Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2014
From ACM TechNews
UNSW Robots Win World Football RoboCup
The University of New South Wales team won the grand final of the 2014 RoboCup Standard Platform League robot soccer tournament, held in Brazil.
From ACM TechNews
Art By Algorithm: Computer Evolves New Artworks
New software creates digital artworks using algorithms that mimic natural selection.
From ACM TechNews
The Need For Speed
Researchers are using high-performance computers to achieve new breakthroughs in science and engineering.
From ACM TechNews
The Birth of Topological Spintronics
Researchers have discovered a new material combination they say could lead to a more efficient approach to computer memory and logic.
From ACM News
Digging Through Big Data to Find Alien Life
Back in the 1970s, scientists at Ohio State University began searching for signs of intelligent alien life using a radio telescope the size of three football fields.
From ACM News
Google's New Moonshot Project: The Human Body
Google Inc. has embarked on what may be its most ambitious and difficult science project ever: a quest inside the human body.
From ACM News
U.s. Government Chatbot Gets You to Tell All
Want access to the U.S. government's secrets? Talk to the robot.
From ACM News
For Half, STEM Degrees Lead to Other Jobs
A recent U.S. Census Bureau report says only about 26 percent of those who graduate with a four-year degree in a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) subject end up working in a STEM field.
From ACM TechNews
Built For Speed: Designing Exascale Computers
Researchers at Harvard University are focused on developing the hardware and software for exascale computers, while others are planning to apply exascale computing resources to diverse scientific fields once they become available…
From ACM TechNews
rban Jungle a Tough Challenge For Google's Autonomous Cars
Google's Chris Urmson, who heads the company's self-driving car program, said the project is entering its most difficult phase so far: building vehicles with the intelligence to navigate the chaos of city streets.
From ACM TechNews
Cloud Provides Chip Design Education to Developing Countries
Semiconductor Research Corp. and Silicon Cloud International are deploying EDA hardware and software in a private cloud with the goal of educating and training new system-on-chip design engineers in developing countries.
From ACM TechNews
Turing's Oracle: The Computer That Goes Beyond Logic
An "oracle" computer proposed by celebrated mathematician Alan Turing in 1938 that goes beyond conventional human logic is the focus of a Missouri State University project exploring the possibilities of a super-Turing computer…
From ACM News
No Guts, All Glory at Robot Soccer World Cup
Spectacular falls, miraculous goals, and footwork that would put the Premier League to shame—RoboCup 2014 has seen it all.
From ACM News
Surface Impressions of Rosetta's Comet
Surface structures are becoming visible in new images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the scientific imaging system OSIRIS onboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft.
From ACM News
How Hackers Hid a Money-Mining Botnet in Amazon's Cloud
Hackers have long used malware to enslave armies of unwitting PCs, but security researchers Rob Ragan and Oscar Salazar had a different thought: Why steal computing resources from innocent victims when there's so much free processing…
From ACM News
No Man's Sky: A Vast Game Crafted By Algorithms
Sean Murray, one of the creators of the computer game No Man's Sky, can't guarantee that the virtual universe he is building is infinite, but he's certain that, if it isn't, nobody will ever find out.
From ACM TechNews
Multi-Bit Spin For Mram Storage May Rival Flash Memory
A group of researchers say they have developed a new multi-bit magnetic random access memory storage paradigm with the potential to rival flash memory.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science Adds New Dimension to Study of Chemistry
Computer science is benefiting the study of chemistry by adding a layer to analyze chemical processes.
From ACM TechNews
Astronauts to Test Free-Flying 'housekeeper' Robots
Astronauts on the International Space Station will use two prototype Project Tango smartphones to collect visual data to generate a 3D model of their environment.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Enlist Big Data to Guide Conservation Efforts
Researchers have developed a model that uses big data to help biologists understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
From ACM News
More Eyes on the Skies
The future, it is often said, belongs to those who plan for it.
From ACM News
Harold Edgerton: The Man Who Froze Time
Every time you use the flash on your smartphone or camera, you should give silent praise to Harold Eugene Edgerton.
From ACM News
Mars Slow to Yield Its Secrets
Thunderous applause greeted planetary cartographer Ken Tanaka of the US Geological Survey on 14 July as he unveiled a new geological map of Mars.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop High-Precision Software For Diagnosing Eye Sensitivity
Researchers report a successful test of prototype software for diagnosing eye sensitivity.
From ACM TechNews
NASA Upgrades Humanoid Robot in Space
Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot that has been working on the International Space Station since 2011, is getting a series of upgrades.
From ACM TechNews
Epsrc Calls For Partners to Develop Alan Turing Institute
The U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council wants to partner with U.K. universities to establish the Alan Turing Institute.
From ACM TechNews
Indonesian Techies Crowdsource Election Results
A trio of Indonesians working for international tech companies have used crowdsourcing to calculate a result for Indonesia's contested presidential election.
From ACM TechNews
Birdsongs Automatically Decoded by Computer Scientists
Researchers have developed a successful way of identifying bird sounds from large audio collections.
From ACM News
Transistor Successor Set to Bring on "the Machine" Age Soon
A replacement for the ordinary transistor may make it to market by the end of this decade, an event that will herald a radical redesign of traditional computer architectures.
From ACM TechNews
Share Button May Share Your Browsing History, Too
A recent study provides the first large-scale investigation of a previously undetected cookie-like tracking mechanism embedded in the "share" buttons of websites.