Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2018
From ACM News
'Weaponized Ad Technology': Facebook's Moneymaker Gets a Critical Eye
Facebook has made a mint by enabling advertisers to identify and reach the very people most likely to react to their messages.
From ACM News
This Military Tech Could Finally Help Self-Driving Cars Master Snow
The research conducted at the country's National Laboratories is usually highly classified and specifically aimed at solving national security problems. But sometimes you get a swords-into-ploughshares moment.
From ACM TechNews
Mobile App Extends Smartphone Battery 10-25%
Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed a mobile app that purportedly reduces the energy consumption of Android smartphones.
From ACM TechNews
Google Just Gave Control Over Data Center Cooling to an AI
Google says the cooling systems of several of its data centers are now governed by an artificial intelligence algorithm.
From ACM TechNews
Low Bandwidth? Use More Colors at Once
A team of researchers has simplified the manufacturing process enabling the utilization of multiple colors simultaneously on an electronic chip instead of one color at a time.
From ACM News
Out-doctoring the Doctors
Artificial software can outperform human doctors at reading medical imaging.
From ACM Careers
As Cars Collect More Data, Companies Try to Move It All Faster
Cars need to get faster—not on the road, but on the inside.
From ACM TechNews
AI Has a Racial Bias Problem. Google Is Funding Summer Camps to Try to Change That
The Oakland, CA-based nonprofit AI4All will use a $1-million grant from Google.org to broaden its outreach to young underrepresented minorities and women.
From ACM TechNews
Crowdsourcing Algorithms to Predict Epileptic Seizures
More than 10,000 crowdsourced algorithms can enable clinically relevant epileptic seizure prediction across a broad spectrum of patients.
From ACM TechNews
Robots Have Power to Significantly Influence Children's Opinions
Researchers have demonstrated that young children are much more susceptible than adults to having their opinions and decisions influenced by robots.
From ACM TechNews
A Twist in Graphene Could Make for Tunable Electronic Devices
Researchers have demonstrated proof of principle for a method of controlling graphene's rotation and the dynamic variance of its electrical, optical, and mechanical properties.
From ACM TechNews
LiveTag Is Out to Make Dumb Objects Smart
University of California, San Diego researchers are developing a Wi-Fi-based system using inexpensive tags that can be stuck to everyday non-electronic objects.
From ACM TechNews
Transistor Technology May Improve Speed, Battery Life for Computers, Mobile Phones, Other Electronics
Purdue University researchers have developed a technology design for field effect transistors that incorporates lasers.
From ACM News
How to Make a Robot Use Theory of Mind
Imagine standing in an elevator as the doors begin to close and suddenly seeing a couple at the end of the corridor running toward you.
From ACM News
Six Things About Opportunity's Recovery Efforts
NASA's Opportunity rover has been silent since June 10, when a planet-encircling dust storm cut off solar power for the nearly-15-year-old rover.
From ACM Careers
The 'Neuropolitics' Consultants Who Hack Voters' Brains
Maria Pocovi slides her laptop over to me with the webcam switched on.
From ACM TechNews
Rethinking Social Networks
The WBPA (Weighted Betweenness Preferential Attachment) model developed at Carnegie Mellon University shows how social networks change and develop over time.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Study Disparities in STEM Career Aspirations for Underrepresented Students
Researchers measured the sociodemographic disparities and changes in career aspirations in STEM fields among U.S. high school students.
From ACM TechNews
Common Wi-Fi Can Detect Weapons, Bombs, and Chemicals in Bags
Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers found common Wi-Fi technology can easily identify weapons, bombs, and explosive chemicals in bags at public venues.
From ACM TechNews
Oracle Open-Sources Graphpipe to Make It Easier to Deploy Machine Learning Models
Oracle has released an open-source tool called Graphpipe to facilitate the deployment of machine learning models.
From ACM TechNews
Replacing Your Boss With a Cruel Robot Could Make You Concentrate More
A mean robot could motivate human employees to improve their cognitive performance, compared to supervision by a friendly robot or no robot supervision, researchers say.
From ACM News
How Unpaywall Is Transforming Open Science
After being kicked out of a hotel conference room where they had participated in a three-day open-science workshop and hackathon, a group of computer scientists simply moved to an adjacent hallway.
From ACM News
Settling Arguments About Hydrogen With 168 Giant Lasers
With gentle pulses from gigantic lasers, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California transformed hydrogen into droplets of shiny liquid metal.
From ACM News
Automating Negotiation
Computers are starting to outperform the average human at negotiation.
From ACM TechNews
Nvidia Unveils Real-Time Ray Tracing Turing Graphics Architecture
Nvidia says it has "reinvented computer graphics" with its Turing graphics-processing unit architecture, which will serve as the platform for a new GPU family that focuses on real-time ray tracing.
From ACM TechNews
Universal Method to Sort Complex Information Found
A multi-institution team of computer scientists has clarified the first general-purpose method of solving nearest neighbor question for complex data.
From ACM News
To Get Ready for Robot Driving, Some Want to Reprogram Pedestrians
You're crossing the street wrong.
From ACM News
LHC Physicists Embrace Brute-Force Approach to Particle Hunt
A once-controversial approach to particle physics has entered the mainstream at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
From ACM News
Wi-Fi Could Be Used to Detect Weapons and Bombs
Wireless signals can penetrate bags to measure the dimensions of metal objects or estimate the volume of liquids, researchers claim.
From ACM TechNews
How a Computer Learns to Dribble: Practice, Practice, Practice
Researchers have developed a physics-based, real-time method for controlling animated characters that can learn basketball dribbling skills from experience.