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
Sandia, Harvard Team Create First Quantum Computer Bridge
Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and Harvard University have demonstrated on one chip all the elements needed to create a quantum bridge to link quantum computers together.
From ACM TechNews
Marconi Inspires Rice niversity Design For 1-Terabit Wireless
Rice University researchers are developing a laser-free, pulse-based radio system to support a transmission rate of 1 terabit per second.
From ACM News
Say Hello to .google and Other Branded Internet Addresses
Google is helping usher in a new way for companies to tout their brand names in the digital realm.
From ACM News
Google: Race and Gender Gaps Persist in Computer Science Education
New research from Google shows that black students are less likely to have computer science classes in school and are less likely to use computers at home even though they are 1.5 times more interested in studying computer science…
From ACM News
Quantum Computers Will Destroy Bitcoin, Scientists Warn
Some computer scientists say quantum computers will cripple bitcoin's encryption systems and doom the digital currency. Governments are investing aggressively in quantum computers, which are ultra powerful.
From ACM News
Venus: Inhospitable, and Perhaps Instructional
Venus is not a placid paradise—that much we know.
From ACM News
Europe and Russia Prepare For Historic Landing on Mars
Almost three weeks after it crash-landed the Rosetta orbiter on a comet, the European Space Agency (ESA) is gearing up to land another spacecraft—this time on Mars.
From ACM News
Stepping p Security For an Internet-of-Things World
The vision of the so-called internet of things—giving all sorts of physical things a digital makeover—has been years ahead of reality. But that gap is closing fast.
From ACM News
Exomars Spacecraft Splits in Two to Explore Mars Surface and Air
Sometimes breaking up is the right thing to do. On Sunday at 17:20 GMT, the twin spacecraft of the first stage of the ExoMars mission split in two – one of the most important parts of the mission.
From ACM TechNews
How Vector Space Mathematics Helps Machines Spot Sarcasm
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay led by Aditya Joshi report developing a new strategy to help computers better detect the presence of sarcasm in sentences.
From ACM TechNews
Bendable Electronic Paper Shows Full Color Scale
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology have developed the basis for a new kind of electronic paper that is thin, flexible, and produces all of the colors that a regular light-emitting diode display does.
From ACM TechNews
Stepping p Security For an Internet-of-Things World
As the Internet of things moves closer to realization, initiatives must be taken to ensure the technology is secure, says Michael Walker at DARPA. "If we want to put networked technologies into more and more things, we also…
From ACM TechNews
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due
Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Edinburgh offer a solution in which citations in academic papers are generated automatically.
From ACM TechNews
Making Computer Science Accessible to All Students
The first national consensus document on U.S. computer science education provides standards on computer science concepts and practices by grade span in the areas of computer science, digital citizenship, and computer literacy…
From ACM News
niverse Has Ten Times More Galaxies Than Researchers Thought
The observable Universe contains about 2 trillion galaxies—more than ten times as many as previously estimated, according to the first significant revision of the count in two decades.
From ACM News
A Sense of Scale: The Best Microscopy of 2016
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born while Galileo was still alive, and he ended up developing a similar skill in lens making to that of Galileo.
From ACM News
China Has Now Eclipsed US in AI Research
Humanity may still be years if not decades away from producing sentient artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
Pioneering Brain Implant Restores Paralysed Man's Sense of Touch
For the first time, a paralysed man has gained a limited sense of touch, thanks to an electric implant that stimulates his brain and allows him to feel pressure-like sensations in the fingers of a robotic arm.
From ACM TechNews
T-Rays Could Push Computer Memory Into Overdrive By Factor of 1,000
Terahertz radiation (t-rays) could boost computer memory speeds by a factor of 1,000, according to computer scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
From ACM TechNews
White House: AI Will Be Critical Driver of .S. Economy
A new White House report says artificial intelligence can be a critical economic and societal driver with its development supported by a collaboration between industry, government, civil society, and the public.
From ACM TechNews
Conference For Research Software Engineers Hailed a Phenomenal Success
The world's first conference for Research Software Engineers, held in Manchester, U.K., was called a "phenomenal success" by one of its organizers.
From ACM TechNews
In a Medical First, Brain Implant Allows Paralyzed Man to Feel Again
For the first time, a paralyzed man has regained his sense of touch via a thought-controlled robotic arm thanks to experiments conducted by the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
From ACM TechNews
Two-Dimensional Materials Combined to Produce 'quantum Led'
Devices made from thin layers of graphene, boron nitride, and transition metal dichalcogenides can generate a single photon entirely by electricity. Built at the University of Cambridge, the devices are all-electrical ultra-thin…
From ACM News
Google's AI Reasons Its Way Around the London nderground
Artificial-intelligence systems known as neural networks can recognize images, translate languages and even master the ancient game of Go. But their limited ability to represent complex relationships between data or variables…
From ACM News
Teleporting Toward a Quantum Internet
Quantum physics is a field that appears to give scientists superpowers.
From ACM Careers
Vr Started with Gaming, But It Will Take Over Every Other Industry
"We are looking at sensory immersion.
From ACM Careers
The Search For Virtual Reality's Killer App
Sony Corp.'s release of the PlayStation VR on Thursday brings virtual reality to the cusp of mainstream adoption.
From ACM TechNews
Deep Learning: Achilles Heel in Robo-Car Tests
Machine learning is a serious impediment to the performance of autonomous cars in safety tests. "The training dataset does not conform to traditional expectations of software requirements and design," says CMU professor Philip…
From ACM News
Building Blocks of Life's Building Blocks Come From Starlight
Life exists in a myriad of wondrous forms, but if you break any organism down to its most basic parts, it's all the same stuff: carbon atoms connected to hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements.
From ACM TechNews
How Virtual Reality Is Being sed to Deliver Mental Health Care
Scientists around the world are starting to use virtual reality technology as part of mental health care. VR can help people overcome the two main limitations of in-person therapy — cost and accessibility.