Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2017
From ACM TechNews
Toward Printable, Sensor-Laden 'skin' For Robots
Researchers believe three-dimensional printing of flexible electronics integrating sensors and processing circuitry is key to bulk manufacturing of a robot "skin."
From ACM TechNews
Machine Learning Lets Scientists Reverse-Engineer Cellular Control Networks
Researchers are using the Texas Advanced Computing Center's Stampede supercomputer to create tadpoles with pigmentation never before seen in nature.
From ACM News
Software Synthesis Learns By Example
Neural networks will assist, rather than replace, human programmers.
From ACM News
Google's AI Explosion in One Chart
Nature. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Journal of the American Medical Association.
From ACM News
Silicon Valley's Quest to Live Forever
On a velvety March evening in Mandeville Canyon, high above the rest of Los Angeles, Norman Lear's living room was jammed with powerful people eager to learn the secrets of longevity.
From ACM News
Scientists Hack a Human Cell and Reprogram It Like a Computer
Cells are basically tiny computers: They send and receive inputs and output accordingly.
From ACM TechNews
Virtual Lemonade Sends Color and Taste to a Glass of Water
Researchers say they have developed a system that can digitally transmit the color and sourness of a glass of lemonade to a tumbler of water.
From ACM TechNews
What It Means to {codelikeagirl}
The University of Rochester has significantly increased the number of female students graduating with computer science degrees.
From ACM TechNews
Machine Learning Opens p New Ways to Help Disabled People
Companies are developing and launching machine-learning technologies and applications to enhance the experience of disabled persons.
From ACM TechNews
These AI Bots Created Their Own Language to Talk to Each Other
OpenAI last week disclosed new research detailing the training of artificial intelligence bots to generate their own shared language.
From ACM TechNews
People Remain Calm as the World Ends, Video Game Study Suggests
University at Buffalo researchers found despite some violent acts, most people will be helpful to others as the world ends.
From ACM TechNews
New AI Algorithm Beats Even the World's Worst Traffic
Researchers have developed an intelligent routing algorithm designed to minimize the occurrence of spontaneous traffic jams across a roadway network.
From ACM News
Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.i. Apocalypse
It was just a friendly little argument about the fate of humanity. Demis Hassabis, a leading creator of advanced artificial intelligence, was chatting with Elon Musk, a leading doomsayer, about the perils of artificial intelligence…
From ACM TechNews
nexpected, Star-Spangled Find May Lead to Advanced Electronics
Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas say they have developed a material that can transform from an atomically thin, two-dimensional sheet into an array of one-dimensional nanowires.
From ACM TechNews
Seeing Sound
Texas A&M University professor Tim Davis uses sparse matrix algorithms to create works of electronic art by visualizing music.
From ACM TechNews
sing Virtual Reality to Catch a Real Ball
Disney researchers have developed ways to enhance virtual experiences involving interactions with physical objects by showing how a person using a virtual reality system can use it to catch an actual ball.
From ACM TechNews
'girls in Stem' Culture Is Failing Both Girls and STEM
Cleoniki Kesidis writes that a culture that tries to encourage girls to enter science, technology, engineering, and math fields guilt-tripped her into pursuing such a career, which she found unrewarding and left.
From ACM TechNews
Quadruped Robot Exhibits Spontaneous Changes in Step with Speed
Researchers from Tohoku University in Japan have successfully demonstrated that a quadruped robot can spontaneously change its steps between energy-efficient patterns.
From ACM News
How to Hunt For a Black Hole with a Telescope the Size of Earth
Here's how to catch a black hole. First, spend many years enlisting eight of the top radio observatories across four continents to join forces for an unprecedented hunt.
From ACM News
Atomic Clocks Make Best Measurement Yet of Relativity of Time
Our most accurate clocks are probing a key tenet of Einstein's theory of relativity: the idea that time isn't absolute.
From ACM TechNews
A Professor Built an AI Teaching Assistant For His Courses--and It Could Shape the Future of Education
Georgia Institute of Technology professor Ashok Goel has created an artificially intelligent teaching assistant.
From ACM TechNews
Wpi Researcher Wants to Transform Your Commute
Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Yanhua Li has proposed an alternative urban transit system that uses a hub-and-spoke configuration with shared shuttles.
From ACM TechNews
Point-and-Click Method Makes Robot Grasping Control Less Tedious
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are working to make the process of a robot autonomously grasping an object easier.
From ACM TechNews
Research Leads to a Golden Discovery For Wearable Technology
Missouri S&T researchers have developed a way to "grow" thin layers of gold on single crystal wafers of silicon and use them as substrates on which to grow other electronic materials.
From ACM News
Hash Function Sha-1 Is Broken
The industry should be scrambling for upgrades.
From ACM News
Mathematicians Create Warped Worlds in Virtual Reality
"It feels like the entire universe is within a sphere that is maybe within a couple metres' radius," says topologist Henry Segerman at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.
From ACM News
The .s. Military Wants Its Autonomous Machines to Explain Themselves
Intelligence agents and military operatives may come to rely heavily on machine learning to parse huge quantities of data, and to control a growing arsenal of autonomous systems.
From ACM TechNews
Research Teaches Machines to Decipher the Dawn Chorus
The U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is supporting research on deciphering the timing and sequences of bird calls.
From ACM TechNews
Molecular Motor-Powered Biocomputers
European researchers recently launched a research project that aims to develop a biocomputer based on highly efficient molecular motors that will use a fraction of the energy of existing computers.
From ACM TechNews
How Aristotle Created the Computer
Modern computers would not exist without the influence of Aristotelean principles.