Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2010
From ACM TechNews
Improving Economy Means Opportunities in It
Information technology hiring could be about to surge in 2011, according to the recent Robert Half Technology Salary Guide 2011. Professionals who can help a company become more efficient and grow will likely be in the highest…
From ACM TechNews
Researcher Highlights Need For Transparency on the Web
University of Southampton professor Luc Moreau says that enabling Web users to determine where data comes from and decide if it is trustworthy will lead to a new generation of Web services that are capable of producing trusted…
From ACM News
Cell-Phone Chips to the Rescue
Data centers, under greater demand than ever, are looking to low-power chips as a way to save money, but switching won't be easy.
From ACM News
Accelerator Supercomputers Dominate Newest Green500 List's Top 10
Accelerator-based supercomputers hold eight of the top 10 spots on the Green500 list. Green500 ranks the energy efficiency of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, serving as a complement to the well-known supercomputer industry…
From ACM News
China Internet Hijack: A Guide
Cyber terrorism is a growing threat, and of increasing concern to governments around the world. But just what did the latest alleged cyber attack by a Chinese telecommunications firm involve, and what purpose did it serve?
From ACM News
Graph500 Rating System Evaluates Nine Supercomputer Capabilities
Nine supercomputers have been tested, validated and ranked by the new "Graph500" challenge, introduced this week by an international team led by Sandia National Laboratories.
From ACM TechNews
Virus Could Ruin Many Industries' Control Systems
Stuxnet, a worm that appears to target Iran's nuclear energy plants, can be tweaked to inflict damage on industrial control systems worldwide, and constitutes the most critical cyberthreat that industry is aware of, according…
From ACM TechNews
.S. Sees 'Huge' Cyber Threat in the Future
U.S. Defense secretary Robert Gates recently told members of The Wall Street Journal CEO Council that the threat from cybertechnologies will grow from "considerable" to "huge" in the future.
From ACM TechNews
In Search of More Than a Few Good Geeks
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division has multiplied its employees by six in the past two years, but the agency is still understaffed and is having an increasingly difficult time finding skilled professionals…
From ACM TechNews
Ecs Research Helps to 'fix the Web'
Citizens Online's new Fix the Web campaign is designed to address the problem of inaccessible websites by providing a quick and easy way for users to complain about inaccessible sites, and will introduce a process for reporting…
From ACM TechNews
Forcing Browsers to se Encryption
The Internet Engineering Task Force has developed a security mechanism to mitigate the threat from browser add-ons that allow attackers to easily capture the cookies that websites use to communicate with computers.
From ACM News
What If We sed Poetry to Teach Computers to Speak Better?
A better understanding of how people use acoustic cues to stress new information and put old information in the background may help computer programmers produce more realistic-sounding speech.
From ACM News
.s. Accuses China Telecom of Internet Hijack
China Telecom diverted Internet traffic from the United States and other nations for about 18 minutes on April 8 by publishing incorrect routing information that diverted data through Chinese servers, according to a U.S. congressional…
From ACM TechNews
Racetrack Memory
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne professor Mathias Klaui is working on a racetrack memory technology that could be 100,000 times faster and consume less power than current hard disks.
From ACM TechNews
A Conversation With Ed Catmull
Pixar Animation Studios president Ed Catmull says he once used realistic computer-generated animation as a goal because "doing it is so hard that it would help drive us forward."
From ACM TechNews
A Minority Report Interface For the Rest of S
Two programmers have developed Toscanini, a free gestural computer interface that provides a connection between a user's movements and digital instruments such as synthesizers, keyboards, or anything that can be controlled through…
From ACM News
Rensselaer Team Shows How To Analyze Raw Government Data
The Rensselaer Tetherless World Research Constellation has created a how-to primer on "mashing-up" the treasure trove of government Web data.
From ACM News
niversity Analysis Suggests Limiting Exposure to Carbon Nanotubes
UC Berkeley researcher Mark Philbrick says that carbon nanotubes pose potential adverse health effects to humans and should be treated as if they are hazardous.
From ACM TechNews
Survey of Women, Men in IT Shows Differing Views
A recent Technisource survey of men and women in information technology found differences in opinion in areas such as compensation and career challenges. Fewer women than men think that women's compensation is equal to that of…
From ACM News
Openstudy Aims to Create Worldwide Study Group
OpenStudy is a social media site that hooks up students from all across the globe, making the entire world a study group.
From ACM TechNews
Chips in Football Helmets to Monitor For Concussions
Intel researchers are working with football helmet manufacturers and several universities to develop technology that can monitor brain damage in real time and build helmets that minimize the risk of injury.
From ACM TechNews
Israeli Researchers Pursue Brain-Operated Computing
Tel Aviv University is developing an electronic component that can read signals from nerve cells and transmit them to a computer. Researchers hope to develop a computer that recognizes different brain patterns for characterizing…
From ACM News
Israeli High Tech Adjusts to Asian Challenge
The emergence of India and China is casting a shadow on the developed economies of Europe and North America, and is also posing a challenge to Israel. Key players are asking whether the Asian giants might steal Israel's high…
From ACM News
Illinois Students Build 33-Teraflop Cluster From Gpus
Students at the University of Illinois have built a supercomputer out of GPUs as part of a hands-on class. They expect the cluster to be ranked on the Green500 list of the most energy-efficient supercomputers, which will be released…
From ACM TechNews
Uic Researchers Paint on 20-Foot Electronic Canvas
The University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory maintains a video display wall with a resolution of 8,160 by 2,304 pixels. Recently, students made the wall touch-enabled and created an iPad app that…
From ACM TechNews
Ice and a Slice Makes Transistors More Precise
Transistors can be built more precisely by using ice as a mask, according to researchers at Harvard University. The ice lithography process resembles how computer chips are made, but is a cleaner, cheaper, and gentler way to…
From ACM News
New Standard Proposed For Supercomputing
A new supercomputer rating system, Graph500, tests a supercomputer's ability to analyze large, graph-based structures that link the huge number of data points present in biological, social and security problems.
From ACM News
It Is Finally Proven: Apple Users Are More Intelligent Than Pc Users
More than 2 millions PC users and Apple users took an Intelligence Test on the Intelligent Elite website. The results were quiet astonishing: Test takers using an Apple computer score more than 6 IQ points higher than users…
From ACM TechNews
New Research Provides Effective Battle Planning For Supercomputer War
Researchers have been studying and comparing the supercomputing systems in China and the United States to provide an analysis that will benefit the battle plans of both sides in an escalating war between two competing technologies…
From ACM TechNews
.s. Building Next Wave of Supercomputers
Both Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are building 20-petaflop supercomputer systems that are expected to ready in 2012. The new systems would be much more powerful than today's fastest…