Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2014
From ACM TechNews
Graphene Rival 'phosphorene' Is Born to Be a Transistor
Phosphorene, which is structurally similar to graphene, is a natural semiconductor that could be used in the next generation of computers.
From ACM TechNews
Bio-Inspired Robotic Device Could Aid Ankle-Foot Rehabilitation
Robotics researchers have developed an active orthotic device that can duplicate the natural motions in a person's ankle.
From ACM TechNews
Tacc Addresses Need For ser-Friendly, Inexpensive Science Gateways
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) has released version 2.0 of the Agave application programming interface, and Gateway DNA.
From ACM News
Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps
When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spies could be lurking in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and…
From ACM Careers
The Race to Buy the Human Brains Behind Deep Learning Machines
Any aspiring science fiction writer looking for a good protagonist could do worse than ripping off the Wikipedia page for Demis Hassabis.
From ACM News
How You Might Be Tracked For Ads in a Post-Cookie World
The Web cookie may be dying, but that doesn’t mean it is the end of consumers being tracked online.
From ACM News
How the Incite Project Allots Supercomputer Hours
Researchers vie for some of the billions of computer-hours available on two of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
From ACM Opinion
dacity Founder: Moocs Can Help the Economy, Even If They Can't Replace College
Sebastian Thrun was instrumental in building Google's self-driving car and Glass projects, and helped launch the company's Google X wing to spearhead "moonshot" projects like Project Loon.
From ACM News
China's Jade Rabbit Rover May Be Victim of Moon Dust
A plucky bunny on the moon may have just met an untimely end.
From ACM News
The Holodeck Begins to Take Shape
Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking are playing poker together.
From ACM News
10 years of Opportunity: Celebrating the Rover’s Role on Mars and Earth
On January 25, 2004, a strange object fell out of the sky on a distant planet—and when it hit the surface, it started to bounce.
From ACM TechNews
Tech Workers' Employment Rates Beat the National Average
Overall U.S. unemployment rates, while falling during 2013, were still double the rate for tech workers, according to the latest Tech Employment Snapshot from Dice.com.
From ACM TechNews
Are You a Super-Spreader of Disease?
New research could yield insight into monitoring a specific group of disease carriers to identify nascent outbreaks early and help prevent epidemics.
From ACM TechNews
D-Wave Aims to Beat Any Classical Computer
D-Wave says its D-Wave Two quantum computer's 509-qubit Vesuvius 6 (V6) processor can rival state-of-the-art semiconducting processors.
From ACM TechNews
Transponder Allows Cars to 'See' Pedestrians
Researchers have developed a method to enable driver-assistance systems in vehicles to identify pedestrians and cyclists even if they are obscured by large obstacles.
From ACM TechNews
Space Droids Battle to Save Earth From Comet
As part of the Zero Robotics tournament, students across Europe write algorithms to control autonomous satellites that hover around the International Space Station.
From ACM TechNews
Crowdsourcing a Living Map of World Health
A project at University of California, San Diego uses crowdsourcing to create maps of large-scale health problems and environmental damage.
From ACM News
At Super Bowl, Detecting Threats Is Like Finding a Needle in a Haystack
Imagine this scenario: In the course of an hour this week, four different people involved in Super Bowl setup require emergency medical assistance, all for nausea, and all in separate incidents.
From ACM Opinion
How a Database of the World's Knowledge Shapes Google's Future
For all its success, Google's famous Page Rank algorithm has never understood a word of the billions of Web pages it has directed people to over the years.
From ACM TechNews
Netflix-Like Algorithm Drives New College-Finding Tool
A computer science doctoral student has developed a recommendation algorithm to help guide high school students in their choice of colleges.
From ACM TechNews
Big Web Crash in China: Experts Suspect Great Firewall
A massive Internet failure in China on Tuesday prevented most of the country's 500 million Internet users from accessing websites for up to eight hours.
From ACM News
The Inside Story of Tor, the Best Internet Anonymity Tool the Government Ever Built
Last year, Edward Snowden turned over to the Guardian, a British newspaper, some 58,000 classified U.S. government documents.
From ACM News
One Day an Elevator Might Ask—are You Getting On?
Microsoft researchers have enabled elevators in a company building to detect the likelihood that a person walking by will want to board it.
From ACM Opinion
The White House Is Going to Study Big Data. Here Are 5 Things It Should Know
The White House announced via blog post on Thursday that it's forming working group focused on understanding the promises and pitfalls of big data (with a heavy emphasis on privacy, apparently) and how they might affect government…
From ACM TechNews
Ford, Stanford, and MIT Research Giving Self-Driving Cars 'intuition'
Ford Motor is working with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to give self-driving cars intuition.
From ACM TechNews
Neural Nets: Now Available in the Cloud
A new system called N2Sky sets up neural networks in the cloud so their services can be shared like other computing resources.
From ACM TechNews
Bringing the World Reboot-Less pdates
The Ksplice software automatically applies patches to an operating system without having to reboot.
From ACM TechNews
E-Whiskers: Berkeley Researchers Develop Highly Sensitive Tactile Sensors For Robotics and Other Applications
Researchers have created tactile sensors similar to the highly sensitive whiskers of cats and rats from composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles.
From ACM News
Bitcoins and Virtual Currency: How Do Businesses Cope?
Bitcoin speculators have made millions of pounds in the last few months as the value of the Internet-based virtual currency has exploded.
From ACM News
Fbi Warns Retailers to Expect More Credit Card Breaches
The FBI has warned U.S. retailers to prepare for more cyber attacks after discovering about 20 hacking cases in the past year that involved the same kind of malicious software used against Target Corp in the holiday shopping…