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
The Grill: MIT Media Labs' David Merrill on Tangible Computing
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab graduate student David Merrill has co-invented Siftables to facilitate more natural and tangible interaction with digital media in a field he refers to as embodied media.
From ACM TechNews
Internet 'Immune System' Could Block Viruses
A system that fights highly infectious computer viruses by embedding defense mechanisms in key parts of the Internet has been developed by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher Scott Coull and Rensselaer Polytechnic…
From ACM TechNews
Experimental Tech Turns Your Coffee Table Into a niversal Remote
The recent ACM SIGGRAPH conference offered a video demonstration of Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces (CRISTAL), a multitouch tabletop display that acts as a universal remote.
From ACM TechNews
New Linux-Based Technology to Make 'smarter' Gps
National ICT Australia has developed AutoMap, a Linux-based system designed to make personal navigation systems more accurate. AutoMap uses machine-vision techniques to detect and classify geometric shapes from video footage,…
From ACM TechNews
Napolitano: Cybersecurity Issues Remain nresolved
U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano recently affirmed that her staff is still weighing options about how best to assimilate the public and private sectors in responding to security threats, saying…
From ACM TechNews
How to Build Anonymity Into the Internet
At the 9th annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, security researchers discussed alternatives to existing systems designed to help Internet users maintain their privacy while online.
From ACM TechNews
'spiderbots' Talk Amongst Themselves Inside Active Volcano
A group of "spiderbots" released inside Mount St. Helens in Washington is the first network of volcano sensors capable of automatically communicating with each other and directly with satellites. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion…
From ACM TechNews
Semantics-Based Software Boosts Company Performance
SUPER, a European research project, has developed software that expedites companies' development or adjustment of their business processes while realizing cost savings through the application of semantic Web technology. The tools…
From ACM TechNews
Berkeley Lab Gets $62m to Build Blazing Ethernet Network
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been awarded $62 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to develop what it says will be the world's fastest computer network…
From ACM TechNews
Robots to Get Their Own Operating System
Robots are limited by the fact that they are often designed and built in isolation for specific functions, and roboticists have started to consider what aspects of their manufacture can be standardized in the hope of developing…
From ACM TechNews
Tiny 'mems' Devices to Filter, Amplify Electronic Signals
Purdue University researchers are developing a new class of microelectromechanical (MEMS) devices called resonators that contain vibrating, hair-thin structures and could be used to filter electronic signals.
From ACM TechNews
.s. Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears
The White House is proposing to soften a long-existing prohibition on tracking how users peruse U.S. government Web sites with cookies and other methods, inciting suspicion among privacy advocates.
From ACM TechNews
Computer 'agents' Take to the Web
Artificial intelligence agents that automatically negotiate for online shoppers, called Negotiation Ninjas, will be tested on a shopping Web site called Aroxo this fall. The agents are the result of 20 years of work by researchers…
From ACM TechNews
Finding the Right Piece of Sky
At the recent ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 conference, Microsoft Research's Visual Computing Group presented SkyFinder, a search system designed to analyze images of the sky. Microsoft's Jian Sun says that unlike most commercial image-search…
From ACM News
Cloud Computing Spurs New Encryption Solutions
University of Washington researchers’ announcement that they had created an encryption scheme called Vanish captured a lot of attention for its elegant simplicity, but two more arcane developments—presented at the Massachusetts…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientists Take Over Electronic Voting Machine With New Programming Technique
Computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the University of Michigan, and Princeton University have demonstrated that a Sequoia electronic-voting machine could be hacked, and votes stolen, using…
From ACM TechNews
Rutgers niversity in Newark to Lead Nine-School Consortium to Double Minority Students Majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math
Rutgers University in Newark is leading the Garden State Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (GS-LSAMP), a $5 million, five-year, multiple-school project created to significantly increase the number of minority students…
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputer Visuals Without Graphics Chip
The obsolescence of graphics-processing clusters is being hastened by the rapidly accelerating data processing speed of supercomputers. Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are crafting software that permits visualization…
From ACM TechNews
After Boom, Is Wikipedia Heading For Bust?
The explosive growth of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia is petering out, while a less welcoming attitude toward new contributors could negatively affect the archive's quality in the long term, according to a team of Palo Alto…
From ACM TechNews
Nist Demonstrates Sustained Quantum Processing in Step Toward Quantum Computers
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists have demonstrated sustained, reliable information processing operations on electrically charged atoms, or ions, a significant step toward building a quantum computer…
From ACM TechNews
Research Findings Contradict Myth of High Engineering Dropout Rate
Research indicates that engineering does not have a higher dropout rate than other majors and women's persistence in the discipline is equal to men's, according to professor Matthew Ohland with Purdue University's School of Engineering…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science Courses on the Decline
A decline in U.S. high school computer science (CS) courses is indicated by the Computer Science Teachers Association's (CSTA's) 2009 National Secondary Computer Science Survey. Only 65 percent of about 1,100 high school CS teachers…
From ACM TechNews
Communication Devices 2033
Motorola's Consumer Xperience Design (CXD) teams have speculated possible evolutionary paths that communication devices may take during the next 25 years. They project that by 2033 the cell phone could be an extension of the…
From ACM TechNews
Call For Debate on Autonomous Military Robots
BBC NewsAs robots are increasingly used in warfare, civilian lives will be put at greater and greater risk, according to University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey, who says an international debate is needed on the use of…
From ACM TechNews
A Mind-Controlled Wheelchair Is Moving Closer to Reality
Researchers are making major progress on technology that could help the severely disabled. Professor Javier Minguez at Spain's University of Zaragoza is developing a wheelchair that can be controlled by thought. The wheelchair…
From ACM TechNews
Warning Issued on Web Programming Interfaces
Application programming interfaces (APIs), software specifications that allow Web sites and services to interact with each other, have been a major factor in the rapid growth of Web applications, but security experts at the DEFCON…
From ACM TechNews
Siggraph 2009 Announces Computer Animation Festival Winners
From ACM TechNews
For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics
The statistics field's popularity is growing among graduates as they realize that it involves more than number crunching and deals with pressing real-world challenges, and Google chief economist Hal Varian predicts that "the…
From ACM TechNews
Broadband Is This Generation
In early August, U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski toured California to build support for the FCC's ongoing effort to create the nation's first broadband plan. Genachowski's trip, along…
From ACM TechNews
New Epidemic Fears: Hackers
Under the economic stimulus bill and other U.S. federal government proposals, hospitals and doctors' offices that invest in electronic records systems may receive compensation from part of a $29 billion fund. However, such systems…