Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2012
From ACM TechNews
Cyber Defense Effort Is Mixed, Study Finds
A Pentagon pilot program that shields the computer networks of defense contractors using classified U.S. National Security Agencydata succeeded in some respects and came up short in others, according to a Carnegie Mellon University…
From ACM TechNews
Kaist's Smart E-Book System More Convenient Than Paper-Based Books
Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed the Smart E-book System, technology designed to make reading easier on smartphones and tablet computers.
From ACM News
Patent Grants Hit All-Time High in 2011; Ibm Leads the Way
Patents were a hot-button issue in 2011, so there's no wonder so many companies were filling their portfolios with new intellectual property all year.
From ACM News
New Storage Device Is Very Small, at 12 Atoms
Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.
From ACM News
Marines Want iPads to Control Robo-Copter Brains
It's been less than a month since the Marines flew their first robotic supply helicopter on its debut combat mission in Afghanistan.
From ACM Careers
What Hacker Apprenticeships Tell S About the Future of Education
Three very similar compressed software development training programs have emerged in the past few months: Code Academy (not to be confused with the startup Codecademy) in Chicago, Dev Bootcamp in the Bay Area, and Hacker School…
From ACM News
How Research Goes Viral
Scores of interesting new findings from the biosciences may speed around the globe at the click of a mouse, but one thing particularly encourages other researchers to follow up on them: The chance to use the lab materials…
From ACM News
Critics See 'disaster' in Expansion of Domain Names
Vast new tracts of the Internet are up for sale as of Thursday.
From ACM TechNews
Apple Patents Power Charger Password Recovery
Apple recently received a new patent that proposes embedding password recovery secrets, or the encrypted passwords themselves, in a microchip that is placed inside a power adapter and then paired with a specific device.
From ACM TechNews
How Siri Makes Computers (and Coders) More Human
Siri, a program in the latest Apple iPhone that can carry out a wide spectrum of vocal commands without requiring training or special syntax from the user, stands out from similar applications by being imbued with the semblance…
From ACM TechNews
Should Computers Have Their Own Web Sites?
Organizations could use a new top-level domain, .data, to share data in a standard form, writes Stephen Wolfram, creator of the computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, in a blog post.
From ACM TechNews
World's Largest Quantum Computation Uses 84 Qubits
D-Wave Systems' Zhengbing Bian and colleagues announced that they have carried out a calculation involving 84 qubits. The computation involved two-color Ramsey numbers, mathematical entities that are intimately connected with…
From ACM News
The Search For the Right Candidate Just Got More Personal
The 2012 presidential campaign is about to get a lot more personal, at least if Google has any say in it.
From ACM News
Google Adds Posts From Its Social Network to Search Results
Google's popularity was built on its ability to help people find just the right Web pages. Then came the social Web, led by Facebook, where people go to see vast amounts of material that has largely been off-limits to Google—conversations…
From ACM News
Almost 1 In 3 U.s. Warplanes Is a Robot
Remember when the military actually put human beings in the cockpits of its planes?
From ACM News
Galaxy Hosts 100 Billion Planets, in New Estimate
Astronomers said Wednesday that each of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way probably has at least one companion planet, adding credence to the notion that planets are as common in the cosmos as grains of sand on the beach…
From ACM TechNews
NASA: Prize Money a Bargain for Better Software
Researchers at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Harvard Business School in 2010 launched the NASA Tournament Lab, an online platform for contests between independent programmers who compete to create…
From ACM TechNews
Are Roll-Up Screens Ready For Prime Time?
Researchers at Queen's University's Human Media Lab have developed the Paper Phone, a flexible display that shows text, graphics, and media content.
From ACM TechNews
It Security Pros Go Full Year With No Joblessness
The Information Security Media Group reports that an analysis of new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that there was no joblessness for information security analysts last year.
From ACM News
Intel Unveils New Chips For Smartphones and Tablets
Intel's chips have dominated the PC era, but when it comes to post-PC devices, such as smartphones and tablets, the company is less than an also-ran.
From ACM News
The $1,000 Human Genome?
The race to the $1,000 genome heated up today as Life Technologies, based in Carlsbad, Calif., announced it will debut a new sequencing machine this year that will eventually be capable of decoding entire human genomes in…
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Reinvents Wi-Fi For White Spaces
Microsoft researchers have developed WiFi-NC, a type of Wi-Fi network that runs at peak performance even when interference is present.
From ACM TechNews
nc Charlotte Professor's Signcryption Technology Tightens Cyber Security
University of North Carolina-Charlotte professor Yuliang Zheng has developed signcryption, data security technology that was recently recognized as an international standard by the International Organization of Standardization…
From ACM TechNews
Winter Driving Trouble? There's an App for That
North Dakota State University researchers have developed Winter Survival Kit, a free iPhone and Android application that helps motorists prepare for winter driving and provides a beacon when accidents occur.
From ACM News
Time Cloaking: How Scientists Opened a Hidden Gap in Time
Scientists say they have achieved "temporal cloaking"—manipulating light in a way that makes it appear as if 50 trillionths of a second never happened.
From ACM News
Intel's Newest Project: Helping Stephen Hawking Speak
Intel is looking for ways to help famed British physicist Stephen Hawking reverse the slowing of his speech, according to a senior executive with the American chipmaker.
From ACM News
Russian Space Chief Claims Space Failures May Be Sabotage
Some recent failures of Russian satellites may have been the result of sabotage by foreign forces, Russia's space chief said in comments apparently aimed at the United States.
From ACM News
One-Atom-Tall Wires Could Extend Life of Moore's Law
There may be a bit more room at the bottom, after all.
From ACM News
Facial Recognition: Beating Surveillance Cameras
Big Brother is watching you, though probably not in the ways most of us would imagine.
From ACM News
What Fueled Twitter's Success?
Innovators anxious to see their software products go viral might want to take a close look at how Twitter—which is said to have more than 300 million users worldwide—accomplished that feat.