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 TechNews
The 'Elephant in the Valley' Is Tech's Problem
The outlook remains bleak for gender and minority representation in Silicon Valley, according to the "Elephant in the Valley" survey.
From ACM TechNews
A Bitcoin-Style Currency For Central Banks
Virtual currency could become more viable thanks to a new Bitcoin-like system developed by University College London researchers.
From ACM TechNews
Eu Researchers Have Made Big Steps Towards the Creation of a Fully Functional Robotic Nose
The European Union's BIOMACHINELEARNING project has created a neuromorphic network for odor recognition.
From ACM News
Obama Weighs In on Apple v. Fbi: 'you Can't Take an Absolutist View'
In his keynote address at the 2016 South By Southwest conference, President Barack Obama responded directly to a question about cybersecurity in light of the ongoing Apple v. FBI casewith answers that favored the American government's…
From ACM News
What Happens When the Surveillance State Becomes an Affordable Gadget?
When Daniel Rigmaiden was a little boy, his grandfather, a veteran of World War II and Korea, used to drive him along the roads of Monterey, California, playing him tapes of Ronald Reagan speeches.
From ACM News
Nasa's K2 Mission: The Kepler Space Telescope's Second Chance to Shine
The engineers huddled around a telemetry screen, and the mood was tense. They were watching streams of data from a crippled spacecraft more than 50 million miles away—so far that even at the speed of light, it took nearly nine…
From ACM TechNews
Hooray For Hollywood Robots: Movie Machines May Boost Robot Acceptance
A recent study found older adults who recalled more robots in films had lower anxiety toward robots than seniors who remembered fewer robot portrayals.
From ACM TechNews
The .s. Government Launches a $100-Million 'apollo Project of the Brain'
A new $100-million project will reverse-engineer a section of the brain in order to improve machine-learning and artificial-intelligence algorithms.
From ACM TechNews
Algorithm Reads Tweets to Figure Out Which Restaurants Make You Sick
A new app identifies food poisoning-related tweets and connects them to restaurants using geotagging, in order to identify likely hotspots of food poisoning..
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Spoof Phone's Fingerprint Readers Using Inkjet Printers
Michigan State University researchers used off-the-shelf inkjet printers to demonstrate how fingerprint readers on popular smartphones can be spoofed into unlocking.
From ACM TechNews
Machine-Learning Algorithm Aims to Identify Terrorists Using the V Signs They Make
Ahmad Hassanat from Mu'tah University in Jordan and colleagues have developed a way to distinguish people from the unique way they make the "V for victory" sign.
From ACM News
Apple and U.s. Bitterly Turn Up Volume in Iphone Privacy Fight
The Obama administration argued on Thursday that "no single corporation"—even one as successful as Apple—should be allowed to flout the rule of law by refusing to help the F.B.I.unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino…
From ACM News
In Memoriam: David S. Johnson 1945–2016
Johnson’s innovations helped lay the foundation for algorithms used to address optimization problems.
From ACM News
Welcome to the Crispr Zoo
Timothy Doran's 11-year-old daughter is allergic to eggs. And like about 2% of children worldwide who share the condition, she is unable to receive many routine vaccinations because they are produced using chicken eggs.
From ACM News
System Loads Web Pages 34 Percent Faster By Fetching Files More Effectively
There are few things more frustrating than a slow-loading Web page.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data Analysis Is Changing the Nature of Sports Science
Sports scientists now can gather vast amounts of data on players and the action while games are in progress, but they still struggle to process the data in meaningful ways.
From ACM TechNews
One-in-Three Developers Fear AI Will Replace Them
A survey of developers found nearly a third identify the most worrisome part of their careers as the potential to be replaced by artificial intelligence.
From ACM TechNews
Web: Security Protocol Tls Compromised
An international team has demonstrated the security protocol TLS and encrypted data transfer can be compromised in one-third of all servers.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook's AI Is Learning Language By Reading Loads of Children's Books
Facebook is using data from children's books to train its artificial intelligence system, and one of the system's focal points is understanding natural language.
From ACM News
The .s. Government Launches a $100-Million 'apollo Project of the Brain'
Three decades ago, the U.S. government launched the Human Genome Project, a 13-year endeavor to sequence and map all the genes of the human species.
From ACM News
Nasa Targets May 2018 Launch of Mars Insight Mission
NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission to study the deep interior of Mars is targeting a new launch window that begins May 5, 2018, with a Mars landing scheduled…
From ACM News
Security Experts Weigh in on Apple vs. the Fbi, Public Policy and the Law at Nyu Event
Most participants agreed the growing sophistication of security threats demands a shift from preventing attacks to detecting them as quickly as possible.
From ACM News
Biometrics Are Coming, Along With Serious Security Concerns
You're buying a pair of jeans. At the register, instead of reaching for your wallet or phone, you pull back your hair.
From ACM TechNews
AI Crossword-Solving Application Could Make Machines Better at Understanding Language
Researchers say they have developed a Web-based machine-language platform that solves crosswords better than existing commercial products.
From ACM News
At Supreme Court, Debate Over Phone Privacy Has A Long History
Underlying the debate over Apple's refusal to help the FBI unlock the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook is the idea that cellphones hold the most intimate details of our daily lives.
From ACM TechNews
Leaf Mysteries Revealed Through the Computer's Eye
A computer-vision method has enabled an international team of researchers to quickly classify leaves and generate vast quantities of new botanical data.
From ACM TechNews
New Project to Watch Social Media For Signs of Mental Illness
University of Ottawa professor Diana Inkpen will receive $464,100 in funding to research "social Web mining and sentiment analysis for mental illness detection."
From ACM TechNews
Wi-Fi Breadcrumbs Reveal Pedestrian Patterns
The traces people leave as they pass Wi-Fi access points could provide key insights into the comings and goings of pedestrians.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Mechanics Is So Weird That Scientists Need AI to Design Experiments
University of Vienna researchers have developed an algorithm that helps design experiments in quantum optics.
From ACM News
China Is Building a Big Data Platform For 'precrime'
It's "precrime" meets "thoughtcrime."