Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2011
From ACM News
The End of Credit Cards Is Coming
Credit cards may soon be as outdated as vinyl records. (Remember them?) And this is the year that the slow, steady march to oblivion begins.
From ACM News
Social Media and Law Enforcement: Who Gets What Data and When?
This month, we were reminded how important it is that social media companies do what they can to protect the sensitive data they hold from the prying eyes of the government. As many news outlets have reported, the U.S. Department…
From ACM Opinion
Apple: Disrupt or Perish
While the secret for Apple's success seems patently obvious to most&meash;as obvious as the form and function of the iPhone 4—a more subtle reason is the company's counter-intuitive knack for disrupting its own product lines…
From ACM News
Where High Speed Internet Meets Smart Grid
Advanced internet technologies, energy management and the smart grid are coming together in an unlikely location: a mid-sized city in the South.
From ACM News
Obama Honors Outstanding Science, Math, Engineering Mentors
President Obama has named 11 individuals and 4 organizations as 2011 recipients of the prestigious Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
From ACM TechNews
Securing the Cloud
University of Texas at Austin researchers are working on the NEBULA project, a U.S. National Science Foundation-funded study to develop a more cloud-compatible Internet architecture by enhancing data transfer security.
From ACM TechNews
Giving Hackers a Printed Invitation
At the Shmoocon conference, researchers demonstrated how hackers are using printers to infiltrate corporate computer networks. Printers are "totally integrated in the business environment," which makes them a prime target, says…
From ACM News
Nasa Inventions Headed to Your Home
With only two shuttle flights left and the future of manned spaceflight in question, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is having a bit of an identity crisis.
From ACM News
For Robust Robots, Let Them Be Babies First
A University of Vermont scientist has created robots that change their body forms while learning how to walk, like tadpoles becoming frogs. These evolving robots learned to walk more rapidly than robots with fixed bodies and…
From ACM TechNews
Survey Reveals Potential Innovation Gap in the U.s.
Young women in the U.S. represent an untapped group of potential inventors, according to the 2011 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index. The latest index shows that women have many characteristics necessary to become inventors.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Turn Usb Cable Into Attack Tool
George Mason University researchers were scheduled to demonstrate a computer device attack using a USB cable at the Black Hat DC conference.
From ACM News
Nist Advances Single Photon Management For Quantum Computers
The quantum computers of tomorrow might use photons to move around the data they need to make calculations, but photons are tricky to work with. Two new papers point to ways to build reliable sources of single photons for use…
From ACM TechNews
'outrageous Ideas' at Cidr: Seeking to Stimulate Innovative Research Directions
The Computing Community Consortium is sponsoring "wacky idea" sessions aimed at identifying major new research opportunities. The program hopes to move beyond the conventional scientific reviewing process by making new papers…
From ACM News
In Pursuit of Qubits, Uniting Subatomic Particles By the Billions
In a step toward a generation of ultrafast computers, physicists have used bursts of radio waves to briefly create 10 billion quantum-entangled pairs of subatomic particles in silicon.
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Ghost Knifefish Is Born
Northwestern University researchers have developed GhostBot, a robotic fish that can instantly change directions using a ribbon-like fin, potentially revolutionizing the use of underwater robots for rescue missions and scientific…
From ACM TechNews
Administration Says It Will Give Industry and Academia Heads Up on Cyberattacks
Universities and businesses will be supplied with government intelligence about malicious Internet activities by the Obama administration so that they can defend their critical assets, says White House cybersecurity coordinator…
From ACM News
Iran Seeks to Boost Corps of Web Watchers
Iran's top police chief envisions a new beat for his forces: patrolling cyberspace.
From ACM TechNews
Ph.d. Candidate Optimizes New Data Storage Method
The University of Twente's Johan Engelen has optimized a new storage technique by adding another motor which drives a needle that reads bits. The new technique works similarly to a record player by moving a needle across a disk…
From ACM News
Bending and Stretching Classroom Lessons to Make Math Inspire
At the aptly named Tiny Thai restaurant here, a small table, about two and a half feet square, was jammed with a teapot, two plates of curry, a bowl of soup, two cups of tea, two glasses of water, a plate with two egg rolls…
From ACM News
Tv Broadcasters Resist FCC Proposal to Surrender More Airwaves
Many broadcasters are already worried about declining viewers, and now they say the government wants to take away something more: the airwaves themselves.
From ACM News
Ncsu Researchers Develop 'unified' Computer Memory Device
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a double floating-gate field effect transistor, a "unified" device which can perform both volatile and nonvolatile memory operations.
From ACM News
Ipad Animation Helps Assess Mobility in Elderly
Two professors at Wake Forest University have developed the Mobility Assessment Tool which uses an iPad and video animation to assess the physical mobility of older adults.
From ACM News
First Silicon Entanglement Will Aid Quantum Computing
The state of entanglement has been created in silicon for the first time. The feat could lead to quantum computers made like ordinary computer chips.
From ACM TechNews
Driving Blood-Flow Research at the Petascale
Brown University researchers are using Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Cray XT5 Kraken supercomputer to develop three-dimensional models of the human arterial tree to enhance predictive capabilities in certain diseases.
From ACM TechNews
Battle For Tech Geeks: Street vs. Silicon Valley
Wall Street firms are aggressively competing with Silicon Valley for computer programmers and software engineers by offering more laid-back office environments, higher wages, and more perks.
From ACM TechNews
Fruit Fly Nervous System Provides Insight to Computer Network Problem
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Tel Aviv universities are drawing on inspiration from a fruit fly's nervous system to develop models for distributed computer networks.
From ACM TechNews
Eu Project to Facilitate Collaboration in Data-Intensive Environments
The European Union's Dicode project is using high-performance computing technologies and data processing methods to facilitate decision making in data-intensive settings.
From ACM News
In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly
When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information about…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Helping Pentagon Build Mind-Controlled Prosthetics
A U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-funded multi-institution research project aims to develop mind-controlled prosthetic devices that will not break down for the user's entire life.
From ACM TechNews
Euclid Brings New Computing Capabilities to UW-Madison Researchers
With a peak performance of about 19 teraflops, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's new computing resource, the Euclid cluster, can run large-scale computing projects and move datasets and files at up to 10 Gbits/second of bandwidth…