Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2009
From ACM TechNews
Experts Urge Federal Efforts on Cybersecurity
The U.S. federal government needs to step up its cybersecurity efforts, experts from industry and academia recently told the House Science and Technology Committee's Research and Science Education Subcommittee. Information technology…
From ACM TechNews
'mobilization' For Math and Science Education
Math and science education in the United States needs to improve dramatically if the country wants to stay competitive in the 21st century, concludes a report from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The report, "The Opportunity…
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Ferret Will Detect Hidden Drugs and Weapons
Engineering & Physical Sciences Research CouncilScientists at the University of Sheffield have developed the first cargo-scanning device that can operate inside standard freight containers and detect illicit substances. The…
From ACM TechNews
The Internet Is Incomplete, Says its Co-Designer, Vinton Cerf
Google Internet evangelist Vinton Cerf, the co-designer of the Internet's TCP/IP protocols along with Robert Kahn, says the Web continues to lack many of the basic features it should have, particularly in security. Cert says…
From ACM TechNews
Software Liability Law Could Divide Open Source
The European Commission has proposed that software companies should be held liable for the security and efficiency of their products. Ovum's David Mitchell says the proposal will likely force software vendors to require support…
From ACM TechNews
Does Parallel Processing Require New Languages?
The software-design community is split on the best approach for distributing their programs across a multicore architecture, and most programming languages were authored based on the assumption that only one processor would be…
From ICT Results
Computing in the Quantum Dimension
A huge consortium of European researchers is solving some of the fundamental obstacles blocking real quantum computing applications in the short term. At the same time, it is helping to pave the way to a quantum computer.
From ACM News
Virtual Power Plants Could Tame Coming Grid Chaos
Fears over energy security and climate change have led to record investment in renewable energy. But a major problem threatens to stall progress towards a more sustainable future: national electricity grids are far from ready…
From ACM TechNews
Robotics Inspire Students in Computer Science
Lamar University's Increasing Student Participation In Research Development (INSPIRED) team hosts computing workshops for middle and high school students in an effort to get them more interested in computer science through robotics…
From ACM TechNews
Dumb Ways To Make Computers Smarter
Cornell University researchers have developed a technique that will make it easier for computers to find written articles that are related to one another based on the content of those articles without using shared links. Understanding…
From ACM TechNews
Behavior-Driven Development Catches On
A process that helps users be more involved in the development of applications, behavior-driven development (BDD) continues to become increasingly popular among developers, particularly in agile application development. BDD brings…
From ACM News
Kim Jong-Il's Old School Nurtures Top Scientists
As North Korea's nuclear tests and missile launches affirm its technological and military prowess, alarming its neighbors and drawing international criticism, a school once attended by leader Kim Jong Il is nurturing the country's…
From ACM News
China Internet Filter Challenged in Rights proar
A Chinese lawyer has demanded a public hearing to reconsider a government demand that all new personal computers carry Internet filtering software, adding to uproar over a plan critics say is ineffective and intrusive. Li Fangping…
From ACM News
'electronic Glue' Promises Cheaper Semiconductors
Researchers at the University of Chicago and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed an "electronic glue" that could accelerate advances in semiconductor-based technologies, including solar cells and thermoelectric…
From ACM News
Data Center Overload
Much of the daily material of our lives is now dematerialized and outsourced to a far-flung, unseen network. The stack of letters becomes the e-mail database on the computer. The tilting CD tower gives way to the MP3-laden hard…
From ACM TechNews
'colossal' Magnetic Effect Under Pressure
Scientists are on the verge of understanding and controlling the colossal magnetoresistance effect (CMR), a phenomenon that is potentially up to a thousand times more powerful than the giant magnetoresistance effect and could…
From ACM TechNews
The Future of Robots Is Rat-Shaped
Some roboticists believe that artificial intelligence researchers are following the wrong path by trying to replicate human intelligence, and a better approach would be to start at a lower level and work out simpler abilities…
From ACM TechNews
Opening Doors on the Way to a Personal Robot
The ability to open doors is a significant step forward for robotics and an important milestone toward a personal robot industry. Such a milestone has been reached with Willow Garage's PR2, an experimental wheeled machine that…
From ACM TechNews
Data Mining Knowledge and Expertise on Show at KDD-09
Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2009 (KDD-09), organized by ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, will offer more than 120 presentations by data-mining experts from around the world and is expected…
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputing From Clusters to Clouds
The Intrepid supercomputer is the largest installation of IBM's Blue Gene architecture to date. Part of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, the $77 million supercomputer, the fifth fastest in the world, is used in a limited…
From ACM TechNews
Visual System Detects Movement, Colors and Textures
A University of Granada research team has evaluated the accuracy of several models that estimate movement, and combined the responses of four movement detection cells, two of which are static, either on or off, and two are transitory…
From ACM TechNews
Extracting Meaning From Millions of Pages
University of Washington researchers have developed an automated information extraction software engine that mines meaning out of more than 500 million Web pages, contributed by Google, by analyzing fundamental relationships…
From ACM TechNews
Computing Research That Changed the World
The Computing Community Consortium held a day-long symposium at the Library of Congress in late March titled "Computing Research That Changed the World: Reflections and Perspectives." Ed Lazowska from the University of Washington…
From ACM TechNews
Is the Hacking Threat to National Security Overblown?
U.S. President Obama recently made cybersecurity a national priority, but at the ACM's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference, Threat Level editor Kevin Poulsen asked whether hacking and cyberattacks are an actual threat…
From ICT Results
No More Geeky Glasses to Watch 3D
Most people's experience with 3D involves wearing tinted glasses in a cinema. But a new technology, which does not require glasses and may enable 3DTV, is being developed by European researchers. While the first applications…
From ACM News
Cloud Computing Goes Global
Three far-flung research organizations have joined the cloud computing test bed run by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Yahoo. The locations of these new converts — in Russia, South Korea, and Malaysia — provide more evidence that…
From ACM TechNews
University Deploys 'world's Largest' 802.11 Wireless Network
The University of Queensland (UQ) says it is implementing the biggest 802.11n wireless network in the world to serve as a platform for research, access, and collaboration at the university. UQ's Nick Tate says the network will…
From ACM TechNews
Nist Team Deeply Studying Cloud Computing
The National Institute for Standards and Technology's (NIST's) interest in cloud computing goes beyond developing a definition for the concept. NIST views the draft definition released in May as only the beginning of its work…
From ACM News
'smart Grid' Power Lines Move Into the Digital Age
Thomas Alva Edison, meet the Internet. More than a century after Edison invented a reliable light bulb, the nation's electricity distribution system, an aging spider web of power lines, is poised to move into the digital age.…
From ACM News
The Bar Code Is Taking a Leap Forward
Look closely at recent supermarket coupons, and you may see some new markings on them near the traditional bar code: sets of neat black bars stacked in two rows. The new symbols, called GS1 DataBars, can store more data than…