Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2016
From ACM TechNews
Design Your Own Custom Drone
Researchers have developed a way for consumers to design and develop drones to meet their unique specifications.
From ACM TechNews
Lazy Coders Are Training Artificial Intelligences to Be Sexist
Artificial intelligence systems can form flawed and stereotypical word associations by learning from biased data samples.
From ACM TechNews
Mit's Modular Robotic Chain Is Whatever You Want It to Be
Researchers have developed an improved version of last year's LineFORM multifunctional snake robot that introduces modularity to the system.
From ACM TechNews
CLA Professors Stride Forward in Robotic Technology Research
University of California, Los Angeles computer scientists say recent artificial intelligence innovations are pushing robotic technology forward.
From ACM News
A Year After San Bernardino and Apple-Fbi, Where Are We on Encryption?
The debate over encryption and government access to secured communications dates decades back.
From ACM News
Spinoff 2017: Nasa Tech Makes a Difference on Earth
NASA has released its Spinoff 2017 publication, which takes a close look at 50 different companies that are using NASA technology—innovations developed by NASA, including JPL; with NASA funding; or under a contract with the agency—in…
From ACM News
CRISPR Heavyweights Battle in US Patent Court
It was a tough day in US patent court for the University of California, Berkeley.
From ACM TechNews
A Handful of Photos Yields a Mouthful of (digital) Teeth
Disney researchers have developed a model-based method of realistically reconstructing teeth for digital actors and for medical applications.
From ACM TechNews
Safer, Less Vulnerable Software Is the Goal of New Nist Computer Publication
The strategies compiled in a new U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) publication can lead to software with 100 times fewer vulnerabilities, according to computer scientists at the agency.
From ACM TechNews
When an Interface Becomes the Face
Social roboticist Glenda Hannibal at the University of Vienna in Austria considers how a future society supported by robots will transform human-digital interaction.
From ACM TechNews
.s. Lead in Quantum Computing 'under Siege,' Says White House Cyber Adviser
The United States needs to invest more in quantum computing, according to Tim Polk, assistant director of cybersecurity within the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy.
From ACM TechNews
The Origin of Silicon Valley's Gender Problem
About 25 percent of boys and 24 percent of girls expect to be working in a science-related occupation in their 30s, according to the OECD Program for International Student Assessment test. However, more boys expect to be engineers…
From ACM TechNews
White House Boosts Csforall Commitments For Computer Science Education Week
The White House has announced new commitments involving implementing computer science and computational thinking in K-12 education that build on President Barack Obama's Computer Science for All initiative.
From ACM News
Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to Gunfire in D.c.
What was finally real was Edgar Welch, driving from North Carolina to Washington to rescue sexually abused children he believed were hidden in mysterious tunnels beneath a neighborhood pizza joint.
From ACM News
Google, Democracy and the Truth About Internet Search
Here's what you don’t want to do late on a Sunday night. You do not want to type seven letters into Google. That's all I did.
From ACM News
Coding Comics
Macarthur Fellow Gene Luen Yang's graphic novels introduce kids to computer programming.
From ACM TechNews
Making Airport Precheck Free Could Save Tsa Millions: Report
A University of Illinois study found if the U.S. Transportation Security Administration paid for the expedited airport screening program PreCheck for frequent fliers, it would save the agency $34 million a year, enhance airport…
From ACM TechNews
Geo Faces Algorithm Seeks to Determine Where You're From
Southern Connecticut State University professor Mohammad Tarik Islam has developed Geo Faces, an algorithm and dataset that can determine where people are from based on photographs of them.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Tackle Communicating With Test Flights sing Weaker Frequencies
University of Kansas researchers have received a $2.5-million contract to develop new communication technologies for airborne vehicles on U.S. test ranges. The research will help remake test-flight communications following an…
From ACM News
Security Experts Warn Congress That the Internet of Things Could Kill People
A growing mass of poorly secured devices on the Internet of things represents a serious risk to life and property, and the government must intervene to mitigate it.
From ACM News
Cassini Makes First Ring-Grazing Plunge
NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has made its first close dive past the outer edges of Saturn's rings since beginning its penultimate mission phase on Nov. 30.
From ACM News
AI Learns to Predict the Future By Watching 2 Million Videos
An artificial intelligence system can predict how a scene will unfold and dream up a vision of the immediate future.
From ACM TechNews
Team Finds New Method to Improve Predictions
Researchers at Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard universities have developed a new method to analyze big data that better predicts outcomes in healthcare, politics, and other fields.
From ACM TechNews
Designing Agile Human-Machine Teams
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) recently announced Agile Teams (A-Teams) program is designed to discover, test, and illustrate predictive and generalizable mathematical techniques for enabling optimized…
From ACM TechNews
100 Million Students Worldwide Will Learn to Code This Week For Hour of Code
Computer Science Education Week begins today (December 5), and more than 100 million students worldwide will participate in Hour of Code, a 60-minute introduction to computer programming.
From ACM TechNews
Google Deepmind Makes AI Training Platform Publicly Available
Alphabet's Google DeepMind is making its game platform available to the general public on GitHub. DeepMind is open sourcing the entire source code for its training environment, which has been renamed DeepMind Lab, so anyone can…
From ACM TechNews
Augmented Reality Helps Patients With Chronic Phantom Limb Pain
A new treatment developed by Max Ortiz Catalan at the U.K.'s Chalmers University of Technology can help alleviate amputees' phantom limb pain. The approach relies on machine learning and augmented reality.
From ACM TechNews
Security Experts Warn Congress That the Internet of Things Could Kill People
Prominent computer security experts in November warned the U.S. Congress that a poorly secured Internet of Things could seriously threaten life and property.
From ACM Careers
Silicon Valley's Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China
The majesty of the Golden Gate, the windy chill of Alcatraz, the tourist hubbub of Pier 39—Zhao Haoyu’s itinerary for San Francisco had it all.
From ACM News
With Wireless Optogenetic Tools, Neuroscientists Steer Mice Around Their Cages
Scientists typically control the behavior of a lab mouse by enticing it with food or repelling it with puffs of air.