Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2017
From ACM News
The Benefits of Old Age (for Transistors)
In case you didn't know, the transistors in your computer's processor, your smartphone's memory, and your car's autobrake system get old.
From ACM TechNews
Internet of Things Made Simple: One Sensor Package Does Work of Many
Researchers have developed a plug-in sensor package that tracks multiple phenomena in a room.
From ACM TechNews
Fsu Technology Cracks, Fixes Passwords
New software evaluates the strength of a password by trying to break it.
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Researchers Develop Crowdsourcing Software to Convene Rapid, On-Demand 'flash Organizations'
New software integrates crowdsourcing's flexibility and the benefits of on-demand specialists to form "flash organizations."
From ACM TechNews
Computer Accurately Identifies and Delineates Breast Cancers on Digital Tissue Slides
Researchers say a new deep-learning computer network is 100% accurate in identifying the presence of invasive forms of breast cancer in whole biopsy slides.
From ACM TechNews
Better Screenings Through Artificial Intelligence
Researchers say they have developed a cervical cancer screening technique that could perform as well as, or better than, traditional screening methods at a greatly reduced cost.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop Transistors That Can Switch Between Two Stable Energy States
Researchers have constructed optical and electrical bistable outputs from a single transistor.
From ACM News
The Most Promising Route to 'mental Superpowers'
Many of us have our special ways of dealing with our feelings and emotions.
From ACM News
How Nasa Visualizes Stunning Worlds Without Really Seeing Them
Everyone likes a good space photo.
From ACM News
A Robot Revolution, This Time in China
Even a decade ago, car manufacturing in China was still a fairly low-tech, labor-intensive endeavor.
From ACM TechNews
Father of the Internet: 'ai Stands For Artificial Idiot'
Google chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf said modern artificial intelligence systems are only as smart as the people who interact with them.
From ACM TechNews
What's Holding Back Self-Driving Cars? Human Drivers
The challenge of understanding drivers' behavior and the quirks of local traffic means the use of autonomous vehicles on public roads will be constrained for many years.
From ACM TechNews
New Robotic Fish For Environmental Monitoring
Researchers are developing a fish-like underwater vehicle equipped with biosensors to monitor water quality.
From ACM TechNews
Kids, Parents Alike Worried About Privacy With Internet-Connected Toys
A new study points to anxieties about the potential for Wi-Fi-enabled Internet-connected toys to infringe on children's privacy.
From ACM TechNews
Teaching Robots to Teach Other Robots
C-LEARN is a system designed to let users teach robots skills that they can pass along to other robots.
From ACM News
The Search For Life on Mars Is About to Get Weird
Since the dawn of the space age NASA and other agencies have spent billions of dollars to reconnoiter Mars—assailing it with spacecraft flybys, photo-snapping orbiters and landers nose-diving onto its surface.
From ACM News
Down on the Farm with C3po
Turning to robots to improve agricultural yields.
From ACM News
Observatories Combine to Crack Open the Crab Nebula
Astronomers have produced a highly detailed image of the Crab Nebula, by combining data from telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large…
From ACM TechNews
Mobile Device Can Accurately and Inexpensively Monitor Air Quality Using Machine Learning
c-Air is a new, cost-effective mobile device designed to measure air quality.
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Team Brings Quantum Computing Closer to Reality With New Materials
In an attempt to bring functional quantum computers closer to reality, researchers are developing materials that can trap a single isolated electron.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Use Twitter to Track the Flu in Real Time
Researchers have developed a computational model to project the spread of the seasonal flu in real time, using Twitter posts.
From ACM TechNews
Nanofridge Could Keep Quantum Computers Cool Enough to Calculate
Researchers have conceived of a nanoscale refrigerator to maintain temperatures cold enough to keep qubits functioning in a quantum computer.
From ACM News
The Harmony That Keeps Trappist-1's 7 Earth-Size Worlds From Colliding
In February, astronomers announced the discovery of a nearby star with seven Earth-size planets, and at least some of the planets seemed to be in a zone that could provide cozy conditions for life.
From ACM News
The Finesse of Flying Cassini Between Saturn's Rings
The Cassini space probe is going to dive through Saturn's rings again on Wednesday, the third of a planned 22 orbits threading that planetary needle as the probe continues a ballistic death-drop inward.
From ACM TechNews
Harnessing the Potential of Big Data to Improve the Security of Internet of Things Devices
Researchers have proposed algorithms that generate and store a very small piece of secret information within an Internet of Things device.
From ACM TechNews
Laser-Controlled Touch Displays Near Reality
Researchers have discovered a phenomenon called the photodielectric effect, which they think could be applied to the development of laser-controlled touch displays.
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Challenges Coders to Speed p Its Supercomputer
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has issued a challenge to programmers to boost the performance of its Pleiades supercomputer.
From ACM TechNews
Inquisitive Bot Asks Questions to Test Your Understanding
Researchers say they have developed an artificial intelligence system that has learned to ask questions of its own.
From ACM TechNews
Cornell Cis and Adobe Collaboration Creates AI Photo Tool
Deep Photo Style Transfer software can transpose the look of one photo onto another.
From ACM TechNews
Computers That Can Smell
Eighteen teams participated in a competition to develop algorithms that can estimate how humans will perceive a particular odor from its molecular properties.