Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2019
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Quantum Algorithm Boosts Medical Imaging
Microsoft and Case Western Reserve University researchers have enhanced the speed and quality of medical imaging with an algorithm designed to work on a future quantum computer.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Skin Can Sense 1,000 Times Faster Than Human Nerves
Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed artificial skin containing physical sensors that can detect pressure, bending, and temperature.
From ACM TechNews
Forces Behind Growing Political Polarization in Congress Revealed in New Model
Researchers analyzed roll call votes taken in the U.S. Congress to develop a model able to accurately predict changes in polarization in 28 of the 30 U.S. Congresses elected in the past 60 years.
From ACM News
Personal Firewalls
Researchers find a way to make many implanted medical devices virtually hack-proof.
From ACM TechNews
Twitter 'Fingerprint' Helps Decode How Individuals Respond to Crises
Purdue niversity researchers have developed an algorithm that analyzes tweets to better understand how users respond to crises.
From ACM TechNews
Software Vulnerable in New Election Systems
The majority of the approximately 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes, and report ballot counts.
From ACM TechNews
The Speediest Quantum Operation Yet
Researchers in Australia built the first two-qubit gate between atomic qubits in silicon.
From ACM TechNews
U.K. AI Gender Diversity is in 'Crisis' as Number of Female Scientists Drops
A report from innovation foundation Nesta found the U.K.'s artificial intelligence (AI) sector is suffering from a "serious gender diversity crisis," as only 14% of researchers in the field are women.
From ACM TechNews
Vibration-Powered Robots Are the Size of the World's Smallest Ant
Researchers have developed tiny three-dimensionally (3D)-printed robots that move by harnessing vibrations.
From ACM TechNews
The AI Technique that Could Imbue Machines with the Ability to Reason
Yann LeCun suggested during a recent ACM webinar that unsupervised learning could help deep learning algorithms provide computers with human-like reasoning skills.
From ACM TechNews
Drones Could Herd Rhinos From Poaching Hotspots
Researchers in the .K. found that drones and siren sounds were most effective in getting endangered southern white rhinos to leave poaching hotspots in national parks and reserves in South Africa.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Build Transistor-Like Gate for Quantum Information Processing - with Qudits
Purdue niversity researchers used qudits to develop what could be a quantum version of a transistor, known as a gate.
From ACM TechNews
Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face
Many databases of facial images are compiled by companies and researchers without the knowledge or consent of the owners of those faces.
From ACM TechNews
Automated System Generates Robotic Parts for Novel Tasks
Researchers have developed an automated system that can design and print in three dimensions complex robotic parts optimized to a large number of specifications.
From ACM TechNews
Schools Wrestle With Privacy of Digital Data Collected on Students
Experts are concerned that digital data stored on vendor servers could later harm students who make mistakes on social media, or with widely used classroom apps.
From ACM TechNews
Idaho Teacher ses Computer Video Games to Teach Science
Ninth graders in Lewiston, ID, are being taught about earth science through the use of interdisciplinary video games developed by Polymorphic Games, an evolutionary video game studio at the University of Idaho.
From ACM TechNews
Robots Have a Hard Time Grasping "Adversarial Objects"
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have extended the concept of adversarial images to robot grasping, using physical objects designed to be tricky for conventional robot grippers to pick up.
From ACM News
A New Way to Recognize Objects
Radar opens up possibilities for human-computer interaction.
From ACM News
Wall Street Finds Blockchain Hard to Tame After Early Euphoria
A review of 33 projects involving large companies and interviews with more than a dozen executives show that blockchain technology has yet to deliver on its promise.
From ACM News
The Fantastic Seven
Technion awarded honorary doctorates to seven distinguished men and women, including past ACM president Stuart I. Feldman.
From ACM TechNews
Recognizing Kidney Injury Due to Burns Is Improved by AI
A new artificial intelligence/machine learning model can predict burn-related acute kidney injury quicker and more accurately than ever.
From ACM TechNews
Spurred by Amazon, Supermarkets Try Swapping Cashiers for Cameras
Supermarket chains in Europe are testing cashierless stores with cameras that monitor items shoppers pick, with transactions recorded as they exit.
From ACM TechNews
A Zoom Flaw Gives Hackers Easy Access to Your Webcam
Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in the Zoom videoconferencing desktop app to commandeer a user's Webcam, a security researcher warns.
From ACM News
Contention Over H-1B Visas is Hot Again
Should the U.S. admit more, or fewer, foreign technology workers?
From ACM News
Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software
The moon landing was one of the most important moments in the history of computing, laying the foundations of much of our digital world.
From ACM News
Craigslist's Craig Newmark: 'Outrage is Profitable. Most Online Outrage is Faked for Profit'
The founder of the online classifieds site is a survivor of the era of Internet optimism. He rejects the idea his website helped cause journalism's financial crisis.
From ACM TechNews
NASA Chooses MS Researchers' Computer for Trial on Moon
A radiation-hardened computer designed by Montana State University researchers was chosen by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be tested on the Moon.
From ACM TechNews
Baseball's Robot mpires Are Here. You Might Not Notice the Difference.
The Atlantic League was the first U.S. professional baseball league to use a "robot" umpire, at its recent All-Star Game.
From ACM TechNews
AI Can Edit Photos with Zero Experience
Researchers are using deep internal learning, in which a machine learning algorithm ascertains the internal structure of a single image from scratch, to edit photos without previous training.
From ACM TechNews
Hackers Breach Greece's Top-Level Domain Registrar
Researchers said Greece's top-level domain registrar has suffered a hacker breach, and identified the state-sponsored "Sea Turtle" hacker group as the perpetrator.