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 Opinion
Trump's Plans to Shake p the Tech World
Donald Trump's ascension to the White House had very little to do with his views on the spread of high-speed broadband, wireless spectrum allocation—or any number of other eye-glazing but important issues impacting technology…
From ACM News
Vr Is Totally Changing How Architects Dream p Buildings
From the Lower Manhattan offices of New York architecture firm SHoP, you can explore buildings around the world—including ones that don't yet exist.
From ACM TechNews
Face Electrodes Let You Taste and Chew in Virtual Reality
Researchers have created a spoon with electrodes that can amplify salty, sour, or bitter flavors, and used thermal stimulation to mimic the sensation of sweetness.
From ACM TechNews
The Fun Work of Technology Crystal Ball Gazing at Sc16
Next week's International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis will feature a workshop on Post-Moore Era Supercomputing.
From ACM TechNews
Is No Secret Safe? Lipreading Robot Proves More Accurate Than a Human in Deciphering Speech
Researchers from the University of Oxford in the U.K. have developed LipNet, a new program they say is more accurate at reading lips than human experts.
From ACM TechNews
Giant Machine Shows How a Computer Works
Researchers at the University of Bristol in the U.K. have built a giant, operational 16-bit computer to help non-experts see how the mechanisms of computation work.
From ACM TechNews
Driverless-Vehicle Options Now Include Scooters
Researchers have developed an autonomous mobility scooter using the same sensor configuration and software used in previous trials of autonomous cars and golf carts.
From ACM News
What Trump Means For Tech
Barack Obama's policies on technology were considered pro-innovation, with a view to using technology expertise to improve government systems and services.
From ACM News
Nasa Small Satellites Will Take a Fresh Look at Earth
Beginning this month, NASA is launching a suite of six next-generation, Earth-observing small satellite missions to demonstrate innovative new approaches for studying our changing planet.
From ACM News
Brain Implants Allow Paralysed Monkeys to Walk
For more than a decade, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine has been flying every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to another lab in Beijing, China, where he conducts research on monkeys…
From ACM News
Paas Enables Greater Customization
Platform-as-a-Service environments foster development of custom cloud applications.
From ACM TechNews
Future Internet Voting Faces Security Hurdles, CMU Students Find
A team of Carnegie Mellon University students says strong encryption will be a necessity for any future online or Internet-based U.S. voting system.
From ACM TechNews
Slac & Berkeley Researchers Prepare For Exascale
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory will work to develop applications for exascale supercomputers that can the handle massive datasets produced by x-ray lasers.
From ACM TechNews
Machines May Never Master the Distinctly Human Elements of Language
Artificial intelligence might never be able to completely understand human language.
From ACM TechNews
There's Money in Your Wearable Fitness Tracker
The health information collected by wearable fitness trackers may one day carry monetary value, according to a recent study.
From ACM News
The Real-Time Technicolour Living Brain
Rosa Cossart thinks she knows what a memory looks like.
From ACM News
Why You Don't Have Much Neanderthal Dna in Your Genome
Neanderthals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor about half a million years ago.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data Shows People's Collective Behavior Follows Strong Periodic Patterns
Big data-based analysis of datasets of modern and historical news, social media, and Wikipedia page views can reveal periodic patterns in collective population behavior.
From ACM TechNews
A Slow Ride Toward the Future of Public Transportation
A self-driving electric bus relying on laser sensors, global-positioning systems, and software is undergoing testing in Helsinki, Finland.
From ACM TechNews
The Ocean's Robots May Soon Enjoy High-Speed Internet
A wireless communications network could soon enable autonomous underwater instruments to collect information, communicate, and transfer data at Internet speeds,
From ACM TechNews
Chinese Characters Are Futuristic and the Alphabet Is Old News
Stanford University professor Tom Mullaney believes computers make Chinese far more advantageous than typing English via a QWERTY keyboard.
From ACM TechNews
Brown Researchers Developing New Interactive Sleep App
Brown University researchers have developed a smartphone app that uses sleep analytics to generate personalized sleep recommendations.
From ACM TechNews
Will Computer Vision Help France Take a Lead in Ai?
A key factor for France emerging as a leader for research and development in artificial intelligence is overcoming public concerns and outdated government regulations.
From ACM News
Donald Trump's US Election Win Stuns Scientists
Republican businessman and reality-television star Donald Trump will be the United States' next president.
From ACM News
China Adopts Cybersecurity Law Despite Foreign Opposition
China has green-lit a sweeping and controversial law that may grant Beijing unprecedented access to foreign companies' technology and hamstring their operations in the world's second-largest economy.
From ACM News
Watching Summer Clouds on Titan
NASA's Cassini spacecraft watched clouds of methane moving across the far northern regions of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, on Oct. 29 and 30, 2016.
From ACM TechNews
Nyu Is Building a Real-Life Holodeck
New York University recently received a $2.9-million U.S. National Science Foundation grant to develop an immersive virtual reality experience.
From ACM TechNews
Internet-Based and Open Source: How E-Voting Works Around the Globe
Although electronic voting in various forms has become more prevalent outside the U.S., its primary difficulties include its inability to verify source code and cost.
From ACM TechNews
Why Light Bulbs May Be the Next Hacker Target
The Internet of Things could prove highly vulnerable to cyberattackers, according to a new study.
From ACM TechNews
Make America Tweet Again
Software developed by a team of researchers at the University of Utah can identify an individual's feelings toward current events by analyzing political tweets.