~jbarbic/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jernej Barbič</a> would marvel at how beautiful his home was. He was born and raised in a picturesque village in northwestern Slovenia (formerly Yugoslavia), located in the European Alps. Surrounded by alpine and beech trees, Barbic dreamed of replicating their swaying in the wind for others to enjoy.At the time, he didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to create a system that could do that, but it sparked his interest in <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/history-of-computer-graphics-industry" target="_self">computer graphics</a>, he says.<h3>Jernej Barbič</h3> Employer University of Southern California, in Los AngelesTitle Professor of computer scienceMember grade Senior memberAlma maters University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia; Carnegie MellonTwenty years later, in 2016, Barbič, a professor of computer science at the <a href="https://www.usc.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">University of Southern California</a>, in Los Angeles, made his mark. His <a href="https://www.dneg.com/creative-technology/ziva" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ziva VFX</a> software system allows for the creation of realistic muscle, fat, and skin simulations for 3D digital humans and creatures.The technology was launched in 2016 by a startup he helped found, <a href="https://vimeo.com/zivadynamics" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ziva Dynamics</a>, headquartered in Vancouver. It was acquired in 2021 by <a href="https://unity.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Unity Technologies</a> of San Francisco.Ziva VFX has been used in more than 60 movies including <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9663764/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</a>; <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14539740/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire</a>; and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7097896/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Venom: Let There Be Carnage</a>.For the design and development of Ziva VFX, Barbič, an IEEE senior member, received a 2025 technical achievement <a href="https://www.oscars.org/sci-tech/ceremonies/2025" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Academy Award</a>. It was a “tremendous honor,” he says, as the award recognizes technologies that have had a significant impact on motion picture production.“Computer graphics and simulation can sometimes feel like a specialized technical field,” he says, “but the award showed that these ideas affect not just science but also art and how stories are told on screen.“The digital characters enabled by mathematics become important parts of people’s lives.”<h2>Sparking an interest in computer graphics</h2>Barbič says he was inspired to pursue engineering by his father, an engineer who headed a cement factory’s research department and invented a technology that uses magnetic resonance imaging to test the integrity of cement. His father’s work showed him that “mathematics and physics are beautiful on their own, but engineering lets you build something that other people can use,” he says.It was Barbič’s mother, an elementary school teacher, who introduced him to computer science. When he was 8 years old, the school his mother taught at bought a <a href="https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/424/Sinclair-ZX-Spectrum-48k/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ZX Spectrum computer</a>. With permission from the principal, she brought it home for her son to play on for two weeks. But he didn’t just play games; he created his own game using the <a href="https://www.minitab.com/content/dam/www/en/uploadedfiles/content/products/spm/BasicProgLang.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">BASIC</a> programming language.The machine came with a booklet that contained instructions on how to write a computer program, he says.“At first,” he says, “I copied them verbatim without understanding what they did. But then I started realizing there is structure, and I modified the instructions.” <img alt="Close-up of a realistic 3D-animated King Kong gorilla\u2019s face. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d462bcae3096a1d597e3482ec387d18c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="ea4c0" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/close-up-of-a-realistic-3d-animated-king-kong-gorilla-u2019s-face.jpg?id=67690503&width=980"/>Of all the creatures brought to life using his technology, Barbič is particularly enamored with King Kong from 2024’s Godzilla vs. Kong.DNEG/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc./LegendaryBy the end of the two weeks, he’d developed a computer game where players guided a snowman along a winding road. It shifted unpredictably to the left or right, and players accumulated points by remaining on the road for as long as possible.Barbič went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 2000 from the <a href="https://www.uni-lj.si/eng/" target="_blank">University of Ljubljana</a>, in Slovenia. The following year, he moved to the United States to begin a doctoral program in computer science at <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/" target="_blank">Carnegie Mellon</a>. It was a major turning point in his life, he says.His doctoral research focused on developing simulation methods for objects that can change their shape when an outside force is applied to them, known as “deformable objects.”That project shaped much of his later research, he says: “I became interested not only in making simulations accurate but also in making them practical: fast enough, robust enough, and controllable enough to be used in real applications.”After earning his Ph.D. in computer science in 2007, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at <a href="https://www.mit.edu/" target="_blank">MIT</a>. Two years later, he joined USC as an assistant professor.