Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2018
From ACM TechNews
The Unhackable Envelope
Researchers have developed an envelope for hardware security modules that requires no battery and cannot be broken into without deleting its stored data.
From ACM TechNews
NASA's Swarmathon Improves Student Skills in Robotics, Computer Science
College and university students recently participated in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's third annual Swarmathon, a robotic programming competition.
From ACM News
Editing Memories and Sensations in the Brain With Tech
What if we had the ability to fool our brain into thinking that we'd experienced something that never happened?
From ACM News
GRACE-FO: Cracking a Cold Case
Reports of the rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet often refer to how much the melting could add to global sea levels—as if meltwater raises the ocean evenly, like a sink filling up.
From ACM News
Facebook Helped Create an AI Scavenger Hunt that Could Lead to the First seful Home Robots
Artificial-intelligence programs could develop some much-needed common sense by competing in scavenger hunts inside virtual homes filled with simulated coffee tables, couches, lamps, and other everyday things.
From ACM News
What's Behind Russia's New Internet Crackdown
China has its own great firewall. Turkey has been blocking swaths of the internet, including YouTube, for at least a decade.
From ACM News
Dim Prospects for Junior Developers
Employers prefer experience for even entry-level coding positions.
From ACM TechNews
Scholar ses Algorithm to Make Christmas Tree Farming More Efficient
A Penn State University researcher has developed an algorithm to analyze and store images of Christmas tree farms taken by unmanned aircraft.
From ACM TechNews
Apps for Children Should Emphasize Parent and Child Choice, Researchers Say
Preschoolers can benefit from using electronic devices with thoughtfully designed content that intentionally supports parent-child interactions, according to researchers.
From ACM TechNews
Rice . Turns Deep-Learning AI Loose on Software Development
Rice University researchers have invented a deep learning software coding application to help programmers navigate growing numbers of application programming interfaces.
From ACM News
Could Artificial Intelligence Predict the Next Avengers: Infinity War?
Some movies are obvious hits. Like, for example, Avengers: Infinity War, which made a record-breaking $258 million at the domestic box office last weekend, filling seats and the pockets of Marvel Studios parent company Disney…
From ACM News
ACM Recognizes Innovators Who Have Shaped the Digital Revolution
Award recipients made contributions in areas including open source software, biotechnology, networks, and artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
Virtual-Reality Applications Give Science a New Dimension
As I put on a virtual-reality (VR) headset, the outside world disappears.
From ACM TechNews
Editing Brain Activity With Holography
Researchers are building equipment to project holographs into the human brain to trick it into thinking it has felt, seen, or sensed something.
From ACM TechNews
Heart Is Where the Chips Are, Helping Keep the Beat
A new wireless pacemaker array opens new possibilities for medical sensors.
From ACM TechNews
New Material Is Key Step Toward More Powerful Computing
Oregon State University researchers have developed a compound that constitutes a significant advance toward quantum computing.
From ACM TechNews
There's a New Test in Town for Ranking Supercomputers
Researchers have devised a new benchmark for rating the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers.
From ACM TechNews
Exascale System for Earth Simulation Introduced
The Energy Exascale Earth System Model has been unveiled after four years of development.
From ACM TechNews
AI Cracking Open the Vatican's Secret Archives
The In Codice Ratio project uses artificial intelligence and optical character recognition software to mine the Vatican Secret Archives and make its documents available.
From ACM News
Random Quantum Circuit Easiest Way to Beat Classical Computer
One of the near-term (but somewhat irrelevant) goals of quantum computing is something called quantum supremacy.
From ACM News
Incredibly Detailed Embryo Maps Chart Each Cell's Developmental Fate
Painstaking genomic analyses of thousands of individual cells in frogs and fish have yielded the most detailed roadmaps yet charting an embryo's journey from a single cell to a fully formed organism.
From ACM News
Blockchain Will Be Theirs, Russian Spy Boasted at Conference
Last year, representatives of 25 countries met in Tokyo to work on setting international standards for the blockchain, the technology that was introduced by the virtual currency Bitcoin and has ignited intense interest in corporate…
From ACM TechNews
Meet Celeris, the First Interactive Coastal Wave Modeling Software That Runs Faster Than Real-Time
Newly developed open-source nearshore modeling software runs faster than real-time.
From ACM TechNews
Speeding p Material Discovery
A new algorithm has been developed to help discover and optimize new thermoelectric materials by tackling quantum mechanical equations without experimental input.
From ACM TechNews
Face Recognition for Galaxies: Artificial Intelligence Brings New Tools to Astronomy
University of California, Santa Cruz researchers used computer simulations of galaxy formation to train a deep learning algorithm to recognize three phases of galaxy evolution.
From ACM News
Motion Sickness a Major Problem with Self-Driving Cars
Motion sickness could prevent some of the benefits expected from autonomous vehicles.
From Communications of the ACM
Using Functions for Easier Programming
Functional programming languages automate many of the details underlying specific operations.
From Communications of the ACM
Finding a Healthier Approach to Managing Medical Data
Researchers are exploring ways to put medical data to greater use while better protecting privacy.
From Communications of the ACM
Shrinking Machines, Cellular Computers
Scientists are using DNA and RNA to build the world's tiniest robots and computing devices.