Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2018
From ACM News
China's Quantum-Key Network, the Largest Ever, Is Officially Online
China has the quantum technology to perfectly encrypt useful signals over distances far vaster than anyone has ever accomplished, spanning Europe and Asia, according to a stunning new research letter.
From ACM News
Tractor Beam Breakthrough Could Lead to Levitating Humans
Tractor beams have made the jump from science fiction to reality in recent years, but only for levitating very small objects.
From ACM TechNews
New Research Adds Physiology to Computer Models
Researchers contend that without a physiological complement, a computer program modeling the mind would just be a brain in a vat.
From ACM TechNews
Designing Customizable Self-Folding Swarm Robots
Researchers are developing robotic swarms that can be rapidly customized, self-assembled, and self-deployed without human intervention.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Codes Make Sweet Music For Self-Playing Piano
Researchers used unique software to create an interactive self-playing piano performance.
From ACM TechNews
New Blueprint For Converging Hpc, Big Data
A group of high-performance computing experts has released a report as a blueprint for aligning computational infrastructures.
From ACM TechNews
Professor Designs Algorithms to Make Robots Better Collaborators
Researchers are developing algorithms that enable groups of robots to make good decisions despite inherent communication delays in information sharing.
From ACM TechNews
Trash Talk From an AI Could Help Humans Cooperate Better
Researchers have developed an algorithm to help artificial intelligence and humans learn to cooperate.
From ACM News
Security Fears Spark Crackdown on Chinese Tech
The federal government is taking steps to reduce the presence of some Chinese technology firms in American markets.
From ACM News
Thank the Planet's Shifty Magnetic Poles For Runway Renaming
For decades, pilots heading into or out of Wichita Eisenhower National Airport in southeast Kansas have had three runways to choose from: 1L/19R, 1R/19L, and 14/32.
From ACM Careers
China Declared World's Largest Producer of Scientific Articles
For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
From ACM News
Can Software Predict Crime? Maybe So, but No Better Than a Human
Can you predict a crime?
From ACM TechNews
Nus Engineers Invent Tiny Vision Processing Chip For ltra-Small Smart Vision Systems and Iot Applications
EQSCALE is a new microchip that captures visual details from video frames using 20 times less power than existing chips.
From ACM TechNews
Programmable Droplets
New hardware applies electric fields to manipulate droplets of chemical or biological solutions around a surface, mixing them to test thousands of reactions in parallel.
From ACM TechNews
AI 'scientist' Finds That Toothpaste Ingredient May Help Fight Drug-Resistant Malaria
Researchers discovered that a toothpaste ingredient could be used as a drug against strains of malaria resistant to existing drugs.
From ACM TechNews
Are Programs Better Than People at Predicting Reoffending?
A Dartmouth College research study found the COMPAS computer program performed about as well as humans at predicting recidivism.
From ACM TechNews
Himawari-8 Data Assimilated Simulation Enables 10-Minute pdates of Rain and Flood Predictions
Researchers in Japan used the K supercomputer to show incorporating satellite data at frequent intervals into weather prediction models can improve weather predictions.
From ACM News
A New Way to Track Down Bugs Could Help Save Iot
On a clear day this summer, security researcher Ang Cui boarded a boat headed to a government biosafety facility off the northeastern tip of Long Island.
From ACM TechNews
Brain Mri, AI Predict Deaf Children's Capacity to Learn Language
A new method using two types of computing technology can predict how well a deaf child can learn language after receiving cochlear implant surgery.
From ACM TechNews
New Carnegie Mellon Dynamic Statistical Model Follows Gene Expressions Over Time
Researchers say they have developed a new dynamic statistical model to visualize changing patterns in networks.
From ACM TechNews
Kettering University Students Converting Chevy Bolt Into Autonomous Vehicle
Kettering University researchers are participating in the AutoDrive Challenge, in which teams convert a Chevrolet Bolt into a Level 4 autonomous vehicle.
From ACM TechNews
c Riverside Research Will Help Protect Military Software From Hackers
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside say they are trying to protect important but outdated computers and software still in use by securing legacy systems.
From ACM News
Why Is It Difficult For the Fbi to Break Into Smartphones?
Turing Laureate Whitfield Diffie explains why the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is unable to break the encryption on your smartphone.
From ACM Careers
Artificial Intelligence Will Be a Human Jobs Creator
In 2013, James "Jimi" Crawford founded a company called Orbital Insight, barely noticed at the time amid the Silicon Valley froth.
From ACM News
Nasa Just Proved It Can Navigate Space Using Pulsars. Where to Now?
Half a century ago, astronomers observed their first pulsar: a dead, distant, ludicrously dense star that emitted pulses of radiation with remarkable regularity.
From ACM Careers
How a 22-Year-Old Discovered the Worst Chip Flaws in History
In 2013, a teenager named Jann Horn attended a reception in Berlin hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel. He and 64 other young Germans had done well in a government-run competition designed to encourage students to pursue scientific…
From ACM TechNews
'earworm Melodies With Strange Aspects'--What Happens When AI Makes Music
The FlowMachines project has produced the first entire studio album co-created by artists and artificial intelligence.
From ACM TechNews
Pulses of Light to Encrypt Data and Protect Security of Cryptocurrencies
Researchers have developed a frequency comb they think could encrypt data and bolster the security of cryptocurrency.
From ACM TechNews
Alibaba and Microsoft AI Beat Humans in Stanford Reading Test
Artificial intelligence programs from China and the U.S. last week outperformed humans in a global reading comprehension test
From ACM TechNews
No Evidence to Support Link Between Violent Video Games and Behavior
The results of experiments involving more than 3,000 participants demonstrates that increasing the realism of violent video games does not necessarily boost aggression in gamers.