Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2013
From ACM TechNews
Researchers se Shopping Cart to Put Mobile, Nfc Payment Theft on Wheels
Researchers have found that contactless payments are more vulnerable then previously believed.
From ACM TechNews
Mit, Notre Dame, t San Antonio Help Build Hybrid Cloud Environment For Education
Internet2 is working to bring a hybrid cloud environment to its community of research and educational institutions.
From ACM Careers
Shazam! How the Music Industry Hears What You (will) Love
At some point in 2014, your friends are totally going to be into this Dutch DJ named Martin Garrix.
From ACM News
When Bitcoins Go Bad: 4 Stories of Fraud, Hacking, and Digital Currencies
With Bitcoin interest (and prices) spiking, you might be considering investing in your own little cache of digital currency.
From ACM News
'Soft' Biometrics Is the New Way to Monitor People
Cameras are strewn around our environment, catching glimpses of our faces everywhere we go, yet even the best facial recognition technology still has a hard time picking us out of the crowd.
From ACM News
Scientist-Developed Malware Covertly Jumps Air Gaps Using Inaudible Sound
Computer scientists have developed a malware prototype that uses inaudible audio signals to communicate, a capability that allows the malware to covertly transmit keystrokes and other sensitive data even when infected machines…
From ACM TechNews
Study: Black Women Falling Behind in STEM Fields
Women of color, especially black women, are significantly underrepresented in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics positions
From ACM TechNews
Wave Fingers, Make Faces: The Future of Computing at Intel
Intel's perceptual computing technology incorporates gestures, facial recognition, and voice recognition to make devices more "natural, intuitive, and immersive."
From ACM TechNews
Magnetic Tape to the Rescue
Magnetic tape is being revived as a viable storage medium for the vast volume of data generated, which doubles every two years at its current rate.
From ACM TechNews
Japanese Robots Earn Their Keep
Japanese researchers have developed a robot designed to provide assistance and companionship to human astronauts who spend months working in space.
From ACM TechNews
Patients Drive New Wheelchair With Their Tongues
The new Tongue Drive System is a wearable system that enables paralyzed people to control wheelchairs with flicks of their pierced tongues.
From ACM TechNews
Robotutor Marks the Homework of a Class of Thousands
Codewebs, an artificially intelligent tutor for online students that can analyze and assess submitted code, can give students fast, tailored feedback and guidance.
From ACM News
Nasa's Dawn Fills Out Its Ceres Dance Card
It's going to be a ball when NASA's Dawn spacecraft finally arrives at the dwarf planet Ceres, and mission managers have now inked in the schedule on Dawn's dance card.
From ACM Opinion
Google Puts Money on Robots, sing the Man Behind Android
In an out-of-the-way Google office, two life-size humanoid robots hang suspended in a corner.
From ACM News
Digital Era Confounds the Courts
The Founding Fathers weren't big on texting.
From ACM News
Inside a Twitter Robot Factory
One day last month, Jim Vidmar bought 1,000 fake Twitter accounts for $58 from an online vendor in Pakistan.
From ACM TechNews
Mission Possible: Simulation-Based Training and Experimentation on Display
The Fleet Integrated Synthetic Training/Testing Facility software and gaming technology offers an affordable, adaptive way to train sailors for combat scenarios.
From ACM TechNews
Prestigious Reis Prize Awarded to 31-Year-Old Information Theorist
Researchers have developed a security system for wireless communications that would prevent a would-be eavesdropper from receiving transmitted information.
From ACM TechNews
What Can Happen When Graphene Meets a Semiconductor
Researchers say they have identified new characteristics of electron transport in a two-dimensional sheet of graphene layered on top of a semiconductor.
From ACM News
2014 Bower Award Goes To… Validation
Edmund Clarke will receive the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science.
From ACM News
Imagine Your Face As Your Future Iphone Password
You may one day be able to unlock your iPhone based just on your good looks.
From ACM News
Europa's Choppy Ocean Looks Friendly to Life
As moons go, Europa is doing pretty well in the looks department.
From ACM News
Pilot se of Automation Eyed in Air Crashes
Pilots are becoming so reliant on the computer systems that do most of the flying in today's airliners that on the rare occasions when something goes wrong, they're sometimes unprepared to take control, according to aviation…
From ACM News
Nasa Outlines Ingenious Plan to Resurrect the Kepler Planet Hunter
Back in August, NASA formally threw in the towel on attempts to get its Kepler planet-hunting probe working again.
From ACM Opinion
Diagnosis For Healthcare.gov: nrealistic Technology Expectations
The fiasco with the $600 million federal health insurance website wasn't all bureaucratic.
From ACM News
Supreme Court Declines Case on Making Online Retailers Collect Sales Taxes
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in state efforts to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect sales tax from customers even in places where the companies do not have a physical presence.
From ACM TechNews
Uae Researchers Pioneer First Patient-Specific 3D Virtual Birth Simulator
A new virtual birthing simulator could enable mothers, doctors, and midwives to see how a birth will likely occur.
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Begins Exploring Quantum Computing
U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration researchers have started running applications on a novel machine to explore quantum computing.
From ACM TechNews
Sc13 Student Cluster Competition Results Are In
The University of Texas at Austin's Team Longhorn was the overall winner of the 2013 Student Cluster Competition (SCC) at the recent SC13 Conference in Denver.
From ACM TechNews
Gates Foundation Big Data Grants Stress Open Data
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has allocated six $100,000 grants to projects aimed at "increasing interoperability of social good data."