Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2014
From ACM TechNews
A 'babelfish' Could Be the Web's Next Big Thing, Says AI Expert
University of Southampton professor Nigel Shadbolt thinks automatic real-time machine translation could be possible within 25 years.
From ACM TechNews
How Your Tweets Reveal Your Home Location
An algorithm developed by IBM researchers exploits anyone's last 200 Twitter postings to reveal their home city location with nearly 70-percent accuracy.
From ACM News
DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 2014: Google’s Schaft Will Be Self-Funded, More Competitors Added
The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 2014 has announced Google’s SCHAFT robot will compete in the self-funded track.
From ACM TechNews
Despite Pwn2own 2014 Hacks, Application Sandboxing Still Critical
Participants and organizers of the recent CanSecWest security conference's Pwn2Own hacking contest say popular software is increasingly more secure.
From ACM Careers
Space Sunflower May Help Snap Pictures of Planets
A spacecraft that looks like a giant sunflower might one day be used to acquire images of Earth-like rocky planets around nearby stars.
From ACM News
Revelations of N.s.a. Spying Cost .s. Tech Companies
Microsoft has lost customers, including the government of Brazil.
From ACM News
Graphene Helps Copper Wires Keep Their Cool
When people in the chip industry talk about the thermal problems in computer processors, they get dramatic.
From ACM Opinion
How to Win $1 Billion on Ncaa Basketball: A Mathematician's Tips
Last Thursday, the underground classroom at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York was filled to capacity for a college professor's PowerPoint-aided lecture.
From ACM TechNews
Alan Turing Institute to Be Set Up to Research Big Data
The U.K. government will provide 42 million UK pounds ($70 million US) to fund a research center that will carry the name of computer pioneer Alan Turing.
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Designs a Robot For Mars
U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration researchers have developed Valkyrie, a humanoid robot that will one day explore and study Mars.
From ACM TechNews
How a Laser Beam Could Quadruple the Speed of the Internet
A new kind of laser holds the potential to quadruple bandwidth on the fastest fiber-optic networks.
From ACM TechNews
Smartphone to Become Smarter With 'deep Learning' Innovation
Researchers are developing a deep-learning method to enable smartphones and other mobile devices to understand and identify objects in a camera's field of view.
From ACM TechNews
Data Mining Reveals How Conspiracy Theories Emerge on Facebook
Computational social scientists have studied the Facebook interactions of more than 1 million people to examine the spread of misinformation on the Internet.
From ACM News
Spinoffs from Spyland
It takes more than a little tradecraft to spin off a startup from the National Security Agency.
From ACM News
Facebook Introduces 'hack,' the Programming Language of the Future
Facebook engineers Bryan O'Sullivan, Julien Verlaguet, and Alok Menghrajani spent the last few years building a programming language unlike any other.
From ACM TechNews
Open Source Project Builds Mobile Networks Without Big Carriers
Range Networks is working on an open source project that aims to shift mobile network creation from proprietary hardware to inexpensive commodity hardware.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Simulations Developed By Mu Researchers Help Predict Blast Scenarios, Also Have Crossover Appeal in Animation
University of Missouri researchers have developed computer-based methods for simulating building explosions.
From ACM TechNews
Nanoscale Optical Switch Breaks Miniaturization Barrier
The development of an ultra-fast and ultra-small optical switch could lead to the proliferation of electronic devices that detect and control light.
From ACM TechNews
Data-Mining For Crystal 'gold' at Slac's X-Ray Laser
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory researchers are analyzing data using a tool that can produce high-quality images of important proteins using fewer samples.
From ACM Opinion
Building Bicep2: A Conversation with Jamie Bock
Caltech Professor of Physics Jamie Bock and his collaborators announced on March 17, 2014 that they have successfully measured a B-mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the BICEP2 telescope at…
From ACM News
China's Moon Rover Awake but Immobile
China's Moon rover Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit," has stopped hopping. But its ears are still twitching—and communicating with Earth.
From ACM Careers
With Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus, a Virtual Battleground May Finally Be Here
Virtual reality has never quite materialized for most consumers.
From ACM News
The Automotive Internet 'road Map' Is Becoming Easier to Read
Announcements herald greater focus on vehicle-based communication.
From ACM News
The $1,000 Genome
In Silicon Valley, Moore's law seems to stand on equal footing with the natural laws codified by Isaac Newton.
From ACM News
Why Mh370 Could Still Talk to Satellites After Its Other Comms Went Dark
It's the latest mystery in the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Was a key communications system on board the plane disabled before or after the co-pilot calmly bid air traffic controllers goodnight?
From ACM News
Nasa Historic Earth Images Still Hold Research Value
NASA's Seasat satellite became history long ago, but it left a legacy of images of Earth's ocean, volcanoes, forests and other features that were made by the first synthetic aperture radar ever mounted on a satellite.
From ACM TechNews
Obama Creates Climate Tool With Google, Others
The White House has announced its Climate Data Initiative, through which it will partner with organizations to create tools to help communities adapt to climate change.
From ACM TechNews
Creating a Graphene-Metal Sandwich to Improve Electronics
Researchers have found that creating a graphene-copper-graphene sandwich strongly enhances the heat conducting properties of copper.
From ACM TechNews
A Degree Where Techie Meets Business Smarts
Science and technology graduates increasingly are pursuing a hybrid professional science master's degree to broaden their career opportunities.
From ACM TechNews
Volunteers and Algorithms Need Training to Find Mh370
As the search continues for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, crowdsourcing has emerged as a way to allow the public to help scan satellite imagery to find the missing jetliner.