Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2015
From ACM News
Military Technology: Laser Weapons Get Real
Silently, the drone aircraft glides above the arid terrain of New Mexico—until it suddenly pivots out of control and plummets to the ground.
From ACM News
Can Google Fix Gesture Tech with Tiny, All-Knowing Sensors?
Ivan Poupyrev looks like he's playing the world's smallest violin.
From ACM TechNews
Dartmouth Researchers Create First Smartphone App That Predicts Gpa
Dartmouth College researchers have developed a smartphone app that automatically predicts college students' grade point average based on their smartphone data.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop Intelligent Handheld Robots
University of Bristol researchers have developed, and are studying, intelligent handheld robots.
From ACM TechNews
Advance in Quantum Error Correction
Researchers have developed a quantum error correction code that requires the measurement of only a few quantum bits at a time.
From ACM TechNews
'deep Web Search' May Help Scientists
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is collaborating on a platform for searching the Deep Web.
From ACM TechNews
Scientist Created Drones that Fly Autonomously and Learn New Routes
A researcher at Mexico's National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics, and Electronics is developing a drone that can fly autonomously without GPS.
From ACM News
Nasa Begins Testing Mars Lander For Next Mission to Red Planet
Testing is underway on NASA's next mission on the journey to Mars, a stationary lander scheduled to launch in March 2016.
From ACM News
Household Robots Are Here, but Where Are They Going?
Social robots like the quasi-anthropomorphic Jibo and Amazon's far more utilitarian Echo are beginning to find their places in our living rooms.
From ACM News
How to Travel Faster Than Light Without Really Trying
The speed of light, c, is an absolute physical constant.
From ACM News
Atomic Telescope Brings Atoms to Standstill
One of the abiding mysteries of physics is how to make the transition between quantum and classical objects.
From ACM News
How Computers Can Teach Themselves to Recognize Cats
In June 2012, a network of 16,000 computers trained itself to recognize a cat by looking at 10 million images from YouTube videos. Today, the technique is used in everything from Google image searches to Facebook's newsfeed algorithms…
From ACM TechNews
Machine Vision System Could Help the Visually Impaired Shop For Food
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University are working to develop a device that could help the visually impaired shop for food independently.
From ACM TechNews
Mission Possible: This Device Will Self-Destruct When Heated
Researchers have developed heat-triggered self-destructing electronic devices and a radio-controlled trigger that could remotely activate self-destruction on demand.
From ACM TechNews
Your Brain's nique Response to Words Can Reveal Your Identity
New research suggests security systems could use brainwaves to verify the identity of individuals.
From ACM News
'deep Learning' Will Soon Give S Super-Smart Robots
Yann LeCun is among those bringing a new level of artificial intelligence to popular internet services from the likes of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
From ACM News
Apple Comes to Payments
How a technology firm is disrupting the payments market.
From ACM News
Is This the First Computational Imagination?
Imagine an oak tree in a field of wheat, silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky on a dreamy sunny afternoon.
From ACM News
'instinctive' Robot Recovers From Injury Fast
Computer scientists have endowed a six-legged robot with the ability to rapidly modify its motion to cope with damage, such as the loss of a foot.
From ACM News
Europa Mission to Probe Magnetic Field and Chemistry
Two powerful science investigations will help unravel the mystery of whether Jupiter's icy moon Europa might have the right conditions for life, when a new NASA mission heads there sometime in the 2020s.
From ACM News
The nderwater Internet
In 1962, during a period of technological and political transition in the undersea-cable industry, the Keawaula cable station was built on Oahu’s west shore for the landing of the Commonwealth Pacific Cable (COMPAC).
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputer nlocks the Secrets of Plant Cells to Create More Resilient Crops
Scientists have used supercomputers to move a step closer to identifying the nanostructure of cellulose.
From ACM TechNews
Researcher Invents Fake Password Technology to Confuse Hackers
ErsatzPasswords is a security system that makes it much harder for hackers to obtain usable passwords from a leaked database.
From ACM TechNews
Walk-Man Sets the Bar High For Darpa's Robotics Challenge Finals
An international group of researchers has developed the WALK-MAN robot to seamlessly operate in environments damaged by disasters.
From ACM TechNews
Computational Aesthetics Algorithm Spots Beauty That Humans Overlook
A team of researchers has developed a machine-vision algorithm that can identify and highlight beautiful images.
From ACM TechNews
Brain Implant Allows Paralyzed Man to Sip a Beer at His Own Pace
Researchers placed an implant in the posterior parietal cortex of a man paralyzed from the neck down, who then controlled a robotic arm with his mind.
From ACM Opinion
Project Exodus
On March 27th, an American astronaut named Scott Kelly blasted off from Earth and, six hours later, clambered onto the International Space Station.
From ACM TechNews
Connected Cars, Data Traffic Jams, to Challenge Mobile Operators
A new report suggests the rise of connected cars could create major network traffic headaches for mobile network operators.
From ACM News
New Mathematics Could Neutralize Pathogens That Resist Antibiotics
Bacteria that make us sick are bad enough, but many of them also continually evolve in ways that help them develop resistance to common antibiotic drugs, making our medications less effective or even moot.
From ACM News
Cyborgs: Not Quite Ready For Primetime
The grinder community seeks to biohack the human race with technology implants.