Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2011
From ACM News
Rare, Last Look Inside Space Shuttle Atlantis
Space shuttle Atlantis, which only five months ago flew the final mission of NASA's 30-year shuttle program, is now being prepared for its public display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
From ACM News
Making Science Leap From the Page
When a college textbook, "Principles of Biology," comes out from the Nature Publishing Group in January, one place it won't be is on the shelves of school bookstores.
From ACM News
Augmented Monoliths: Stonehenge Goes Digital
Ever wanted to stand at the centre of Stonehenge at summer solstice and appreciate the site’s beauty without the accompaniment of tourists or druids?
From ACM News
Digital Data on Patients Raises Risk of Breaches
One afternoon last spring, Micky Tripathi received a panicked call from an employee. Someone had broken into his car and stolen his briefcase and company laptop along with it.
From ACM News
Supercomputers Get Real
HPC designers, domain experts, and embedded chip makers are teaming up to create optimized applications.
From ACM Careers
Can Cornell Build a Silicon Valley Culture in New York City?
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Cornell University and its partner Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have been approved to build a two million square foot Roosevelt Island campus focusing on technology…
From ACM News
Should We Fire the First Shot in a Cyberwar?
Military bureaucracies around the world are likely to see offensive capabilities as increasingly attractive in any cyberwar, suggests the head of the computer research arm of the National Academy of Sciences.
From ACM News
Sopa Hearings Cast Debate as Old Media vs. New Media
The circus atmosphere of the hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), reflected the high-stakes, emotional nature of the debate over how to protect copyrighted movies, songs, or books…
From ACM News
Iran's Alleged Drone Hack: Tough, but Possible
Take everything that Iran says about its captured U.S. drone with a grain of salt. But its new claim that it spoofed the drone’s navigational controls isn't implausible.
From ACM TechNews
Mosaic Report: Synergies Between Cs, Social Sciences
The NSF's Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences recently released a report that assessed the directorate's research investments and identified future research directions.
From ACM TechNews
Improving Security in the Cloud
Weizmann Institute and MIT researchers are moving closer to developing a method for working with data while it is still encrypted, providing an encrypted result that can later be securely deciphered.
From ACM TechNews
Tool Detects Patterns Hidden in Vast Data Sets
Researchers at the Broad Institute and Harvard University have developed a tool that can analyze large data sets.
From ACM TechNews
Japan Group to Build Smart Power Grids That Treat Energy Like Network Data
Japan's Digital Grid Consortium plans to develop large-scale energy grids that can handle power the way the Internet handles data, using routers and service providers to efficiently manage and direct the flow of electricity.
From ACM News
Dm: Iran Pioneering Drone Production
Iran is a leading country in manufacturing different types of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi stressed on Monday.
From ACM News
Tiny Biocomputers Move Closer to Reality
Several research groups are developing DNA-based circuits that could one day monitor and treat disease from inside the body.
From ACM News
Data Mining Without Prejudice
A new technique for finding relationships between variables in large data sets makes no prior assumptions about what those relationships might be.
From ACM TechNews
San Diego Supercomputer Center Welcomes 'gordon' Supercomputer as a Research Powerhouse
The San Diego Supercomputer Center's new Gordon supercomputer is designed to help researchers solve the most challenging data-intensive problems, including mapping genomes for personalized medicine and calculating thousands of…
From ACM TechNews
Entry-Level It Jobs Will Be Plentiful in 2012, Experts Predict
There is a shortage of information technology (IT) workers in 18 states and Washington, DC, according to Dice.com. The shortage will probably drive entry-level IT salaries up in 2012, according to industry experts.
From ACM News
Warning to Gossipy Grunts: Darpa's Eyeing Your Email
The Pentagon's intent on weeding out "insider threats"—troops or other military personnel who might be disgruntled enough to (Wiki)leak some documents or mentally unhinged enough to go on a shooting rampage.
From ACM News
Scientists Break World Record For Data-Transfer Speeds
Researchers are claiming a new world record for data transfers over long distances.
From ACM News
Vint Cerf: Sopa Means 'unprecedented Censorship' of the Web
Google chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf has sent a letter to U.S. House Judiciary chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), adding his voice to those of many other Internet and cybersecurity experts opposing the Stop Online Piracy…
From ACM News
Quantum Pagerank Algorithm Outperforms Classical Version
Researchers from Complutense University of Madrid have developed a quantum version of Google's PageRank algorithm that outperforms the world's leading search engine.
From ACM News
5 Disruptive Technologies Happening Now
From e-books to 3D printing, these technologies are destroying markets and creating new ones.
From ACM TechNews
New Path to Flex and Stretch Electronics
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have developed a technique for producing flexible and stretchable backplanes that could be used, in combination with inkjet printing, to enable the fabrication of low-cost flexible…
From ACM TechNews
Sharpening the Lines
Researchers at MIT and the University of Utah have developed a technique that they say surpasses the fundamental limits of microchip design and could lead to more computational power being packed into future electronic devices…
From ACM News
Iran Hijacked .s. Drone, Says Iranian Engineer
Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the U.S. military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's…
From ACM TechNews
Multi-Purpose Photonic Chip Paves the Way to Programmable Quantum Processors
University of Bristol researchers have developed an optical chip that generates, manipulates, and measures two quantum phenomena, entanglement and mixture, which are essential for building quantum computers.
From ACM News
Did a U.s. Radar Research Station Disable Russia's Phobos Probe?
Soon after the ill-fated Phobos-Grunt spacecraft stalled in Earth orbit, a former Russian official implicated "powerful American radars" in Alaska. Is there a basis to the claim, or is it just scapegoating?
From ACM TechNews
First Molybdenite Microchip
Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures have developed a molybdenite microchip that confirms the potential of molybdenum disulfide as an ideal material for…
From ACM TechNews
Senators, Critics Question Icann's Generic Tld Plan
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' plan to introduce hundreds of new generic top-level domains next year may be moving too fast, said U.S. senators at a recent hearing.