Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2018
From ACM TechNews
Watching YouTube Videos May Someday Let Robots Copy Humans
Researchers have trained a neural network to reconstruct human acrobatics in YouTube video clips and manipulate a simulated humanoid to ape those movements.
From ACM News
All Systems Go for Second-Ever Mission to Enter Mercury's Orbit
A European rocket is ready to launch the most ambitious mission ever taken towards Mercury, Earth's once-neglected sibling in the Solar System.
From ACM TechNews
Google to Release DeepMind's StreetLearn for Teaching Machine Learning Agents to Navigate Cities
Google is preparing a November release of its DeepMind unit's StreetLearn dataset for training machine learning models to navigate cities without a map.
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputer Predicts Optical, Thermal Properties of Complex Hybrid Materials
Researchers used a supercomputer to predict the electrical and optical characteristics of semiconductors fashioned from layered hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites.
From ACM TechNews
An Evaluation of the Accuracy-Efficiency Tradeoffs of Neural Language Models
Researchers studying the accuracy-efficiency tradeoffs of neural language models have proposed a simple technique to recover some perplexity using negligible memory.
From ACM News
Learning to se Data Better
Using artificial intelligence to process medical sensor data can have great impact on health-related costs and outcomes.
From ACM News
pdate on Opportunity Rover after Martian Dust Storm
One month since increasing their commanding frequency, engineers have yet to hear from NASA's Opportunity rover.
From ACM News
We’d Be Crippled by a Cyberattack on Our tilities
It's time we come up with a strategy to defend our nation from potentially crippling cyberattacks that would put states at the forefront of the fight.
From ACM News
Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen Dies of Cancer at Age 65
Allen was a philanthropist and also the owner of the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers, the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, and had a stake in Seattle's Sounders soccer team.
From ACM News
World's Fastest Camera Can See Light Moving in Slo-Mo
Scientists from Caltech and the University of Quebec have developed the world's fastest camera, which is capable of capturing a record-breaking 10 trillion frames per second.
From ACM News
Internet Hacking Is About to Get Much Worse
Writer Bruce Schneier is a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.
From ACM News
Microsoft just made 60,000 of its patents open source
Apart from older Linux Kernel and Android patents, Microsoft's patent library includes upcoming technologies like LF Energy and HyperLedger.
From ACM News
Riskiest Landing of Japan's Asteroid Mission Delayed ntil January
Touchdown of the Hayabusa2 mothership has been postponed because of unexpectedly rough terrain.
From ACM Careers
As Companies Embrace AI, It's a Job-Seeker's Market
Dozens of employers looking to hire the next generation of tech employees descended on the University of California, Berkeley in September to meet students at an electrical engineering and computer science career fair.
From ACM News
The Pentagon's Push to Program Soldiers' Brains
The military wants future super-soldiers to control robots with their thoughts.
From ACM TechNews
New Technology Allows Spinal Cord Patients to Drive a NASCAR Race Car
Mechanics and electronics specialists collaborated to develop an adaptive auto that can be driven by quadriplegics.
From ACM TechNews
AI Tool Automatically Reveals How to Write Apps That Drain Less Battery
A new tool uses artificial intelligence to determine if a specific application feature should be improved to drain less battery power from a mobile device.
From ACM TechNews
From Rat Brains to Cancer Cells, T Professor Improves Imaging Techniques
The University of Texas' Chandrajit Bajaj is developing advanced imaging methods, including software that generates more dynamic images from neurons.
From ACM TechNews
Just 36 Teachers Across .S. Graduated in 2016 Ready to Teach CS
U.S. universities graduated only 36 new teachers prepared to teach computer science in 2016, and only 35% of U.S. high schools teach the subject.
From ACM TechNews
The Robots Are Coming to Las Vegas
Las Vegas hotels are experimenting with robots and other automation.
From ACM TechNews
Mozilla's Ambitious Plan to Teach Coders Not to Be Evil
Several organizations last week jointly launched an academic contest to incorporate ethics into undergraduate computer science education.
From ACM News
Mars Virtual Reality Software Wins NASA Award
A mixed-reality software that allows scientists and engineers to virtually walk on Mars recently received NASA's 2018 Software of the Year Award.
From ACM News
Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive
When Christine Blasey Ford testified before Congress last month about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's alleged sexual assault, a website called Right Wing News sprang into action on Facebook.
From ACM News
Supercharged Crime-Scene DNA Analysis Sparks Privacy Concerns
Genetic sleuthing techniques that led to the arrest of a suspect in the infamous Golden State Killer case this year are set to become vastly more powerful, suggest two papers published today.
From ACM News
AIs Invent Weird New Limbs to Beat Virtual Obstacle Courses
What are the best two legs for running an obstacle course? One leg that crawls at the knee joint, and one massive leg dragged behind for stability like a kangaroo's tail, according to a recent simulation.
From ACM News
Lynn Conway and the VLSI Revolution in Microchip Design
Although struggling with personal life, Conway made a breakthrough discovery that rewrote what engineers thought single-stream computer architecture might achieve.
From ACM TechNews
Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women
Amazon discontinued an artificial intelligence recruiting tool its machine learning specialists developed to automate the hiring process because it was biased against women.
From ACM TechNews
Cyber Tests Showed 'Nearly All' New Pentagon Weapons Vulnerable to Attack, GAO Says
Most of the U.S. Department of Defense's newest weapons systems are plagued by security issues, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
From ACM TechNews
Forbes Releases Inaugural Top Women in Tech List in Honor of Ada Lovelace Day
In honor of Ada Lovelace Day 2018, Forbes issued its inaugural unranked list of Top Women in Technology.
From ACM TechNews
HyQ Steps Across Gaps Despite Getting Yanked Around
Researchers used a convolutional neural network to reduce the amount of time the HyQ quadruped robot needs to plan its foot placement by several orders of magnitude.