Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2014
From ACM TechNews
.s. May Be Falling Behind in Researching Tech's Next Big Thing
A University of Virginia professor says the U.S. is not spending enough on research and development of cyber-physical systems.
From ACM TechNews
Here Comes the Future: We're Making Robots That Feel!
Cornell University professor Hod Lipson envisions the creation of robots with self-awareness.
From ACM TechNews
Kentucky ses Ideafestival to Push Students Toward Hour of Code Movement
Kentucky Coders hopes to register 1 million Hour of Code coding events before December, starting at the 2014 IdeaFestival, an international event held in Louisville.
From ACM TechNews
sing Intelligence to nlock the Market For Electric Vehicles
A European Union-funded project recently provided electric vehicles with enhanced energy efficiency in Spain.
From ACM TechNews
What It Will Take For Computers to Be Conscious
Christof Koch says it is possible people will some day create conscious machines, but they may not look as expected.
From ACM News
Rosetta Comet Fires Its Jets
The four images that make up a new montage of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were taken on September 26, 2014 by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. At the time, Rosetta was about 16 miles (26 kilometers) from the…
From ACM News
The npatchable Malware That Infects sbs Is Now on the Loose
It's been just two months since researcher Karsten Nohl demonstrated an attack he called BadUSB to a standing-room-only crowd at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, showing that it's possible to corrupt any USB device…
From ACM News
Quantum Bits Get Their First Compression
Without algorithms that compress data to encode information into fewer bits, hard drives would clog up and Internet traffic would slow to a snail's pace.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science and Engineering Researchers Win Best Paper Award
Texas A&M University researchers received the Best Paper Award at the recent 2014 Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques conference in Alberta, Canada.
From ACM News
China May Be Monitoring Hong Kong Protesters' Off-the-Grid Chats
An app called FireChat is making headlines for being the go-to medium for communication among pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
From ACM TechNews
Minority Languages: Cookies, Caches and Cows
The nonprofit Mozilla foundation is seeking to give more users of its open source Web browser the option of a device that speaks their language.
From ACM TechNews
It Skills That Are in Demand, and Those That Will Be
A recent survey of employers found IT professionals with cloud and security-related certifications were in greatest demand.
From ACM TechNews
Intel Encourages Women to Pursue Cloud Training
Cloud services firms need to do a better job recruiting and retaining women if they want to fill positions with qualified candidates, according to Intel's Raejeanne Skillern.
From ACM News
Waiting For the Smart Grid
The technology is here, but barriers remain.
From ACM News
Internet of Things Gets a Hand from Arm's New Operating System
Desktops have Linux. Mobile devices have Android. The Internet of Things has...Mbed?
From ACM Opinion
What It Will Take For Computers to Be Conscious
Is a worm conscious? How about a bumblebee? Does a computer that can play chess "feel" anything?
From ACM News
Nasa Mission Points to Origin of 'ocean of Storms' on Earth's Moon
Using data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), mission scientists have solved a lunar mystery almost as old as the moon itself.
From ACM News
Obama's Brain Project Backs Neurotechnology
The White House said that President Obama's BRAIN Initiative is generating interest from companies and philanthropies in a sign of what it calls a wider partnership developing around the U.S. administration’s most prominent science…
From ACM Careers
Walter Isaacson on the Women of Eniac
Ever since the days of Charles Babbage, who conceived of a giant mechanical calculator called the Analytical Engine in the 1830s, the engineering of computer hardware has been dominated by men.
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Explorers
Yonsei University researchers have developed a system to enable air- and ground-based robot vehicles to cooperate without GPS signals or sensor devices.
From ACM TechNews
Ornl Researcher Is Working to Predict Electric Power Blackouts Before They Happen
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are developing tools to improve electric grid protection operation analysis and prediction under different contingencies.
From ACM TechNews
Simulation Technology Designed For Hollywood Can Be Used as Predictive Tool For Understanding Fundamental Engineering
Software developed to help Hollywood create better virtual hair may be used to study the properties of filamentary structures like oceanic telecommunication cables.
From ACM TechNews
Tim Berners-Lee Wants Internet Magna Carta to Guarantee Netizens' Privacy
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is using the 25th anniversary of his invention of the World Wide Web to push for an Internet bill of rights.
From ACM TechNews
Electronic Brain by 2023
Researchers on the European Union's decade-long Human Brain Project disclosed how far they have come toward the goal of creating an artificial brain by 2023.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Jurisprudence: How to Judge a 'bot; Why It's Covered
The RoboLaw consortium recently presented the European Parliament its findings on potential legal frameworks to manage the development of robotic technology.
From Communications of the ACM
Still Seeking the Optical Transistor
Optical information handling is a critical staple for communications and the Internet, but using light for computer-scale computation remains a distant dream.
From Communications of the ACM
Museums Go High-Tech with Digital Forensics
Scientists are using cutting-edge scanning and visualization techniques to wow visitors and find new stories in ancient artifacts.
From Communications of the ACM
Gradual Evolution
Dynamically typed languages adopt features of static typing to cope with growth.