Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2009
From ICT Results
Software Looks to Solve Life-Threatening Medical Puzzles
New software is under development that doctors hope will help them identify brain tumours in children that will grow aggressively. A new software tool can integrate all the medical data from a tumor patient and then analyze it…
From ACM News
Terrorism in the Age of Technology: Biothreats And?cyber Warfare
While once considered unconventional, cyber attacks and biological warfare have become an increasing threat to security and a tactic of rising concern. Spanning the areas of computer science, technology and government, technological…
From ACM News
Now We Know Where We Stand, and It's About Time
America has seen its last Lost Generation.
Thanks to an invisible armada of incessantly broadcasting satellites, collectively called the Global Positioning System, and to the explosive proliferation of GPS receivers in gadgets…From ACM TechNews
Rutgers Computer Scientists Work to Strengthen Online Security
Rutgers University computer scientists are developing an alternative to online security questions that is designed to be easier for legitimate users and more secure. "We call them activity-based personal questions," says Rutgers…
From ACM TechNews
China Plans For Humanoid Olympics
China has announced plans to hold a robot Olympics in 2010, in which humanoid robots will compete in 16 different events ranging from athletics to machine-related tasks such as cleaning. The organizers expect more than 100 universities…
From ACM TechNews
Inventing a Programming Language
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Barbara Liskov, winner of ACM's 2008 A.M. Turing Award, recently delivered the first lecture of MIT's 2009 Dertouzos Lecture Series. She was introduced as "the Derek Jeter…
From ACM News
Grant Will Improve Mobile Device, Cellular Network Security
Smart phones have become indispensable to today's highly mobile workforce and tech-savvy youngsters, but they pose new security and privacy risks. Two assistant professors in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute…
From ACM TechNews
What Happens When Good Robots Go 'bad'?
A study by University of Washington researchers led by doctoral student Tamara Denning calls attention to the possibility of household robots being hacked by malevolent parties and reprogrammed for nefarious purposes. Such purposes…
From ACM TechNews
Theme-Park Dummy Trick Becomes Teleconference Tool
A trick used in theme-park animatronics could help people act more naturally during videoconferences. Shader lamps is a technique that projects an animated face that looks three dimensional (3D) onto a blank dummy face, and…
From ACM TechNews
Social Tags Complement the Learning Resource Metadata, Researcher Finds
Social tagging can help people find educational resources in digital repositories that are filled with millions of learning materials, says Open University of the Netherlands PhD candidate Riina Vuorikari. She says that adding…
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Showcases 'green' Missions at Sc09 Conference
Milestones by five NASA research centers in the fields of science, engineering, and technology will be showcased at the ACM-sponsored SC09 supercomputing conference, which takes place Nov. 14-20, in Portland, Oregon. More than…
From ACM TechNews
Web Security Tool Copies Apps' Moves
Scientists at Microsoft research have unveiled Ripley, a new way to secure complex Web applications by effectively cloning the user's browser and running it remotely. Ripley prevents a remote hacker or malicious user from changing…
From ACM TechNews
Metagenomics and the Computing Challenges of Microbial Communities
New technologies are enabling researchers to sequence samples of microorganisms taken from their environment, but the relatively new field of metagenomics still has to deal with considerable science and computing challenges.
From ACM TechNews
nlimited Compute Capacity Coming, IBM Says
IBM Canada Lab director Martin Wildberger predicts that unlimited computing capacity will become a reality in the near future, putting the power of modern mainframes in devices such as smartphones.
From ACM TechNews
ACM Names 84 Distinguished Members for Advances in Computing Technology
ACM has recognized 84 members as 2009 Distinguished Members. The number of honorees has more than doubled from a year ago, and ACM says the increase is a reflection of the growth of its membership and its initiatives around…
From ACM TechNews
Is Aes Encryption Crackable?
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) system was long believed to be invulnerable to attack, but a group of researchers recently demonstrated that there may be an inherent flaw in AES, at least theoretically.
From ACM TechNews
Splitting p Search
Researchers at Yahoo!'s Labs in Barcelona, Spain, have developed a distributed search approach that spreads the search index and additional data out over a larger number of smaller data centers instead of a centralized model. …
From ACM TechNews
Labor Shortage in It Industry Despite Recession
A new survey by New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development found a significant shortage of skilled labor in the information technology (IT) industry, despite the recession and resulting job losses.
From ACM TechNews
Triple Shadows and Fake Reflections: Future Graphics
At the second annual ACM SIGGRAPH Asia conference, which takes place December 16-19 in Yokohama, Japan, computer graphics professionals and researchers will demonstrate the most recent developments in graphics.
From ACM TechNews
Validity of Software Patents Goes on Trial at .s. Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider what types of inventions should be eligible for a patent as part of a case that could undermine legal protections for software. The question facing the Supreme Court is whether the "machine…
From ACM News
Green500 Expands Coverage of Energy-Efficient Supercomputers
Virginia Tech's Green500 list is getting a refresh. Since its 2007 debut, the Green500 has ranked only the energy efficiency of the world's 500 fastest performing supercomputers. Now, the Green500 is expanding the definition…
From ICT Results
Digital Fingerprints Aid Video Search
The explosive growth of video on the Internet calls for new ways of sorting and searching audiovisual content. A team of European researchers has developed a groundbreaking solution that is finding commercial applications.
From ACM News
Adding a Sixth Sense to Your Cellphone
Many Indians bought their first mobile phones before they had their first experiences with personal computers. Pranav Mistry thinks that most of them might also skip keyboards and mice and go straight to more intuitive and interactive…
From ACM News
Splitting p Search
Searching the Web could become faster for users and much more efficient for search companies if search engines were split up and distributed around the world, according to researchers at Yahoo.
Currently, search engines are…From ACM TechNews
Futurists' Report Acknowledges Dangers of Smart Robots
A forthcoming report from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) will explore whether robots could eventually become so intelligent that they pose a threat to society. Although some researchers…
From ACM TechNews
M Research Leads to Improved Human, Object Detection Technology
University of Missouri researchers are developing software that would enable computers to search within videos and identify humans and specific objects, as well as perform other video analysis tasks. "The goal of our research…
From ACM TechNews
Announced Initiatives to Bolster .s. Science and Technology Collaboration With Muslim Communities
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently announced new initiatives aimed at promoting science and technology collaboration with Muslim communities around the world. Clinton named Bruce Alberts, Elias Zerhouni,…
From ACM TechNews
.s. and Australia Dominate Magic Robot Competition Short List
The organizers of the Multi-Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) have created a list of 12 teams and has asked them to develop their proposals. Ten teams will receive $50,000, and the remaining two teams…
From ACM TechNews
ACM Initiative Addresses Long-Term Preservation of Digital Library Content
ACM announced that it is providing institutional library customers with advanced electronic archiving services to help preserve their electronic resources. The services, which will be provided by Portico and CLOCKSS, address…
From ACM TechNews
$1.2M Project Speeds Research Data Processing
Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network has provided $1.2 million to researchers at the University of Western Ontario to develop a new high-speed network for handling huge amounts of research data from synchrotrons…