Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2014
From ACM News
Polite Drones Do Awkward Dance to Avoid Crashing
No, I insist, after you.
From ACM News
What's Next For the Rosetta Mission and Comet Exploration
Somewhere dark and icy on a comet 320 million miles away, the history-making, comet-bouncing Philae spacecraft is sleeping.
From ACM News
:-O: The Surprising Power of Emoticons
It all started with an awkward moment online. In the early 1980s, computer scientist Scott Fahlman realised his words were failing him.
From ACM TechNews
Note to Future Self
Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is working to develop a sort of cryptographic time capsule.
From ACM TechNews
New Device Could Make Large Biological Circuits Practical
Researchers have developed a new kind of load driver that could enable biological circuits to behave almost as predictably as electronic circuits.
From ACM TechNews
Linguistic Mapping Reveals How Word Meanings Sometimes Change Overnight
To track how language evolves, Stony Brook University researcher Vivek Kulkarni and colleagues map the linguistic vector space of words.
From ACM TechNews
Tomorrow's Degradable Electronics
SINTEF researchers in Norway say they have made electronic components that are soluble in water and disappear after a few hours.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook's Flow Could Help Javascript Programmers Spot Elusive Bugs
Facebook researchers have developed Flow, an open source debugging tool for JavaScript designed to highlight problems caused by the misuse of data types.
From ACM News
S Regulators Move on Thought-Controlled Prosthetics
For the first time since accidents severed the neural connection between their brains and limbs, a small number of patients are reaching out and feeling the world with prosthetic devices wired directly to their brains.
From ACM News
How the World’s First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
Staffers of Ross Perot have unearthed and restored a big chunk of ENIAC, the "Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer."
From ACM News
Seven Steps to Creating a Brain Implant
The brain is one of the most delicate and complex objects in the universe, so tinkering with its activity may seem like a fool's errand.
From ACM News
Structural Electronics Come Online
Multifunction components are becoming more common as the world gets "smarter."
From ACM News
At China Online Coming-Out Party, Beijing Spells Out Internet Control Ambition
China showed governments and the planet's biggest tech firms last week its vision for global Internet governance—clean, controlled and choreographed.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Machine Learning Tech Adds Captions to Images
Microsoft is leveraging its machine learning research to build software that automatically captions images.
From ACM TechNews
Webrtc Hammers Out Compromise on Video Codec Standards
Proponents of WebRTC, the Web standard for real-time communications via browsers, have reached a compromise on the H.264 and VP8 video codecs.
From ACM TechNews
Fulbright Award Takes Computer Scientist to France
An Arizona State University professor will spend six months studying at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science Automation.
From ACM News
Automakers Aim to Drive Away Car Computer Hackers
Against the team of hackers, the poor car stood no chance.
From ACM News
How to Teach Self-Driving Cars Ethics of the Road
A large truck speeding in the opposite direction suddenly veers into your lane.
From ACM News
Researchers Announce Advance in Image-Recognition Software
Two groups of scientists, working independently, have created artificial intelligence software capable of recognizing and describing the content of photographs and videos with far greater accuracy than ever before, sometimes…
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Cyber Initiative Will Tackle Internet Technology Concerns From Many Angles
The Stanford Cyber Initiative is a program applying broad Stanford University expertise to cybersecurity, cyberspace, and networked information.
From ACM TechNews
Silicon Valley Turns Prisoners Into Programmers at San Quentin
A San Francisco-based programming boot camp has launched a program in which inmates at San Quentin State Prison will learn the basics of computer coding.
From ACM TechNews
Hour of Code to Feature 'frozen' Characters
Educational nonprofit Code.org is collaborating with Disney to open its week-long "Hour of Code" event during Computer Science Education Week Dec. 8-14.
From ACM TechNews
Machine-Learning Algorithm Ranks the World's Most Notable Authors
New software automatically ranks authors and creators whose work is in the public domain by how likely they are to be of interest to academics and the public.
From ACM TechNews
Hackathon Develops Tech Tools to Fight Ebola Epidemic
The University of Oxford earlier this month hosted the Ebola Crisis Hackathon.
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputing 2014 Recognizes Outstanding Achievements in Hpc
Both novice and veteran researchers were honored for their contributions to high-performance computing at the Supercomputing 2014 (SC14) conference.
From ACM Careers
Workers in Silicon Valley Weigh In on Obama's Immigration Order
Silicon Valley's constant stream of new apps and services depends on hundreds of thousands of foreign-born engineers to help create them.
From ACM TechNews
Molecular Flash Memory Could Store Massive Amounts of Data
Novel molecules could help expand the storage capacity of flash memory, which is widely used in mobile devices such as smartphones.
From ACM News
Nasa Issues 'remastered' View of Jupiter's Moon Europa
Scientists have produced a new version of what is perhaps NASA's best view of Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa.
From ACM News
Researchers Advance 'quantum Teleportation'
The world at the quantum level, at the scale of particles too small for the eye to see, is very strange.
From ACM News
Sculptor Offers Another Clue in 24-Year-Old Mystery at C.i.a.
The artist who created the enigmatic Kryptos, a puzzle-in-a-sculpture that has driven code breakers to distraction since it was installed 24 years ago in a courtyard at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., has decided that it…