Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2019
From ACM News
Algorithms Should’ve Made Courts More Fair. What Went Wrong?
A 2011 Kentucky law requires judges to consult an algorithm when deciding whether defendants must post cash bail. More whites were allowed to go home, but not blacks.
From ACM TechNews
The Robo Racing Cars Accelerating Driverless Tech
The Roborace motorsport competition is a testbed for autonomous vehicle technology, as international teams pit driverless electric racing cars against each other.
From ACM TechNews
Stretchable Wireless Sensor Could Monitor Healing of Cerebral Aneurysms
Researchers have developed a wireless sensor small enough to be implanted in the blood vessels of the human brain.
From ACM TechNews
AI-Powered Cameras Become New Tool Against Mass Shootings
Artificial intelligence is transforming surveillance cameras from passive devices into active observers that can identify people, suspicious behavior, and guns.
For example, if the cameras have a previously captured image …From ACM TechNews
Mysterious iOS Attack Changes Everything We Know About iPhone Hacking
Google researchers discovered thousands of iPhones have been compromised with sophisticated spyware over the last two years, contradicting assumptions about the rarity of such hacks.
From ACM News
Digital Transformation: A Business Imperative
Advancing to Digital 2.0 can help the modern company anticipate the needs of the customer.
From ACM News
Unix at 50: How the OS that powered smartphones started from failure
Today, Unix powers iOS and Android—its legend begins with a gator and a trio of researchers.
From ACM TechNews
3.8-Million-Year-Old Fossil Cranium Unveils More About Human Ancestry
Researchers have gained new insights into human evolution via digital reconstruction of 3.8-million-year-old fossilized cranium fragments of a hominid from Ethiopia.
From ACM TechNews
Hurricane Forecasters Turn to New Tools to Predict When Storms Will Rapidly Intensify
Scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working to gain a better understanding of what happens within a hurricane during periods of rapid intensification.
From ACM TechNews
Companies Use Cyber Ranges to Practice Security Skills
U.S. companies and universities are developing cybersecurity training facilities that model real-world networks and scenarios to educate staff and evaluate theories about cyberdefense and response strategies.
From ACM TechNews
AI System Passed an Eighth-Grade Science Test
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence introduced an artificial intelligence system that successfully passed an eighth-grade multiple-choice science test, correctly answering over 90% of the questions.
From ACM TechNews
Developing Embedded Systems Faster
Researchers in a consortium of eight partners from six EU countries have created a platform that makes it possible to develop energy-efficient embedded image processing systems more quickly and less expensively.
From ACM TechNews
French Researcher Hacks into Moscow's New E-Voting System
A French cryptographer has exposed a security flaw in an electronic voting system to be used in this month's municipal elections in Moscow.
From ACM TechNews
People Do Grammar Bad. Google's AI is Hear Too Help.
Google has launched an artificial intelligence-powered tool that automatically detects grammar mistakes while messages are being composed in Gmail, and auto-corrects some common spelling mistakes.
From ACM TechNews
Retrosynthetic Algorithm Broadened to Design Similar, but Different, Molecules
Researchers at the Polish Academy of Sciences have developed an algorithm for performing multistep retrosynthesis and predicting the most efficiency synthetic pathways. The algorithm has been extended to libraries of compounds…
From ACM TechNews
U.S. Officials Fear Ransomware Attack Against 2020 Election
The U.S. government intends to launch a program to shield voter registration databases and systems from hackers ahead of the 2020 election.
From Communications of the ACM
An Inability to Reproduce
Big data and modern analytics offer enormous possibilities for research, provided scientists can produce consistent results.
From Communications of the ACM
Augmented Reality Gets Real
Formidable optical challenges are yielding to intensive research, development.
From Communications of the ACM
Can You Locate Your Location Data?
Smartphone apps offering location data services may be desirable, but their ability to collect personal data that can be sold to third parties is less attractive.