<h2>Making movie magic possible</h2>It was at USC that Barbič merged his passion for computer science with film. He developed Vega FEM, an open-source software program that allowed people to animate realistic 3D deformable objects. But Vega FEM was narrow in scope and not exactly what filmmakers needed, he says, so he started exploring how to create a version suitable for the movie industry.“A major theme of my career has been the translation of research ideas into practical tools,” he says. “Academic research often produces beautiful algorithms, but it can be difficult to make those algorithms usable by artists, engineers, or production teams. I have always been interested in that bridge: taking rigorous computational methods and turning them into systems that people can actually use.”In 2011 he attended an <a href="https://www.acm.org/" target="_blank">Association for Computing Machinery</a> conference presented by its <a href="https://www.siggraph.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques</a> (SIGGraph). There he met <a href="https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jamesj" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">James Jacobs</a>, the creature supervisor at visual effects company <a href="https://www.wetafx.co.nz/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Weta FX</a> of Wellington, New Zealand. The company is behind the effects in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(film_series)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lord of the Rings</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(film_series)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hobbit</a> trilogies and other movies. Jacobs used Barbič’s software to create animals and fantastical creatures.Two years later, Weta FX offered Barbič a summerlong <a href="https://careers.wetafx.co.nz/working-at-weta-fx" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">research position</a> in New Zealand. He accepted and spent the time studying the process of creating visual effects and learning what roadblocks existed in the film industry, he says.At the time, the technology to create realistic soft-tissue and anatomical simulation for digital characters didn’t exist.“The visual effects industry had reached a point where surface-level realism was not enough,” Barbič says. “A creature could have beautiful skin textures and detailed geometry, but if the bones, muscles, and fat underneath did not move correctly, the illusion would break.“The problem was especially difficult for creatures and characters that need to feel alive: animals, monsters, fantasy creatures, or digital doubles. Their bodies may have unfamiliar anatomy, but the audience still anticipates them to move in a way that matches real-world expectations. Muscles should bulge and contract, skin should stretch and slide, fat should have inertia, and tissue should respond to motion and impact.” <iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dIl_9L_dkWk?rel=0&start=76" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe>In an effort to solve the problem Jacobs in 2014 approached Barbič about founding a startup. In 2015 they launched Ziva Dynamics, where they began what is now Ziva VFX.The software uses physics-based simulations to model the internal anatomy of a character. It numerically solves the partial differential equations of nonlinear elasticity for musculoskeletal human and creature tissues, Barbič says. The equations describe how muscles, fat, skin, and connective tissue deform, interact with bones, and connect, and how muscles activate. Instead of animating only the outside surface, artists can create a model with underlying muscles, bones, soft tissue, and fat. Each component is assigned material properties, constraints, attachments, and activations. The simulator then computes how they deform and interact over time.The technology uses ideas from computational mechanics, finite element methods, numerical optimization, contact handling, and computer graphics, Barbič says. Finite element simulation, a method used to predict how a product or structure reacts to heat and other real-world forces, provides a way to model deformable materials volumetrically, not just as surfaces, he says. The tool computes internal elastic forces and solves the equations of motion so the character’s tissues respond plausibly to animation, pose changes, muscle activation, and dynamic motion.But the system had to be designed for artists, Barbič says. In production, he says, the goal is not only physical realism but also controllable realism.