Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2017
From ACM News
Deepmind AI Teaches Itself About the World By Watching Videos
To an untrained AI, the world is a blur of confusing data streams.
From ACM TechNews
ta Researcher Seeks to Minimize Risks For nmanned Aerial Systems Over Populated Areas
A researcher will use a $550,000 U.S. National Science Foundation grant to quantify risks posed by unmanned aerial systems and create algorithms to reduce those risks.
From ACM TechNews
Nsf Grant Aims to se Big Data to Improve Crops
Researchers have received a $1.2-million U.S. National Science Foundation grant to help biologists improve crop management.
From ACM TechNews
Cu Boulder Wants Humans to Experience Secret Life of Pets
Researchers have received a U.S. National Science Foundation grant to design and build wearable technologies to help humans experience the world through a dog's senses.
From ACM News
Teaching Computational Thinking Sooner
Are there benefits to teaching computational thinking to preschoolers?
From ACM Opinion
Jpl's Design For a Clockwork Rover to Explore Venus
The longest amount of time that a spacecraft has survived on the surface of Venus is 127 minutes.
From ACM News
How to Map the Circuits That Define S
Marta Zlatic owns what could be the most tedious film collection ever.
From ACM TechNews
Aussies Win Amazon Robotics Challenge
Team ACRV, from the Australian Center for Robotic Vision at the Queensland University of Technology, won the final combined task in Amazon's 2017 Robotics Challenge.
From ACM TechNews
How Can Humans Keep Control of Ai?
Osaka University president Shojiro Nishio stresses the need to keep artificial intelligence under human control.
From ACM TechNews
Hacking Cybersecurity to Anticipate Attacks
The ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks in July highlighted developing a hacking model for anticipating cyberattacks.
From ACM TechNews
Designing the Microstructure of Printed Objects
Researchers have developed a design system to catalog the physical characteristics of a huge number of tiny cube clusters that can function as building blocks for 3D-printable objects.
From ACM TechNews
An Algorithm Trained on Emoji Knows When You're Being Sarcastic on Twitter
Researchers have developed a deep-learning textual sentiment algorithm which can analyze tweets to pick up sarcasm and general emotional subtext.
From ACM TechNews
The Future of Search Engines
Researchers aim to improve enhance search engines by integrating artificial intelligence with annotation insights and information encoded in domain-specific resources.
From ACM News
Demystifying the Black Box That Is AI
When Jason Matheny joined the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) as a program manager in 2009, he made a habit of chatting to the organization's research analysts. "What do you need?" he would ask, …
From ACM News
National Ignition Facility Recreates the Interior of Heavy Stars
In a lot of ways, stars are our model for creating nuclear fusion here on Earth, with fusion power often promoted as "harnessing the power of the Sun."
From ACM News
New Clues to niverse's Structure Revealed
What is our universe made of, and has its composition changed over time?
From ACM TechNews
Nsf Issues Awards to Advance a National Research Infrastructure For Neuroscience
The U.S. National Science Foundation has allocated 17 Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience awards to help the research community understand the human brain.
From ACM TechNews
New Tool Increases Adaptability, Autonomy of 'skyrim' Nonplayer Characters
CIF-CK is a new artificial intelligence architecture program that uses social behavior models to make individual "Skyrim" non-player characters more reactive and adaptable.
From ACM News
New Horizons' Next Target Just Got a Lot More Interesting
Could the next flyby target for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft actually be two targets?
From ACM News
In Memoriam Peter Wegner: 1932-2017
Wegner made significant contributions to the theory of object-oriented programming.
From ACM News
Academic Supercomputer Seeks a Top 10 Ranking
A second-generation academic supercomputer aims to break into the top rankings of the world's fastest supercomputers.
From ACM News
Radio Navigation Set to Make Global Return as Gps Backup, Because Cyber
Way back in the 1980s, when I was a young naval officer, the Global Positioning System was still in its experimental stage.
From ACM News
Gene Editing For 'designer Babies'? Highly nlikely, Scientists Say
Now that science is a big step closer to being able to fiddle with the genes of a human embryo, is it time to panic?
From ACM News
$2-Million Donation Supports Launch of Theoretical Machine Learning Program
The donation comes from Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, and Wendy Schmidt, president of The Schmidt Family Foundation and cofounder of the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
From ACM TechNews
Caltech, Cornell Create Creature-Cataloging Contest For Computers
Researchers have created the iNaturalist Challenge, a competition to produce the best machine-learning algorithm for identifying the world's plant and animal species.
From ACM TechNews
Pitt Researchers Control Supercomputers in Space
Researchers are conducting high-performance computing operations in space.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence Helps to Keep Tired Drivers Awake
Researchers at Panasonic have developed an artificial intelligence platform to keep tired drivers comfortably alert at all times.
From ACM TechNews
The Death of Ruby? Developers Should Learn These Languages Instead
The Ruby programming language's popularity has plummeted steeply in the past few years, owing to scalability limits, slower application runtimes, and an inability to let computer scientists gain the same types of insight into…
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Bioengineers Encourage Virtual Competitors to Vie For a Different Kind of Athletic Title
Researchers have built precise models of how individual muscles and limbs move in response to neural control signals, and organized a contest to develop models of the brain's movement control systems.
From ACM TechNews
New AI Algorithm Monitors Sleep With Radio Waves
A new sleep monitoring system uses an algorithm to analyze radio signals around subjects and translate those measurements into sleep stages.