Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2017
From ACM News
Supercomputing in Space
Off-the-shelf computer components were hardened to the extremes of space with layers of "detection, correction, and protection."
From ACM News
The Drug-Maker's Guide to the Galaxy
In 2016, the pharmaceutical firm Sunovion gave a group of seasoned employees an unusual assignment.
From ACM Opinion
Is Beaming Down In star Trek a Death Sentence?
In the 2009 movie Star Trek, Captain Kirk and Sulu plummeted down toward the planet Vulcan without a parachute. "Beam us up, beam us up!" Kirk shouted in desperation.
From ACM Careers
Facebook's New 'ai Camera' Team Wants to Add a Layer to the World
Take a video of a birthday cake's candles sparkling in an Instagram story, then tap the sticker button. Near the top of the list you'll see a slice of birthday cake.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Judges? Edmonton Research Crafting Artificial Intelligence For Courts
University of Alberta professor Randy Goebel's team in Canada is working with researchers in Japan to develop artificial intelligence software for legal reasoning.
From ACM TechNews
Real or Fake? Creating Fingers to Protect Identities
Michigan State University researchers have designed and created a fake finger containing multiple properties of human skin.
From ACM TechNews
As More Women Enter STEM Fields, Difficulties Remain
A new report suggests women may be more inclined to drop out of certain STEM fields when they get low grades in stereotypically male disciplines..
From ACM TechNews
Internet Rulemaking Is Going to Get More Complicated
A new report warns of cybersecurity measures undermining personal rights and freedoms through censorship and other means if "multilateral" government policies continue.
From ACM TechNews
A Brain Built From Atomic Switches Can Learn
Researchers are constructing a device "inspired by the brain to generate the properties that enable the brain to do what it does."
From ACM News
Nasa Designed This Low-Tech Rover to Survive Venus
Venus is not pleasant. Its surface, approximately 850 degrees Fahrenheit, is hot enough for paper to spontaneously combust. Its atmosphere, an oppressive mix of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide, is dense enough to…
From ACM News
New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning
A new idea called the "information bottleneck" is helping to explain the puzzling success of today's artificial-intelligence algorithms—and might also explain how human brains learn.
From ACM News
Some of the Best Parts of Autonomous Vehicles Are Already Here
Fully automated cars are still many years away. Amid the government activity and potential for social benefits, it's important not to lose sight of smaller improvements that could more immediately save lives and reduce injuries…
From ACM TechNews
Reducing the Massive Energy Appetite of Data Centers
Researchers are developing new chips and approaches to reduce the power consumption of data centers, which accounted for about one-fiftieth of all U.S. electricity use in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists From the Rudn niversity Will Make Computer Networks More Robust
Researchers from the RUDN University in Russia have applied a new mathematical model called a Markovian arrival process to the breakdown of telecommunication systems and electronic equipment that handles client requests.
From ACM TechNews
Drones Can Almost See in the Dark
Researchers at the University of Zurich and NCCR Robotics have taught flying drones to navigate with an eye-inspired camera, which could create a path toward operating in low-light conditions.
From ACM TechNews
Autonomous Vehicles' Future May Be Further Away, Different Than Imagined
Experts think autonomous vehicles (AVs) may arrive later than expected, or in a different form than most people anticipate. Ben McKeever with California PATH says it will be at least 20 years a full rollout of self-driving AVs…
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence Just Made Guessing Your Password a Whole Lot Easier
Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology used artificial intelligence to generate a program that successfully guessed 27 percent of the passwords from more than 43 million LinkedIn profiles.
From ACM TechNews
Choir: Bringing Harmony to Discord in the Iot World
Carnegie Mellon University professor Swarun Kumar says networking the vast number of devices making up the Internet of Things requires a sweeping technological upgrade. His team developed Choir, a networking platform that could…
From ACM TechNews
Streaming on a Wireless Power Connection
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a system that can deliver watts of power while also transmitting data at rates sufficiently high to stream video over the same wireless connection.
From ACM TechNews
An Extra Challenge in a Crisis: Dealing With Rare Languages
Researchers at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute are building machine-learning systems to quickly translate any of the world's 7,000 languages and automatically generate actionable information…
From ACM TechNews
Facial Recognition Is Only the Beginning
Apple says the inclusion of its Face ID technology in the upcoming iPhone X will make smartphone unlocking, payment, and other operations possible via facial recognition.
From ACM News
These Robots Can Merge and Split Their Brains to Form New Modular Bots
We cover all kinds of modular robotics around here, and when we do, we're almost always talking about one overall robotic system made up of many different modules, some number of which can be individually controlled or swapped…
From ACM News
How the Internet Kept Humming During 2 Hurricanes
At one node of the industrial backbone that keeps the internet running, employees sheltered from the worst of Hurricane Irma in a stairwell of a seven-story building in downtown Miami.
From ACM TechNews
World-First Microchip: 'storing Lightning Inside Thunder'
Researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia have stored photonic information on a microchip as an acoustic wave, which they say is an important breakthrough in the development of chips that manage data optically instead…
From ACM News
Infrared Signals in Surveillance Cameras Let Malware Jump Network Air Gaps
Researchers have devised malware that can jump airgaps by using the infrared capabilities of an infected network's surveillance cameras to transmit data to and from attackers.
From ACM News
Wind, Warm Water Revved p Melting Antarctic Glaciers
A NASA study has located the Antarctic glaciers that accelerated the fastest between 2008 and 2014 and finds that the most likely cause of their speedup is an observed influx of warm water into the bay where they're located.
…From ACM News
Researchers nite in Quest For 'standard Model' of the Brain
Leading neuroscientists are joining forces to study the brain—in much the same way that physicists team up in mega-projects to hunt for new particles.
From ACM News
Chips Off the Old block: Computers Are Taking Design Cues from Human Brains
We expect a lot from our computers these days. They should talk to us, recognize everything from faces to flowers, and maybe soon do the driving.
From ACM Careers
Conservatives, Liberals nite Against Silicon Valley
The days of unqualified praise from Washington are over for the country's biggest tech companies, whose size and power are increasingly drawing attacks from both the left and the right.
From ACM TechNews
Stretchy Artificial 'skin' Could Give Robots a Sense of Touch
Rubberized electronics and sensors that function normally when stretched up to half of their length could operate as artificial skin on robots.