Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2013
From ACM TechNews
Opening Doors to Foldable Electronics With Inkjet-Printed Graphene
Researchers have used a highly conductive, bendable graphene-based ink to inkjet-print graphene patterns that could be used as conductive electrodes.
From ACM TechNews
Google Preps Dart 1.0 to Challenge Javascript
Google is preparing to formally release Dart language version 1.0, as well as the 3.0 version of Google Web Toolkit.
From ACM Careers
Inside Google's Secret Lab
Last February, Astro Teller, the director of Google's secretive research lab, Google X, went to seek approval from Chief Executive Officer Larry Page for an unlikely acquisition.
From ACM News
German Railways to Test Anti-Graffiti Drones
The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night.
From ACM News
Century-Old Science Helps Confirm Global Warming
A new NASA and university analysis of ocean data collected more than 135 years ago by the crew of the HMS Challenger oceanographic expedition provides further confirmation that human activities have warmed our planet over the…
From ACM News
Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
It's exactly the sort of futuristic thinking you'd expect from Google and NASA: Late last week, the organizations announced a partnership to build a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center.
From ACM News
How Evolution May Help Build Better Robots
In the real world, animals have evolved the ability to get from point A to B by galloping, crawling, and jumping. Now, robots in the virtual world have accomplished something similar.
From ACM News
Building Supercomputers with Raspberries
At some point in the not-too-distant future, building powerful, miniature computing systems will be considered a hobby for high schoolers, just as robotics or even Lego-building are today.
From ACM TechNews
Ibm's Watson Tries to Learn...everything
IBM has given Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute an open-ended three-year charter to improve the intelligence of IBM's Watson software.
From ACM TechNews
Rice Unveils Method For Tailoring Optical Processors
Rice University researchers have developed a method for arranging metal nanoparticles in geometric patterns that can act as optical processors.
From ACM TechNews
Cracking the 1,000-Core Processor Power Challenge
Researchers are working on solutions to growing power consumption, as mainstream processors are expected to contain hundreds of cores in the near future.
From ACM TechNews
Exascale Computing Needs More Funding, Say Federal Computer Scientists
The U.S. Department of Energy's supercomputer efforts need at least another $400 million annually to possibly build an exascale computer by 2020.
From ACM TechNews
Hackers Find China Is Land of Opportunity
Hacking is openly discussed and promoted in China.
From ACM TechNews
Google nveils Tornado Crisis-Response Map Effort For Moore, Ok
Google's Crisis Response unit created a crisis map Web page to assist the community of Moore, OK, in its cleanup and recovery.
From ACM TechNews
AI Gets Involved With the Law
The application of artificial intelligence to the law aims to let automated systems handle arguments in which the logic is not clear.
From ACM News
Marketing to the Big Data Inside S
Companies market to you according to your shopping habits, your age, your salary, and your social-media activities. In the future, they may be able to advertise to you on the basis of your DNA.
From ACM Careers
Hackers Find China Is Land of Opportunity
Name a target anywhere in China, an official at a state-owned company boasted recently, and his crack staff will break into that person's computer, download the contents of the hard drive, record the keystrokes, and monitor cellphone…
From ACM TechNews
Energy-Efficient Computing Work Earns Science Foundation's Support
Arizona State University professor Carole-Jean Wu is researching how to convert waste heat in computing systems to usable electricity.
From ACM TechNews
Innovation Could Bring Flexible Solar Cells, Transistors, Displays
Researchers have developed a type of transparent electrode that could be used in solar cells, flexible displays, and future optoelectronic circuits.
From ACM TechNews
New Technique May Open p an Era of Atomic-Scale Semiconductor Devices
A new technique can create high-quality semiconductor thin films only one atom thick.
From ACM TechNews
Computational Tool Translates Complex Data Into 2-Dimensional Images
A new computational method lets scientists visualize high-dimensional data produced by single-cell measurement technologies such as mass cytometry.
From ACM Careers
What Will Hackers Do with the New Kinect?
Microsoft announced a new version of the Xbox One earlier this week, and with it an improved and essentially reinvented version of Kinect, the company's body- and gesture-control sensor.
From ACM Careers
One Day Your Phone Will Know If You're Happy or Sad
As much time as we spend with our cell phones and laptops and tablets, it's still pretty much a one-way relationship.
From ACM Careers
Computer Brain Escapes Google's X Lab to Supercharge Search
Two years ago Stanford professor Andrew Ng joined Google's X Lab, the research group that's given us Google Glass and the company's driverless cars. His mission: to harness Google's massive data centers and build artificial intelligence…
From ACM News
Making Quantum Encryption Practical
One of the many promising applications of quantum mechanics in the information sciences is quantum key distribution (QKD) in which the counterintuitive behavior of quantum particles guarantees that no one can eavesdrop on a private…
From ACM Careers
40 Years Ago, Ethernet's Fathers Were the Startup Kids
Bob Metcalfe, Dave Boggs, and the rest of the scientists at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1973 were a lot like young developers at a Silicon Valley startup today.
From ACM TechNews
Robots Learn to Take a Proper Handoff By Following Digitized Human Examples
Researchers have developed a method that allows a humanoid robot to receive an object handed to it by a person with a somewhat-natural human-like motion.
From ACM TechNews
UAB Research Finds New Channels to Trigger Mobile Malware
Researchers have discovered new, hard-to-detect methods for triggering mobile device malware.
From ACM TechNews
Stacking 2-D Materials Produces Surprising Results
Researchers have made progress on the longstanding challenge of developing a band gap property in graphene, essential for using the material to make transistors.
From ACM TechNews
3D Modeling Technology Offers Groundbreaking Solution for Engineers
New software will make it easier for engineers to develop real-world safety assessments of structures and foundations.