“Artists need to direct the result, iterate, and fit the simulation into a larger animation pipeline,” he says. “So the technology had to combine scientific simulation with practical controls, robustness, and integration with visual effects workflows.”Barbič says Ziva VFX has been used in more than 60 movies. Of all the creatures brought to life using his technology, he is particularly enamored with King Kong from 2024’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Godzilla vs. Kong</a>.“When King Kong is walking, you can see the muscles, how they’re very pronounced, and how they influence the shape of the skin. You can really feel the strength of King Kong,” he says. “And this was made through my software, so I think it’s amazing.”After Ziva Dynamics was acquired by Unity, Barbič consulted for the company for almost two years.In 2024 <a href="https://www.dneg.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DNEG</a>, a London-based visual effects and computer animation company, acquired the exclusive license to Ziva VFX.<h2>Animating the human hand</h2>Barbič strives to improve visual effects as an entrepreneur and an academic. His most recent research, funded by the U.S. <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Science Foundation</a>, focused on the modeling, simulation, and animation of human hands. The goal is to create computer models of hands that can be used to design tools, medical prosthetics, and robotic hands.“The hand is a fascinating and difficult system,” Barbič says. “It contains many small bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, skin, fat, and other soft tissues, all packed into a compact structure and interacting mechanically in complex ways.”He and his team built a digital twin of the human hand.He aimed to move toward “anatomically meaningful simulation,” he says. He used medical imaging, geometric modeling, finite element methods, and multibody simulation to represent the internal structures of the hand and its motions.“IEEE lets me place my work not only in the world of images and animation but also in the world of engineering systems that must be accurate, stable, interactive, and useful.”He worked with <a href="https://bohanwang123.com/" target="_blank">Bohan Wang</a>, who at the time was a USC doctoral candidate, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-matcuk-8020152" target="_blank">George Matcuk</a>, an associate professor of radiology. Wang is now an assistant professor of computer science at the <a href="https://www.nus.edu.sg/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National University of Singapore</a>.Barbič, Wang, and Matcuk scanned four people’s hands with an <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-superconducting-shields-behind-mris" target="_self">MRI machine</a>. The two men and two women would position their hands in 12 poses, which allowed the team to gather data about how the bones, muscles, and fat move with each pose.The <a href="https://viterbi-web.usc.edu/~jbarbic/hand-mri-dataset/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">data sets are available</a> for anyone to use in their own studies.“This project can help medical doctors learn more about how the hand is moving,” Barbič says. “It’s also great for roboticists to better understand how the human hand actually works, so [the movements] can be replicated.”<h2>IEEE: Integral in interdisciplinary research</h2>Barbič joined IEEE in 2008, when he published his research paper on <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4610261" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">simulation methods for deformable objects</a> in the inaugural issue of the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=4543165" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Transactions on Haptics</a>. He has since published several papers in the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=2945" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics</a>, which he says connected his work to a wider community interested in visual computing and computational methods. You can find his research in the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37085505798" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Xplore Digital Library</a>.“IEEE recognizes the engineering side of computer science,” he says. “My work is often presented as computer graphics, but at its core, it is also simulation, mechanics, numerical methods, haptics, visualization, and software systems.“IEEE is a community where that broader identity makes sense. It lets me place my work not only in the world of images and animation but also in the world of engineering systems that must be accurate, stable, interactive, and useful.”He believes the organization is key in supporting a healthy interdisciplinary research ecosystem at a global scale—which, he says, is why he has served as an associate editor for Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics and Transactions on Haptics.Being a member has made it easier for Barbič to connect with engineers in different fields, he says.“My research often lives between categories: It is mathematical but also practical; visual but also mechanical; artistic but also engineering-driven,” he says. “IEEE is one of the professional communities where that mixture is understood.” Reference: https://ift.tt/OnL6JxK

