Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2009
From ACM News
Smartphone Security Threats Likely to Rise
Internet security experts say that worms, spam, viruses and hackers could be well on their way into your smartphone, whose rising popularity makes them sweeter targets for online ne'er do-wells looking to cause mischief or rip…
From ACM News
Rensselaer To Lead Research Center for Social and Cognitive Networks
With $16.75 million in funding from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will launch a new interdisciplinary research center devoted to the study of social and cognitive networks. The Center for…
From ACM News
Parallel Course
In 1995, a good computer chip had a clock speed of about 100 megahertz. Seven years later, in 2002, a good computer chip had a clock speed of about three gigahertz — a 30-fold increase. And now, seven years later, a good computer…
From ACM TechNews
To Protect Your Privacy, Hand Over Your Data
A new proposal from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Human Dynamics Laboratory suggests that digital identities would be more secure if they were based on data collected from "reality mining," which studies…
From ACM TechNews
Researcher Paves Alternate Path For Hard Drives
Carnegie Mellon University professor Jimmy Jian-Gang Zhu is developing a prototype hard disk technology based on his microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) technique, which could potentially allow three terabits (Tbits)…
From ACM TechNews
Fcc to Draft Net Neutrality Rules, Taking Step Toward Web Regulation
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unanimously voted to start drafting rules to support Internet neutrality. "It's hard to imagine anything more important to the future of the success of our economy than a healthy…
From ACM TechNews
Where the Virtual World and Reality Meet
Researchers in Barcelona are developing virtual reality spaces that incorporate touch-sensitive tiles and immersive animations. Pompeu Fabra University professor Paul Verschure says his research team has built an experience-induction…
From ACM TechNews
Vulnerability Seen in Amazon's Cloud-Computing
A new study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) suggests that leading cloud-computing services may be vulnerable to eavesdropping and malicious…
From ACM News
Center Finds Gaps in Internet se Based on Age, Education, and Income
The total number of Internet users in the United States reached its highest point to date this year — 82 percent of Americans say they go online, a percentage that has remained relatively steady for the last few years. However…
From ICT Results
Biosensor to Help Enlist Cancer Resistance Fighters
Cancer is a major killer and an intractable problem confronting medical science, but now the Cochise team of European researchers have developed a biosensor that will help doctors to use the patient's own immune system to combat…
From ACM TechNews
Material That Could Boost Data Storage, Save Energy
North Carolina State University researchers have developed a new material that would enable a fingernail-sized computer chip to store a terabyte of data. The breakthrough material was created through the process of selective…
From ACM TechNews
Algorithm Predicts Fate of Emergency Medical Service Callers
A computer algorithm that can predict the risk of dying for individuals who place calls for emergency medical service has been developed by researchers in Japan. A team from the Yokohama City University School of Medicine collected…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Help Ensure Security of Military Logistics
University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) professor Bhavani Thuraisingham, director of UTD's CyberSecurity Research Center, believes it is possible to establish data security for large military logistics systems even if the system's…
From ACM News
Friend This: Scientists Will Find Research Partners on National Network
From ACM News
Skiing Robot Navigates Slalom Courses
Bojan Nemec from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia recently presented his skiing robot at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). The videos of this robot taking a ride down the ski…
From ACM News
Congress Endorses Computer Science Education as Driver of Innovation, Economic Growth
ACM joins with several partners from the computing community to commend the U.S. House of Representatives' passage of a resolution to raise the profile of computer science as a transforming industry that drives technology innovation…
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computers Could Tackle Enormous Linear Equations
Aram Harrow of the University of Bristol in England along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd believe that encoding large datasets of linear equations in quantum forms will enable…
From ACM TechNews
Cheetah, Gecko and Spiders Inspire Robotic Designs
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Sangbae Kim is trying to replicate the mechanisms used by animals in robotics. Kim says the animal kingdom provides the best ideas for creating mobile robots.
From ACM TechNews
Computers Have Speed Limit as nbreakable as Speed of Light, Say Physicists
Boston University physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli have demonstrated that if processors continue to improve in accordance with Moore's Law, an unbreakable speed barrier will be reached in approximately 75 years.
From ACM TechNews
Acm, Ieee-CS Honor Pioneer of Grid Computing
ACM and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) have named Francine Berman the winner of the inaugural Ken Kennedy Award. Established this year, the award, named for the high-performance computing expert who founded Rice University's…
From ACM News
Frankencamera Could Herald a New Digital Photography Era
There's a pieced-together monster shaking up the campus of Stanford University this fall. Named after the legendary, lumbering creature that Halloween nightmares are made of, this monster was cobbled together from a Texas Instruments…
From ACM News
Georgia Tech Wins Nsf Award For Next-Gen Supercomputing
The Georgia Institute of Technology announced its receipt of a five-year, $12 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure to lead a partnership of academic, industry and government…
From ACM News
Is Your Microrobot p For the (nist) Challenge?
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with IEEE, is inviting university and collegiate student teams currently engaged in microrobotic, microelectronic or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)…
From ACM News
Artificial Muscles Made of Hydrogen Can Make Domestic Robots Silent
Engineers have found a way to make domestic robots a lot quieter, by building them with artificial muscles that run on hydrogen, instead of noisy compressed-air pumps or electric motors. According to a report in New Scientist…
From ICT Results
Jumping the Queue For Official Documents
Software developed by European researchers allows citizens and local governments to exchange official documents over mobile phones. The software could help usher in the era of mobile government services and put an end to the…
From ACM News
Handheld Camera Brings 'invisible' Into View
A group of researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology has developed a handheld camera that uses microwave signals to non-destructively peek inside materials and structures in real time. The system is powered…
From ACM News
First Gordon Prize in Managing Cybersecurity Resources Awarded
The first $1,000 Gordon Prize in Managing Cybersecurity Resources goes for an essay written by researchers from Harvard and Dresden, Germany. Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business announced the winner October 14.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers to Model the Life Cycles of Successful Virtual Teams
Florida State University (FSU) researcher Kathleen Burnett has received a two-year, $380,226 U.S. National Science Foundation grant to study scientific researchers working at FSU's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Burnett…
From ACM TechNews
CSB Joins With Leading Asian Institute to Develop Green Electronics
The research and development of "green" nanoscale devices with ultra-low power leakage is the focus of a new collaboration between the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the Institute of Microelectronics (IME)…
From ACM News
Moving Beyond Text-Based Video Search
Current disputes on the appropriate format for conducting searches of online video threaten to dredge up old battles on the superiority of linear, textual styles of presentation versus visual-spatial representations. The conflict…