Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2016
From ACM News
Software Flags 'Suicidal' Students, Presenting Privacy Dilemma
Ken Yeh is the director of technology at Ontario Christian Schools, a private K-12 school near Los Angeles with about 100 children per grade.
From ACM TechNews
Phone-Based Laser Rangefinder Works Outdoors
Researchers have developed an infrared depth-sensing system, built from a smartphone with a $10 laser attached to it, that works indoors and outdoors.
From ACM TechNews
Breakthrough Technology to Improve Cybersecurity
A collaborative project has yielded a major breakthrough in generating single photons as carriers of quantum information in security systems.
From ACM TechNews
New Open Source Software for High Resolution Microscopy
Bielefeld University researchers have developed a new open source software solution that can process raw data quickly and efficiently.
From ACM News
The Race Is On to Control Artificial Intelligence, and Tech's Future
The resounding win by a Google artificial intelligence program over a champion in the complex board game Go this month was a statement—not so much to professional game players as to Google's competitors.
From ACM TechNews
Male Computer Programmers Shown to Be Right p There With Chefs, Dentists on Gender Pay Gap Scale
Male computer programmers' salaries are far higher than those of their female peers, according to a new Glassdoor report.
From ACM TechNews
It's Your Fault Microsoft's Teen AI Turned Into Such a Jerk
Microsoft unveiled a new online chatbot on Twitter but took it offline the same day because Twitter users coaxed it into regurgitating offensive language.
From ACM News
Meet the Largest Science Project in S Government History—the James Webb Telescope
Since Galileo first discovered the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, telescopes have gotten larger, more accurate, and more powerful.
From ACM News
Intel Accepts That Moore’s Law Is Finally Dead, Drops Its ‘tick-Tock’ Model Of Chip Making
Many experts have called 2016 the year when Moore’s Law dies.
From ACM News
Security Missed Brussels Bombs–But Could Sensors Spot Them?
After terrorists attacked Paris last November, nearby Brussels, home of many of the attackers, posted heavily armed soldiers in public places.
From ACM TechNews
Crowd Control? Baidu Has an Algorithm For That
Baidu's Big Data Lab has devised an algorithm that can predict crowd formation.
From ACM TechNews
A Japanese AI Almost Won a Literary Prize
A short-form novel co-authored by an artificial intelligence has successfully passed the initial screening of a Japanese literary competition.
From ACM TechNews
Survey Finds Most Coders Are Self-Taught
Most programmers are self-educated and have received little formal training, according to a new survey of 50,000 coders.
From ACM TechNews
A Computer With a Great Eye Is About to Transform Botany
Pennsylvania State University paleobotanist Peter Wilf and colleagues have developed new software for identifying families of leaves.
From ACM TechNews
Poly Develops Integrated iWheelchair System
A team from Hong Kong Polytechnic University has developed an intelligent system called the iWheelchair that promises to make life easier for users and caregivers.
From ACM News
Computational Thinking, 10 Years Later
"Not in my lifetime." That's what I said when I was asked whether we would ever see computer science taught in K-12.
From ACM News
'minimal' Cell Raises Stakes in Race to Harness Synthetic Life
Genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter has created a synthetic cell that contains the smallest genome of any known, independent organism.
From ACM News
Tech Could Help Secure Public Spaces, If Europe Wants More Surveillance
Facial recognition software, scanners that detect weapons and cameras that spot nervous people are some of the technologies that could be used more widely to secure public places, but some would require greater acceptance of…
From ACM News
Locking Out the Hackers
New hardware and services are aimed at identifying malware before it has the chance to execute.
From ACM News
Bright Spots and Color Differences Revealed on Ceres
Scientists from NASA's Dawn mission unveiled new images from the spacecraft's lowest orbit at Ceres, including highly anticipated views of Occator Crater, at the 47th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands…
From ACM News
Fbi Director Says Fight with Apple About Terrorism, Not Setting Precedent
James Comey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, is defending the agency's legal battle with Apple, saying it is about fighting terrorism and not about setting legal precedent.
From ACM News
Why You Should Be Skeptical That Any Video Is Real
Be careful about believing what your eyes are telling you.
From ACM TechNews
How New Yorker Cartoons Could Teach Computers to Be Funny
The New Yorker magazine is using crowdsourcing algorithms to mine a massive volume of cartoon caption submissions to identify the funniest captions.
From ACM TechNews
Tor Project Says It Can Quickly Catch Spying Code
A Tor Project developer reports the project is enhancing its software to rapidly detect tampering to its network for the purpose of surveillance.
From ACM TechNews
Analyzing Twitter: Advanced Algorithm Predicts Likelihood of Online Protests
Arizona State University researchers have developed and studied an algorithm to help anticipate online protests via Twitter.
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputer Simulates Whole-Body Blood Flow
A new supercomputer simulation of the circulation of blood throughout the entire human body correlates very closely with real-world flow measurements.
From ACM News
A Computer With a Great Eye Is About to Transform Botany
My dad is a wildlife biologist, and during road trips we took when I was growing up he spent a lot of time talking about the grasses and trees along the highway.
From ACM News
The Black-Hole Collision That Reshaped Physics
The event was catastrophic on a cosmic scale—a merger of black holes that violently shook the surrounding fabric of space and time, and sent a blast of space-time vibrations known as gravitational waves rippling across the Universe…
From ACM News
How the Hell Could the FBI Hack Into That iPhone?
You know that part about the FBI needing Apple's help to unlock a terrorist's iPhone 5C?
From ACM TechNews
What's the Year, Make, and Model of Your Vehicular Cloud?
Old Dominion University engineers want to use Internet-connected cars as a cloud computing resource.