Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2013
From ACM TechNews
The Sensitive Robot: How Haptic Technology Is Closing the Mechanical Gap
As haptic technology advances with new sensors and feedback systems, robots might soon gain a sense of touch, further closing the gap between humans and machines.
From ACM TechNews
The Network of the Future, Beyond Theory
The European Union-funded EURO-NF project, "Anticipating the Network of the Future — From Theory to Design," pools the skills of 35 partners from across Europe and Israel to develop new projects and research directions.
From ACM Careers
10 Companies Chasing Innovations That Really Matter
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin faced some flak recently when he announced he was starting a new company in the already crowded field of digital payments.
From ACM News
National Security Letters Are Unconstitutional, Federal Judge Rules
A federal district court judge in San Francisco has ruled that National Security Letter (NSL) provisions in federal law violate the Constitution. The decision came in a lawsuit challenging a NSL on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications…
From ACM News
Panorama From Nasa Mars Rover Shows Mount Sharp
Rising above the present location of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, higher than any mountain in the 48 contiguous states of the United States, Mount Sharp is featured in new imagery from the rover.
From ACM News
Finally, A Robot Chimp that Turns Into a Tank
The harrowing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Chilean Copiapó mine collapse: extraordinarily dangerous circumstances that called for not just human but superhuman solutions…
From ACM Careers
Israel Ramps p Its Cyberdefense Training
Twice a week about 200 Israeli high school students in seven separate locations meet after school for six hours of extra classes.
From ACM TechNews
Studies Expose Gender Bias in Tech Job Listings
A series of studies has found a subtle gender bias in the way companies word job listings in fields such as engineering and programming.
From ACM TechNews
Google Wants to Replace Your Passwords With a Ring
Google has developed rings designed to be worn on the finger that provide security for logging into a computer or an online account.
From ACM TechNews
Creating Indestructible Self-Healing Circuits
Researchers say they have developed self-healing integrated chips that can automatically repair themselves.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Find 25 Countries Using Surveillance Software
As many as 25 governments, some with controversial human rights records, appear to engage in surveillance of citizens using off-the-shelf software.
From ACM TechNews
Steganography Is No Laughing Matter
A computer scientist has developed an approach to steganography that uses jokes to make hidden messages less obvious.
From ACM News
Physicists Say They Have Found a Higgs Boson
It helps solve one of the most fundamental riddles of the universe: how the Big Bang created something out of nothing 13.7 billion years ago.
From ACM News
10 Extraordinary Pentagon Mind Experiments
It’s been 30 years since the first message was sent over initial nodes of the Arpanet, the Pentagon-sponsored precursor to the internet. But this month, researchers announced something that could be equally historic: the passing…
From ACM News
Cryptographers Demonstrate New Crack For Common Web Encryption
It's long been known that one of the oldest and most widely used standards for encrypting Web sites has some serious weaknesses. But one group of researchers has found a method that downgrades that security scheme from vaguely…
From ACM News
High-Tech Designs Vie to Replace Nyc's Payphones
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computing Moves Forward
Technologies under development aim to exploit quantum behavior for computing and other applications.
From ACM TechNews
ltra-High-Speed Optical Communications Link Sets New Power Efficiency Record
IBM researchers have found a way to move large amounts of data within supercomputers while limiting power consumption.
From ACM TechNews
The Future of Ion Traps
Researchers say ion-trap technology could be a scalable option for quantum information processing.
From ACM Opinion
Peter G. Neumann: Top Cop on the Hair-Raising Cybersecurity Beat
The threat is always there—in your car, at the office, on the table next to where you sleep at night: a near-biblical plague of worms, phisher kings, identity thieves, even cyberterrorists.
From ACM TechNews
U.s. Security Chief Warns of Rising Cyber Threats
Cyberattacks represent the greatest threat to U.S. security, according to a new report by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
From ACM News
Pentagon Creating Teams to Launch Cyberattacks as Threat Grows
The Pentagon's Cyber Command will create 13 offensive teams by the fall of 2015 to help defend the nation against major computer attacks from abroad, Gen. Keith Alexander testified to Congress on Tuesday, a rare acknowledgment…
From ACM News
Google Concedes That Drive-By Prying Violated Privacy
Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people's privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, email, and other personal information from unsuspecting computer…
From ACM News
Controversial Quantum Computer Aces Entanglement Tests
A few days ago, I held a quantum computer in my hand—or did I?
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Explores Network to Sustain Large Data Dumps, Space Travel
NASA is studying what technology will be needed after 2022 in order to support future space communication and navigation.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft nveils Self-Sketching Whiteboard Prototype
Microsoft researchers are developing a whiteboard that can interpret users' sketches to complete the diagrams they are drawing.
From ACM TechNews
Connected Corridors
Researchers are working to increase freeway efficiency in California's Bay Area and Los Angeles, tied for the second-worst traffic in the United States.
From ACM TechNews
Making Cloud Computing More Efficient
DBSeer could alleviate cloud computing inefficiencies that arise from the overprovisioning that occurs with database-intensive applications.
From ACM TechNews
Tim Berners-Lee on the Making of New Worlds
Tim Berners-Lee's keynote address at the SXSW Interactive Conference emphasized the need to fight for an open Internet.
From ACM News
Goldwasser and Micali Receive 2012 ACM Turing Award
Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali have been named co-recipients of the 2012 ACM A.M. Turing Award.