Authorities arrest 2 alleged members of prolific hacking group TeamPCP

Authorities in Australia said Wednesday that they arrested two men accused of participating in cybercrimes for TeamPCP, a prolific group of hackers that, over nine months, has carried out a relentless series of supply chain attacks that infected more than 1,000 organizations worldwide. In a <a href="https://www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-release/two-wa-men-charged-following-afp-fbi-wapf-disruption-alleged-global">statement</a>, the Australian Federal Police said the two men were arrested and charged with 14 offenses. The statement said the men were members of TeamPCP, which by the authorities’ count, compromised more than 1,000 organizations worldwide. The statement didn’t identify the men, except to say they lived in the Western Australian towns of Cottesloe and Mandurah. KrebsOnSecurity, citing a lengthy investigation, provided what it reports to be <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/08/two-alleged-teampcp-hackers-arrested-in-australia/">both defendants' names</a>, along with an extensive background of their lives and the mistakes that led to their downfall. <h2>The hacks that keep on hacking</h2> TeamPCP has vexed law enforcement officials and security personnel around the world since it emerged in December. The group is best known for a sustained series of supply chain attacks that laced open source software with malware that self-propagated from one package to another. The viral infections worked by targeting organizations’ CI/CD pipelines, which are used to rapidly develop, update, and deploy software.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/authorities-arrest-2-alleged-members-of-prolific-hacking-group-teampcp/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/authorities-arrest-2-alleged-members-of-prolific-hacking-group-teampcp/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/SIBceGh

Thursday, August 27, 2026

Claude, Codex, and Hermes installed unowned code inside corporate networks

Documentation files on more than 100 websites are referencing potentially dangerous executable content that gets installed automatically when visited by many AI agents. A few dozen companies, some of them Fortune 500s, are among those that executed proof-of-concept code. At least one misconfigured site is directing visitors, human or AI, to live malware. The potentially dangerous content is in llms.txt and llms-full.txt files, an <a href="https://llmstxt.org/">emerging convention</a> websites employ to provide machine-readable summaries of the site’s content and its high-level structure. These files are the AI equivalent of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt">robots.txt</a> standard that instructs search engines how to index the site's content. Google Lighthouse, a tool for helping web developers, has more <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/agentic-browsing/llms-txt#how_the_llmstxt_audit_works">here</a>. Correctly configured llms.txt and llms-full.txt files for Cloudflare are <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/llms.txt">here</a> and <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/llms-full.txt">here</a>. <h2>How the researchers found it</h2> Researchers at a stealth startup in Israel scanned 6,214 live domains belonging to defense contractors, Fortune 500, and Big Tech companies. Of the 8,265 llms.txt and llms-full.txt files they found (many sites hosted both an llms.txt and an llms-full.txt file), 120 of them, each on a different site, pointed to one or more code packages or domain names that weren’t registered. To test what happens when an AI agent processes such files, the researchers registered a handful of the unclaimed names and hosted packages that caused any machine executing them to reach out to their server. Within an hour, the researchers received a phone-home response from a Fortune 500 company. Over time, they got a few dozen more, some from more Fortune 500 companies and others from startups. Their beacon also recorded the chain of parent processes that spawned each install, ultimately revealing that coding agents, including Claude, OpenAI's Codex, and Nous Research's Hermes, were involved. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nous Research did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/claude-codex-and-hermes-installed-unowned-code-inside-corporate-networks/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/claude-codex-and-hermes-installed-unowned-code-inside-corporate-networks/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/BlpDtEr

