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 TechNews
Nsf's Cyber-Network Now Connects Half the Globe
The Taj network, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), has expanded to the Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD), and now connects India, Singapore, Vietnam, and Egypt to the GLODRIAD…
From ACM News
New Software Could Smooth Supercomputing Speed Bumps
Supercomputers have long been an indispensable, albeit expensive, tool for researchers who need to make sense of vast amounts of data. One way that researchers have begun to make high-speed computing more powerful and also more…
From ACM TechNews
IT Jobs Will Expand Globally by Nearly 6 Million in 4 Years
IDC predicts that by 2013, jobs in information technology (IT) will expand by 5.8 million worldwide, and that 75,000 new businesses will be created during that time. IDC says that growth in software and cloud computing will…
From ACM TechNews
Tracking Devious Phishing Web Sites
Internet security experts have discovered that many phishers are using a trick called a flux, which allows a fake Web site to rapidly change its URL, making it difficult for defenders to block phishing sites or warn unsuspecting…
From ACM TechNews
Field Experiment on a Metropolitan Quantum Cryptography Network
The University of Science and Technology of China recently demonstrated a metropolitan quantum cryptography network (QCN) for use by the government in Wuhu, China. The researchers say that combining quantum key distribution…
From ACM TechNews
The A-Z of Programming Languages: Arduino's Tom Igoe
Tom Igoe is a co-developer of the Arduino programming language, which he says was created out of a desire to provide a tool for teaching physical computing to artists and designers, with a specific focus on microcontroller programming…
From ACM TechNews
Conference Focuses on Preventing High-Capacity Computer Data Theft
At the recent International Conference on Applied Modeling and Information Security Systems, high-performance computing researchers cautioned that worldwide computer use puts a growing amount of digitally stored modeling, design…
From ACM TechNews
Jeff Dozier of csb Wins Microsoft Research's Jim Gray Award
University of California, Santa Barbara professor Jeff Dozier has received Microsoft Research's second annual Jim Gray eScience Award. The award was created to honor the memory of the late Microsoft visionary in data-intensive…
From ICT Results
Plastic Optical Fiber Brightens Communications Landscape
Groundbreaking research by a team of European scientists working in the EU-funded POLYCOM project has helped put plastic optical fiber (POF) on track for use in optical computing, ultra-high-speed LANs, new sensing devices and…
From ACM News
Is My Robot Happy to See Me?
Scientists at Georgia Tech have tested people's ability to interpret a robot's "emotion" by reading its expression to see if there were any differences between different age groups. They found that older adults showed some unexpected…
From ACM TechNews
NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing
The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) says the 2010 NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing will include affiliate award programs in Texas, Illinois, and Florida. Young women in high school who apply…
From ACM TechNews
Merging Video With Maps
Microsoft and researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany are collaborating to create Videomap, navigation software that incorporates videos of driving routes. The program gives drivers visual cues by highlighting…
From ACM TechNews
In Search of Machines That Play at Being Human
This year, 15 teams from Brazil, Canada, the United States, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Spain, among others, participated in the BotPrize contest, which applies the Turing Test to video games.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Save Electricity With Low-Power Processors and Flash Memory
During ACM's recent Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs Pittsburgh won the best paper award for their article on Fast Array of Wimpy Nodes (FAWN), a server architecture…
From ACM TechNews
Recommender Systems Make Learning More Fun
As part of the European Union TENCompetence project, the Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies' Hendrik Drachsler searched for the most suitable way to recommend learning activities, considering the personal needs, preferences…
From ACM TechNews
Seeing Things
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Antonio Torralba and students from the school's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) say they have developed an object recognition system that requires…
From ACM TechNews
What Kind of Cloud Computing Project Would You Build With $32m?
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to build a large cloud computing test bed in an effort to determine whether cloud computing can help meet scientists' demand for computing resources. Approximately $32 million will be…
From ACM TechNews
Dispute Finder: Making the Call on Web 'facts'
Intel Labs researcher Rob Ennals has developed Dispute Finder, software that highlights inaccurate online information in pink with a link pointing toward a reliable body of evidence that disputes it. Dispute Finder, which currently…
From ACM News
Northeastern Launches Online Master's Degree Program in Information Security
Northeastern University is launching an online graduate degree program in information assurance (IA). The program, which will train students to tackle identity theft and information security breaches, also addresses the growing…
From ACM News
Quantum Computer Chips Now One Step Closer to Reality
Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered a way to make quantum devices using technology common to the chip-making industry today. This work might one day enable faster, low-power computer chips. It could also lead…
From ACM News
Hacker Dojo Sparks Ideas and Tinkering
A typical evening at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA, sometimes looks like chaos — two friends cobbling together a robot out of chips, circuit boards and servo motors; a clump of technical writers packed like sweaty sardines…
From ICT Results
'Light on a Wire' Promises Faster Computing, Communications
A team of European researchers has demonstrated some of the first commercially viable plasmonic devices, paving the way for a new era of high-speed communications and computing in which electronic and optical signals can be handled…
From ACM TechNews
Kraken Becomes First Academic Machine to Achieve Petaflop
The National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS), a joint project between the University of Tennessee (UT) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has upgraded its Kraken Cray XT5 supercomputer to achieve a peak performance…
From ACM TechNews
New Wi-Fi Spec Challenges Bluetooth
The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced Wi-Fi Direct, a new Wi-Fi specification that supports standard Wi-Fi data rates and enables Wi-Fi-enabled devices within about 100 meters of each other to connect.
From ACM TechNews
Harvard's Robotic Bees Generate High-Tech Buzz
Harvard University researchers have received a $10 million U.S. National Science Foundation grant to create a colony of flying robotic bees called RoboBees. The researchers say the grant will help drive innovation in ultra-low…
From ACM TechNews
$1.25 Million Grant to Develop Teacher Training Institute
The U.S. National Science Foundation has given Arizona State University a five-year, $1.25 million grant to create the Modeling Institute, which will pool university research on science, technology, engineering and mathematics…
From ACM TechNews
Csi in a Virtual World: Grant Furthers Nc State's Work in Forensic Science
North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers are using a U.S. National Science Foundation grant to adapt the process used in building video games to help criminal investigators solve real-world crimes. The researchers…
From ACM News
Eight-State Cyber Consortium Gets $2.7 Million Grant
The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.7 million grant to an eight-state consortium of technology centers and community colleges that is working to block cyber attacks and stop the loss of high-tech jobs in the…
From ACM News
Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse Portal to be Developed
Virginia Tech has been awarded a $1.25 million five-year contract by the U.S. Department of Energy to develop, manage, and maintain a public Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse Web portal that encourages use of electricity in…
From ACM News
Designing a Ride and Learning Math at Epcot
Can children who do not know how many sides a triangle has get excited about learning math and engineering? Maybe a field trip to an amusement park will do the trick.
That is the idea behind a new initiative from Disney and …