Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2013
From ACM Careers
All Is Fair in Love and Twitter
Right in the center of South Park, a large, grassy oval near San Francisco's financial district, there is a rinky-dink playground with slides, ladders, and firefighter poles, all dented and dinged, connected by gritty brown pylons…
From ACM News
Autonomous Vehicles Roll Forward
Self-driving vehicles will likely provide substantial benefits, and introduce new challenges.
From ACM Opinion
Yep, Apple's A7 Looks Twice As Fast–at Least For Fractal Math
Is Apple's A7 chip twice as fast at processing and graphics, as Apple promised when announcing the new iPhone 5S?
From ACM News
Mugged By a Mug Shot Online
In March last year, a college freshman named Maxwell Birnbaum was riding in a van filled with friends from Austin, Tex., to a spring-break rental house in Gulf Shores, Ala.
From ACM News
Making Martian Clouds on Earth
At first glance, Mars' clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA's Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude wisps, similar to our cirrus clouds.
From ACM News
2013 Chemistry Nobel Goes to Computer Modeling of Chemical Reactions
What is actually happening at the atomic scale when two elements react?
From ACM TechNews
The Human Brain Project Has Officially Begun
Scientists from 135 institutions working on the Human Brain Project are meeting this week at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
From ACM TechNews
Send in the Bots
Scientists are using autonomous robots to make discoveries about animal behavior and cognition, some of which would be impossible using live animals.
From ACM TechNews
Sc13 Supercomputing Show Must Go On, Government Shutdown or Not
SC13 will hold its annual Supercomputing Conference the week of November 17 in Denver as scheduled, regardless of the status of the U.S. government shutdown.
From ACM TechNews
UltraHaptics – It's Magic in the Air
UltraHaptics is a new interface system that enables users to experience multi-point haptic feedback above an interactive surface without having to touch or hold a device.
From ACM TechNews
Disney Develops Algorithm For Rendering 3D Tactile Features on Touch Surfaces
Disney researchers have developed an algorithm for tactile rendering of three-dimensional features and textures.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data Is Too Big For Scientists to Handle Alone
Experts say big data can only be leveraged in future scientific endeavors with a combination of science, statistics, computers, mathematics, and leadership.
From ACM News
Nasa Missions Struggle to Cope with Shutdown
All it took was four minutes.
From ACM TechNews
Teens Hone Their Hacking Skills in National Competitions Guided By Federal Officials
Federal officials are guiding national cybercontests aimed at helping tech-savvy teenagers prepare for careers in protecting the government and private companies from hackers.
From ACM Careers
In Digital Era, What Does 'watching Tv' Even Mean?
We spend a full five hours and 16 minutes a day in front of a screen, and that's without even turning on a television.
From ACM News
The Mathematical Shape of Things to Come
Simon DeDeo, a research fellow in applied mathematics and complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute, had a problem.
From ACM Careers
Researchers Split Over NSA Hacking
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has upset a great many people this year.
From ACM News
Spy Agencies Exploit It Vulnerabilities
The U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters surveillance group and the U.S. National Security Agency use hacking techniques to eavesdrop on Internet users, and may be weakening the security of communications hardware and…
From ACM News
Silk Road Bust Hints at Fbi's New Cybercrime Powers
The biggest drug marketplace on the Internet has been busted.
From ACM TechNews
Google Debuts Google Web Designer Beta For Html5 Creativity
Google has released the beta version of a tool designed to help Web developers create interactive and vibrant Internet content using HTML5, Google Web Designer.
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Adds $15.5 Million to Help Take Semiconductors Beyond Moore's Law
Microelectronics Advanced Research Corp. has received $15.5 million to further development of future semiconductor technology.
From ACM TechNews
Nsf Awards $12 Million to Sdsc to Deploy Comet Supercomputer
Comet, a supercomputer awaiting deployment, is designed to transform advanced scientific computing by expanding access and capacity.
From ACM News
How Gaming Tech Is Making For Better Interplanetary Exploration
"My dream in this area is that, someday, when we put human boots on the surface of Mars, I want there to be millions of people in attendance for that event," Jeff Norris, Mission Operations Innovations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion…
From ACM Opinion
Graphene: 'miracle Material' Will Be in Your Home Sooner Than You Think
Just under 10 years ago, the Dutch-British physicist Andre Geim stumbled across a substance that would revolutionize the way we understand matter and win him and his colleague Kostya Novoselow the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics…
From ACM News
.s. Intelligence Chief Defends Attempts to Break Tor Anonymity Network
The National Security Agency may have attempted to penetrate and compromise a widely used network designed to protect the anonymity of its users, but it was only because terrorists and criminals use it, too.
From ACM News
New Kind of Microscope Uses Neutrons
Researchers at MIT, working with partners at NASA, have developed a new concept for a microscope that would use neutrons—subatomic particles with no electrical charge—instead of beams of light or electrons to create high-resolution…
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Algorithm Analyzes Sentence Sentiment, Advances Machine Learning
Neural Analysis of Sentiment is software that analyzes sentences from movie reviews and rates the sentiments they express on a five-point scale.
From ACM TechNews
Private Data Gatekeeper Stands Between You and the Nsa
OpenPDS allows users to see and control any third-party requests for their information.
From ACM TechNews
Moocs Could Help 2-Year Colleges and Their Students, Says Bill Gates
Online courses that "flip" homework and coursework using outsourced lectures could help community colleges and students, according to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
From ACM TechNews
Lack of Women in Ict Sector Costs Europe 9bn Euros a Year
The European economy is losing out on 9 billion euros annually because few women fill information and communications technology roles at tech firms.