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 News
Isaca Identifies Top Five Social Media Risks For Business
An ISACA white paper names the top five social media risks for businesses and recommends solutions to help address the security, customer service and corporate reputation risks raised by employees' use of social media on and…
From ACM News
Mobile Chips Threaten High-Performance Manufacturers
At the end of 2009, Intel was shipping about 80 percent of all x86 processors--the type of chip that powers, for example, Windows-based personal computers. AMD accounted for nearly all the rest of the $28 billion market. But…
From ACM TechNews
Researcher's Robots Learn From Environment, Not Programming
University of Arizona professor Ian Fasel's Concept Learning from Intrinsically Motivated sensory-motor Experience project is researching what robots are able to understand and learn without the aid of human programming.
From ACM News
Technology Assists Paris Metro Passengers With Special Needs
Developed expressly to assist passengers with special needs, the Mobile Transit Companion mobile application uses context-aware self-adaptive computing to deliver live, customized data to Paris Metro passengers en route.
From ACM News
How Computers Know What We Want
Here's an experiment: try thinking of a song not as a song but as a collection of distinct musical attributes. Maybe the song has political lyrics. That would be an attribute. Maybe it has a police siren in it, or a prominent…
From ACM News
Military Taps Social Networking Skills
As a teenager, Jamie Christopher would tap instant messages to make plans with friends, and later she became a Facebook regular. Now a freckle-faced 25, a first lieutenant and an intelligence officer here, she is using her social…
From ACM News
Invisibility Cloaks and How to se Them
The "invisibility cloaks" being made in labs today can hide objects when viewed from a wide range of directions and in visible light--both considered implausible developments when the first working invisibility cloak was demonstrated…
From ACM News
New Video Camera Sees It All
The DHS' Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance promises 360° real-time surveillance video in high-res detail, with multiple views and DVR features.
From ICT Results
Breaking Down the Web Barriers Bit by Bit
A system to remove barriers to the Internet faced by people with disabilities is gaining ground. The NavigAbile project is based on profiling at the entry point so that a user is offered the most customized solution possible…
From ACM News
Water Main Break Floods Dallas Data Center
IT systems in Dallas County were offline for more than three days last week after a water main break flooded the basement of the Dallas County Records Building. The county does not have a backup data center.
From ACM TechNews
Part-Human, Part-Machine Transistor Devised
University of California, Merced researchers have created a part-human, part-machine device that features a nano-sized transistor embedded in a cell-like membrane that is powered by the cell's fuel.
From ACM TechNews
How the Brain Recognizes Objects
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's McGovern Institute of Brain Research have devised a computational model describing how the primate brain recognizes objects visually.
From ACM TechNews
The Age of the Interface
Improved integration between the human body and electronic devices should usher in the age of the organic user interface, whose potential implementations include biometric sensors, displays projected onto the user's skin, and…
From ACM News
Little Known Norwegian Browser Challenges the Big Boys
No. 1 in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. It might not be a slogan to attract an avalanche of American Internet users, but the Norwegian company that makes the fastest Web browser you've never heard of sees a major opportunity…
From ACM News
Immortal Avatars: Back Up Your Brain, Never Die
Zoe Graystone is a girl with two brains. Only one of them is human: the other is an exact digital copy that has become conscious in its own right. When the human Zoe dies, her digital brain is implanted into a humanoid robot,…
From ACM News
Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price
When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it. Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big…
From ACM News
Open-Source Could Mean an Open Door For Hackers
The ability to access the code of open-source applications may give attackers an edge in developing exploits for the software, according to a paper analyzing two years' worth of attack data.
From ICT Results
New Tsunami Early Warning System Stands Guard
The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami killed 230,000 people. The next time a tsunami threatens Indian Ocean nations, a lifesaving early warning system spearheaded by the EU will be in place.
From ACM News
Quantum Computing Expert Wins Canada's Top Science Prize
Gilles Brassard, a Universite de Montreal computer science professor, was awarded Canada's most prestigious award for scientists, the Herzberg Gold Medal.
From ACM TechNews
Hp Researcher Predicts Memory-Centric Processors
HP researchers are studying ways to make memristor processors the centerpiece of future server designs. "Re-thinking the balance of computer, storage, and communications will happen, and it will have big implications," says…
From ACM News
China's Censorship Could Lead to a Brain Drain
They are coming from cities across China, including Beijing and Shanghai. Students are leaving mainland China for the opportunity to study in Hong Kong instead.
From ACM TechNews
Dna Logic Gates Herald Injectable Computers
Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have developed DNA-based logic gates that could carry out calculations inside the body and may lead to injectable biocomputers programmed to target diseases as they arise.
From ACM TechNews
Hiring Expected to Be Robust in Second Half of 2010
Demand for technology professionals is rising and is expected to remain strong through the end of the year. Companies continue to hire entry-level positions, but demand for mid- and senior-level positions also is increasing. …
From ACM News
Augmented Reality Edges Closer to Mainstream
To an unenlightened observer, Ron Haidenger's demonstration of playing a video game by tilting a piece of cardboard back and forth looks more than a little bit nutty. But to anyone wearing his company's computer-enhanced glasses…
From ACM TechNews
The Humanities Go Google
Stanford University's Literature Lab attempts to probe the evolution of literary style by using computer algorithms to sort, interrogate, and interpret some 1,000 digitized texts.
From ACM News
Privacy Worries Inspire a New Wave of Startups
Amid the recent public backlash to the way some of the titans of the Internet handle users' personal data, a slate of ambitious online startups are aiming to squeeze into the fields of social networking and search by touting…
From ACM TechNews
Touch Is Not Enough, Say Display Experts
Experts in touch technologies recently gathered at the Society for Information Display conference to explore the future of touch and interactivity for computer and consumer appliances.
From ACM News
Ranking the Most Powerful Supercomputers
The U.S. still leads in high-performance computing capacity, but China is undergoing explosive growth.
From ICT Results
Free, Open Virtual Laboratory For Infectious Diseases
Doctors around the world will soon have a powerful new tool at their disposal in the fight against infectious diseases: a virtual laboratory that will help them match drugs to patients and make treatments more effective.
From ACM News
Dmp Brings About New Design Space For Virtualization Technology
A group from Peking University has introduced a new memory virtualization technique called Dynamic Memory Paravirtualization that can dynamically patch binary code in the guest operating system to improve performance.