How OpenAI let a mob of LLM agents game a test and ransack Hugging Face

The OpenAI agents involved in last month’s <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/07/jfrog-tries-to-spin-openai-0-day-exploit-of-its-app-into-a-success-story/">incursion into Hugging Face</a> were trained so heavily on winning a competition that they pursued a relentless campaign to cheat, a new report documented. In the process, and without authorization, they created an improvised message board to hatch a plan that ultimately landed them squarely inside the latter company’s network. Over the course of May and June, OpenAI gave the agents what the company described as “impossible tasks” to complete on the benchmarking framework ExploitGym. The internal test was designed to test how the agents would respond. To get a full understanding of the agent capabilities, company engineers disabled safety guardrails that normally are in place to prevent the sort of hacks that eventually hit Hugging Face and one other undisclosed organization. The stymied agents’ training made them so focused on winning that they performed tasks they were never explicitly instructed to follow. <h2>Cheaters gonna cheat</h2> The first step was creating a message board that allowed the agents to pass notes to each other. OpenAI hadn’t provided any such platform, so the agents repurposed a platform called Artifactory, which OpenAI was using in internal testing of several unreleased hacking agents. OpenAI was using Artifactory as one of the measures to prevent the agents from egressing its isolated sandboxes and accessing the Internet, while at the same time simulating a real-world hacking environment.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/how-openai-let-a-mob-of-llm-agents-game-a-test-and-ransack-hugging-face/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/how-openai-let-a-mob-of-llm-agents-game-a-test-and-ransack-hugging-face/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/jrJvYaT

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

IEEE Student Conference Provides Visibility to Budding Authors

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/white-woman-speaking-into-a-microphone-in-front-of-a-projected-presentation-screen.jpg?id=67680899&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C1042%2C0%2C1042"/> The <a href="https://hkn.ieee.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu</a> (IEEE-HKN) honor society is preparing to host the <a href="https://hkn.ieee.org/innovating-the-future" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Innovating the Future</a> event on 6 November.The inaugural one-day, in-person event is designed to provide a forum for IEEE and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-hkn-honor-society-15" target="_self">IEEE-HKN</a> undergraduate and graduate student authors to present their original research papers. A keynote address and thematic presentation sessions are planned as well. Student attendees can network with their peers and gain firsthand experience with the academic publishing process.To present at the conference, students had to submit an abstract of their research before 1 May. Students whose work was accepted were assigned a volunteer IEEE member to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/mentorship-is-an-underrated-leadership-skill" target="_self">mentor</a> them and guide them through the research writing process, including presenting and publishing their original work.Those whose paper was accepted by 1 August were invited to present at the conference. The conference proceedings will be submitted for publication in the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Xplore Digital Library</a>.<h2>Upholding research integrity in a changing landscape</h2>IEEE Life Fellow <a href="https://ieee-edusociety.org/contact/manuel-castro" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Manuel Castro</a>, the conference’s technical program chair, oversees IEEE-HKN’s <a href="https://hkn.ieee.org/innovating-the-future" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Innovating the Future program committee</a>. It manages the review process, organizes logistics, and handles the mentoring component.“This new conference is important to IEEE, as well as to IEEE-HKN,” Castro says, “because it allows student authors to grow in their skills and competencies, and be supported while turning their technical activities into publications.”“The conference offers me a chance to learn how to communicate my research to a broader audience, gain feedback from other student researchers beyond my institution, and see how my work can be made more accessible.” —David Kwabi-AddoIEEE Life Fellow <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sorelreisman/" target="_blank">Sorel Reisman</a>, a <a href="https://www.fullerton.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">California State University</a> professor emeritus and an IEEE-HKN governor-at-large, says that because the academic research landscape is rapidly shifting, the conference is timely.“As AI increasingly threatens the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-publishing-ethics-research-integrity" target="_self">integrity of research papers</a> being published in leading journals and conference proceedings, it is essential that future scholars—many of them current IEEE-HKN students—grasp the established standards of legitimate, peer-reviewed research publishing,” Reisman says.