Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2018
From ACM TechNews
Hyundai Develops Fingerprint Tech to Unlock and Start Cars
Hyundai Motor has developed a system that will allow drivers to unlock and start their vehicles using only their fingerprints.
From ACM TechNews
Deep Learning Technique Reveals 'Invisible' Objects in the Dark
Engineers used a deep neural network to train a computer to reconstruct transparent objects from images captured in almost total darkness.
From ACM TechNews
Students Win High-Performance Computing Competition
A team of students from the University of Cape Town in South Africa took first place in the Student Cluster Competition.
From ACM TechNews
Synthesizing Natural Products With a Computational Step Saver
Yale University researchers have reduced the number of steps needed to synthesize two natural anticancer products, using a strategy for computational analysis in organic chemistry.
From ACM News
Consumer Rating Algorithms Score Big with Businesses, Governments
Businesses, universities, and governments increasingly are turning to algorithms to make crucial decisions about how to treat customers and citizens.
From ACM News
Microsoft Issues Emergency Patch for Zero-day Flaw in the IE Browser
CVE-2018-8653 must be patched manually for now.
From ACM News
Getting the Dirt on Creation, Inside OSIRIS-REx's First Close Look at Bennu
Last week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) the science team of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission presented their first findings from the asteroid, Bennu. As expected, the spacecraft had uncovered evidence of…
From ACM TechNews
Israel's Tech Sector Faces Shortage of Workers
Israel is struggling to recruit workers to its technology sector.
From ACM TechNews
Sydney Motorists sing Mobile Phones Will Be Snapped in Camera Trial
Drivers who illegally use mobile phones while driving will have their pictures taken along several motorways in Sydney, Australia, in a pilot of new high-tech cameras.
From ACM TechNews
How a Personality Trait Puts You at Risk for Cybercrime
A new study found that people with low self-control are more susceptible to malware attacks.
From ACM TechNews
Nurse Robot Moxi Gets Schooled by Texas Nurses
A robot designed to test collaborative automation integration in a working medical facility recently concluded its first real-world trial in a Texas hospital.
From ACM TechNews
Brazil Could Save More Species at Half the Cost With New Forest Restoration Plan
An international research team developed customized software to determine the best strategy for Brazilian reforestation efforts.
From ACM TechNews
Computers Determine States of Consciousness
A new algorithm can distinguish between unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and a minimally conscious state through the use of electroencephalographic brainwave recordings.
From ACM TechNews
Half of Academic Scientists Quit After Just Five Years–Here's Why
Indiana University researchers estimated that half of all people pursuing STEM careers at higher-education institutions leave the field after only five years.
From ACM TechNews
AI Has Some Explaining to Do
Software makers offer more transparent machine-learning tools—but there's a trade-off.
From ACM TechNews
This Graduate School Helped Make New York Appealing to Amazon
Cornell Tech's reputation for producing skilled technology graduates played a decisive role in Amazon's decision to build its new headquarters in New York City.
From ACM News
Taking the Reins of AI
A new report calls for the U.S. government to watch, encourage, and regulate (where necessary) artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
Team Invents Method to Shrink Objects to the Nanoscale
MIT researchers have invented a way to fabricate nanoscale 3-D objects of nearly any shape. They can also pattern the objects with a variety of useful materials, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA.
From ACM News
Stewart Brand Announced as 2019 Paradigm Award Winner
The "Original Ecomodernist" to accept the award at the Breakthrough Dialogue event in June in Sausalito, CA.
From ACM News
How Russian Trolls sed Meme Warfare to Divide America
There's a meme on Instagram, circulated by a group called "Born Liberal." A fist holds a cluster of strings, reaching down into people with television sets for heads. The text declares: "The People Believe What the Media Tells…
From ACM News
NASA's Juno Mission Halfway to Jupiter Science
On Dec. 21, at 8:49:48 a.m. PST (11:49:48 a.m. EST) NASA's Juno spacecraft will be 3,140 miles (5,053 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops and hurtling by at a healthy clip of 128,802 mph (207,287 kilometers per hour).
From ACM News
Searching for the Perfect Artificial Synapse for AI
What's the best type of device from which to build a neural network? Of course, it should be fast, small, consume little power, have the ability to reliably store many bits-worth of information.
From ACM TechNews
STEM Toys Promise to Turn Kids Into Tech Geniuses. Grown-Up Coders Are Skeptical
Some programmers are doubtful that toys promising to imbue young minds with science, technology, engineering, and math skills can deliver on that promise.
From ACM TechNews
Taiwan's Rice Farmers se Big Data to Cope With Climate Change
Taiwanese rice growers are using big data as a part of a pilot project to ensure the resilience of crop production in the face of climate change.
From ACM TechNews
Data se Draining Your Battery? Tiny Device to Speed up Memory While Also Saving Power
A memory cell with multiple layers of two-dimensional material stacks has the potential to be faster and more reliable than other materials.
From ACM TechNews
Ingestible Capsule Can Be Controlled Wirelessly
A new ingestible capsule can be customized to dispatch drugs, sense environmental conditions, or both, and can remain in the stomach for at least a month.
From ACM TechNews
How Sony's 'Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse' ses AR to Put a New Spin on a Beloved Superhero
Sony has enhanced the new animated film "Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse" to break new ground with augmented reality technology.
From ACM TechNews
This Artist Is sing AI to Paint With His Mind
Roboticist Alexander Reben uses artificial intelligence to create works of art.
From ACM News
The Yoda of Silicon Valley
Donald Knuth, recipient of the ACM A.M. Turing Award for 1974, reflects on 50 years of his opus-in-progress, "The Art of Computer Programming."
From ACM News
Ambient AI is About to Devour the Software Industry
Amazon has casually unveiled what could turn into a fundamentally different way to build software.