Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2016
From ACM TechNews
Fujitsu Eyes Architecture to Rival Quantum Computers
Fujitsu Laboratories is working with University of Toronto researchers in Japan to develop a computing architecture that addresses combinatorial optimization problems.
From ACM TechNews
The Pentagon's 'terminator Conundrum': Robots That Could Kill on Their Own
The Pentagon has made artificial intelligence the core of its agenda to maintain the U.S. position as the world's leading military power.
From ACM TechNews
Flying Drones Could Soon Recharge While Airborne With New Technology
Imperial College London researchers have demonstrated a highly efficient method for wirelessly transferring power to a drone while it is flying.
From ACM TechNews
Turning Your Living Room Into a Wireless Charging Station
A panel could one day remotely charge smartphones, tablets, and other devices within its line of sight.
From ACM TechNews
Study Finds 'lurking Malice' in Cloud Hosting Services
Up to 10% of the repositories held by cloud hosting services have been compromised, according to a newly released study.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Vision Leader Fei-Fei Li on Why AI Needs Diversity
As artificial intelligence technologies increasingly are deployed to meet industrial and personal needs, the field will need to address its lack of ethnic and gender diversity.
From ACM News
X-Rays Are Revealing the Mysterious Writings in Mummy Coffins
It's a sleepy summer Friday at Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source.
From ACM News
Tangled p in Spacetime
"All the world’s a stage…," Shakespeare wrote, and physicists tend to think that way, too.
From ACM News
Webcams sed to Attack Reddit and Twitter Recalled
Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou Xiongmai issued the recall soon after its cameras were identified as aiding the massive web attacks.
From ACM TechNews
AI Experts Weigh in on the White House Approach to Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence experts stress the need for clarity around certain economic and safety ramifications of artificial intelligence technologies.
From ACM TechNews
Typing While Skyping Could Compromise Privacy
Researchers have found a security breach in which keystroke sounds can be recorded during a Skype voice or video call and later reassembled as text.
From ACM TechNews
Creating 3D Hands to Keep S Safe and Increase Security
Researchers say without a lifelike three-dimensional model to test and calibrate fingerprint scanners, there is no consistent way to determine their accuracy.
From ACM News
How Nasa Fights To Keep Our Dying Spacecraft Alive
Sometime in the next 10 or so years, the massive antennas that comprise NASA's Deep Space Network will pick up a faint, distant signal for the final time.
From ACM News
The Pentagon's 'terminator Conundrum': Robots That Could Kill on Their Own
The small drone, with its six whirring rotors, swept past the replica of a Middle Eastern village and closed in on a mosque-like structure, its camera scanning for targets.
From ACM News
Will Visual Programming Crack the Code on Learning?
An emerging generation of visual coding platforms is introducing software development to young people and other beginners.
From ACM News
Computing Glitch May Have Doomed Mars Lander
Photos of a huge circle of churned-up Martian soil leave few doubts: a European Space Agency (ESA) probe that was supposed to test landing technology on Mars crashed into the red planet instead, and may have exploded on impact…
From ACM News
A New Era of Internet Attacks Powered By Everyday Devices
When surveillance cameras began popping up in the 1970s and '80s, they were welcomed as a crime-fighting tool, then as a way to monitor traffic congestion, factory floors and even baby cribs.
From ACM TechNews
Chinese Researchers Develop Algorithms For Smart Energy Grid
Scientists at Northeastern University in China have proposed a way to distribute energy similarly to how the Internet operates.
From ACM TechNews
Wits Researchers Find Techniques to Improve Carbon Superlattices For Quantum Electronic Devices
The quantum properties of carbon-based superlattices could lead to a fundamental shift in the design and development of electronics.
From ACM TechNews
Designing the Future Internet
Connecting many smart objects to the Internet will result in an enormous boost in online traffic, which one researcher aims to make manageable with a network redesign.
From ACM TechNews
What Iarpa Knows About Your Canceled Dinner Reservation
The U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity is running several projects examining how crowdsourced data could be used to predict specific events.
From ACM TechNews
Debates: Linguistic Trick Boosts Poll Numbers
A study of U.S. presidential debates found mimicking subtle aspects of an opponent's language better engages a third-party audience and leads to a bump in the polls.
From ACM TechNews
Here's How Young People Decide When They're Drunk 'enough,' According to Math
Mathematical models developed by engineers at Ohio State University have enabled colleagues to explain the factors that drive alcohol consumption among young people.
From ACM News
New Technique Allows Scientists to 'listen' to Proteins
Researchers have come up with a bold new method for representing and understanding a protein's shape: translating it into music.
From ACM News
Icy Heart Could Be Key to Pluto's Strange Geology
Pluto's icy heart beats with a planetary rhythm.
From ACM News
The Power of Prediction Markets
It was a great way to mix science with gambling, says Anna Dreber.
From ACM TechNews
Stephen Hawking Opens British Artificial Intelligence Hub
Stephen Hawking on Wednesday opened an artificial research center at Cambridge University in the U.K.
From ACM TechNews
Tech's Gender Gap Is Getting Worse, Not Better, Report Says
Unless technology companies and educators start reaching out to young women and girls, the number of women in the computer science field will drop, a new report finds.
From ACM Opinion
Inside Microsoft's Quest For a Topological Quantum Computer
The race is on build a "universal" quantum computer. Such a device could be programmed to speedily solve problems that classical computers cannot crack, potentially revolutionizing fields from pharmaceuticals to cryptography.
From ACM News
The Amazing Cloud Cities We Could Build on Venus
It's hot enough to melt lead, the acid rain will scorch the flesh from your bones – and it's the perfect place to raise a family. Venus, not Mars, might be the off-world destination of choice for future space colonists.