acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

News Archive


Archives

The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.

July 2015


From ACM TechNews

Researchers Open Repository For 'dark Data'

Researchers Open Repository For 'dark Data'

The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding an effort to develop a one-stop shop to house researchers' data sets after they publish their papers. 


From ACM TechNews

3D Printed Electronics Are Here, Researchers Say

3D Printed Electronics Are Here, Researchers Say

Researchers have demonstrated a method for three-dimensional  printing of electrical components. 


From ACM TechNews

Inside Nasa's Version of the Holodeck

Inside Nasa's Version of the Holodeck

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to start testing a virtual environment to help astronauts deal with isolated and confined environments. 


From ACM TechNews

Iarpa Funds Program to Predict Next Wave of Cyberattacks

Iarpa Funds Program to Predict Next Wave of Cyberattacks

The U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a program to develop a framework for coupling threat indicators with external information sources. 


From ACM News

The Secret Agents Who Stake Out the ­gliest Corners of the Internet

The Secret Agents Who Stake Out the ­gliest Corners of the Internet

When President Obama launched his Twitter account in May, people noticed his rapid accumulation of followers, a silly back-and-forth with President Clinton, but also something more serious: the number of hostile and threatening…


From ACM News

Vibrant Pluto Stuns Scientists

Vibrant Pluto Stuns Scientists

They are 5 billion kilometres from the Sun in the dim, far-flung outskirts of the Solar System, but Pluto and its large moon Charon turn out to be astonishingly vital worlds.


From ACM Careers

Defensive Stats Shift Back Toward Irrelevance

Defensive Stats Shift Back Toward Irrelevance

Baseball's statisticians have long been looking for a way—any way—to figure out what a player is worth on defense. It was nothing less than the holy grail of baseball statistics.


From ACM TechNews

Camp Gives Middle School Girls Hands-On Experience in Engineering

Camp Gives Middle School Girls Hands-On Experience in Engineering

The University of California, Berkeley's Girls in Engineering summer camps are aimed at narrowing the gender gap in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. 


From ACM TechNews

Siting Wind Farms More Quickly, Cheaply

Siting Wind Farms More Quickly, Cheaply

Researchers say they have developed a statistical technique that yields better wind-speed predictions than existing techniques. 


From ACM TechNews

Security Researchers Find a Way to Hack Cars

Security Researchers Find a Way to Hack Cars

Security researchers plan to demonstrate a method to hack into and control vehicles at the Black Hat and Def Con hacking conferences in August. 


From ACM TechNews

Mother Robots Build Children Robots to Experiment With Artificial Evolution

Mother Robots Build Children Robots to Experiment With Artificial Evolution

ETH Zurich researchers sought to bypass some of the limitations of evolutionary robotics by training a "mother robot" to autonomously assemble children robots. 


From ACM TechNews

After 85-Year Search, Massless Particle with Promise for Next-Generation Electronics Discovered

After 85-Year Search, Massless Particle with Promise for Next-Generation Electronics Discovered

Princeton University researchers have confirmed the existence of Weyl fermions, which could permit a nearly free and efficient flow of electricity in electronics.


From ACM TechNews

Web 2.0 (and Beyond): Developing the Next Generation of Connectivity

Web 2.0 (and Beyond): Developing the Next Generation of Connectivity

The U.S. National Science Foundation's Global Environment for Network Innovations is a network established to test next-generation networking concepts.


From ACM Careers

The Hidden Lab Where Bankcards Are Hacked

The Hidden Lab Where Bankcards Are Hacked

It couldn't get any more steampunk if it tried: a wooden robot hisses like an airbrake as a blast of compressed air shoves its arm sideways, sending a credit card attached to it clattering through a card reader.


From ACM News

Nfl Teams Train Qbs with Vr

Nfl Teams Train Qbs with Vr

The Dallas Cowboys is the first professional football team to use Virtual Reality in player training; others are following suit.


From ACM News

Dawn Maneuvering to Third Science Orbit

Dawn Maneuvering to Third Science Orbit

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is using its ion propulsion system to descend to its third mapping orbit at Ceres, and all systems are operating well. The spiral maneuvering over the next five weeks will take the spacecraft to an altitude…


From ACM News

Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—with Me in It

Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—with Me in It

I was driving 70 mph on the edge of downtown St. Louis when the exploit began to take hold.


From ACM TechNews

Cars May Soon ­nderstand More of What You Say

Cars May Soon ­nderstand More of What You Say

Many cars today now come with limited voice control, but more elaborate and robust systems could be coming to cars soon. 


From ACM TechNews

Neuroscience Computing Boot Camp Aims to Ignite Interest For Brain Research

Neuroscience Computing Boot Camp Aims to Ignite Interest For Brain Research

IBM is trying to get the federal government more interested in neuroscience-inspired computing. 


From ACM TechNews

Tiny Wires, Great Potential

Tiny Wires, Great Potential

Harvard scientists have developed a new type of nanowire that can absorb light at specific wavelengths, as well as also absorb light from other parts of the spectrum. 


From ACM News

Deep-Learning AI Is Taking Over Tech. What Is It?

Deep-Learning AI Is Taking Over Tech. What Is It?

Have you ever begun a Google search, only to click on the words the box lays before you?


From ACM News

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Gets a $100-Million Boost

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Gets a $100-Million Boost

You could say that the silence has been deafening.


From ACM News

The People 'possessed' By Computers

The People 'possessed' By Computers

Sophia Ben-Achour looks like a typical London student. She has short, brown hair, dancing eyes and a wide smile.


From ACM News

The Long, Strange Trip to Pluto, and How Nasa Nearly Missed It

The Long, Strange Trip to Pluto, and How Nasa Nearly Missed It

Planetary scientists are coloring in the family portrait of our solar system as close-up photographs and observations stream back from Pluto, a world three billion miles away with towering mountains of ice, vast smooth plains…


From ACM News

Inside the Fake Town in Michigan Where Self-Driving Cars Are Being Tested

Inside the Fake Town in Michigan Where Self-Driving Cars Are Being Tested

Later this year a Michigan pedestrian named Sebastian will spend his days throwing himself in the path of speeding cars.


From ACM TechNews

Nsa Summer Camp: More Hacking Than Hiking

Nsa Summer Camp: More Hacking Than Hiking

The U.S. National Security Agency is seeking to cultivate middle- and high-school student interest and proficiency in cybersecurity in a new summer camp program. 


From ACM TechNews

Google Proposes Open Source Beacons

Google Proposes Open Source Beacons

Google's Eddystone protocol uses an open specification for Bluetooth low energy beacons to encourage developers, marketers, and others to adopt the technology.


From ACM TechNews

Rice Tests Wireless Data Delivery Over Active Tv Channels

Rice Tests Wireless Data Delivery Over Active Tv Channels

Rice University researchers have developed which they say is the first system that enables wireless data transmission over UHF channels during active TV broadcasts. 


From ACM TechNews

Hitchhiking Robot Embarking on Coast-to-Coast Tour Across ­.s.

Hitchhiking Robot Embarking on Coast-to-Coast Tour Across ­.s.

HitchBOT set out on its first cross-country tour of the U.S. on Friday. 


From ACM TechNews

Ibm's Machine-Learning Crystal Ball Can Foresee Renewable Energy Availability

Ibm's Machine-Learning Crystal Ball Can Foresee Renewable Energy Availability

Researchers have developed a machine-learning algorithm that can predict days in advance how much power solar and wind plants will generate for the U.S. power grid.