Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2013
From ACM TechNews
Exploring Public Perceptions of Future Wearable Computing
Georgia Tech researchers have conducted a case study on interaction with on-body technology in public. The team's findings suggest that scientists should focus on arms and wrists as they pursue wearable computing.
From ACM TechNews
To Thwart Spies, IETF Wants to 'Strengthen the Internet'
Internet Engineering Task Force chair Jari Arkko recently spoke about the need for the engineers behind the Internet to push for new standards that would make it more difficult for government intelligence agencies to spy on Internet…
From ACM TechNews
Does Your Professor Have a Wikipedia Entry? Congrats! It Means Nothing
Oxford University has released a study indicating that no significant correlation exists between a scientific academic professional having a Wikipedia entry and being productive in his or her field.
From ACM TechNews
Wireless Device Converts 'lost' Energy Into Electric Power
Duke University researchers have developed a power-harvesting device that wirelessly converts a microwave signal to direct current voltage capable of recharging a cellphone battery or other small electronic device.
From ACM TechNews
Intel Launches Internet of Things Push With Tech Industry Call to Arms
Intel has called on the tech industry to make Internet of Things (IoT) technology a viable option for mainstream users. Intel has outlined nine key areas in which technology companies and governments can make the IoT a reality…
From ACM News
Five Fascinating Things Revealed By Twitter Data
When technology companies get floated on the stock market, it prompts all kinds of analytical soul searching.
From ACM Careers
As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry
On Stanford University’s sprawling campus, where a long palm-lined drive leads to manicured quads, humanities professors produce highly regarded scholarship on Renaissance French literature and the philosophy of language.
From ACM News
It's Complicated: Dawn Spurs Rewrite of Vesta's Story
Just when scientists thought they had a tidy theory for how the giant asteroid Vesta formed, a new paper from NASA's Dawn mission suggests the history is more complicated.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Dare AI Experts to Crack New Gotcha Password Scheme
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed GOTCHA, Generating panOptic Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, a password system based on visual cues that typically only a human can decipher.
From ACM TechNews
New Bucks For Bugs Program Focuses on Open Source Software, Internet Infrastructure
The Microsoft- and Facebook-sponsored Internet Bug Bounty program pays as much as $2,500 for a new vulnerability detected in key open source platforms. The program provides an incentive for people to raise the quality of software…
From ACM TechNews
Are Racks-on-Chip the Future of Data Centers?
Increasing the scale and decreasing the cost and power of data centers requires greatly boosting the density of computing, storage, and networking within those centers, according to University of California, San Diego researchers…
From ACM TechNews
Vehicle-To-Vehicle Tech Hits Speed Bumps
Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technologies could provide significant safety benefits if widely deployed. However, several challenges could create problems for the U.S. Transportation Dept. and the auto industry, joint developers…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science Team Wins Challenge to Improve Reading Process of Reviews
Virginia Tech researchers say they have developed a better method of summarizing text through the mining or retrieval of key data, which won a Yelp-sponsored contest. The goal was to help guess an online review's rating from…
From ACM News
Nsf Grant to Help Point Way to 5g Wireless
Researchers are investigating millimeter-wave radio communication in the 60-GHz band, which could increase spectrum for wireless communication by several orders of magnitude.
From ACM News
Monkey Thoughts Move Virtual Arms—human-Machine Mind-Meld Next?
Rhesus monkeys in a lab are using their brains to move two arms of a virtual primate on a screen, moving researchers one step closer towards outfitting paralyzed humans with with exoskeletons that move like biological limbs.
From ACM News
The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge
Consider the tweet.
From ACM TechNews
Ditch the Pedometer – the AI in Your Phone Is Better
Smartphones can do a better job measuring the energy you expand during the day than today's wearable activity monitors, according to Amit Pande from the University of California, Davis.
From ACM TechNews
Stretchable Energy Sources
University of Delaware researchers have developed a compact, stretchable wire-shaped supercapacitor based on continuous carbon nanotube fibers.
From ACM News
The Highs and Hazards of Bitcoin
Bitcoin, the leading online alternative currency, has attracted high-minded entrepreneurs and crooks alike.
From ACM TechNews
Superfast Rock-Paper-Scissors Robot 'wins' Every Time
Japanese scientists have developed a robot that can choose a hand shape for the rock-paper-scissors game almost at the same time as a human.
From ACM TechNews
3-D Scanning Mobile App Makes It Easier to 3-D Print
Microsoft Research has developed a mobile app designed to make it easier and less expensive to create and print three-dimensional (3-D) content.
From ACM News
Black Holes Don't Make a Big Splash
Throughout our universe, tucked inside galaxies far, far away, giant black holes are pairing up and merging.
From ACM Opinion
Here's What the Morris Worm Prosecutor Thinks About Aaron Swartz
It was 25 years ago Tuesday that The New York Times first named 23-year-old Cornell graduate student Robert Morris as the culprit behind what became known as the Morris Worm, the Internet's first major malware outbreak.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum 'sealed Envelope' System Enables 'perfectly Secure' Information Storage
Cambridge University researchers say they have achieved a breakthrough in quantum cryptography by demonstrating that information can be encrypted and then decrypted with complete security using a "sealed envelope" system based…
From ACM TechNews
New Supercomputer ses Ssds Instead of Dram and Hard Drives
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory this month is deploying Catalyst, a new supercomputer that uses solid-state drive storage as an alternative to dynamic random access memory and hard drives, and delivers a peak performance…
From ACM TechNews
Nsa's Reported Tampering Could Change How Crypto Standards Are Made
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology is formally reviewing its cryptographic standards development processes to address a loss of public confidence following reports that the U.S. National Security Agency weakened…
From ACM News
Circle of Life: The Beautiful New Way to Visualize Biological Data
When Martin Krzywinski took a systems administrator job at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Center, he didn’t plan on becoming a pioneer of 21st century biological data visualization.
From ACM TechNews
Gimball: A Crash-Happy Flying Robot
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne have developed Gimball, a spherical flying robot that is protected by an elastic cage that enables it to absorb and rebound from impacts.
From ACM TechNews
New Computing Model Could Lead to Quicker Advancements in Medical Research
Virginia Tech researchers have developed data management and analysis software for data-intensive scientific applications in the cloud that could help speed up medical research.
From ACM TechNews
Addressing the Threat of Silent Data Corruption
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are conducting a large-scale field test study of incorrect results on high-performance computing platforms to gain a better understanding of soft errors and silent data corruption…