Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2011
From ACM News
Open Source Hardware: Seven Questions For Limor Fried
Limor Fried discusses the future of the open source hardware movement, Facebook’s decision to open source its new data center, and being featured on the cover of Wired.
From ACM News
NASA Concludes Attempts To Contact Mars Rover Spirit
NASA is ending attempts to regain contact with the long-lived Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which last communicated on March 22, 2010.
From ACM News
Start-p Gambles Folks Will Wear Special Contacts to Get Their Reality Augmented
There could be a lot of reasons why virtual reality hasn’t taken off, and the bulky glasses may not be the only thing holding back the industry.
From ACM News
Augmented Reality Has Potential to Reshape Our Lives
TV football fans are used to seeing augmented reality in action. That virtual yellow first-down line superimposed on an actual football field is one of the more visible examples of a technology that is still not well known…
From ACM News
Calculating the Potential Return on Your Major
As the cost of college climbs ever higher each year, amid a national economic forecast that remains cloudy, questions about the value of a four-year degree are being raised with increased urgency.
From ACM TechNews
FBI Set to Kill Secret-Stealing Russian 'Botnet.' Is Your Computer Infected?
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized control of a Russian botnet that commandeered millions of personal computers that may have penetrated U.S. diplomatic, military, and law enforcement computer systems.
From ACM TechNews
Ncsa Installing 153 Teraflop Supercomputer
The U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications has begun installing Forge, a 153-teraflop hybrid supercomputer that contains both central processing units and general-purpose graphics processing units. It should be…
From ACM TechNews
New Research Shows Keystroke Biometric Is an Effective Method to Id, Authenticate Online Test Takers
Pace University researchers have found that the keystroke biometric is an inexpensive and effective method for user identification and authentication.
From ACM News
Can Tornado Prediction Be Improved?
Advances in computer modeling and other technologies still cannot overcome the fundamental complexity of thunderstorm and subsequent tornado formation.
From ACM News
Is Graphene a Miracle Material?
The material graphene was touted as "the next big thing" even before its pioneers were handed the Nobel Prize last year. Many believe it could spell the end for silicon and change the future of computers and other devices…
From ACM News
Why Would-Be Engineers End Up As English Majors
Amenah Ibrahim vividly remembers her first introduction to thermodynamics.
From ACM News
The Mind-Expanding World of Quantum Computing
On the outskirts of Oxford lives a brilliant and distressingly thin physicist named David Deutsch, who believes in multiple universes and has conceived of an as yet unbuildable computer to test their existence.
From ACM TechNews
The Invisible iPhone
Hasso Plattner Institute researchers have developed a system that enables iPhone users to perform actions on their devices without actually holding the phone.
From ACM TechNews
A $1m Prize For the Best Product Recommendation Algorithm
RichRelevance and Overstock.com are offering the $1 million RecLab Prize to the developer team that builds the most powerful online recommendation engine.
From ACM TechNews
Earthquake? Terrorist Bomb? Call in the AI
Durham University researchers are developing a training simulation system designed to help emergency services workers adapt to chaotic situations. The system takes a big picture view of an ongoing situation, analyzing information…
From ACM TechNews
Awards Encourages Women to Break Tech Glass Ceiling
The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology recently held its annual Women In Vision Awards honoring women who are challenging the male-dominated technology field. The meeting drew some of the industry's leading women technologists…
From ACM TechNews
Red Hot: The Computer Science Job Market
Across the United States, new computer science graduates from strong programs are receiving extraordinary job offers, with starting salaries as high as $105,000 and signing bonuses as high as $30,000.
From ACM TechNews
Movement Through the Power of the Mind
U.S. universities are conducting research in motor memory and brain-machine interfaces. A Brown University research team is developing technologies to restore the communication, mobility, and independence of people with neurologic…
From ACM News
Autocratic Regimes Fight Web-Savvy Opponents with Their Own Tools
For weeks, Syrian democracy activists have used Facebook and Twitter to promote a wave of bold demonstrations. Now, the Syrian government and its supporters are striking back—not just with bullets, but with their own social…
From ACM News
How Spam Works, from End to End
"Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain" is a scholarly research paper reporting on a well-designed study of the way that spam works, from fast-flux DNS to bulletproof hosting to payment processing…
From ACM News
Tracking How Mobile Apps Track You
Third-party apps are the weakest link in user privacy on smart phones. They often get access to large quantities of user data, and there are few rules covering how they must handle that data once they have it. Worse yet, few…
From ACM News
The Next Big Thing in Analytics: Tracking Your Cursor's Every Move
Media, search engines, advertisers and social networks have been tracking what you click since the birth of the Web, but this measurement yields an incomplete picture of what you're actually doing when you browse.
From ACM News
Arm: Intel Has Tough Road Into Mobile Market
Intel may have made a big splash this week announcing it's going to focus on the mobile market, but its rival in the space says the chip maker has an uphill climb ahead of it.
From ACM TechNews
Seven Technologies to Disrupt the Next Decade
Among the technologies expected to appear in the next decade is augmented reality effected by eyewear and cameras that can add an informational overlay to the wearer's point of view, radically transforming the cityscape and possibly…
From ACM TechNews
Fully Automatic Software Testing Now Possible
University of Twente researcher Machiel van der Bijl has developed Model-Based Testing, a system that automates all steps in the software testing process. Model-Based Testing eliminates the need to manually develop tests, run…
From ACM TechNews
Java Use Increases Among Developers Worldwide: Survey
Java use has increased over the past year, according to a new study from Evans Data. Already the world's most popular and widely used programming language, Java saw growth in all geographic regions.
From ACM TechNews
Lack of Training Hinders GP in HPC
Several factors, including the lack of training in parallel programming and support from independent software vendors, are major obstacles keeping general-purpose computation on graphics processing units from being used inhigh…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Hope to Build a Brain
The Human Brain Project, led by Ecole Polytechnique Federale's Henry Markram, aims to build a complete computer model of the human brain, which the researchers say could lead to disease cures, new supercomputers, and intelligent…
From ACM TechNews
Study Sees Way to Win Spam Fight
University of California, San Diego researchers recently completed a study aimed at finding a choke point that could reduce the flow of spam emails.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Show Android Devices Susceptible to Eavesdropping
Researchers have found that they can use commercially available software to eavesdrop on Android systems that use authTokens which enable legitimate users to stay logged into certain applications for up to two weeks.