Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2015
From ACM News
Do You Only Trust Wall-E Because He's Cute?
Each year it seems a little less like science fiction to ask your phone for advice about local chinese food or trust your car to get you to a new location.
From ACM News
Mediators Call For Change to Science of Human Brain Project
Mediators appointed to analyse the rifts within Europe’s ambitious €1-billion (US$1.1 billion) Human Brain Project (HBP) have called for far-reaching changes both in its governance and its scientific programmes. Most significantly…
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Sensor's Advantages Survive Entanglement Breakdown
MIT researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can improve the performance of optical sensors, even when it does not survive light's interaction with the environment, a development that furthers the progress toward quantum…
From ACM TechNews
Obama Seeks to Boost Training For High-Tech Jobs
President Barack Obama is embarking on a 20-city drive to intensify job-specific training in the high-tech sector. The administration aims to place 50,000 graduates into high-paying jobs by harnessing the potential of skills-specific…
From ACM TechNews
From Massive Supercomputers Come Tiniest Transistors
Purdue University researchers have created a set of software tools that can predict the future behavior of nanoscale transistors. The software simulates the phenomena that occur when an electric charge passes through a few-atoms…
From ACM News
Use of Rover Arm Expected to Resume in a Few Days
Managers of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover mission expect to approve resumption of rover arm movements as early as next week while continuing analysis of what appears to be an intermittent short circuit in the drill.
From ACM News
Silicon Valley Is Trying to Make Humans Immortal—and Finding Some Success
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, plans to live to be 120. Compared with some other tech billionaires, he doesn't seem particularly ambitious.
From ACM TechNews
Eben Upton: The Raspberry Pi Pioneer
Eben Upton, the inventor of the Raspberry Pi computer, got his start coding games in BASIC on a BBC Micro when he was 10.
From ACM TechNews
What Is Privacy? New Research Reveals We May Need a New Definition
Rutgers University professor Vivek Singh has found that information taken from just four credit card transactions can uniquely identify a person.
From ACM TechNews
Addressing the Human Brain's Big Data Challenge With Brainx3
Researchers have developed BrainX3, a platform for visualizing, simulating, analyzing, and interacting with massive amounts of data.
From ACM TechNews
Time to Disconnect: Why the Sim Card Has Had Its Day
SIM cards used by mobile phones to connect to phone networks will soon be 25 years old, and have been found to be vulnerable.
From ACM TechNews
Heavy Smartphone Use Linked to Lower Intelligence
New research from the University of Waterloo suggests a link between heavy smartphone use and lower intelligence.
From ACM Careers
Google Ventures and the Search For Immortality
"If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes," Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California.
From ACM News
To Digitize a Brain, First Slice 2,000 Times with a Very Sharp Blade
As I stepped into the Brain Observatory, I didn't really see what I expected from a brain bank.
From ACM News
Engineering the Perfect Baby
If anyone had devised a way to create a genetically engineered baby, I figured George Church would know about it.
From ACM News
Dig This: I Operated a Giant Excavator from 2,500km Away
Thanks to Ericsson, I can check off operating heavy machinery from my bucket list.
From ACM News
To Bring Virtual Reality to Market, Furious Efforts to Solve Nausea
Few technologies have generated more attention than virtual reality, which promises to immerse people in 3-D games and video.
From ACM TechNews
Flexible Sensors Turn Skin Into a Touch-Sensitive Interaction Space For Mobile Devices
Researchers working on the iSkin project are studying the potential use of the human body as a touch-sensitive surface for controlling mobile devices.
From ACM TechNews
Sc15 Chair on Hpc Transforms, Diversity Outreach, and Austin
In an interview, Jackie Kern, general chair of the SC15 conference, shares her agenda for the year and plans for the event.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook Invents an Intelligence Test For Machines
Artificial intelligence researchers want to develop more comprehensive exams to test their systems.
From ACM TechNews
Ncsa Part of Team Developing Tools to Help Governments Deal With Disasters
A $20-million grant is aimed at developing computer tools to help local governments prepare for extreme weather and recover quickly in the aftermath of natural hazards.
From ACM TechNews
Kids and Robots Learn to Write Together
Young children can use a new program to teach a humanoid robot how to write letters and improve their writing skills at the same time.
From ACM News
Nasa Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet.
From ACM News
Rover Examining Odd Mars Rocks at Valley Overlook
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed last month to an overlook for surveying "Marathon Valley," a science destination chosen because spectrometer observations from orbit indicate exposures of clay minerals.
From ACM News
Astronomers Observe Supernova and Find They're Watching Reruns
It's "Groundhog Day" in the cosmos.
From ACM News
A Robot That Collapses nder Pressure (in a Good Way)
If NASA plans to send robots to other planets, it's going to need some new designs: ones that are easy to land, easy to move around, and easy to fix.
From ACM News
Robo-Rescuers Battle It Out in Disaster Challenge
When the humanoid robot SAFFiR gets a shove, it reflexively moves to maintain its balance. SAFFiR can also walk over uneven terrain, turn its head to scan its surroundings and—with the help of a human operator—reach out to grasp…
From ACM News
Facebook Invents an Intelligence Test For Machines
John is in the playground. Bob is in the office. Where is John?
From ACM TechNews
Demand For Linux Skills Growing Faster Than Talent Pool: Report
There is still a shortage of qualified Linux professionals, according to the Linux Foundation's 2015 Linux Jobs report.
From ACM TechNews
New Technology Could Cut Costs of Night Vision, Thermal Imaging
Researchers say they have developed semiconductor technology that could make night vision and thermal imaging affordable for everyday use.