Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2009
From ACM TechNews
Online Social Networks Leak Personal Information to Third-Party Tracking Sites
A Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) study by professor Craig Wills found that the practices of many popular social networking sites can make personal information shared by users on their pages available to companies that…
From ACM TechNews
The Evolution of Retweeting
Twitter has announced that it will establish a set format for retweeting, or reposting another user's message, for use within the micro-blogging service. Retweeting serves as a way to quickly spread ideas and comments to new…
From ACM TechNews
Fujitsu Aims For 10-Petaflop Supercomputer
Fujitsu is building a 10-petaflop supercomputer based on its upcoming Sparc64 VIIIfx processor. The new processor has eight processor cores, with each running at 2 GHz and accessing 5MB of L2 cache memory. The update to the…
From ACM TechNews
Women in It: Success and Struggle
Female participation in the information technology (IT) industry is growing and women now account for 15 percent to 25 percent of technical professionals, although only about 8 percent of management positions.
From ACM TechNews
Robot's Gentle Touch Aids Delicate Cancer Surgery
Canadian researchers have developed a robot capable of detecting tumor tissue in half the time it takes a human surgeon and with 40 percent greater accuracy while causing less tissue damage. The researchers, from the University…
From ACM TechNews
Worldwide Battle Rages For Control of the Internet
Governments in the Middle East and north Africa routinely block and censor Web sites to control political discussions, according to a new report on the region by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaboration of researchers based…
From ACM TechNews
W3c Bridging Knowledge Organization Systems to Linked Data
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has introduced a new standard designed to make it easier to search for documents and information. The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) serves as a model for expressing basic structure…
From ACM TechNews
Brighter Idea For Bendable Displays
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor John Rogers has led the development of a new technique for manufacturing tiny inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that enables them to be attached to materials such as glass…
From ACM TechNews
Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts
Opinions expressed on the Internet can determine the eventual success or failure of a product, and tools stemming from the emergent field of sentiment analysis could not only help businesses bolster their revenues, but ultimately…
From ACM TechNews
Web Tools Help Protect Human Rights Activists
A new generation of Internet privacy tools is being developed to prevent governments from gathering data, such as where users access the Internet from. One tool, called Tor, scrambles information before sending it over the Web…
From ACM TechNews
Grid Computing, the New Commodity
The European Union-funded GridEcon project has developed a platform for trading computing resources and buying and selling standardized computing resources. GridEcon's commodity market platform allows users to bid on available…
From ACM TechNews
A-Z of Programming Languages: Scala
The Scala programming language, which runs on the Java Virtual Machine, could become the preferred language of the modern Web 2.0 startup, according to a Twitter developer. Scala creator Martin Odersky says the name Scala "means…
From ACM News
Competitions Aim to Create Interest in Cybersecurity
U.S. government, industry, and academia are using cybersecurity competitions to interest high school and college students about the career opportunities in cybersecurity.
From ACM TechNews
Study Finds that Online Education Beats the Classroom
Students' performance in online education settings tended to trounce that of those receiving face-to-face instruction, according to a study SRI International carried out for the U.S. Education Department. The study analyzed the…
From ACM TechNews
Nuclear Fusion Research Key to Advancing Computer Chips
Scientists at Purdue University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory are adapting the same methods used in fusion-energy research to develop a new class of nanolithography for use in the creation of…
From ACM TechNews
Robots 'evolve' the Ability to Deceive
Robots programmed to find food concealed their performance from other robots by the 50th generation in a research project at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
From ACM TechNews
Nist Reorganization Plan Would Shutter It Lab's Computer Security Division
A proposed plan to reorganize the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) IT Laboratory would close the Computer Security Division and distribute its resources and functions throughout the lab, despite…
From ACM TechNews
Wi-Fi via White Spaces
The transition from analog to digital broadcasts has opened up radio spectrum that could be used to deliver long-range, low-cost wireless Internet service using white spaces, which are empty fragments of the spectrum scattered…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientists Scale 'Layer 2' Data Center Networks to 100,000 Ports and Beyond
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have developed software designed to enable data centers to function as single, scalable, plug-and-play networks. The PortLand software system is a fault-tolerant, layer 2…
From ACM TechNews
Desktop Multiprocessing: Not So Fast
The continuance of Moore's Law—the axiom that the number of devices that can be economically installed on a processor chip doubles every other year—will mainly result in a growing population of cores, but the exploitation of…
From ICT Results
Tiny Robots Get a Grip on Nanotubes
How do you handle the tiny components needed for constructing nanoscale devices? A European consortium has built two microrobotic demonstrators that can automatically pick up and install carbon nanotubes thousands of times thinner…
From ACM TechNews
Pay-Per-Email Plan to Beat Spam and Help Charity
Yahoo! researchers are testing a scheme in which users pay one cent for each email message they send, with the money going to charity, in an effort to cut back on spam. Yahoo! Research's CentMail trial is based on the theory…
From ACM TechNews
Mobile Data Show Friend Networks
A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that friendships can be inferred with 95% accuracy by studying cellphone call records and the proximity of users. "We gave out a set of phones that were…
From ACM TechNews
Making Android More Secure
Google developed a new approach to mobile phone security with its open source Android operating system. Android developer Rich Cannings says there must be a balance between being open and being secure. Instead of eliminating…
From ACM TechNews
The Corporate Lab as Ringmaster
The advent of the Internet era is shrinking the role of corporate research and development laboratories in the innovation process, according to experts. Michael Schrage with the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts…
From ACM TechNews
Doing What the Brain Does--How Computers Learn to Listen
Researchers at Germany's Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging in London have developed a mathematical model that could significantly improve computers'…
From ACM TechNews
Nsf Awards CLA Engineering $10m to Create Customized Computing Technology
The U.S. National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program has awarded the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science a $10 million grant to work on a new…
From ACM TechNews
Energy-Aware Internet Routing
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Carnegie Mellon University, and Akamai indicates an Internet-routing algorithm that tracks electricity price fluctuations could save major Internet companies millions…
From ACM TechNews
Harvard Research Team Receives $10m Nsf Grant to Develop Small-Scale Mobile Robotic Devices
A Harvard University-led, multidisciplinary team of computer scientists, engineers, and biologists have received a $10 million U.S. National Science Foundation Expeditions in Computing grant to develop small-scale robotic devices…
From ACM TechNews
Hackers Stole Ids For Attacks
Russian hackers stole U.S. identities and software tools for use in a cyberattack against Georgian government Web sites during the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, according to a new report by the U.S. Cyber Consequences…