Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2015
From ACM News
Sap, Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation Co-Founder Tschira Dies
Klaus Tschira, co-founder of German software giant SAP and creator of the foundation that helped to launch the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, died today.
From ACM News
Stacking Chips Gains Momentum at Stanford
A new model of a monolithic 3D stack could boost logic, memory bandwidth.
From ACM News
.s. Supreme Court: Gps Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure
If the government puts a GPS tracker on you, your car, or any of your personal effects, it counts as a search—and is therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment.
From ACM News
A Gold Mine of Galaxy Nuggets
One telescope finds the treasure chest, and the other narrows in on the gold coins.
From ACM News
The Healing Power of Your Own Medical Records
Steven Keating's doctors and medical experts view him as a citizen of the future.
From ACM TechNews
Dump ser Names, Says Dartmouth Research
A joint academic and industry research team has found that two-factor authentication schemes depending on user names and passwords are inherently flawed.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook AI Software Learns and Answers Questions
New artificial intelligence software developed by Facebook can process text and then answer questions about it.
From ACM TechNews
Avoiding the Crush
New crowd-modeling research describes a mathematical law that helps characterize a person's ability to move through crowds without running into another person.
From ACM News
Neuron Encyclopaedia Fires p to Reveal Brain Secrets
An ambitious plan is afoot to build the world's largest public catalogue of neuronal structures.
From ACM News
Festo nleashes New Robotic Swarm of Ants and Butterflies
The family of animal robots created by German robotics company Festo is growing. As part of its Bionic Learning Network, the company has introduced two new robots: a swarm of ants that can operate cooperatively, and a butterfly…
From ACM Opinion
Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust
Shortly before the dreadful crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, I happened to be reading part of "The Second Machine Age," a book by two academics at M.I.T., Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, about the coming automation of many…
From ACM Careers
Hi-Tech and Big Data Offer Hope to Battered .s. Oil Industry
The tech geeks are coming to the oil industry's rescue.
From ACM News
2,636 Icelandic Genomes Pinpoint Risk For Alzheimer's, Other Diseases
An Icelandic genetics firm has sequenced the genomes of 2,636 of its countrymen and women, finding genetic markers for a variety of diseases, as well as a new timeline for the paternal ancestor of all humans.
From ACM TechNews
The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM
Gender bias appears to be a key contributor to the scarcity of U.S. women in science, technology, engineering, and math, according to new studies.
From ACM TechNews
Does Your Password Pass Muster?
New research raises concerns about the effectiveness of password strength meters, the bars that turn red, yellow, or green to rate the strength of new passwords.
From ACM TechNews
Hoax-Detecting Software Spots Fake Papers
Software programs that generate nonsense computer science papers have become sources of embarrassment for major academic publishers.
From ACM TechNews
So, Arkansas Is Leading the Learn to Code Movement
Arkansas took the lead in pushing computer science in schools last month when it passed a law requiring all public and charter schools to offer computer science courses.
From ACM TechNews
Carnegie Mellon's Snake Robots Learn to Turn By Following the Lead of Real Sidewinders
Researchers analyzed the motions of sidewinder rattlesnakes and tested their observations on snake robots.
From ACM TechNews
For Hardware Makers, Sharing Their Secrets Is Now Part of the Business Plan
Makers of computer, automotive, and other high-tech hardware components increasingly are adopting an open source model.
From ACM News
Rover Amnesia Event Follows Latest Memory Reformatting
The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity learned Thursday that the long-lived rover experienced a brief amnesia event related to its flash memory, the first since a reformatting of that nonvolatile type of…
From ACM TechNews
Goodbye Gps? DARPA Prepares New Tracking Technology
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing more advanced position- and navigation-tracking technology.
From ACM News
Researchers Demonstrate Quantum Entanglement, Prove Einstein Wrong
For the first time, quantum entanglement of a single particle has been observed by researchers—an event that Albert Einstein believed to be impossible under the contemporary quantum mechanics definition of physical reality, calling…
From ACM Opinion
Learning to See Data
For the past year or so genetic scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have been collaborating with a specialist from another universe: Daniel Kohn, a Brooklyn-based painter and conceptual artist.
From ACM News
Nvidia's Powerful New Computer Helps Teach Cars to Drive
As cars get smarter and creep ever-closer to driving themselves, the software that makes infotainment systems and adaptive cruise control work is becoming as important as hardware like engines.
From ACM News
Astronomers pgrade Their Cosmic Light Bulbs
The brilliant explosions of dead stars have been used for years to illuminate the far-flung reaches of our cosmos.
From ACM TechNews
The Smartest Hackers in the Room (hint: They're Not the Humans)
Teams from around the world will engage in a dress rehearsal next month for the U.S. Pentagon's Cyber Grand Challenge, a competition to develop automated hacker-fighting software.
From ACM TechNews
Expert: Artificial Intelligence Systems More Apt to Fail Than to Destroy
Oregon State University professor and Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence president Thomas Dietterich says he is more concerned about potential ways artificial intelligence might fail or be abused than…
From ACM TechNews
Stealing Data From Computers sing Heat
Researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University say they have developed a method of retrieving data from or sending simple commands to an air-gapped computer using heat emissions and a computer's built-in thermal sensors.
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputers Give niversities a Competitive Edge, Researchers Find
Clemson University researchers found universities with locally available supercomputers are more efficient in producing research in critical fields than universities that do not have supercomputers.
From ACM TechNews
Silicon Valley Gender Gap Is Widening
A report from the American Association of University Women warns that the gender gap in the technology sector is widening.