Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2017
From ACM TechNews
Chinese Scientists Engineer Flexible, Faster-Swimming Robot
Chinese researchers have developed a flexible, remote-controlled robotic ray that can swim through water nearly twice as fast as previous robo-swimmers without being tethered.
From ACM TechNews
Electronic Synapses That Can Learn: Towards an Artificial Brain?
European researchers from several institutions have developed an artificial synapse on a chip that can learn autonomously.
From ACM News
How Artificial Life Spawned a Billion-Dollar Industry
Scientists are getting closer to building life from scratch and technology pioneers are taking notice, with record sums moving into a field that could deliver novel drugs, materials, chemicals and even perfumes.
From ACM News
Machine Learning Predicts the Look of STEM Cells
No two stem cells are identical, even if they are genetic clones.
From ACM TechNews
Tiny Black Holes Enable a New Type of Photodetector For High-Speed Data
Researchers have developed tiny "black holes" on a silicon wafer that serve as a new type of photodetector.
From ACM TechNews
Google's Video AI Was Tricked Into Thinking a Video About Apes Was About Spaghetti
Researchers have successfully tricked Google's Cloud Video Intelligence application programming interface into identifying a video about gorillas as one dealing with an unrelated topic.
From ACM TechNews
Inkjet-Printed Flexible Memory Devices
Researchers have developed flexible, inkjet-printable memory cells they say could lead to mass-produced printable electronics. T
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Researchers Create Deep Learning Algorithm That Could Boost Drug Development
A new type of deep learning, known as one-shot learning, could be used to help drug development because it only requires a small number of data points.
From ACM News
Apprenticeship Emerging To Fill Skills Gaps
New approaches to apprenticeship aim to provide talented, if not traditionally trained, computing professionals.
From ACM Careers
The Diy Electronics Transforming Research
A research subject watches a brush slowly stroking a rubber hand on a table in front of her, while her own hand—hidden from view—experiences the same stimulation.
From ACM News
Nasa's Cassini Mission Prepares For 'grand Finale' at Saturn
NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn since 2004, is about to begin the final chapter of its remarkable story.
From ACM News
Building an AI Chip Saved Google From Building a Dozen New Data Centers
Google operates what is surely the largest computer network on Earth, a system that comprises custom-built, warehouse-sized data centers spanning 15 locations in four continents.
From ACM TechNews
Synthetic Humans Help Computers Understand How Real People Act
Researchers are working to help computers understand human behavior by feeding them videos and images of computer-generated bodies in motion
From ACM TechNews
Photonics Breakthrough Paving the Way For Improved Wireless Communication Systems
Researchers say they have made a breakthrough in achieving radio-frequency signal control at sub-nanosecond time scales on a chip-scale optical device.
From ACM TechNews
Warped Reality: Virtual Trip to Hyperbolic Space
Researchers have created a virtual reality program for exploring hyperbolic geometries.
From ACM TechNews
Innovative Software Converts Wi-Fi Data Into Energy Savings
New software uses Wi-Fi to determine the number of building occupants and adjusts ventilation accordingly, which can save energy without sacrificing air quality.
From ACM TechNews
Visualizing Scientific Big Data in Informative and Interactive Ways
Wei Xu at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory is leading the development of visualization tools for analyzing large and varied datasets.
From ACM TechNews
Understanding the Limits of Deep Learning
The capabilities of deep-learning neural networks are impressive, but these are tempered by significant constraints.
From ACM Opinion
With New Technology, Mathematicians Turn Numbers Into art
Once upon a time, mathematicians imagined their job was to discover new mathematics and then let others explain it.
From ACM News
Learning to Think Like a Computer
In "The Beauty and Joy of Computing," the course he helped conceive for nonmajors at the University of California, Berkeley, Daniel Garcia explains an all-important concept in computer science—abstraction—in terms of milkshakes…
From ACM News
New Horizons Halfway from Pluto to Next Flyby Target
Continuing on its path through the outer regions of the solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has now traveled half the distance from Pluto—its storied first target—to 2014 MU69, the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) it will fly…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers 'iron Out' Graphene's Wrinkles
Researchers have developed methods to reduce and "iron out" wrinkles in graphene, potentially enabling faster and more efficient electronic and photonic devices.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Shoot For Success With Simulations of Laser Pulse-Material Interactions
Researchers studying atomic-scale phase transformations used the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's Titan supercomputer to model laser interactions with metallic surfaces.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Turn Mammalian Cells Into Complex Biocomputers
Researchers have genetically engineered the DNA of mammalian cells to execute complex computations.
From ACM News
Trump Completes Repeal of Online Privacy Protections From Obama Era
President Trump on Monday signed a congressional resolution to complete the overturning of internet privacy protections created by the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration.
From ACM News
Inventor of World Wide Web Receives ACM A.m. Turing Award
Sir Tim Berners-Lee designed integrated architecture and technologies that underpin the Web.
From ACM News
The Founding Fathers Encrypted Secret Messages, Too
Thomas Jefferson is known for a lot of things—writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia, owning hundreds of slaves despite believing in the equality of men—but his place as the "Father of American…
From ACM TechNews
Tech Jobs Are Thriving Nationwide--p to 7.3m
The U.S. technology job market has expanded 2% to about 7.3 million employees since 2016, with 6.9 million employed by technology companies, according to CompTIA's latest annual Cyberstates report.
From ACM TechNews
Why Asimov's Laws of Robotics Should Be Updated For the 21st Century
Tom Sorell, a professor at the University of Warwick in the U.K., suggests Isaac Asimov's famed "Three Laws of Robotics" need updating for the modern era,
From ACM TechNews
Virginia Tech Researchers: Android Apps Can Conspire to Mine Information From Your Smartphone
Researchers say they have conducted the first-ever large-scale systematic study of how the trusty applications on Android phones are able to talk to one another and trade information.