Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2014
From ACM TechNews
Hackers Reverse-Engineer Nsa's Leaked Bugging Devices
Security researchers have reverse-engineered some of the wireless spying devices used by the U.S. National Security Agency.
From ACM TechNews
New Manufacturing Methods Needed For 'soft' Machines, Robots
Purdue University researchers have developed a technique that could be used to produce "soft machines" made of elastic materials and liquid metals.
From ACM TechNews
Scheduling Algorithms Based on Game Theory Makes Better se of Computational Resources
A new method has been developed to address the scheduling problem in the ASTRO program in cosmology and the WIEK2k program in theoretical chemistry.
From ACM TechNews
Memory Cells Built on Paper
A team at the National Taiwan University in Taipei has printed small resistive random access memory cells on paper.
From ACM TechNews
Information School Team App For West African Fishermen Snags Sustainable Fishing Prize
A team from the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information won the grand prize of the Fishackathon programming challenge.
From ACM News
Top500 Supercomputer Race Hits a Slow Patch
The performance of the world's fastest computers has been steadily growing for two decades, but the latest tally of their collective performance shows slowing progress.
From ACM News
We Can Code It!
Why coding literacy is key to winning the 21st century.
From ACM News
The Game Theory of Life
An insight borrowed from computer science suggests that evolution values both fitness and diversity.
From ACM News
Computing a Cure For Hiv: 9 Ways Supercomputers Help Scientists nderstand and Treat the Virus
HIV/AIDS has caused an estimated 36 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization, and remains a major menace worldwide.
From ACM News
3D Images Remodel History
It took hundreds of thousands of workers decades to create China's terracotta army, but digital avatars made in minutes could solve the lingering mystery of one of the country's most famous relics.
From ACM News
As Robotics Advances, Worries of Killer Robots Rise
From driverless cars to delivery drones, a new generation of robots is about to revolutionize the way people work, drive and shop.
From ACM News
China's Lunar Rover Limps Into Another Long Night
As it plunges into another two-week long 'lunar night', Jade Rabbit, China's Moon rover, is living on borrowed time.
From ACM News
Spitzer Spies an Odd, Tiny Asteroid
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have measured the size of an asteroid candidate for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), a proposed spacecraft concept to capture either a small asteroid, or a boulder from…
From ACM News
Mind-Control: 'i Drove a Car with My Thoughts'
Henrik Matzke is in the driving seat of a car, poised to make a very unusual manoeuvre.
From ACM TechNews
nicode pdate Adds Emoji For Spiders, Chili Pepper, 'live Long and Prosper,' and More
The Unicode consortium has updated its character-encoding standard to include an additional 250 emoji.
From ACM TechNews
A New Safety System For City and School Buses Will Avoid Accidents Around Bus Stops
A new safety system for city and school buses detects the presence of pedestrians in the area surrounding a bus stop and warns the driver of dangerous conditions.
From ACM TechNews
Can We See the Arrow of Time?
A new algorithm can determine whether a given snippet of video is playing backward or forward with 80-percent accuracy.
From ACM TechNews
Female Tech Staff 'in Decline' in the U.k.
A new report finds the gender gap in the U.K. information technology industry is getting worse.
From ACM News
Lighting on the Wall: World's Most Spectacular Video Projections
Sydney has had a radical makeover this summer, with the famous Opera House dressed in snakeskin and the underpass dotted with flowers to mark the city's Vivid festival.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computers Still Aren’t Faster Than Regular Old Computers
Researchers recently found a quantum computer performed no faster than a classical computer when running optimization algorithms.
From ACM News
Can Hp Build the Computer of the Future?
On June 11, Hewlett-Packard revealed plans to make a new kind of computer that it's playfully calling The Machine.
From ACM News
Commercial Quantum Computer Still Awaits Ultimate Test
Quantum computers promise to revolutionise the digital world, but how do you tell if a computer really is harnessing the power quantum mechanics?
From ACM News
Supreme Court Tosses 'abstract' Software Patent
The Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out an Australian company's patent for business software in a decision that clarifies standards for awarding patents, but not as much as some firms had hoped.
From ACM News
Mobile Apps Enable Professional Development
Continuing Education begins adapting to the smartphone.
From ACM TechNews
Breakthrough For Information Technology Using Heusler Materials
For the first time, researchers have directly observed the 100-percent spin polarization of a Heusler compound.
From ACM TechNews
Seeking Reality in the Future of Aeronautical Simulation
Computer simulation software is being used to help design future airliners that will cut fuel consumption, reduce polluting emissions, and fly more quietly.
From ACM TechNews
Facial Recognition Algorithms Improve
The accuracy of facial-recognition algorithms has improved over the past three years, according to a U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study.
From ACM TechNews
Why Businesses Should Use Caution With Html5-Based Mobile Apps
University of Syracuse researchers have found that vulnerabilities in HTML5 could enable malicious code execution in mobile apps.
From ACM News
The Thought Experiment
I was about 15 minutes late for my first phone call with Jan Scheuermann.
From ACM Careers
Losing the Key
In this age of rapid transformation, the house key has been surprisingly resistant to change.