Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2012
From ACM TechNews
Google Says Government Surveillance Growing
Government surveillance is on the rise, according to the most recent Google Transparency Report. Governments also want more data about Google users and want more content posted by Google users removed.
From ACM TechNews
New Ncsa Team to Focus on Big Science and Engineering Data Challenges
The U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications' new Data Cyberinfrastructure Directorate will combine NCSA projects, personnel, and capabilities to focus on data-driven science.
From ACM TechNews
White House Tells Tech Sector to Dream Big
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is challenging industry members, government agencies, academics, and philanthropic organizations to develop ways to use new technology to solve some of the U.S.'s most pressing…
From ACM TechNews
Speeding Algorithms By Shrinking Data
MIT researchers have developed a technique to represent data so that it takes up much less space in memory but can still be processed in conventional ways.
From ACM TechNews
Exploring Credits For Free Online Courses
The American Council on Education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Coursera have launched an initiative to determine if free online courses are worthy of academic credit and how they might be used to help more people…
From ACM TechNews
Ok, App, What Should I Wear to This Wedding?
New software could help people decide what to wear for weddings, job interviews, or first dates.
From ACM TechNews
Early Science Runs Prepare Lawrence Livermore National Lab's Sequoia For National Security Missions
Researchers from the three nuclear weapons laboratories of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration are running unclassified science codes on the Sequoia supercomputer to test the power and versatility of the 20-petaflop…
From ACM TechNews
Good Connections to Molecular Electronics
Researchers from the Max Planck Society's Fritz Haber Institute have gleaned insights into the optimization of molecular wires from conductance measurements on graphene nanoribbons.
From ACM TechNews
Measuring Metabolism Can Predict the Progress of Alzheimer's with 90 Percent Accuracy
Tel Aviv University researchers have developed a method for identifying early signs of Alzheimer's disease in the brain's metabolism.
From ACM News
Researchers Struggle to Measure Big Data's Impact
The impact of big data on the U.S. economy is huge, but how huge isn’t easily determined.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Simulations Shed Light on Cancer Prevention
NYU researchers are using high performance computing resources to model airborne cancerous chemicals, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, and their effect on DNA strands in human cells.
From ACM TechNews
Structure of Network Drives Friends to Congregate into Many Small, Highly Interconnected Communities
Indiana University in Bloomington and University of Messina researchers have discovered, for the first time, the dynamics of how Facebook user communities are formed, using mathematical tools typically utilized to study complex…
From ACM TechNews
Customize Your Favorite Tv Show
With TVs utilizing gestural and voice controls, and analytics to examine your backlog of DVRed programs and suggest new shows, a team of French developers thought something was still missing.
From ACM TechNews
Georgia Tech Turns Stale Physics Book Into Mobile Experience
Georgia Tech researchers are turning physics textbooks into applications for e-books, making the lessons more interactive and more interesting for students.
From ACM TechNews
Blue Waters Petascale Supercomputer Now in Friendly User Phase
U.S. National Science Foundation-approved science and engineering teams now have access to the full Blue Waters petascale computing system.
From ACM Opinion
Moore's Law Is Becoming Irrelevant
Companies like Apple and Samsung are the public face of the smartphone and tablet boom, but they all rely on ARM, the British company that licenses the energy-efficient processor designs required by mobile devices.
From ACM News
Google Is Blocked in China as Party Congress Begins
All Google services, including its search engine, Gmail and Maps, were inaccessible in China on Friday night and into Saturday, the company confirmed.
From ACM News
From Sudan to Cyber, Secret War with Iran Hots Up
From a suspected Israeli airstrike in Sudan to cyber warfare in the Gulf and a drone shot down over Israel, the largely hidden war between Iran and its foes seems heating up and spreading.
From ACM TechNews
Twitter a Big Winner in 2012 Presidential Election
Both Twitter and Facebook played a big role in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, as this was the first national election since social-networking technology became mainstream.
From ACM TechNews
In Bounties They Trust, but Does Paying For Security Bugs Make a Safer Web?
Freelance security researchers who hunt for exploitable software bugs for cash rewards posted by vendors can sometimes make a decent wage, but some of the largest software vendors do not host bug bounty programs, which raises…
From ACM TechNews
Computational Text Analysis Made Possible Regardless of Language or Domain
Aalto University's Mari-Sanna Paukkeri has devised computational methods for processing and analyzing online text regardless of its language or domain.
From ACM TechNews
Cambridge Software Improves Quality of Sound For Hearing Aid sers
Cambridge University researchers have developed CAM2, software that improves the quality of sound for hearing aid users.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Brings Star Trek's Voice Translator to Life
Microsoft has developed and publicly demonstrated nearly instantaneous Chinese-to-English spoken word translation software capable of preserving the distinctive cadence of the speaker's voice.
From ACM News
Climate Likely to Be on Hotter Side of Projections
A new NASA-funded study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo., finds climate model projections that show a greater rise in global temperature are likely to prove more accurate than those showing a lesser…
From ACM Careers
With Millions Paid in Hacker Bug Bounties, Is the Internet Any Safer?
The night before the end of Google's Pwnium contest at the CanSecWest security conference this year in Vancouver, a tall teen dressed in khaki shorts, tube socks and sneakers was hunkered down on a hallway bench at the Sheraton…
From ACM Opinion
Eye Am a Camera: Surveillance and Sousveillance in the Glassage
Digital eye glasses like Google’s Project Glass, and my earlier Digital Eye Glass, will transform society because they introduce a two-sided surveillance and sousveillance.
From ACM News
Mars to Earth: How to Send Hd Video Between Planets
"It once was a small step... now it's six big wheels," exclaimed Curiosity's Twitter account after the Nasa rover landed on Mars in early August. The message itself took a fraction of a second to post on the social network.
From ACM TechNews
Cray's Next Supercomputer Has Speedy Interconnect
Cray's new XC30 supercomputer, known as Aries, features a new interconnect and a new routing topology that together could dramatically improve internal bandwidth.
From ACM TechNews
Camera-to-Sound App Lets Blind People 'See'
Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have developed a device that enables congenitally blind adults to interpret visual information from sound.
From ACM TechNews
Uconn Voter Center Helps Ensure Accuracy of Voting Machines
The University of Connecticut's Voting Technology Research Center analyzes data from AccuVote Optical Scanners, which are electronic ballot-counting systems used by the state for elections.