Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2021
From ACM TechNews
Lasers, Levitation, and Machine Learning Make Better Heat-Resistant Materials
A process developed at the Argonne National Laboratory can predict how refractory oxides are impacted by high temperatures.
From ACM News
Japan's Coronavirus Vaccine Booking System Crashes
Japan has inoculated just 2.8% of its population.
From ACM News
Coding Bootcamps in the Time of COVID
Immersive coding schools have headed online, where their job orientation is more intense than ever.
From ACM News
Intel's Cryogenic Chip Shows It Can Control Qubits Even in a Deep Freeze
Intel's researchers have proven that Horse Ridge could be used to control qubits directly next to the quantum processor.
From ACM TechNews
Helping Robots Collaborate to Get the Job Done
A new algorithm aims to foster cooperation between information-gathering robot teams.
From ACM TechNews
Police Departments Adopting Facial Recognition Tech Amid Allegations of Wrongful Arrests
U.S. police departments are adopting facial recognition technology, despite complaints of wrongful arrests as a result of its use.
From ACM TechNews
The Way We Use Emojis Evolves Like Language, Changes Their Meaning
A study of emoji use over time found that their use and meaning evolves like language, with changes dictated by context.
From ACM TechNews
An Automated Box on Wheels—with Personality
People find boxy talking robots humorous and engaging, which may make robotic technology more acceptable in everyday life.
From ACM TechNews
Precise Touchscreens, Thanks to AI
A new artificial intelligence technique more precisely estimates where a finger touches a mobile phone screen, to reduce typing errors.
From ACM TechNews
Simulating Sneezes, Coughs to Show How COVID-19 Spreads
Two groups of computer scientists created detailed simulations of droplets sprayed by coughs or sneezes, to demonstrate how COVID-19 spreads.
From ACM News
Cloudflare Reveals Plan to End CAPTCHA 'Madness'
Cloudflare says the CAPTCHA system wastes nearly 500 human years every single day.
From ACM News
The Pentagon Inches Toward Letting AI Control Weapons
Drills involving swarms of drones raise questions about whether machines could outperform a human operator in complex scenarios.
From ACM TechNews
Ayanna Howard Named ACM Athena Lecturer
ACM has named Ayanna Howard, dean of the Ohio State University College of Engineering, its 2021-2022 ACM Athena Lecturer.
From ACM TechNews
Amazon Cloud Technology Aids NFL in Schedule Making
The National Football League used Amazon Web Services' cloud platform to arrange its just-released 272-game 2021 schedule.
From ACM TechNews
System Cleans Messy Data Tables Automatically
A system developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology automatically cleans "dirty data."
From ACM TechNews
Overcoming Tab Overload
Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have found that tab overload is an issue for many people.
From ACM TechNews
AI, Drones Will Help Pin Down Sosnovsky's Hogweed
To monitor the spread of Sosnovsky's hogweed, scientists developed an artificial intelligence monitoring system that performs real-time image segmentation onboard drones.
From ACM News
The Autonomous Vehicle World is Shrinking — It's Overdue
'The AV industry has promised too much for too long, and has delivered too little'
From ACM News
Pipeline Hack Points to Growing Cybersecurity Risk for Energy System
Energy infrastructure has increasingly come under assault, and analysts said the attack that cut off fuel supplies this week should be a "wake-up call."
From ACM News
New Initiatives Aim to Improve Diversity in Computer Science Department
Two Duke Univesity professors and a graduate student formed a group of researchers dedicated to identifying "strategies for making computing more equitable and inclusive."
From ACM News
Colonial Pipeline Paid Nearly $5 million in Ransomware Blackmail Payment
The payment was reportedly made soon after the attack began. It wasn't enough to stop the disruption.
From ACM TechNews
Light Emitters Developed for Quantum Circuits
Researchers at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed integrated chips that can produce light particles on demand at room temperature.
From ACM TechNews
Integrating Medical Imaging, Cancer Biology with Deep Neural Networks
Deep neural networks can replicate reported associations between gene expression, histology, and computed tomography-derived image features of lung cancer, and identify new ones.
From ACM TechNews
Security Researcher Successfully Jailbreaks Apple AirTag
German security researcher stacksmashing was able to break into, dump, and reflash the microcontroller of Apple's AirTag object-location product.
From ACM News
Quantum Simulator Beats Quantum Hardware
Toshiba's quasi-quantum optimization algorithm on Microsoft's Azure cloud outperforms today's fledgling quantum computer speeds.
From ACM News
Biden Signs Executive Order to Bolster Federal Government’s Cybersecurity
President Biden's order places strict new standards on software sold to the government.
From ACM News
Intel Says It Has Solved a Key Bottleneck in Quantum Computing
Intel and QuTech say they've demonstrated the first instance of high-fidelity two-qubit control using Intel's Horse Ridge cryogenic control chip.
From ACM News
This One Change Could Protect Your Systems From Attack. So Why Don't More Companies Do It?
One 'boring but really important' change could improve your security posture significantly. But not everyone does it.
From ACM News
Bloomberg Gives $150 Million to Help Universities Diversify STEM Doctorates
The initiative, which will benefit Johns Hopkins and six other institutions, will be named in honor of Vivien Thomas, best known for his work treating "blue baby syndrome."
From ACM TechNews
Self-Learning Robots Go Full Steam Ahead
Researchers in the Netherlands have demonstrated that a group of autonomous self-learning robots can change what they are doing in response to changing conditions.