Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2015
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientist Helps Researchers Track Honey Bee Health
Computer science has played a key role in an initiative to track the health of honeybees across the U.S. The Bee Informed Partnership, a project involving scientists from eight universities, is tracking hive loss and documenting…
From ACM TechNews
Tiny Wires Could Provide a Big Energy Boost
MIT researchers have found a new approach to deliver the short but intense bursts of power needed by wearable electronic devices for health and fitness monitoring.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Offers Researchers $500k to Work on Hololens
Microsoft is looking for new ideas on potential uses for its HoloLens augmented reality headgear. The company recently issued a request for proposals seeking projects to help "better understand the role and possible applications…
From ACM News
IBM Discloses Working Version of a Much Higher-Capacity Chip
IBM said on Thursday that it had made working versions of ultradense computer chips, with roughly four times the capacity of today's most powerful chips.
From ACM News
The 24/7 Search For Killer Quakes
At 17 minutes past midnight on Saturday 25 April, Rob Sanders's computer started chiming with alerts.
From ACM News
Introducing the Astronaut Clothing of the Future
A crew member aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is performing routine maintenance.
From ACM News
FBI Chief Warns Encryption Emboldens Would-Be Islamic State Attackers
Barring law enforcement authorities' access to encrypted communications would make it easier for Islamic State sympathizers to attack the United States, FBI Chief James Comey told Senate lawmakers on Wednesday.
From ACM TechNews
Elon Musk Gives $10 Million in Grants to Study Safe AI
Inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk has given the Future of Life Institute $10 million to be distributed as 37 grants to research projects designed to keep artificial intelligence "robust and beneficial."
From ACM TechNews
Bbc Offers Free Tiny Computers to .k. Students
The BBC is partnering with more than two dozen companies and organizations to provide at least 1 million British school children with a free pocket-sized computer called the BBC micro:bit.
From ACM TechNews
Project ses Crowdsourced Computing to Improve Water Filtration
Researchers and more than 150,000 volunteers used crowdsourced computing to simulate the flow of water molecules flowing through nanotubes.
From ACM TechNews
Hi-Tech Harness Lets Owners Communicate With Canine Companions
A dog harness outfitted with sensors and a computer developed by researchers at North Carolina State University is equipped with speakers and vibrating pads to enable owners to communicate with their pets.
From ACM TechNews
Sounds Bad
University of Southern California's Stefan Scherer and Carnegie Mellon University's Louis-Philippe Morency are seeking to use computers to diagnose depression.
From ACM TechNews
Researcher's Interface Allows Analysts to Visualize, Interact With Images
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) scientists say they have developed a user interface that facilitates the visualization, navigation, and manipulation of tens of thousands of images.
From ACM News
Almost Time For Pluto's Close-Up
The pictures coming back from Pluto are still a bit fuzzy. But just wait.
From ACM News
Code Specialists Oppose U.S. and British Government Access to Encrypted Communication
An elite group of code makers and code breakers is taking American and British intelligence and law enforcement agencies to task in a new paper that evaluates government proposals to maintain special access to encrypted digital…
From ACM TechNews
How to Stop Virtual Reality From Making You Want to Puke
Stanford University professor Gordon Wetzstein and his colleagues are developing a virtual reality headset that is designed to solve one of the persistent problems of modern VR technology: its tendency to make some people nauseous…
From ACM TechNews
Seahorse Tails Could Inspire New Generation of Robots
Clemson University researchers have developed a 3-D printed model based on the square prism of a seahorse tail, as well as a hypothetical cylindrical version. They found the square prototype was stiffer, stronger, and more resilient…
From ACM TechNews
IBM Makes Lake George World's Smartest Lake
Researchers at IBM, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Fund for Lake George have collaborated to use Internet of Things technology to turn New York State's Lake George into a "smart lake" to get a clearer picture of…
From ACM News
Leap Motion's Augmented-Reality Computing Looks Stupid Cool
We have a habit of filling new technologies with old ideas.
From ACM News
Car Dashboards That Act Like Smart Phones Raise Safety Issues
When it comes to dashboard displays that are more like smart phones, two things are clear: Customers want them, and automakers are intent on supplying them.
From ACM News
Google's Deep Learning Machine Learns to Synthesize Real World Images
Google Street View offers panoramic views of more or less any city street in much of the developed world, as well as views along countless footpaths, inside shopping malls, and around museums and art galleries.
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Challenge Greatly Propelled Humanoid Robotics
The DARPA Robotics Challenge has significantly advanced the field of humanoid robotics thanks to contributions from academia, including the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, whose team finished in the top third of the challenge's…
From ACM TechNews
Dartmouth Contests Experiment With 'human-Quality,' Computer-Generated Creativity
Dartmouth College is pushing the limits of what artificial intelligence is capable of with a trio of new contests to see if algorithms can produce creative works indistinguishable from those made by human beings.
From ACM News
Pluto Spacecraft Temporarily Loses Contact with Earth
Ten days before its historic flyby of Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft lost contact with mission control, for unknown reasons, for an hour and 21 minutes on 4 July.
From ACM TechNews
Cooperative Driving Will Become Common as Data Exchange Between Vehicles Increases
The international Celtic Plus CoMoSeF project recently concluded, yielding a communication system linking cars and drivers with a host of road-side devices that provide information on weather, road conditions, and traffic incidents…
From ACM TechNews
Eu Open Source Software Project Receives Green Light
The European Union's Framework 2020 program has provided 7.6 million euros (U.S. $8.4 million) to help fund an open source software project that will extend the capacity of computational mathematics and interactive computing…
From ACM TechNews
Google's AI System Gets Its Snark From Humans
A recent study by Google scientists details how their machine-learning and natural-language research project trained a computer to answer various questions by feeding it a database of movie scripts. Some of the system's resulting…
From ACM News
Machine Ethics: The Robot's Dilemma
In his 1942 short story 'Runaround', science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Laws of Robotics—engineering safeguards and built-in ethical principles that he would go on to use in dozens of stories and novels.
From ACM News
The Computers of Our Wildest Dreams
One of the first electronic, programmable computers in the world is remembered today mostly by its nickname: Colossus.
From ACM TechNews
The Reality of Problem Solving
A new adaptive importance sampling algorithm can help generate more accurate predictions than a data assimilation algorithm when uncertainty is involved.