Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2015
From ACM TechNews
Facebook's Cyborg Virtual Assistant Is Learning From Its Trainers
Several hundred users of Facebook's mobile messaging app late last month were given access to M, the social network's new artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant.
From ACM TechNews
Key Benchtop Testing Planned For Wireless Brain Sensor
Researchers are starting to test wireless transmitter prototypes as part of the investigational BrainGate Neural Interface System.
From ACM TechNews
Ethical Trials, Targeted Ads
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Philippe Rigollet and colleagues have developed an approach they say increases the effectiveness of online ads.
From ACM TechNews
The Fuzzy Logic of Fleeing For Your Life
A special session at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligence Transportation Systems dealt with intelligent pedestrian traffic and evacuation dynamics.
From ACM TechNews
New Crypto Tool Makes Anonymous Surveys Truly Anonymous
Cornell Tech security researchers have built a free survey alternative which they say makes it mathematically impossible for anyone to identify respondents.
From ACM News
.s. and China Seek Arms Deal For Cyberspace
The United States and China are negotiating what could become the first arms control accord for cyberspace, embracing a commitment by each country that it will not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other's critical…
From ACM News
Whoa. Microsoft Is sing Linux to Run Its Cloud
Microsoft has cozied up to the open source community in recent years.
From ACM News
Funky Light Signal From Colliding Black Holes Explained
Entangled by gravity and destined to merge, two candidate black holes in a distant galaxy appear to be locked in an intricate dance.
From ACM News
Robotic Limbs Get a Sense of Touch
Advanced prosthetics have for the past few years begun tapping into brain signals to provide amputees with impressive new levels of control.
From ACM News
Microsoft to Invest $75 Million in Computer Science Education
Microsoft is investing $75 million over a three-year period to help make computer science more mainstream in schools.
From ACM News
The Revolution Will Not Be Crystallized: A New Method Sweeps Through Structural Biology
In a basement room, deep in the bowels of a steel-clad building in Cambridge, a major insurgency is under way.
From ACM TechNews
How Tomorrow's Battles Will Be Fought in Augmented Reality
For nearly three decades, Bob Stone has worked in the field of virtual reality, and he now sees the technology's applications becoming a reality.
From ACM TechNews
Europe Gears p For Land, Air, and Sea Robotics Competition
The euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge is designed to assess how well cooperative robot systems perform as part of a simulated emergency-response operation.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Now There's an App For That
The California HealthCare Foundation offered $100,000 for an algorithm that would allow artificial intelligence to detect retinal damage due to diabetic retinopathy.
From ACM TechNews
The 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration Abie Award Winners
The Anita Borg Institute has announced the winners of its 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration ABIE Awards recognizing female leaders in computer science.
From ACM TechNews
The Dismal State of America's Decade-Old Voting Machines
Almost all U.S. states are using technologically outdated touchscreen and optical-scan voting systems that are at least 10 years old, according to a report.
From ACM News
The Search For a Thinking Machine
Thanks, in part, to a new era of machine learning, computer are already starting to assimilate information from raw data in the same way as the human infant learns from the world around her.
From ACM News
nhackable Kernel Could Keep All Computers Safe from Cyberattack
An autonomous helicopter gunship is flying over a military base in Arizona. Suddenly, officers on the ground lose radio contact: hackers have taken control of an on-board computer. Could they fly the helicopter?
From ACM News
China Tries to Extract Pledge of Compliance From .s. Tech Firms
The Chinese government, which has long used its country's vast market as leverage over American technology companies, is now asking some of those firms to directly pledge their commitment to contentious policies that could require…
From ACM News
The People Hoping to Continue to Exist Through Technology
"We have this strange idea that dying is something we need to do."
From ACM News
Cassini Finds Global Ocean in Saturn's Moon Enceladus
A global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from NASA's Cassini mission.
From ACM TechNews
Study Names the Five Most Hackable Vehicles
A PT&C|LWG Forensic Consulting Services study has named the top five vehicles most susceptible to hacking.
From ACM TechNews
Egyptian Professor Chipping Away at Energy Efficiency
A Brown University professor is studying ways to increase the energy efficiency of computing systems without sacrificing performance.
From ACM TechNews
Engineers Are Modeling Quantum Computers Based on Sound
Sound, instead of wires or fiber optics, could be used to connect distant quantum bits, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics.
From ACM TechNews
ta Research Will Lead to More Efficient Computer Modeling
A group of engineers are developing hybrid software and hardware approaches to testing electric machines during the design stage.
From ACM News
Cyberthreat Posed By China and Iran Confounds White House
A question from a member of the Pentagon’s new cyberwarfare unit the other day prompted President Obama to voice his frustration about America's seeming inability to deter a growing wave of computer attacks, and to vow to confront…
From ACM News
Brain-Controlled Smart Home Lets You Turn the Tv On By Thinking
Feeling cold? Your home already knows, and turns up the heat. Sick of the TV show you are watching? Your home changes the channel.
From ACM News
Glasses Foil Facial Recognition
The PrivacyVisor prevents facial detection/identification programs based on Haar-like feature recognition.
From ACM News
Google Is 2 Billion Lines of Code—and It's All in One Place
How big is Google? We can answer that question in terms of revenue or stock price or customers or, well, metaphysical influence.
From ACM News
The Milky Way's Missing Mass: Partially Found
Giant galaxies such as the Milky Way and Andromeda consist mostly of exotic dark matter.