Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2012
From ACM News
Hackers Attack Iranian Oil Ministry Website, Vital Data Remains Intact
A spokesman of the Iranian oil ministry confirmed a cyber attack on the ministry's data systems, but stressed that the Iranian oil industries' data has not been damaged or lost in the attack.
From ACM News
Vint Cerf: We Knew What We Were nleashing on the World
Vint Cerf invented the protocol that rules them all: TCP/IP.
From ACM News
How Big Data Is Changing Astronomy (Again)
Think of all the data humans have collected over the long history of astronomy, from the cuneiform tablets of ancient Babylon to images—like the one here—taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
From ACM News
What's a 'computer Vision Specialist' and Why Does Apple Need One?
When Apple posted a job listing last week for a "Computer Vision specialist," the tech-obsessed echo chamber began speculating which Apple product line would be employing this person's expertise.
From ACM News
Intel's Ivy Bridge Chips Launch Using '3d Transistors'
The American firm says the innovation allows it to offer more computational power while using less energy.
From ACM TechNews
This Supercomputer Is Rethinking the Future of Software
The International Center of Excellence for Computational Science and Engineering's Daresbury lab recently installed an IBM BlueGene/Q supercomputer in order to help re-engineer software to run on future computers with millions…
From ACM TechNews
. of Florida Dean Proposes to Save Money By Revising Faculty Jobs to Focus on Teaching, Not Research
The University of Florida College of Engineering is proposing to revise the assignments of some of its tenured faculty in the computer science department to focus more on teaching and advising and less on research in an attempt…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Boost Efficiency of Multi-Hop Wireless Networks
North Carolina State University researchers have developed centrality-based power control technology, which they say is a more efficient data transmission approach that can boost the amount of data networks can transmit by as…
From ACM TechNews
New Institute to Tackle 'data Tsunami' Challenge
U.S. Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory researchers recently received part of a $25 million grant to address the problem of extracting knowledge from massive data sets.
From ACM News
Iran Decodes U.S. Drone Intel
Senior Iranian military officials announced that the country's experts have decoded the intelligence gathering system and memory hard discs of the United States' highly advanced RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft that was downed…
From ACM News
Pentagon Looks to Dna from Plants to Foil Electronic Component Counterfeiters
Counterfeit electronics embedded in missile guidance systems and hundred-million-dollar aircraft have become a serious problem for the U.S. military and its contractors.
From ACM News
New Report Recommends NASA Rethink How It Avoids Contaminating Other Worlds
Over the past several decades, there's been a stunning revolution in how we view the prospect of life on other planets.
From ACM News
Tomorrow's Privacy Struggles, On Display Today
The thorny privacy issues of tomorrow were on display Thursday morning, when AT&T showed off a batch of technologies under development at AT&T Labs, the company’s research arm.
From ACM TechNews
Secret Computer Code Threatens Science
Although modern science calls for researchers to share their work so that their peers can verify the success or failure of experiments, most researchers still do not share the source code for the software used in their projects…
From ACM TechNews
Open Source Hardware Movement Seeks Legitimacy
A group of technologists recently established the Open Source Hardware Association to promote the creation and sharing of hardware or electronic designs.
From ACM TechNews
Software Helps Spot Groups of Fake Online Reviews
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Google have developed software that can identify groups of fraudulent online reviews that attempt to steer the sentiment of products or businesses.
From ACM TechNews
New Julia Language Seeks to Be the C For Scientists
MIT researchers have developed Julia, a programming language designed for building technical applications. The language has already been used for image analysis and linear algebra research.
From ACM TechNews
Man and Machine: Better Writers, Better Grades
A University of Akron study comparing human graders and software designed to score student essays concluded that they achieved virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software proving more reliable in some cases.
From ACM News
Going With the Flow: Google's Secret Switch to the Next Wave of Networking
In early 1999, an associate computer science professor at UC Santa Barbara climbed the steps to the second floor headquarters of a small startup in Palo Alto, and wound up surprising himself by accepting a job offer.
From ACM News
Security Researcher nearths Plans For Iran's Halal Internet
Iran appears to have recently published a Persian-language "Request for Information" for an even-more filtered and monitored version of the Internet than what presently exists in the Islamic Republic.
From ACM News
Medical Device Hack Attacks May Kill, Researchers Warn
Karen Sandler has a big heart. And that's not just because she is head of the Gnome Foundation—a non-profit community group dedicated to making and giving away free software for PCs.
From ACM TechNews
Demand For Linux Skills Sets a New Record This Month
People with Linux skills and experience have a good chance of finding a Linux job, or landing a better position.
From ACM TechNews
Research Consortium Claims Solution For Multi-Core Scaling
Hierarchical hardware coherence that remains transparent to application programs could be used to solve the scaling problem for next-generation processors, according to a Semiconductor Research Corp. study.
From ACM TechNews
Network Science Reveals the Cities That Lead the World's Music Listening Habits
Clique Research Cluster scientists recently analyzed data from Last.fm, a social Web site for music, to determine which cities set the world's listening trends.
From ACM News
War of the Worlds: When Science, Politics Collide
Roger Cone is a microbiologist, not a politician. He struggles with a basic truth: For all the scientific acceptance of evolution, many Americans simply don't believe it is factually accurate.
From ACM TechNews
Data Centers in Va. and Elsewhere Have Major Carbon Footprint, Report Says
Data centers and mobile telecommunications networks use more than 623 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, and a 2008 study found that the IT sector represented 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
From ACM TechNews
Programming Project Comes to Primary Schools
A volunteer project in the United Kingdom is writing session plans for teaching the basics of computer programming to children between the ages of 10 and 11.
From ACM TechNews
Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Deals With 5 Top Universities
Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller recently received $16 million in venture capital funding and formed partnerships with five universities to form Coursera, a free online learning system…
From ACM News
Cassini Successfully Flies Over Enceladus
Cassini flew by Enceladus at an altitude of about 46 miles (74 kilometers). This flyby was designed primarily for the ion and neutral mass spectrometer to analyze, or "taste," the composition of the moon's south polar plume as…
From ACM News
Nancy Lynch Named 2012 Athena Lecturer
MIT's Nancy Lynch was named the 2012 Athena Lecturer for her advances in distributed systems that enable dependable Internet and wireless network applications.