Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2017
From ACM TechNews
How to Ensure AI Is Good For Girls: A Robot For Every Child
Rapid progress is being made in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics, as milestones are being passed in a wide range of areas.
From ACM News
Building A.i. That can Build A.i.
They are a dream of researchers but perhaps a nightmare for highly skilled computer programmers: artificially intelligent machines that can build other artificially intelligent machines.
From ACM News
Wormholes Join Black Holes By Quantum Teleportation
A century after wormholes were first theorized, scientists have posited that passages through space-time can be traversed using a special quantum connection between two black holes.
From ACM News
A Better Technique For Spotting Bugs in Self-Driving AI Could Save Lives
Most software bugs won't kill you.
From ACM TechNews
Graphene Enables High-Speed Electronics on Flexible Materials
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have used graphene transistors on plastic substrates to develop a flexible detector for terahertz frequencies.
From ACM TechNews
Humans Are Still Better Than AI at Starcraft--For Now
Professional player Song Byung-gu won a recent "StarCraft" tournament in South Korea, beating four artificial intelligence programs in less than 30 minutes.
From ACM TechNews
Crowdsourcing Big-Data Analysis
FeatureHub is a new collaboration tool designed to make feature identification more efficient and effective.
From ACM TechNews
Smart Access to Homes and Cars sing Fingers
Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a low-cost, minimal-power smart access system that can authenticate users by sensing their finger vibrations.
From ACM TechNews
Captcha Is Dying. This Is How It's Being Reinvented For the AI Age
Completely Automated Public Turing Tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs) appear to be heading toward obsolescence.
From ACM News
Uss mccain collision Ultimately Caused By Ui Confusion
On November 1, the US Navy issued its report on the collisions of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain this summer.
From ACM News
Russian Ads, Now Publicly Released, Show Sophistication of Influence Campaign
Lawmakers on Wednesday released a trove of ads that Russian operatives bought on Facebook, providing the fullest picture yet of how foreign actors sought to promote Republican Donald Trump, denigrate Democrat Hillary Clinton …
From ACM News
Propaganda Bots vs. Transparency
An electoral 'arms race.'
From ACM TechNews
Ornl, City of Oak Ridge Partner on Sensor Project to Capture Trends in Cities
Researchers are partnering with Oak Ridge, TN, to develop a sensor network and real-time visualization platform that helps cities evaluate urban activity trends.
From ACM TechNews
. of Michigan Expert Puts Bird-Like Robot Through Its Paces
University of Michigan researchers are working with a two-legged robot bird they say could eventually be used in search-and-rescue missions.
From ACM News
Next Mars Rover Will Have 23 'eyes'
When NASA's Mars Pathfinder touched down in 1997, it had five cameras: two on a mast that popped up from the lander, and three on NASA's first rover, Sojourner.
From ACM News
Google's AI Wizard nveils a New Twist on Neural Networks
If you want to blame someone for the hoopla around artificial intelligence, 69-year-old Google researcher Geoff Hinton is a good candidate.
From ACM TechNews
New Robobee Flies, Dives, Swims, and Explodes Out of the Water
The latest generation of RoboBee is an aerial-to-aquatic robot that is 1,000 times lighter than any previous model.
From ACM TechNews
Small Words in an Email Can Reveal a Person's Identity
Researchers have demonstrated it is possible to identify someone by analyzing small sequences of words in emails.
From ACM TechNews
How Songbirds Learn a New Song
Researchers studying how Zebra finches learn new songs have found the birds' strategy closely resembles methods used in computer linguistics to compare documents.
From ACM TechNews
The 10 Programming Languages Developers Hate the Most
Perl, Delphi, and VBA top the list of the 10 programming languages that developers like the least, according to a new Stack Overflow report.
From ACM TechNews
'twisted' Light Could Illuminate New Path For Wireless Communications
Researchers have researched "optical angular momentum" to overcome challenges with using "twisted" photons across open spaces and enable advanced wireless communications.
From ACM Careers
Building Tomorrow's Robots
When Brandon Araki arrived at MIT in 2015 as a master's candidate in mechanical engineering, he brought along the picobug, a tiny robot that can fly, crawl, and grasp small objects.
From Communications of the ACM
Overcoming Disabilities
Brain-computer interfaces hold the promise of fully featured replacements for body parts that don't work or are missing.
From Communications of the ACM
Censoring Sensors
Amid growing outcry over controversial online videos, tech firms grapple with how best to police online advertising.
From Communications of the ACM
A Block on the Old Chip
Block copolymers may help transistors shrink to tinier dimensions.