Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2018
From ACM News
NASA InSight Lander 'Hears' Martian Winds
NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport InSight lander, which touched down on Mars just 10 days ago, has provided the first ever "sounds" of Martian winds on the Red Planet.
From ACM News
DeepMind Achieves Holy Grail: An AI That Can Master Games Like Chess and Go Without Human Help
DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Alphabet, has created a system that can quickly master any game in the class that includes chess, Go, and Shogi, and do so without human guidance.
From ACM TechNews
New Attack Could Make Website Security Captchas Obsolete
Researchers have demonstrated a deep learning algorithm that could render captcha security and authentication redundant.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Demonstrate New Building Block in Quantum Computing
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a new level of control over photons encoded with quantum data.
From ACM TechNews
Walmart Leads the Way...in Floor Scrubbing Robots?
By the end of next month, Walmart will deploy floor-scrubbing robots in its stores.
From ACM TechNews
Teachers Say There's a Disconnect in Computer Science Education
Eighty-eight percent of surveyed K-12 teachers said computer science is critical for students' career success, while two in 10 said their students are not taught computer science.
From ACM TechNews
2018 ACM Fellows Honored for Pivotal Achievements that Underpin the Digital Age
ACM has named 56 members as 2018 ACM Fellows for achievements underpinning the technologies that define the digital age.
From ACM News
NASA's Next Mars Rover Will Use AI to Be a Better Science Partner
NASA can't yet put a scientist on Mars. But in its next rover mission to the Red Planet, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is hoping to use artificial intelligence to at least put the equivalent of a talented research assistant…
From ACM News
NASA Reveals Aliens Could Have Already Visited Earth
A NASA scientist suggested that aliens may have already visited earth but evaded detection due to their appearances being vastly different from human expectations.
From ACM Careers
An Inside Look at Apple's Biggest Step Yet in Health Care
Captain America and Black Panther were about to defend Earth from the villain Thanos when Kevin Foley first noticed something was wrong.
From ACM TechNews
The Designer Changing the Way Aircraft Are Built
Generative design is being employed to design seatbelt brackets in cars, motorbike chassis, cabin partitions in passenger aircraft, and other everyday industrial components.
From ACM TechNews
ORU's New Supercomputer Has the Brains to Tackle Weather Forecasting, Physics, and More
Oral Roberts University has unveiled an $850,000 supercomputer, with the goal of bolstering the institution's science, technology, engineering, and math program.
From ACM TechNews
UCR Researchers Uncover New Hacking Methods to Steal Personal Information
University of California, Riverside researchers in October demonstrated side-channel graphics processing unit attacks using direct and cross-computational stacks.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Reality Check: They Create Wealth--and Jobs
A new Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report says U.S. adoption of automation is lagging behind that of other countries.
From ACM News
Overcoming AI Bias with AI Fairness
New tools aim to remove unconscious and other types of bias from algorithms.
From ACM News
More Than an Auto-Pilot, AI Charts Its Course in Aviation
Ask anyone what they think of when the words "artificial intelligence" and aviation are combined, and it's likely the first things they'll mention are drones.
From ACM News
The 'Camera That Saved Hubble' Turns 25
Twenty-five years ago this week, NASA held its collective breath as seven astronauts on space shuttle Endeavour caught up with the Hubble Space Telescope 353 miles (568 kilometers) above Earth. Their mission: to fix a devastating…
From ACM TechNews
OK, Computer: How Much Is My House Worth?
Computer algorithm-based valuations could replace appraisers.
From ACM TechNews
Smartphone Camera Replicates Physical Objects for Virtual Reality
A new technique allows physical objects to be replicated for the augmented and virtual reality space using any digital camera with a flash.
From ACM TechNews
Inside Sellafield's Death Zone With the Nuclear Clean-Up Robots
The defunct Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Cumbria in the U.K. is a toxic environment that must be cleaned up by robots.
From ACM TechNews
White House Outlines Five-Year STEM Push
The Trump administration has announced a five-year strategic plan for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.
From ACM TechNews
Facial Gestures Can Move This AI-Motorized Wheelchair
A new prototype kit exploits artificial intelligence to enable a disabled person to drive a motorized wheelchair using facial expressions.
From ACM TechNews
Searching an Artificial Bee Colony for Real-World Results
Researchers in Japan have proposed a scale-free mechanism to guide an artificial bee colony algorithm's exploration process.
From ACM News
These Dusty Young Stars Are Changing the Rules of Planet-Building
Some 100,000 years ago, when Neanderthals still occupied the caves of southern Europe, a star was born.
From ACM News
Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for California
The Little Hoover Commission is calling for immediate action by California's governor and legislature on artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
The Friendship That Made Google Huge
From ACM News
NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Arrives at Asteroid Bennu
NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft completed its 1.2 billion-mile (2 billion-kilometer) journey to arrive at the asteroid Bennu Monday. The spacecraft…
From ACM News
All the Light There Is to See? 4 x 10⁸⁴ Photons
In one of those exercises that you think should be impossible or perhaps a punishment for some infraction, a team of astronomers has now measured the total amount of light that has ever been produced by all the stars in our universe…
From ACM News
NSF, NASA Announce Commitments to Support White House Strategic Plan on STEM Education
The National Science Foundation is expanding its diversity program to other federal agencies, and creating new graduate internship opportunities.
From ACM TechNews
AI a Focus as U.S. Preps Export Controls
The U.S. Commerce Department has called for input by Dec. 19 on which of 14 emerging technologies should face export controls.