Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2010
From ACM TechNews
Lizard-Like Robot Can 'swim' Through Sand
Inspired by the sandfish lizard, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are collaborating with Northwestern University's Paul Umbanhowar to develop a snake-like robot that can swim through sand.
From ACM TechNews
Broadband Availability to Expand
U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday (June 28) will sign a memorandum that makes 500 megahertz of wireless spectrum, currently controlled by the federal government and private companies, available for auction.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Collaborate on Project to Integrate 'Cloud Computing' With 'Grid' Technologies
European researchers working on the StratusLab project are developing software designed to improve distributed computing infrastructures in an effort to enable research and higher education organizations to pool computing resources…
From ACM TechNews
World First For Quantum Memory Storage
A new system developed by researchers at Australian National University uses quantum memory for light more efficiently than similar storage devices.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Analyze the Future of Transistor-Less Magnonic Logic Circuits
The emerging field of magnonics is attracting researchers because of its possible role in the development of transistorless logic circuits, and researchers are investigating how to use spin wave phenomena to make logic circuits…
From ACM News
An Internet 100 Times As Fast
A new network design that avoids the need to convert optical signals into electrical ones could boost capacity while reducing power consumption.
From ACM TechNews
3-D Virtual Learning Platforms
Carlos III University of Madrid researchers working on the eMadrid project are studying how to use three-dimensional virtual worlds for teaching.
From ACM TechNews
ncovering Results in the Magellan Testbed
The Magellan cloud computing testbed funded by the U.S. Department of Energy is dedicated to studying the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud computing model as it applies to scientists working on government-funded initiatives…
From ACM News
Police Push to Continue Warrantless Cell Tracking
A law requiring police to obtain a search warrant before tracking Americans' cell phones may imperil criminal investigations and endanger children's lives, a law enforcement representative told Congress last week.
From ACM News
The Challenge of Molecular Communication
Bacteria communicate with molecules, and now computer scientists want to copy them. Their first task: to derive a mathematical theory of molecular communication.
From ACM News
China Pushing the Envelope on Science, and Sometimes Ethics
Last year, Zhao Bowen was part of a team that cracked the genetic code of the cucumber. These days, he's probing the genetic basis for human IQ.
From ACM News
China's Young College Grads Toil in 'ant Tribes'
Liu Jun sleeps in a room so small, he shares a bed with two other men. It's all the computer engineering graduate can afford in Beijing, a city where the dreams of many young educated Chinese are running up against the realities…
From ACM TechNews
Smart Computer Learns From Video
ETH Zurich researchers have developed a learning program that can analyze street scenes from video, map the patterns that characterize the various road users, and establish rules governing the traffic flow.
From ACM TechNews
Algorithms Aid Prosthetics Development
Advanced algorithms could help make the speed and accuracy of clinically viable prosthetic devices more comparable to a healthy human arm.
From ACM TechNews
Hop, Jump and Stick
The behavioral laws of insects have the potential to give robots a greater complexity of movement without the need for high computational power, says the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's Mirko Kovac.
From ACM TechNews
U.K. Researchers Building 'Fat-Free' Cloud Programming Framework
Researchers at Citrix and the universities of Cambridge and Nottingham have developed Mirage, a programming framework aimed at supporting applications that run on cloud infrastructure platforms.
From ACM TechNews
How a Computer Program Became Classical Music's Hot, New Composer
University of California, Santa Cruz professor David Cope has developed Emily Howell, a music-composing program that generates its own compositions by following musical rules that Cope has taught it.
From ACM TechNews
'augmented Reality' on Smartphones Brings Teaching Down to Earth
University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers are developing an open source tool that lets designers link text, images, video, and audio into a physical location, making the real world into a map that users can navigate with…
From ACM News
How Wi-Fi Drains Your Cell Phone
A study finds problems, but also offers software fixes that could help cell phones last significantly longer between charges.
From ACM News
Working Toward a Smarter, Faster Cloud
A proposed system would let cloud developers control the way their data travels across different machines.
From ACM News
Computers Make Strides in Recognizing Speech
"Hi, thanks for coming," the medical assistant says, greeting a mother with her 5-year-old son. "Are you here for your child or yourself?" The boy, the mother replies. He has diarrhea. "Oh no, sorry to hear that," she says, looking…
From ACM News
Beyond the Petaflop: DARPA Wants Quintillion-Speed Computers
Not known for taking the demure route, researchers at DARPA this week announced a program aimed at building computers that exceed current peta-scale computers to achieve the mind-altering speed of one quintillion (1,000,000,000…
From ACM TechNews
Toward the Semantic Web
The World Wide Web Consortium recently published the Rule Interchange Format, a new standard that should help bring the idea of the Semantic Web closer to reality.
From ACM TechNews
How Html5 Will Change the Web
The implementation of HTML5 will remake the Internet and enable basic Web sites to do much more, from tracking a user's location to storing more data in the cloud.
From ACM News
Sleepserver Software Lets Enterprise Pcs Work While They Sleep
Personal computers in enterprise environments save energy and money by "sleep-working," thanks to new software called SleepServer created by computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego.
From ACM News
Pioneering Seac Computer Remembered on 60th Anniversary
Sixty years ago this week, the National Bureau of Standards dedicated the first programmable computer in U.S. history.
From ACM News
Judge Sides With Google in Viacom Video Suit
In a major victory for Google in its battle with media companies, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday threw out Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube, the No. 1 Internet video-sharing…
From ACM News
Nist to Lead Nice Cybersecurity Program
NIST has been tapped to coordinate the new interagency program, which aims to promote cybersecurity awareness and know-how across the country and among citizens of all ages.
From ACM News
Nsa Gets Geeky After Dark, New Docs Show
It's an agency staffed by some of the government's top hackers, brainiest cryptographers, and most sophisticated network defenders. But when employees at the NSA aren't playing Big Brother, pwning foreign networks or coming to…
From ACM News
Sending Data 160 Characters at a Time
In the absence of a good Internet connection, why not use text messages to transmit data?