Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2017
From ACM TechNews
Now You Can 'build Your Own' Bio-Bot
A team of researchers has released a protocol for designing and building "bio-bots" powered by muscle cells and controlled with light and electrical signals.
From ACM News
Broad Institute Wins Bitter Battle Over Crispr Patents
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has upheld a series of patents granted for the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
From ACM News
The Need For a Digital Geneva Convention
Responding to the rise in nation-state cybersecurity attacks.
From ACM News
Observations Catch a Supernova Three Hours After It Exploded
The skies are full of transient events.
From ACM News
Apple vs. Fbi One Year Later: Still Stuck in Limbo
It's been a year since Apple fought the FBI over data privacy, and we've barely heard a peep from either side on the issue.
From ACM TechNews
Novel Technique Tracks More Web sers Across Browsers
Researchers say they have developed the first cross-browser fingerprinting technique using machine-level features to identify users.
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Bee Could Help Pollinate Crops as Real Bees Decline
Researchers have created a drone that transports pollen between flowers.
From ACM TechNews
A Chip Flaw Strips Away Hacking Protections For Millions of Devices
The VUSec team at the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has demonstrated an exploit that undercuts a basic safeguard used in all modern operating systems.
From ACM TechNews
Success By Deception
Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland say they have refined machine learning by deliberately misleading intelligent machines.
From ACM TechNews
New Software Will Standardize Data Collection For Great White Sharks
Researchers collaborated on software that helps researchers collect and manage data on great white sharks spotted along the coast.
From ACM TechNews
Pushing Boundaries
The recent Women in Data Science Conference provided a forum for female data scientists to discuss a range of topics in the field.
From ACM News
Lasers Could Give Space Research Its 'broadband' Moment
Thought your Internet speeds were slow? Try being a space scientist for a day.
From ACM News
S Science Advisers Outline Path to Genetically Modified Babies
Scientists should be permitted to modify human embryos destined for implantation in the womb to eliminate devastating genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anaemia or cystic fibrosis—once gene-editing techniques advance sufficiently…
From ACM TechNews
Millimeter-Scale Computers: Now With Deep Learning Neural Networks on Board
University of Michigan computer scientists are researching micro mote computers.
From ACM TechNews
Intel Researches Tech to Prepare For a Future Beyond Today's Pcs
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich says his company is investigating and investing in technologies that promise to transcend the computing capabilities of current PCs and servers.
From ACM TechNews
Wave of the Future: Terahertz Chips a New Way of Seeing Through Matter
Researchers at Princeton University say they have created microchips capable of transmitting and receiving terahertz waves.
From ACM News
Fixing the Fake News Problem
Unsubstantiated information can spread like wildfire through social media; new tools aim to make it easy to track down sources of misinformation, no matter where they are encountered.
From ACM News
Elusive Triangulene Created By Moving Atoms One at a Time
Researchers at IBM have created an elusive molecule by knocking around atoms using a needle-like microscope tip.
From ACM News
Physicists Teach AI to Identify Exotic States of Matter
Put a tray of water in the freezer. For a while, it's liquid. And then—boom—the molecules stack into little hexagons, and you've got ice.
From ACM News
Nae's Newest Members Include 17 Computer Scientists
Seventeen computer scientists were among the 84 new members and 22 new foreign members recently announced by The National Academy of Engineering.
From ACM TechNews
The Internet and Your Brain Are More Alike Than You Think
Researchers say they have found parallels between an Internet algorithm and human brain activity that improve the understanding of engineered and neural networks.
From ACM TechNews
Sensors Embedded in Sports Equipment Could Provide Real-Time Analytics to Your Smartphone
Researchers are experimenting with Internet of Things devices that can be embedded into sports equipment, as well as in wearable devices, to make data analytics more accessible to the sports industry.
From ACM TechNews
Inside the Far-Out Glass Lab
Engineers at Corning's research lab in New York are developing new materials in their quest to expand the capabilities of glass.
From ACM TechNews
New System Makes It Harder to Track Bitcoin Transactions
Researchers have developed a program that could make it more difficult for observers to track any single bitcoin transaction.
From ACM TechNews
Automated Rescue
The Texas A&M University Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue builds robots that can work with first responders in search-and-rescue operations.
From ACM TechNews
ts to Launch Programming Environment For the Quantum Era
Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia say they will soon unveil a quantum-era programming environment at the UTS Center for Quantum Software and Information.
From ACM News
Scientists Shortlist Three Landing Sites For Mars 2020
Participants in a landing site workshop for NASA's upcoming Mars 2020 mission have recommended three locations on the Red Planet for further evaluation.
From ACM News
AI Learns to Solve Quantum State of Many Particles at Once
The same type of artificial intelligence that mastered the ancient game of Go could help wrestle with the amazing complexity of quantum systems containing billions of particles.
From ACM News
Yale Will Rename Calhoun College to Honor 'trailblazing' Alum Grace Murray Hopper
Hopper was an early computer scientist who foresaw the importance technology would have in daily life.
From ACM News
Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age
Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, …