Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2022
From ACM News
How Smart Is AI After All These Years?
Virtual assistants seem to be great at retrieving facts, and absolutely terrible at giving advice as they have no common sense.
From ACM TechNews
Chemical Computer Can Be Programmed to Solve Hard Problems
Researchers have programmed a chemical computer to solve specific problems, following earlier research on encoding data into the system.
From ACM TechNews
Self-Driving Microscopes Discover Shortcuts to New Materials
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are training microscopes to find new materials faster using an intuitive algorithm.
From ACM TechNews
What It's Like to Have a Robot Paint Your Nails for $10
Retail giant Target has deployed fingernail-painting robots manufactured by the Clockwork company at three stores in California and Minnesota.
From ACM TechNews
Unpacking Black-Box Models
A mathematical framework aims to quantify and evaluate the understandability of a machine learning model's explanations for its predictions.
From ACM TechNews
Neon Ice Shows Promise as Qubit Platform
Researchers created a new quantum bit (qubit) platform using frozen neon gas.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Highlight More Equitable Way to Analyze DNA Data from Understudied Groups
Brown University scientists led a multi-institutional team in employing new DNA analysis methods to better understand genetic conditions' impact across different populations.
From ACM News
ACM Recognizes Far-Reaching Technical Achievements with Special Awards
Award recipients made contributions to areas including secure systems, software, privacy, and artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
Crowdfunding a War: How Online Appeals Are Bringing Weapons to Ukraine
The online campaign has tapped into widespread Western sympathy and produced meaningful donations for the country's war effort.
From ACM News
Russia Was Behind Cyberattack in Run-Up to Ukraine War, Investigation Finds
The attack focused on a system run by Viasat, a California company that provides high-speed satellite communication services — and was used heavily by the Ukrainian government.
From ACM News
Think Like a Computer
A pilot program designed in part by educators at South Dakota's Sanford Underground Research Facility is introducing computational thinking into elementary school curricula.
From ACM TechNews
Machine Learning Program for Games Inspires Development of Groundbreaking Scientific Tool
A reinforcement learning algorithm aims to speed up materials discovery by modeling material properties at the atomic and molecular scale.
From ACM TechNews
Lego to Expand Online Ambitions by Tripling Total of Software Engineers
From ACM TechNews
Proposed Search Strategies Improve Computational Cost of Bicycle-Sharing Problem
Researchers at Japan's Tokyo University of Science proposed two methods for reducing the computational cost of bicycle sharing systems without impacting performance.
From ACM News
Costa Rica's New President Declares State of Emergency After Conti Ransomware Attack
The attack crippled the country's customs and taxes platforms alongside several other government agencies, even bringing down one Costa Rican town's energy supplier.
From ACM News
The Drones of War
Drone makers are donating, or selling at cost, unmanned aerial drones to Ukraine.
From ACM News
Clearview AI Settles Suit, Agrees to Limit Sales of Facial Recognition Database
The facial recognition software maker is largely prohibited from selling its database of photos to private companies.
From ACM News
V.R. 'Reminiscence Therapy' Lets Seniors Relive the Past
Some care facilities are giving older adults a way to visit their pasts to boost their well-being.
From ACM News
Predicting Others' Behavior on the Road With Artificial Intelligence
A new machine learning system may someday help driverless cars predict the next moves of nearby drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists in real-time.
From ACM TechNews
Pandemic Exposed Mental Health Divide Among College Students, Study Finds
Dartmouth College researchers found that smartphone technology and artificial intelligence could be employed as an "early detection system" for mental health issues.
From ACM TechNews
Apple, Google, Microsoft Want to Kill the Password with 'Passkey' Standard
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are launching a "joint effort" to "expand support for a common password-less sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium."
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Use AI to Detect Weak Heart Pump via Patients' Apple Watch ECGs
A new artificial intelligence algorithm can identify patients with weak heart pumps based on single-lead ECG tracings from an Apple Watch.
From ACM TechNews
Automatic Audio Loggers Map the Sound of Norway
Audio recorders have reliably identified birds in Norwegian forests by their songs.
From ACM TechNews
Digital Twins Aid Giving Individual Patients the Right Treatment at the Right Time
An international team of researchers has modeled digital twins of diseases, in order to improve diagnosis and treatment.
From ACM TechNews
Decade-Old Bugs Discovered in Avast, AVG Antivirus Software
Researchers at cybersecurity software company SentinelOne reported two high-severity bugs in Avast and AVG antivirus products that have gone undetected for a decade.
From ACM News
Two Papers Selected to Receive 2022 Dijkstra Prizes
Together, the papers revolutionized both the theory and practice of nonblocking algorithms.
From ACM News
David Walden, Computer Scientist at Dawn of Internet, Dies at 79
In 1969, he was part of a team of young engineers who built the first machine to switch data among computers using the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet.
From ACM News
Meta Has Built a Massive New Language AI—and It's Giving It Away for Free
Facebook's parent company is inviting researchers to pore over and pick apart the flaws in its version of GPT-3.
From ACM News
How Millions of Russians are Tearing Holes in the Digital Iron Curtain
A tremendous surge in VPN downloads represents a challenge to Putin and his version of the Ukraine war.
From ACM News
Women in Computer Science Strives for Community, Professional Growth
Co-faculty advisor Mary Lauren Benton said she thinks more female role models are needed in the field to encourage women to believe computer science is a viable choice for them.