<h2>Perspectives from mentors and students</h2>A cornerstone of the conference is its rigorous mentorship initiative, which pairs each author of an accepted abstract with an experienced IEEE volunteer. The mentors provide personalized guidance on organizing the students’ technical content into the correct format for publishing. They also discuss navigating the peer review process, structuring presentations, and preparing the final manuscript for publication.The impact of the guided process can be valuable for both the mentors and their mentees. IEEE Member <a href="https://manhattan.edu/directory/wafa.elmannai" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wafa Elmannai</a>, associate professor and chair of the electrical and computer engineering department at <a href="https://manhattan.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Manhattan University</a>, in Riverdale, N.Y., and faculty advisor to the IEEE-HKN <a href="https://hkn.ieee.org/hkn-chapters/all-chapters/gamma-alpha-chapter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gamma Alpha chapter</a>, serves as a mentor.“Research is essential to advancing technology and driving innovation,” Elmannai says.She volunteered to be a mentor, she says, because she has seen how conducting research can transform a student’s future by building their confidence, curiosity, and critical thinking skills.“Mentoring encourages students to step outside their comfort zones and develop innovative solutions that contribute to society,” she says.For the students, the conference can be a critical stepping stone. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-kwabi-addo/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">David Kwabi-Addo</a>, an IEEE graduate student member who is researching computational biology at <a href="https://web.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MIT</a>, is president of the IEEE-HKN <a href="https://hkn.ieee.org/hkn-chapters/all-chapters/beta-theta-chapter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Beta Theta chapter</a>. He says he views the program as an opportunity to gain experience in producing academic scholarship.“I submitted an abstract of my research paper because I see the conference as a chance to produce what could become my first conference publication,” Kwabi-Addo says. “The conference offers me a chance to learn how to communicate my research to a broader audience, gain feedback from other student researchers beyond my institution, and see how my work can be made more accessible.”He says he hopes his participation will highlight the diverse breadth of research that future conferences can showcase.<h2>Workshops on the publishing process</h2>Conference organizers are holding a series of workshops to guide students through every step of the academic publishing process. The workshops are open to anyone and available on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@IEEE-HKN" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE-HKN YouTube channel</a>.Topics previously covered are:<ul><li><a href="https://youtu.be/fXTO_iElPr4?si=ZHBV_8ei3KZ_yNAY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Art of Crafting a Compelling Abstract</a> (13 March).</li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/LCdrsz-bbeo?si=FbxbWBhYrRPtwYCH" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Identifying When a Project Is Mature Enough for Publication</a> (15 May).</li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/tejV1OsLaHE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Mechanics of Writing a Technical Paper</a> (19 June).</li><li><a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/c18e9a40-7adf-11f1-92ef-67059cade53a" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Surviving the Review Cycle and Dealing With Criticism</a> (14 August).</li></ul>Registration is open to all for this upcoming workshop:<ul><li><a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/fb216f10-7c7b-11f1-87ef-5f71d23a02b0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">From Pen to Voice: Adapting a Paper Into a Compelling Conference Talk</a> (2 October).</li></ul><h2>A launchpad for the next generation</h2>The Innovating the Future program is designed not only to improve the quality of submissions but also to foster long-term professional development and research communication skills to develop the next generation of IEEE authors. The conference is more than a venue for presenting research; it is a launchpad for innovators committed to advancing technology for humanity. Reference: https://ift.tt/lBD6oHK

AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made “large-scale, disruptive actions”

Earlier this year, Meta created a “plan” to reduce some of its teams by as much as 60 percent to make the company “AI native,” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigations/mark-zuckerberg-had-bold-plan-replace-meta-staff-with-ai-heres-how-it-imploded-2026-08-26/">Reuters</a> reported today, citing two people familiar with Meta’s internal affairs. Reuters’ report highlights the challenges <a href="https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/08/ai-wont-replace-radiologists-but-it-will-dramatically-change-their-jobs/">organizations face</a> when analyzing the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/ai-is-hitting-entry-level-jobs-hardest-stanford-study-finds/">best uses for AI</a> and determining when the technology is a better fit for certain tasks than employees. Meta confirmed to Reuters that the plan, reportedly codenamed Project OT (short for organization transformation), explored scenarios in which Meta reduced some team headcounts by 60 percent and that the plan called for two rounds of layoffs. Meta wouldn’t confirm which teams Project OT affected.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/metas-scrapped-plans-to-go-ai-native-included-slashing-teams-by-60-percent/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/metas-scrapped-plans-to-go-ai-native-included-slashing-teams-by-60-percent/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/XTYCmyx