Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2022
From ACM TechNews
Surveillance Drone Saves Power by Deliberately Crashing into Walls
New York University researchers have built a small surveillance drone able to extend its battery life by attaching itself to a wall and powering down its rotors.
From ACM TechNews
Hospital Robots Are Helping Combat Wave of Nurse Burnout
Moxi and other delivery-focused assistants have become even more critical as the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed health care workers to their limits.
From ACM News
NEC X Announces Fifth AI Start-Up from its Corporate Accelerator Program
Start-up Beagle Technology addresses agricultural labor shortage and cost issues with new automated pruning technology for the wine industry.
From ACM News
Reconfigurable Brain-Like Chips Top Deep Neural Net
The quantum material NNO demonstrates novel quantum properties that enable it to learn throughout its lifetime.
From ACM News
Europe to Slap New Regulations on Big Tech, Beating U.S. to the Punch
European policymakers reached a deal on the Digital Services Act which would force Silicon Valley companies to more aggressively police harmful content on their platforms, or face large fines.
From ACM News
Elon Musk Acquires Twitter for $44 Billion
The company's board and the Tesla CEO hammered out the final details of his $54.20 a share bid.
From ACM News
Spilling Silicon Valley's Secrets, One Tweet at a Time
Using only her own ability to engineer code, Jane Manchun Wong is keeping tech on its toes.
From ACM News
Investing is Not Enough: Andreessen Horowitz has New Crypto Research Lab
The firm is trying to bridge academia and the crypto industry, an unusual investment in venture capital.
From ACM TechNews
Can Robots Save Nursing Homes?
As more nursing home and assisted living facility staff leave the profession, some facilities are turning to robots to fill in the gaps.
From ACM TechNews
Your iOS App May Still Be Covertly Tracking You, Despite What Apple Says
Researchers at the U.K.’s University of Oxford found that iOS apps can still track users without explicit permission.
From ACM TechNews
Reducing COVID-19 Patients' Breathing Efforts Could Be Key to Success of Non-Invasive Respiratory Support
A team of researchers demonstrated that non-invasive respiratory support is more likely to be successful if it relies on significantly reducing patients' efforts to breath.
From ACM TechNews
Improving Georgia Land Conservation Through Algorithms
Researchers at the University of Georgia developed an algorithm for assessing a tract of land's conservation value by factoring in variables excluded from other models.
From ACM TechNews
U.S. Drone Company Zipline Starts Delivering Medicine in Japan
U.S. drone firm Zipline is delivering medical supplies to pharmacies and hospitals in southwestern Japan via aerial drones.
From ACM TechNews
Concerned Your Smartphone Is Spying on You?
Columbia University computer scientists developed an algorithm that can block smart devices from spying on users by generating extremely quiet sounds.
From ACM TechNews
Cyber Chiefs Try New Tricks to Attract Talent
With demand exceeding the available workforce, more cybersecurity and risk executives are seeking candidates without degrees or traditional technology backgrounds.
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Rat Climbs, Crawls, Turns on a Dime
Qing Shi and colleagues at China's Beijing Institute of Technology built a rat-inspired robot that can squeeze through tight spaces, which could be used to assess disaster zones or pipelines.
From ACM News
AI Researcher Says Police Tech Suppliers are Hostile to Transparency
Expert witness in Lords police tech inquiry welcomes committee's findings but questions whether its recommendations.
From ACM News
Hospital Robots Are Helping Combat a Wave of Nurse Burnout
Moxi and other delivery-focused assistants have become even more critical as the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed health care workers to their limits.
From ACM News
AI Fuses With Quantum Computing in Promising New Memristor
Quantum device points the way toward an exponential boost in "smart" computing capabilities.
From ACM News
These are The 5 Most In-Demand Cloud Computing Jobs in 2022
Unlike sectors such as hospitality, the cloud computing industry continued to grow in 2020 and onwards. But it's not stopping there.
From ACM TechNews
Med-Tech Eureka: The Body Is the Best Secure Data Channel
Harnessing the body's natural ions can enable secure, wireless low-power transmission of data from bio-implants.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop Innovative 3D-Printing Technology for Glass Microstructures
An international team of researchers has developed a three-dimensional printing process for glass microstructures.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Develop Computational Approach to Reduce Noise in X-Ray Data
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have helped to de-noise synchrotron x-ray experiments computationally.
From ACM News
Rethinking Rare Earth Elements
Researchers are looking to untapped sources—from fertilizer waste to printed circuit boards—to solve the environmental and supply chain problems of rare earth elements.
From ACM News
Researchers Break World Record for Quantum-Encrypted Communications
The research could lead to hack-proof networks.
From ACM News
Web Scraping is Legal, U.S. Appeals Court Reaffirms
The Ninth Circuit's decision is a major win for archivists, academics, researchers, and journalists who use tools to collect, or scrape, information that is publicly accessible on the internet.
From ACM TechNews
Can AI All but End Car Crashes? The Potential Is There
Proponents of artificial intelligence believe it can be used to predict, and help to prevent, dangerous driving behaviors.
From ACM TechNews
'Tamper-Evident Container' Will Snitch if Anyone Tries to Meddle with What's Inside
A team of researchers three-dimensionally (3D)-printed a prototype Tamper-Evident Container designed to record attempts to break into it.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Use 3D-Printed Shells to Ward Off Ravens, Save Desert Tortoises
Researchers have developed a Techno-tortoise that eventually could help curtail a decline in the desert tortoise population.
From ACM TechNews
Power Use Reveals Harmful Chips Hidden on Circuit Boards
A circuit board's power consumption can reveal malicious tampering designed to facilitate Trojan attacks to steal sensitive data or crash a device when triggered.