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The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.

October 2017


From ACM TechNews

'low Cost Android' to Study the Brain

'low Cost Android' to Study the Brain

Researchers working on the European Union-funded MoCoTi project say they have designed the prototype of an android that learns how to actuate its own limbs.


From ACM TechNews

For $1,000, Anyone Can Purchase Online Ads to Track Your Location and App ­se

For $1,000, Anyone Can Purchase Online Ads to Track Your Location and App ­se

Researchers suggest it could cost only about $1,000 for someone to buy and target online ads in order to monitor the location of others, as well as their application use.


From ACM TechNews

Alphago Zero Shows Machines Can Become Superhuman Without Any Help

Alphago Zero Shows Machines Can Become Superhuman Without Any Help

DeepMind's upgrade to the AlphaGo algorithm, AlphaGo Zero, beat its predecessor in a 100-game Go match, acquiring skills by playing millions of games against itself.


From ACM TechNews

­sing Artificial Intelligence to Improve Early Breast Cancer Detection

­sing Artificial Intelligence to Improve Early Breast Cancer Detection

Researchers are working to apply artificial intelligence to improving the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer.


From ACM TechNews

What Cmu's Snake Robot Team Learned While Searching For Mexican Earthquake Survivors

What Cmu's Snake Robot Team Learned While Searching For Mexican Earthquake Survivors

Researchers used their snake robots in search-and-rescue missions in Mexico City shortly after a major earthquake struck the region in September.


From ACM News

The Shape of Work to Come 

The Shape of Work to Come 

Last year, entrepreneur Sebastian Thrun set out to augment his sales force with artificial intelligence.


From ACM TechNews

AI Algorithms Are Starting to Teach AI Algorithms

AI Algorithms Are Starting to Teach AI Algorithms

Artificial intelligence researchers and companies are applying machine learning to automate the more complicated aspects of AI algorithm development.


From ACM TechNews

­.s. Mass Killings Occurring at 'uniform' Rate

­.s. Mass Killings Occurring at 'uniform' Rate

Mass murders in the U.S. occur at a stable, once-every-two-weeks rate, according to a recent University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study.


From ACM TechNews

New Method to Detect Spin Current in Quantum Materials ­nlocks Potential For Alternative Electronics

New Method to Detect Spin Current in Quantum Materials ­nlocks Potential For Alternative Electronics

Researchers have developed a new method that precisely measures the mysterious behavior and magnetic properties of electrons flowing across the surface of quantum materials.


From ACM TechNews

Wpi Computer Scientists ­se Mixed Reality to Visualize Complex Biological Networks

Wpi Computer Scientists ­se Mixed Reality to Visualize Complex Biological Networks

Researchers are developing new mixed-reality methods for visualizing complex biological networks so they can find the most salient information and linkages.


From ACM News

Paving the Way For Women, Minorities Into STEM

Paving the Way For Women, Minorities Into STEM

Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe on her career-long advocacy for greater diversity in technology education.


From ACM News

Mapping the Great Barrier Reef with Cameras, Drones and Nasa Tech

Mapping the Great Barrier Reef with Cameras, Drones and Nasa Tech

Richard Vevers, a British underwater photographer, was horrified when he returned in 2015 to a colourful reef in American Samoa he had shot a year earlier. It had turned pure white.


From ACM News

It Takes Just $1,000 to Track Someone's Location with Mobile Ads

It Takes Just $1,000 to Track Someone's Location with Mobile Ads

When you consider the nagging privacy risks of online advertising, you may find comfort in the thought of a vast, abstract company like Pepsi or Nike viewing you as just one data point among millions.


From ACM News

Fresh Findings From Cassini

Fresh Findings From Cassini

NASA's Cassini spacecraft ended its journey on Sept. 15 with an intentional plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn, but analysis continues on the mountain of data the spacecraft sent during its long life.


From ACM TechNews

There's a Huge Opportunity in Robotics For Early-Career Computer Scientists and Serious Software Engineers

There's a Huge Opportunity in Robotics For Early-Career Computer Scientists and Serious Software Engineers

University of Washington professor Maya Cakmak discusses the role of programming by demonstration in her work on human-machine interaction.


