Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2013
From ACM News
How Social Media Is Changing Disaster Response
When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, Facebook was the new kid on the block. There was no Twitter for news updates, and the iPhone was not yet on the scene.
From ACM TechNews
Wearable Computing Pioneer Steve Mann: Who Watches the Watchmen?
Steve Mann has been developing wearable technology for the past 30 years, adapting computers, screens, and optics into wearable devices.
From ACM TechNews
Securing the Cloud
Researchers have created an encryption algorithm that could improve security for cloud computing technology.
From ACM TechNews
The Next Big Thing in Tech: Augmented Reality
Augmented reality technologies have been in development in university labs and small companies for almost 50 years.
From ACM TechNews
1st Web Page Proves as Elusive as Mysteries of the Universe
Scientists may never make a clear-cut discovery of the first Web page ever created because of the nature of how data is stored.
From ACM TechNews
How Wearable Tech Will Fuel the Internet of Things
Wearable technologies are expected to play an integral role in the Internet of things.
From ACM TechNews
Laws of Physics Say Quantum Cryptography Is Unhackable. It’s Not
Quantum cryptography can theoretically encrypt a message in a way that can't be hacked, but even quantum cryptography systems can fail.
From ACM Careers
Spies Like s: How We All Helped Build Prism
It used to be that the National Security Agency and its ilk had to pay through the nose for the latest in spying technology.
From ACM News
How Google Transfers Data to Nsa
How does Google hand over data to the government? By old-fashioned secure "file transfer protocol," or FTP. And sometimes even by hand.
From ACM Careers
DARPA Robotics Challenge: The Search For the Perfect Robot Soldier
The Atlas robot looks something out of the post-apocalyptic future, or maybe a Will Smith blockbuster. It's a 330lb cyborg with eerily human-like hands and a head equipped with a laser.
From ACM News
Opening the Doors of Deception
IT managers may incorporate a variety of deceptive tactics into their protective strategies to fend off hackers.
From ACM News
How the .s. ses Technology to Mine More Data More Quickly
When American analysts hunting terrorists sought new ways to comb through the troves of phone records, e-mails, and other data piling up as digital communications exploded over the past decade, they turned to Silicon Valley computer…
From ACM TechNews
Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton Lets Paralyzed People Walk
MindWalker is the first exoskeleton that aims to allow paralyzed people to walk using only their minds.
From ACM TechNews
2-D Electronics Take a Step Forward
Scientists hope to join molybdenum disulfide, a semiconductor, with graphene, which has no band gap, and hexagonal boron nitride, an insulator, to form field-effect transistors, integrated logic circuits, photodetectors, and…
From ACM Opinion
What Would Happen If All Satellites Stopped Working?
We may not always realise it, but we depend on space technology orbiting the Earth.
From ACM TechNews
Raspberry Pi Gets Easier to Use With Noobs Software
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is offering downloadable software that makes its mini-computer easier to use.
From ACM News
Studying Hurricanes With Swarms of Smart Drones
Remember in Twister when they threw all those little sensors into the tornado? University of Florida scientists are working on a similar plan for hurricanes involving hundreds of tiny autonomous submarines and planes.
From ACM Careers
Drone Nation: A New Industry Takes Flight
By 2025 the drone industry will employ 100,000 people and be worth $82 billion globally, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
From ACM Careers
'hidden' Economy in Silicon Valley Built Without Advanced Degrees
Silicon Valley is world-renowned for the Nobel Prize winners and MacArthur "geniuses" behind theoretical breakthroughs in science, technology, engineering, and math.
From ACM News
Administration Says Mining of Data Is Crucial to Fight Terror
In early September 2009, an e-mail passed through an Internet address in Peshawar, Pakistan, that was being monitored by the vast computers controlled by American intelligence analysts.
From ACM News
People's Locations Could Be Tracked
Data collected by the National Security Agency's program that monitors Americans' phone calls could be used to track millions of people's locations through their mobile devices at any given time, according to people familiar…
From ACM News
Hacking the Drone War's Secret History
In 2008 U.S. troops in Iraq discovered that Shi’ite insurgents had figured out how to tap and record video feeds from overhead American drones. Now you too can hack Washington’s globe-spanning fleet of silent, deadly armed robots—although…
From ACM News
Atom by Atom, Bond by Bond, a Chemical Reaction Caught in the Act
When Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set out to develop nanostructures made of graphene using a new, controlled approach to chemical reactions, the first result was a surprise…
From ACM News
If Our Gadgets Could Measure Our Emotions
On a recent family outing, my mother and sister got into a shouting match. But they weren’t mad at each other—they were yelling at the iPhone’s turn-by-turn navigation system.
From ACM News
As Data Floods In, Massive Open Online Courses Evolve
In 2012, education startups attracted millions of students—and a surge of interest from universities and the media—by offering massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Now some core features of these wildly popular courses are…
From ACM TechNews
Empowering a New Generation of Tech-Savvy Women By Teaching Them to Code
Skillcrush offers tutorials that teach women to code and create their own websites, with a focus on highlighting the creative side of technology.
From ACM TechNews
To Catch a Cyber-Thief
A new method for analyzing computer data automatically identifies criminal topics discussed in a textual conversation.
From ACM TechNews
Tiny Airplanes and Subs From niversity of Florida Laboratory Could Be Next Hurricane Hunters
Miniature unmanned vehicles could be used to predict the strength and path of hurricanes.
From ACM TechNews
Firefighting Robot Paints 3D Thermal Imaging Picture For Rescuers
New image-processing techniques will allow robots to quickly explore and characterize structural fires.
From ACM TechNews
'Temporal Cloaking' Could Bring More Secure Optical Communications
A new method for the "temporal cloaking" of optical communications could improve security for telecommunications.