Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2011
From ACM News
Swiping Is the Easy Part
The cellphone has been more than a cellphone for years, but soon it could take on an entirely new role—standing in for all of the credit and debit cards crammed into wallets.
From ACM TechNews
Fake Tweets By 'socialbot' Fool Hundreds of Followers
Three socialbots recently integrated themselves into a group of Twitter users, gained 250 followers, and received 240 responses to the tweets they sent over a two-week period as part of Socialbots 2011.
From ACM News
Diamond Could Store Quantum Information
Could be that diamonds are a geek’s best friend. Scientists have developed a new way to manipulate atoms inside diamond crystals so that they store information long enough to function as quantum memory, which encodes information…
From ACM News
Big Data to Drive a Surveillance Society
As real-time and batch analytics evolve using big data processing engines such as Hadoop, corporations will be able to track our activities, habits, and locations with greater precision than we ever thought possible.
From ACM News
Academics to 'embrace Wikipedia'
Students and academics at a world-leading London university want to build bridges between the Wikipedia website and formal research.
From ACM News
Making a Microscope Without a Lens
Recent work from the University of Twente doesn't use a lens yet achieves a resolution that is about twice what you would expect under optimum conditions. How was this achieved? Through the power of scattering and the magic…
From ACM News
2010: The Year Apple Also Became a Chip Company
While changes in the ancient market-share rivalry between chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices were unremarkable in 2010, the emergence of Apple as a force was anything but.
From ACM News
The First Plastic Computer Processor
Silicon may underpin the computers that surround us, but the rigid inflexibility of the semiconductor means it cannot reach everywhere. The first computer processor and memory chips made out of plastic semiconductors suggest…
From ACM TechNews
Cloud@Home: Goals, Challenges, and Benefits of a Volunteer Cloud
University of Messina professors Salvatore Distefano and Antonio Puliafito suggest using cloud-based volunteer computing, known as Cloud@Home, to solve many of the issues relating to current cloud-computing systems. Cloud@Home…
From ACM TechNews
The Clock Is Ticking on Encryption
Cracking encrypted messages can take a very long time using existing technology. However, researchers warn that quantum computers eventually could make cracking encrypted messages much easier.
From ACM TechNews
Is Government Ready for the Semantic Web?
Semantic technology is capable of supplying answers to questions that might be of interest to U.S. government agencies that have long struggled with problems identifying patterns or probable sequences in massive volumes of data…
From ACM News
Browser Wars: Mozilla's Firefox Challenges Microsoft's IE, Google's Chrome
The Internet browser wars are back. Mozilla released its long-awaited Firefox 4 browser Tuesday, a critical moment for the upstart that first challenged mighty Microsoft's browser dominance in 2004. But the Mountain View nonprofit…
From ACM News
Computer Chips Wired with Nerve Cells
Nerve cell tendrils readily thread their way through tiny semiconductor tubes, researchers find, forming a crisscrossed network like vines twining towards the sun.
From ACM News
Surveillance Robots Know When to Hide
The spy approaches the target building under cover of darkness, taking a zigzag path to avoid well-lit areas and sentries. He selects a handy vantage point next to a dumpster, taking cover behind it when he hears the footsteps…
From ACM News
How Did a British Polytechnic Graduate Become the Design Genius Behind
Few Westerners have ever seen the forging of a Japanese samurai sword. It's considered a sacred practice in Japan; one of the few traditional arts that has yet to be bettered by modern science. Japanese smiths work through…
From ACM News
Attack Code for SCADA Vulnerabilities Released Online
The security of critical infrastructure is in the spotlight again this week after a researcher released attack code that can exploit several vulnerabilities found in systems used at oil-, gas-, and water-management facilities…
From ACM News
Does Rsa Securid Have a .s. Gov't-Authorized Back Door?
Does the RSA SecurID two-token authentication system include a back door that was built in at the request of the U.S. government in exchange for letting RSA export SecurID?
From ACM News
Tiny 3-D-Printed Insect Robots Take Flight
A team of roboticists at Cornell University have created tiny flying robotic insects using 3-D printing. The flapping wings of the hovering robotic insects (known as ornithopters) are very thin, lightweight and yet strong.
From ACM TechNews
Study Analyzes Role of Mobile Software in the Future Internet
Donghua University researchers have performed a macrodynamics analysis of mobile agents' migration behaviors that could provide the basis for a ubiquitous Internet framework in which mobile agents autonomously move between computers…
From ACM TechNews
A New System Has Been Developed For an Id in a Mobile Phone
Carlos III University of Madrid researchers are developing a way to integrate electronic identification data into an SIM mobile phone card to use the device as a means of personal identification.
From ACM News
The Drive Toward Hydrogen Vehicles Just Got Shorter
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Alabama have revealed a new single-stage method for recharging the hydrogen storage compound ammonia borane. The breakthrough makes hydrogen a more attractive…
From ACM News
Google Funds Georgia Tech Internet Transparency Research
A team of Georgia Tech researchers will use a $1 million Google Research Focused Award to conduct research on Internet transparency.
From ACM News
E-Textbooks Get a Lift From Publishers
Over the years, publishers have tried a variety of strategies to sell digital textbooks but with limited success. Two major publishers, Pearson and McGraw-Hill, are trying a new tactic.
From ACM TechNews
Drexel Students Develop Music-Playing Robot
Drexel University researchers have developed RoboNova, a music-playing robot with the long-term goal of getting it to become an interactive participant in a live music ensemble with other performers.
From ACM TechNews
New Software Calculates Heating Costs in Greenhouse Operations
Jonathan Frantz, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher, and colleagues have developed Virtual Grower, software for calculating heating costs in greenhouse operations.
From ACM TechNews
Terahertz Superchips Can Do It All
Cornell University researchers have developed terahertz radiation microchips that could be used in a wide range of medical and scientific applications, including cancer detection, tooth decay, and food inspection.
From ACM News
When CS Students Need Help Asap, They Can Now Turn to Piazzza
Piazzza is a next-generation, wiki-style Q&A platform that has been adopted by more than half of the undergraduate students at Stanford University and is growing virally at MIT and 70 other campuses.
From ACM News
At&t, T-Mobile Merger Blasted
A day after AT&T announced it would buy T-Mobile USA to create the biggest wireless carrier in the country, consumer advocates and some members of Congress blasted the deal, arguing the $39 billion merger would lead to higher…
From ACM News
Dueling Algorithms
There's an old joke about two hikers on a trail, one wearing hiking boots and the other running shoes. "Why the running shoes?" the first hiker asks. "In case of bears," the second answers. The first hiker laughs and says,…
From ACM News
Https Is More Secure, So Why Isn't the Web Using It?
You wouldn't write your username and passwords on a postcard and mail it for the world to see, so why are you doing it online? Every time you log in to Twitter, Facebook or any other service that uses a plain HTTP connection…