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
A Climate-Modeling Strategy That Won't Hurt the Climate
It is perhaps the most daunting challenge facing experts in both the fields of climate and computer science—creating a supercomputer that can accurately model the future of the planet in a set of equations and how the forces…
From ACM News
The Telescope Looking For the Beginning of Time
The universe is a big place.
From ACM News
How Daimler Built the World's First Self-Driving Semi
Christian Urban waves his hands to make a point, then looks at his nails and cracks wise about needing a manicure.
From ACM News
Airport Security Advances Clash With Privacy Issues
At a mock airport in an underground laboratory here at Northeastern University, students pretending to be passengers head through a security exit in the right direction, while a young man enters going the wrong way.
From ACM TechNews
Man Bests Machine in Two-Week Poker Tourney at Rivers Casino
Four professional poker players beat a poker program in the recently concluded Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence poker tournament.
From ACM TechNews
California Launches Digital Democracy Project
California officials have launched Digital Democracy, an online and interactive platform aimed at improving transparency in state government.
From ACM TechNews
Google's Self-Driving Cars of Tomorrow Face the Mean Streets of Today
Google says its self-driving cars will be good for road safety because they can pay better attention to the road than humans do.
From ACM News
Even Robots Now Have Their Own Virtual World
In a month's time, a motley assortment of robots will attempt to navigate a punishing obstacle course laid out in a fairground park in Pomona, California.
From ACM News
Nasa Selects Advanced Space Technology Concepts For Further Study
NASA has selected 15 proposals for study under Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), a program that aims to turn science fiction into science fact through the development of pioneering technologies.
From ACM News
Self-Driving Cars Getting Dinged in California
Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars now rolling around California have gotten into accidents since September, when the state began issuing permits for companies to test them on public roads.
From ACM News
Researchers Craft Network Attack to 'hack' Surgical Robot (sort Of)
As part of a series of experiments, a group of researchers at the University of Washington's BioRobotics Lab launched denial-of-service attacks against a remotely operated surgical robot, causing it to become difficult to control…
From ACM TechNews
Emotion Detection Software sed to Design Advertising
Mexican computer specialist Enrique Leon Villeda helped revolutionize advertising by developing software to assess the emotions of a person considering consumer products.
From ACM TechNews
Improving Organic Transistors That Drive Flexible and Conformable Electronics
Researchers recently completed an investigation of how micro-scale wrinkling affects electrical performance in carbon-based, single-crystal semiconductors.
From ACM TechNews
w Researchers Hack a Teleoperated Surgical Robot to Reveal Security Flaws
Researchers recently conducted a series of experiments to test how attackers could hijack remote-controlled surgical robots, and to make such operations more secure.
From ACM TechNews
Google Embeds Engineers as Professors
Google is placing engineers at a handful of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where they teach, mentor, and advise on curriculum.
From ACM TechNews
Wearable Technology Finds Its Place on Campus
Several universities are experimenting with wearable technologies as a way to improve classroom instruction.
From ACM TechNews
Wearable Gadgets Portend Vast Health, Research, and Privacy Consequences
New devices can provide the average person with unprecedented access to quantifiable information about their bodies.
From ACM News
Five Factors That Will Decide If Philae Wakes
Ever since the European Space Agency's Philae lander ran out of batteries on 15 November, just three days after it bounced on to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, scientists have consoled themselves with the hope that the craft…
From ACM Opinion
Does Artificial Intelligence Pose a Threat?
After decades as a sci-fi staple, artificial intelligence has leapt into the mainstream.
From ACM News
Engineers of Addiction
You can play a slot machine in Las Vegas before you've even reached baggage claim: there are tiny slots parlors in every terminal of McCarran International Airport.
From ACM News
Pluto-Bound Craft Hunts For Hazardous Moons
On 11 May, a telescope aboard a NASA craft will turn and stare at Pluto—like a space-robot equivalent of a sailor watching for shoals that could take out his vessel.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Design New Tiny Qwerty Soft Keyboards For Wearable Devices
New technology could serve as a text-entry system for wearable devices that have touchscreens.
From ACM TechNews
Great Innovative Idea: Machine Teaching
Machine teaching is machine learning turned upside down.
From ACM TechNews
Uw Mapping App Turns Art Into a Sharable Walking Route
Trace is a new app that turns a digital sketch a user draws on a smartphone screen, such as a boat or a leaf, into a walking route that can be sent to another user.
From ACM TechNews
Toward a Squishier Robot: Engineers Design Synthetic Gel That Changes Shape and Moves via Its Own Internal Energy
University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed a synthetic polymer gel that can utilize internally generated chemical energy to shift shapes and propel itself.
From ACM TechNews
MIT Engineers Hand 'cognitive' Control to nderwater Robots
Researchers have developed a new approach to programming autonomous underwater vehicles that increases their "cognitive" capabilities.
From ACM Opinion
The Void's Creator Details His Vision For nleashing Virtual Reality's Full Potential
In a 60-by-60-foot room in Salt Lake City, Ken Bretschneider is taking virtual reality experiences to another level.
From ACM News
Researchers nravel Secrets of Hidden Waves
Detailed new field studies, laboratory experiments, and simulations of the largest known "internal waves" in the Earth's oceans—phenomena that play a key role in mixing ocean waters, greatly affecting ocean temperatures—provide…
From ACM News
How Dry Is Texas? Smap, Txson Network Aim to Find Out
A new network of sensors in the bone-dry Texas hill country will produce detailed data on soil moisture—when there is any.
From ACM News
Images Expose Thunder in Exquisite Detail
On a U.S. military base outside Gainesville, Florida, atmospheric scientists make lightning by shooting rockets into thunderstorms.