Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2017
From ACM Opinion
The Physics of Time Travel Isn't Just the Stuff of Science Fiction
We're all time travelers nowadays. We project ourselves mentally into the misty past and the risky future.
From ACM News
Small Group Scoops International Effort to Sequence Huge Wheat Genome
The wheat genome is finally complete.
From ACM TechNews
Cmu, Pitt Brain Imaging Science Identifies Individuals With Suicidal Thoughts
Researchers have developed an approach to identify suicidal individuals by analyzing changes in how their brains represent concepts such as death, cruelty, and trouble.
From ACM TechNews
Anticipating Aftershocks
Researchers in June released a major report summarizing the scientific and hazard results of the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast.
From ACM TechNews
To Secure the Internet of Things, We Must Build It Out of 'patchable' Hardware
The security of the Internet of Things could depend on its constituent hardware being "patchable" so it can adapt to future threats, write several experts.
From ACM News
Newfound Wormhole Allows Information to Escape Black Holes
In 1985, when Carl Sagan was writing the novel Contact, he needed to quickly transport his protagonist Dr. Ellie Arroway from Earth to the star Vega. He had her enter a black hole and exit light-years away, but he didn't know…
From ACM News
Nustar Probes Black Hole Jet Mystery
Black holes are famous for being ravenous eaters, but they do not eat everything that falls toward them.
From ACM News
Sharing Secrets (without Giving Them Away)
Secure multiparty computation protects privacy while sharing vital data.
From ACM News
How Russian Trolls Lie Their Way to the Top of Your News Feed
Going viral used to be harmless.
From ACM Careers
Facebook Struggles to Contain Russia Narrative
Facebook has been happy to keep congressional investigators focused on the Russian-bought online ads that helped sway voters in last year's election—despite the many other ways that fake messages and bogus accounts spread on …
From ACM TechNews
Women and Robots, 'there's Just No Trust'
Researchers found women were much less likely than men to trust humanoid machines.
From ACM TechNews
What Virtual Reality Can Teach a Driverless Car
Major companies are testing autonomous car software within virtual reality simulations of cities.
From ACM TechNews
Best-Ever Algorithm Found For Huge Streams of Data
Researchers have created a near-perfect streaming algorithm that operates by recalling only enough of what it has seen to relate what it has observed most often.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence to Evaluate Brain Maturity of Preterm Infants
Researchers have developed a method of assessing a preterm infant's brain maturity from an electroencephalogram.
From ACM TechNews
Singapore Teaches Its Seniors to Code
Libraries in Singapore are hosting special versions of the global Hour of Code movement to help seniors learn how to program in the Swift language.
From ACM TechNews
There Are Three Kinds of Consciousness, and Computers Have Mastered One, Says Study
A study by neuroscientists offers insights into whether computers may become conscious by deconstructing consciousness into three categories.
From ACM News
Small Asteroid or Comet 'visits' from Beyond the Solar System
A small, recently discovered asteroid—or perhaps a comet&mdsah;appears to have originated from outside the solar system, coming from somewhere else in our galaxy. If so, it would be the first "interstellar object" to be observed…
From ACM News
Facebook’s Head of AI Wants US to Stop Using the Terminator to Talk About AI
Yann LeCun chats about super-intelligent artificial intelligence and the future of virtual assistants.
From ACM News
What's the Future of Programming? The Answer Lies in Functional Languages
Simon Peyton Jones describes functional programming languages like Haskell as a proving ground where programmers can test new ideas.
From ACM News
Alan Turing: How His niversal Machine Became a Musical Instrument
Alan Turing is one of the great pioneers of the digital age, establishing the mathematical foundations of computing and using electromechanical digital machines to break German ciphers at Bletchley Park, in England, during World…
From ACM TechNews
Old Phones Get New Life in High-Powered Computer Servers
Researchers at Princeton University have demonstrated that old smartphones can be used to build computer servers at much lower cost than high-end servers.
From ACM TechNews
sing Robots in Patient Rehabilitation
Researchers conducted a study of user preferences as an initial step toward developing an interactive movement rehabilitation protocol.
From ACM TechNews
Secure Payment Without Leaving a Trace
Researchers in Germany have developed a secure system for making online payments that that works anonymously and prevents misuse.
From ACM TechNews
AI Model Fundamentally Cracks Captchas
Researchers at the artificial intelligence company Vicarious say they have developed a computer model that can solve CAPTCHAs.
From ACM TechNews
Let Your Car Tell You What It Needs
Researchers are developing software that measures automotive sounds and communicates any service requirements and other diagnostic information to drivers via a smartphone.
From ACM News
Twitter Bans Russian Government-Owned News Sites Rt and Sputnik from Buying Ads
Twitter is banning two Russian government-affiliated news sites from advertising on its platform, the social network said Thursday.
From ACM News
Inspired By Brain's Visual Cortex, New AI tterly Wrecks Captcha Security
Computer algorithms have gotten much better at recognizing patterns, like specific animals or people's faces, allowing software to automatically categorize large image collections. But we've come to rely on some things that computers…
From ACM News
Crispr Hacks Enable Pinpoint Repairs to Genome
The toolbox for editing genes expanded this week, as two research groups announced techniques that enable researchers to make targeted alterations to DNA and RNA.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook Research Automatically Creates an Avatar From a Photo
A new machine-learning system can automatically creating the best possible avatar of a person's face from a photo by using a customized emoji generator.
From ACM TechNews
Two Ornl-Led Research Teams Receive $10.5 Million to Advance Quantum Computing For Scientific Applications
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded two research teams more than $10 million to assess the feasibility of quantum architectures in addressing big science problems.