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 TechNews
'Sentient Data' May One Day Augment Soldier Capabilities
The director of intelligence for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command recently discussed the findings of its 2015 Mad Scientist Conference.
From ACM TechNews
Doing Natural-Language Processing With Neural Nets Without the High Cost
Galvanize's Michael Tamir and Personagraph's Daniel Hansen recently discussed how using Google's Word2Vec tool can address issues with text classification.
From ACM TechNews
Rice Engineering Students Create Real-Time 3D Radar System
An impulse-based radar for real-time three-dimensional imaging recently was awarded the top prize at Rice University's annual Engineering Design Showcase.
From ACM TechNews
17 Javascript Tools Breathing New Life Into Old Code
New JavaScript tools are helping keep obscure programming languages such as Pascal, Lisp, and Cobol alive.
From ACM Careers
Brain Technology Patents Soar As Companies Get Inside People's Heads
From ways to eavesdrop on brains and learn what advertisements excite consumers, to devices that alleviate depression, the number of U.S. patents awarded for "neurotechnology" has soared since 2010, according to an analysis released…
From ACM News
Human vs Machine As Top Poker Pros Take On AI
It's humans versus machine at the Rivers casino in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Four professional poker players are squaring up to an artificial intelligence over two weeks, duking it out by playing a total of 80,000 hands of poker…
From ACM News
A Better Way to Build Brain-Inspired Chips
Memristors, exotic electronic devices only confirmed to exist in 2008, have been used to create a chip that borrows design points from the brain.
From ACM News
Here's What a Cyber Warfare Arsenal Might Look Like
The Pentagon has made clear in recent weeks that cyber warfare is no longer just a futuristic threat—it is now a real one.
From ACM News
The Internet Mapmakers Helping Nepal
The night after the earthquake hit Nepal, people feared to sleep in their homes, worrying about powerful aftershocks toppling the few buildings left standing.
From ACM News
Traffic Around Mars Gets Busy
NASA has beefed up a process of traffic monitoring, communication and maneuver planning to ensure that Mars orbiters do not approach each other too closely.
From ACM TechNews
A Mouse That Beats the Gamers at Super-Quick Motions
A new computer mouse looks and responds like a conventional mouse but offers nearly unlimited tracking speed.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientists Combine Computer Vision and Brain Computer Interface For Faster Mine Detection
University of California, San Diego researchers have developed a new method to speed the detection of landmines in sonar images of the ocean floor.
From ACM TechNews
The Path to a Wearable Future Lies in Academia
Many of the innovative products now available to consumers are based on technologies developed in academic laboratories years ago.
From ACM TechNews
6 Big Data Projects to Aid Disaster Response
The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Japan Science and Technology Agency will fund research to transform disaster management with big data and analytics.
From ACM TechNews
Internet Pioneer Vint Cerf Calls For Rapid Web Security Enhancements
The need for security was a recurring theme of the remarks made by Internet pioneer and former ACM president Vint Cerf at the National Press Club on Monday.
From ACM News
The Trouble with Reference Rot
The scholarly literature is meant to be a permanent record of science.
From ACM TechNews
Crawling Toward a Wiser Web
Carrying out and storing a crawl of the Web requires access to significant storage and computing resources, but the Common Crawl Foundation is trying to change that.
From ACM News
The Number Glitch That Can Lead to Catastrophe
A surprisingly simple bug afflicts computers controlling planes, spacecraft and more; they get confused by big numbers.
From ACM News
The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers
When Prabal Dutta accidentally drops a computer, nothing breaks.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Age-Estimate Tool Unleashed Real-Time Virality
Microsoft's Project Oxford has launched a range of machine-learning application programming interfaces in beta, including How-Old.net.
From ACM TechNews
Carnegie Mellon Project Divides Everyday Tasks, Expenses In Ways Scientifically Calculated to Make Everyone Happy
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a free website that leverages decades of research on how to divide things equitably without resentment.
From ACM TechNews
Tanja Lange Leads Multi-Million Euro Project to Protect Data Against Quantum Computers
Eindhoven University of Technology cryptology professor Tanja Lange is leading a European project to protect data against quantum computers.
From ACM News
With Boxing Match, Video Piracy Battle Enters Latest Round: Mobile Apps
The method used by thousands of people to watch unauthorized broadcasts of Saturday night's big boxing match might have been new, but to longtime media executives, who have led one battle against piracy after another, it was…
From ACM News
To Invent the Future, You Must nderstand the Past
"You can't really understand what is going on now without understanding what came before."
From ACM News
What Would You See in a Black Hole?
Something about a black hole just pulls you in. Sure, its gravity is so strong that not even light can elude its grasp. But, there's something else, something harder to pinpoint.
From ACM Careers
At the Heart of Facebook's Artificial Intelligence, Human Emotions
Facebook Inc. doesn't yet have an intelligent assistant, like the iPhone's Siri.
From ACM News
The Cloud Is Dead. Long Live the Cloud
Inspired by the tech behind the digital currency Bitcoin, IBM and Samsung are rethinking how connected devices connect.
From ACM TechNews
Deep Learning Machine Solves the Cocktail Party Problem
Researchers have separated human voices from the background in a wide range of songs using some of the latest advances associated with deep neural networks.
From ACM TechNews
"fingerprinting" Chips to Fight Counterfeiting
Researchers are using microscopic variations to "fingerprint" silicon chips used in consumer-product tags to combat product counterfeiting.
From ACM TechNews
Ears, Grips, and Fists Take On Mobile Phone ser Id
Yahoo Labs' Bodyprint is a biometric authentication system that could be used to replace PIN codes for smartphones.