Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2013
From ACM Opinion
Will Bitcoins Make Me Rich?
Let me begin this column with a lengthy disclosure. One morning last week, I stopped at my bank, filled out a withdrawal slip for $1,027.51, and walked away with an envelope full of cash.
From ACM TechNews
Futuristic 'Transient Electronics' Disappear When No Longer Needed
Tiny, biocompatible electronic devices could be implanted into the body to relieve pain or battle infection for a specific period of time before dissolving.
From ACM TechNews
This Humanoid Robot Gets Pushed Around but Stays on Its Feet
The COmpliant huMANoid (COMAN) robot features joints with variable stiffness.
From ACM News
Robot Truck Platoons Roll Forward
Imagine cruising down a three-lane highway and rounding a bend to find four trucks rolling along in single-file. They are all traveling close together—perhaps too close—but otherwise everything seems normal.
From ACM News
Crash Course: Training the Brain of a Driverless Car
Early attempts at driverless cars have had little difficulty gathering the loads of data required to operate autonomously.
From ACM Careers
Silicon Valley Goes Hollywood: Top Coders Can Now Get Agents
To be a good coder in Silicon Valley is to be among the pampered elite.
From ACM News
Nasa Associate Administrator on Asteroid Initiative
"The mission to find, capture and redirect an asteroid robotically, and then visit it with astronauts to study it and return samples takes advantage of expertise across all of NASA in an integrated approach to exploration..."
From ACM Opinion
Intel Cooks p Future of TV—A Potential Mess for Cable
Visualize the TV service you've always wanted: a gorgeous interface that does away with clunky (and often ad-strewn) programming grids; a simple remote that isn't a crushing array of buttons; a cloud-based DVR that doesn't require…
From ACM News
Virtual Reality, Goggles and All, Attempts Return
Oculus VR captured the attention of the this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco with the Oculus Rift, its VR headset that's more like a pair of ski goggles than those bulky gaming helmets of the 1990s that…
From ACM News
White House Budget Would Trim Nasa Funding Slightly
The NASA budget would shrink slightly under President Obama's budget proposal. The White House is asking for $17.7 billion in funding, down about $50 million from what the agency received in 2012.
From ACM TechNews
Radical Roads Drive Robot Cars
Los Angeles has completed the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control system, synchronizing its 4,400 traffic lights.
From ACM TechNews
Tech Titans Plot to Reprogram Internet of the Future
Many tech firms are collaborating to develop an open source software-defined networking project known as OpenDaylight.
From ACM TechNews
C San Diego Computer Scientists Develop First-person Player Video Game That Teaches How to Program in Java
CodeSpells is an immersive, first-person player video game designed to teach students how to program in Java.
From ACM TechNews
Baseball Meets Internet of Things: Goodbye, Bad Umpires?
Connected baseball equipment, in combination with sensors and transmitters located through a stadium, could deliver much more precise verdicts than umpires.
From ACM TechNews
Japan Lab Claims Its Software Can Read Dreams
Software developed by a Japanese research institute can determine what people are dreaming about by analyzing their brain waves.
From ACM TechNews
British Library Sets Out to Archive the Web
The British Library is archiving every British website and e-book for future researchers.
From ACM News
Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past
Professor Peter Turchin is the driving force behind a field where scientists analyze history in the hopes of finding patterns they can then use to predict the future. Unless something changes, he says, we're due for a wave…
From ACM News
At&t Researchers Set a Long-Haul Data Record
Researchers at AT&T have devised a way to increase the distance that large amounts of data can travel through a fiber-optic connection. The technique should allow 400-gigabit-per-second signals to make more efficient ocean-spanning…
From ACM News
Cyberattacks Abound Yet Companies Tell Sec Losses Are Few
The 27 largest U.S. companies reporting cyber attacks say they sustained no major financial losses, exposing a disconnect with federal officials who say billions of dollars in corporate secrets are being stolen.
From ACM Careers
Robot Hot Among Surgeons But Fda Taking Fresh Look
The biggest thing in operating rooms these days is a million-dollar, multi-armed robot named da Vinci, used in nearly 400,000 surgeries nationwide last year—triple the number just four years earlier.
From ACM Careers
Scientific Articles Accepted (personal Checks, Too)
The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects.
From ACM TechNews
Don’t Call It Vaporware: Scientists Use Cloud of Atoms as Optical Memory Device
Researchers have demonstrated a method for storing visual images within a thin vapor of rubidium atoms.
From ACM TechNews
Developing New Information Services More Quickly
Researchers have designed a new service-engineering platform to help accelerate the development of information technology services.
From ACM TechNews
Uruguay’s One Laptop Per Child Program: Impact and Numbers
Uruguay has distributed more than 500,000 free laptops to its students and teachers over the last five years as part of its Plan Ceibal.
From ACM News
Remaining Martian Atmosphere Still Dynamic
Mars has lost much of its original atmosphere, but what's left remains quite active, recent findings from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity indicate. Rover team members reported diverse findings today at the European Geosciences Union…
From ACM Careers
Fake Twitter Followers Become Multimillion-Dollar Business
Far from slowing, the market for fake Twitter followers seems to be taking off.
From ACM News
Computers That Identify You By Your Thoughts
Instead of typing your password, in the future you may only have to think your password, according to School of Information researchers. A new study explores the feasibility of brainwave-based computer authentication as a substitute…
From ACM News
Will We Ever… Communicate Telepathically?
In a lab at Harvard Medical School, a man is using his mind to wag a rat's tail.
From ACM Opinion
17 of Apple's Favorite Apps
Steve Jobs was a stickler for detail, requiring final approval on everything from ads to wording on his Keynote presentations. It's no surprise then that the company he built places similar attention to detail when choosing apps…
From ACM TechNews
The Grooviest Words of Medieval Times
New software is determining the dates of British documents from approximately 1066 to the 1400s, based on popular words or phrases they contain.