From ACM TechNews

Liquid Metal Brings Soft Robotics a Step Closer

Liquid Metal Brings Soft Robotics a Step Closer

Researchers in the U.K. say they have applied electrical charges to manipulate liquid metal into two-dimensional shapes such as letters and a heart.


From ACM TechNews

Serious Flaw in Wpa2 Protocol Lets Attackers Intercept Passwords and Much More

Serious Flaw in Wpa2 Protocol Lets Attackers Intercept Passwords and Much More

Researchers have discovered a severe flaw in the WPA2 protocol that enables hackers within range of a vulnerable device or access point to intercept passwords and other sensitive data.


From ACM TechNews

Researchers Create Digital Objects From Incomplete 3D Data

Researchers Create Digital Objects From Incomplete 3D Data

Researchers in Germany say they have developed a computational method for reconstructing a digital object from incomplete images.


From ACM TechNews

Study Finds Auto-Fix Tool Gets More Programmers to ­pgrade Code

Study Finds Auto-Fix Tool Gets More Programmers to ­pgrade Code

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that auto-fix tools are effective ways to get programmers to make relevant upgrades.


From ACM TechNews

Now There's an Iq Test For Siri and Friends

Now There's an Iq Test For Siri and Friends

Researchers used an intelligence test they developed to rank intelligent assistants such as Google Assistant and Siri on the same scale used for humans.


From ACM Careers

China's Xi Calls For More Technology Development

China's Xi Calls For More Technology Development

President Xi Jinping called Wednesday for the ruling Communist Party to lead development of Chinese technology industries, an area fraught with trade tensions and complaints that Beijing encourages theft of foreign know-how.


From ACM Careers

Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords

Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords

When David Stinson finished high school, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1977, the first thing he did was get a job building houses.


From ACM News

Justices to Decide on Forcing Technology Firms to Provide Data Held Abroad

Justices to Decide on Forcing Technology Firms to Provide Data Held Abroad

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether federal prosecutors can force technology companies to turn over data stored outside the United States. 


From ACM TechNews

Esnet's Science Dmz Design Could Help Transfer, Protect Medical Research Data

Esnet's Science Dmz Design Could Help Transfer, Protect Medical Research Data

Researchers say the Energy Sciences Network's Science DMZ architecture for rapidly and securely transferring large datasets could be adapted to fulfill the needs of the medical research community.


From ACM TechNews

Scientists Can Read a Bird's Brain and Predict Its Next Song

Scientists Can Read a Bird's Brain and Predict Its Next Song

Researchers have built a brain-to-tweet interface that predicts the song a finch is going to sing a fraction of a second before it does so.


From ACM TechNews

Scientists ­se Machine Learning to Translate 'hidden' Information That Reveals Chemistry in Action

Scientists ­se Machine Learning to Translate 'hidden' Information That Reveals Chemistry in Action

Researchers say they have taught computers to decipher previously inaccessible information from x-ray data and apply it to decoding three-dimensional nanoscale structures.


From ACM News

The State of Wireless Charging

The State of Wireless Charging

Apple's recent wireless charging announcements highlight how far the tech has come—and how far it needs to go.


From ACM News

Nasa Missions Catch First Light from a Gravitational-Wave Event

Nasa Missions Catch First Light from a Gravitational-Wave Event

For the first time, NASA scientists have detected light tied to a gravitational-wave event, thanks to two merging neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993, located about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra…


From ACM News

Astronomers Are Finally Mapping the 'dark Side' of the Milky Way

Astronomers Are Finally Mapping the 'dark Side' of the Milky Way

Think of the Milky Way—or search for pictures of it online—and you'll see images of a standard spiral galaxy viewed face-on, a sprawling pinwheel of starlight and dust containing hundreds of billions of stars. These images, however…


From ACM TechNews

Internet Researchers Harnessed the Power of Algorithm to Find Hate Speech

Internet Researchers Harnessed the Power of Algorithm to Find Hate Speech

Researchers have trained an algorithm to identify hate speech by comparing what differentiates text that includes hate speech from text that does not contain hate speech.