Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2013
From ACM TechNews
Making Artificial Intelligence More Human
The MIT Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines has launched an initiative to develop intelligence incorporating the ability to intuit basic concepts of psychology or physics.
From ACM TechNews
Putting a Face on a Robot
Older and younger people have varying preferences for whether a personal robot should have a robotic, human, or mixed human-robot face.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook's Sandberg Takes on the Tech Gender Gap
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg took aim at the gender gap in the technology industry at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
From ACM News
And Then Steve Said, 'let There Be an Iphone'
The 55 miles from Campbell to San Francisco make for one of the nicest commutes anywhere.
From ACM News
Formula Predicts Research Papers' Future Citations
It sounds like a science administrator’s dream—or a scientist's worst nightmare: a formula that predicts how often research papers will be cited.
From ACM News
Your Digital Trail: Does The Fourth Amendment Protect Us?
Science fiction writers have fantasized for years about the government monitoring everything we do.
From ACM News
Matchstick-Sized Sensor Can Record Your Private Chats
Everyone knows that to have a private chat in the NSA era, you go outdoors.
From ACM TechNews
Project Sonar Crowdsources a Better Bug Killer
Rapid7 chief research officer HD Moore is developing ways of identifying vulnerable Internet-facing systems and devices through scans of the Internet.
From ACM TechNews
Print a Working Paper Computer on an $80 Inkjet
A new method of printing fine lines of electronic circuitboards onto paper uses an inkjet printer loaded with ink containing silver nanoparticles.
From ACM TechNews
Surprisingly Simple Scheme for Self-Assembling Robots
M-Blocks are cube-shaped robots that can climb over and around one another, leap through the air, roll across the ground, and move while suspended upside down.
From ACM TechNews
Scrambled Code Keeps Software Safe
Computer scientists have developed a "mathematical obfuscation" scheme to prevent hackers from reverse-engineering software.
From ACM TechNews
Kurzweil: The Human Brain on It
Information technology is causing the rate at which the world is changing to accelerate, says Ray Kurzweil.
From ACM News
A Digital Copy of the niverse, Encrypted
Even as he installed the landmark camera that would capture the first convincing evidence of dark energy in the 1990s, Tony Tyson, an experimental cosmologist now at the University of California, Davis, knew it could be better…
From ACM News
As F.b.i. Pursued Snowden, an E-Mail Service Stood Firm
One day last May, Ladar Levison returned home to find an F.B.I. agent's business card on his Dallas doorstep.
From ACM News
Quantum Computer Passes Math Test, But Doesn't Answer the Big Question
Is the world's first commercial quantum computer the real deal or not?
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientists Develop New Approach to Sort Cells p to 38 Times Faster
A new approach combines computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science Researchers at Texas A&m Design Video Game to Manage Stress
Researchers are developing a video game called Chill Out to help students learn stress management.
From ACM TechNews
More Than a Game
Researchers have used graphics processing units to demonstrate how to crunch certain astrophysics calculations much more quickly than conventional methods.
From ACM TechNews
How Dia Is Cultivating Google-Like Innovation
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency is using cloud computing to foster innovation among government agencies, industry, and academia.
From ACM News
Dark Fiber Is Lighting p
After years of scarce activity, laying fiber is big business once again.
From ACM TechNews
The Science Author Clive Thompson Does Not Think Tech Is Ruining Your Mind
Technology writer Clive Thompson believes technology is improving human intelligence.
From ACM News
Early Humans Saw Black Hole Light in the Night Sky
Some 2 million years ago, around the time our ancestors were learning to walk upright, a light appeared in the night sky, rivalling the moon for brightness and size.
From ACM News
Did a Hyper-Black Hole Spawn the niverse?
It could be time to bid the Big Bang bye-bye. Cosmologists have speculated that the Universe formed from the debris ejected when a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole—a scenario that would help to explain why the…
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computers Check Each Other’s Work
A new strategy for verifying the solutions of quantum computers relies on a blind quantum computing technique.
From ACM TechNews
Android Fingerprint Sensors 6 Months Away
The FIDO Alliance is aggressively pushing a new standard of biometric identification for consumer access to mobile payments and other services.
From ACM News
A Google Glass Alternative in Japan
Foreign tourists visiting this city have long encountered translation help.
From ACM TechNews
Which World Governments Are Most Likely to Snoop on Your Facebook?
The United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia have the highest rates of government surveillance of Facebook accounts.
From ACM TechNews
c San Diego, md Researchers to Build ‘wifire’ Cyberinfrastructure
A project called WIFIRE aims to develop a cyberinfrastructure to improve wildfire predictions and simulations.
From ACM TechNews
Stretchable Oleds For Displays, Lighting
A transparent, elastic organic light-emitting diode could give rise to a new class of smartphones, smart clothing, and wallpaper-like lighting panels.
From ACM News
Imagining Data Without Division
Seven years ago, when David Schimel was asked to design an ambitious data project called the National Ecological Observatory Network, it was little more than a National Science Foundation grant.