Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2016
From ACM News
World's First Photonic Neural Network nveiled
Neural networks are taking the world of computing by storm.
From ACM News
New Ceres Views as Dawn Moves Higher
The brightest area on Ceres stands out amid shadowy, cratered terrain in a dramatic new view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, taken as it looked off to the side of the dwarf planet.
From ACM News
Intel Looks to a New Chip to Power the Coming Age of AI
Microsoft researchers recently built an artificially intelligent system that seems to recognize conversational speech as effectively as a human.
From ACM TechNews
New AI Algorithm Taught By Humans Learns Beyond Its Training
Researchers at the University of Toronto say they have developed an algorithm that can learn directly from human instructions rather than a set of examples.
From ACM TechNews
Automated Pro-Trump Bots Overwhelmed Pro-Clinton Messages, Researchers Say
Researchers from Oxford University found that an automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the last few days of the U.S. presidential campaign.
From ACM TechNews
New Software Continuously Scrambles Code to Foil Cyberattacks
Columbia University researchers have developed Shuffler, software that tries to preempt hackers who exploit errors in software code by enabling programs to continuously scramble their code as they run, effectively closing the…
From ACM TechNews
Cow Goes Moo: Artificial Intelligence-Based System Associates Images With Sounds
Using artificial-intelligence techniques, a new system from Disney Research and ETH Zurich is capable of learning the association between images and the sounds they make.
From ACM TechNews
K-Computer Leads Graph 500 List of World's Fastest Supercomputers
Japan's K-Computer tops the latest Graph 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers.
From ACM TechNews
Stanford's First Health++ Hackathon Brings Health Care Innovators Together
Stanford University's inaugural health++ Hackathon involved participation from 257 students, faculty, health professionals, designers, and entrepreneurs to create new technologies and long-lived partnerships.
From ACM TechNews
Critical Linux Bug Opens Systems to Compromise
Researchers from Spain's Polytechnic University of Valencia have found a flaw that enables attackers to obtain root shell on affected Linux systems. The vulnerability appears only if a user encrypted the system partition when…
From ACM TechNews
Mobile App Behavior Often Appears at Odds With Privacy Policies
Mobile applications' privacy policies often are inconsistent with how an app actually collects and shares users' personal information, according to an automated analysis system developed by Carnegie Mellon University.
From ACM TechNews
Security Researchers Want to Hide Your Data in 'cyberfog'
Computer scientists at the U.S. Army Laboratory see "cyberfog" as a powerful new form of data security. They say partially compromised data on a fog network would remain useful to users and opaque to adversaries.
From ACM TechNews
Semiconductor-Free Microelectronics Are Now Possible, Thanks to Metamaterials
University of California, San Diego researchers say they have developed the first semiconductor-free, optically controlled microelectronic device built from metamaterials.
From ACM TechNews
Why the Software Industry Needs Computing Education Research
Job opportunities for software development abound, but schools are producing coders of less-than-adequate skill, according to University of Washington professor Andrew J. Ko and Purdue University professor Susanne Hambrusch.
…From ACM TechNews
Cybercriminals Can Steal All Your Passwords From Thin Air With This $25 Wi-Fi Hack
Researchers have developed a system that can analyze Wi-Fi networks and covertly detect and record passwords by looking at the directions radio waves travel to provide wireless Internet coverage.
From ACM TechNews
Defibrillator-Equipped Drones Could Be First on Scene in Cardiac Arrest
Timothy Chan at the University of Toronto in Canada wants to use drone technology to help people who suffer cardiac arrest.
Chan used computer models to determine that strategically placed drones with defibrillators could …From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computers Can Talk to Each Other via a Photon Translator
Researchers from Germany's University of Paderborn have developed a system that can convert photons from one spread of frequencies to another, while preserving their delicate quantum state.
From ACM TechNews
Mathematical Algorithms Calculate Social Behavior
Predicting and influencing human behavior is well on its way to becoming reality, according to researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TU Munich) in Germany.
From ACM News
Martha E. Pollack, Provost at Michigan, Named 14th President
A fellow of ACM, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Pollack’s research has been in the area of artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
The 'smart City' Is Increasingly Global
Municipalities all over the world are building greater intelligence into their infrastructures.
From ACM TechNews
Tackling Society's Big Problems With Systems Theory
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Institute for Data, Systems, and Society doctoral program is underway.
From ACM TechNews
niversity Researchers Develop Iris-Recognition Technology
Notre Dame University researchers have developed software that can determine the difference between iris scans using a new method.
From ACM TechNews
Virtual Reality App Makes Haptics as Immersive as Visuals
Disney Research has developed a 360-degree virtual reality application and a haptic chair that enable users to enhance their virtual experience with customizable effects.
From ACM TechNews
Online Password Guessing Threat nderestimated
Researchers have created different guessing frameworks that prioritize the order of guessing based on attackers having access to different types of personal information.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial-Intelligence System Surfs Web to Improve Its Performance
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers say they have developed a new approach to information extraction that inverts conventional machine learning.
From ACM TechNews
Real or Not? SC Study Finds Many Political Tweets Come From Fake Accounts
University of Southern California researchers found bots made up nearly 20% of the political conversation on Twitter during the U.S. presidential campaign season.
From ACM TechNews
Accelerating Cancer Research With Deep Learning
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are applying deep-learning techniques to automate how information is collected from cancer pathology reports.
From ACM TechNews
Now You See It, Now You Don't
Researchers say they have developed a cloaking device for microscopic photonic integrated devices that will enable photonic computer chips to be more efficient.
From ACM TechNews
Robovote Helps Groups Make Decisions sing AI-Driven Methods
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard universities have launched an online service that enables optimal group decisions.
From ACM News
AI Science Search Engines Expand Their Reach
A free AI-based scholarly search engine that aims to outdo Google Scholar is expanding its corpus of papers to cover some 10 million research articles in computer science and neuroscience, its creators announced on 11 November…