Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2010
From ACM News
Juicing Up Laptops and Cell Phones with Soda Pop or Vegetable Oil?
Scientists report the development of the first fuel cell designed to produce electricity with biochemical technology borrowed from the biological powerhouses that energize humans and other animals.
From ACM News
Hi-Tech Rechargeable Batteries Developed For Military
MIT scientists reported progress in using a common virus to develop improved materials for high-performance, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that could be woven into clothing to power portable electronic devices.
From ACM News
Online Gambling Poses Hacking Risk, Experts Say
Online gambling experts are warning Canadian provinces to brace themselves for hackers, cheats and criminal gangs that target gaming sites. The warning comes after British Columbia's online gambling site was marred by a series…
From ACM News
Malware Implicated in Fatal Spanair Plane Crash
Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware.
From ACM News
The MIT Roots of Google
Google’s App Inventor, which lets people with no previous programming experience build applications for mobile phones, draws on decades of MIT research.
From ACM News
How to Create a 'super Password'
Say goodbye to those wimpy, eight-letter passwords. The 12-character era of online security is upon us, according to a report published this week by the Georgia Institute of Technology.
From ACM TechNews
Tech Industry Holds Closed Door Talks on Open Internet
The Information Technology Industry Council, representing leading technology industry firms, recently held a closed-door meeting to discuss the future of the open Internet.
From ACM TechNews
Nist Is Nearly Ready to Pick the Next Hash Algorithm
Developers of the 14 semifinalist algorithms for the new SHA-3 Secure Hash Algorithm standard will defend their work at a U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conference. NIST's final selection of a new…
From ACM TechNews
Adaptive Software
Researchers have developed a prototype platform that promises to support adaptive software capable of automatic contextual reconfiguration. Middleware developed by the project combines dozens of factors to make an educated guess…
From ACM TechNews
Web Could Be Stylized By New W3c Font Platform
The World Wide Web Consortium's Web Fonts Working Group has launched version 1.0 of the Web Open File Format (WOFF), compression technology that will provide a platform for providers to make their fonts easily available across…
From ACM TechNews
Virtual Reality You Can Touch
Looking to develop new methods for virtual haptic interaction, ETH Zurich researchers have developed a way to produce virtual copies of real objects, which can be "touched" and sent over the Internet.
From ACM TechNews
Toshiba Claims Data Storage Breakthrough
Toshiba says it has achieved a breakthrough in data storage technology that could lead to hard drives with much higher capacities than are currently available.
From ACM News
Flawed Proof shers In Era of Wikimath
His prospects of answering one of the biggest questions in mathematics may be fading, but Vinay Deolalikar of Hewlett-Packard Labs in Palo Alto, California, may still have made his mark. His proposed proof of the "P versus…
From ACM News
.s. Takes Aim at China Cyber Threat
The U.S. for the first time is publicly warning about the Chinese military's use of civilian computer experts in clandestine cyber attacks aimed at American companies and government agencies.
From ACM News
Virtual Reality Tackles Tough Questions
Virtual reality is allowing scientists to ask difficult questions about human behaviour that were previously not possible or were thought too unethical.
From ACM News
Extreme and Green: What Science Needs from Computing
Four participants in the upcoming Kavli Futures Symposium discuss what science needs from computing, how current computing advances are impacting research, and how the future of computing is looking extreme and green.
From ACM News
Google Offers Cloud-Based Learning Engine
Providing developers with machine learning on tap could unleash a flood of smarter apps.
From ACM News
NSF Announces New Expeditions in Computing Awards
Three new $10 million awards continue the NSF's Expeditions program pursuing ambitious, fundamental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information science.
From ACM News
Intel-McAfee Deal Bets on Building Security Into Hardware
Intel Corp. agreed to buy security-software specialist McAfee Inc. Thursday for $7.68 billion, a surprise transaction that underscores the company's determination to expand beyond its stronghold in chips that power most of…
From ACM News
Daniel Spielman Wins 2010 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize
Daniel Spielman of Yale University, New Haven, CT, has been chosen for the 2010 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize "for smoothed analysis of Linear Programming, algorithms for graph-based codes and applications of graph theory to numerical…
From ACM TechNews
The Future of Interfaces Is Mobile, Screen-Less and Invisible
Google's Android developer advocate Reto Meier recently described where computer interfaces are headed, predicting that in five years there will be widely available flexible displays and built-in high definition projectors.
From ACM TechNews
Virtual Reality Used to Study Haiti, Baja Earthquakes
University of California, Davis researchers are using the virtual reality equipment to study earthquake damage and predict whether faults are likely to move again in the near future.
From ACM News
Wikileaks Encryption se Offers 'legal Challenge'
A novel use of encryption by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks could "challenge the legal system for years to come," according to an influential observer of the hacking community.
From ACM News
Computer Model Advances Climate Change Research
Scientists can now study climate change in far more detail with powerful new computer software. The Community Earth System Model will be one of the primary climate models used for the next integovernmental regional climate change…
From ACM News
Nsf Awards $10m to Develop Computing Techniques For Assessing Child Behavior
A team led by the Georgia Institute of Technology has received a $10 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation to apply computer science to the analysis of autism and other childhood behaviors.
From ACM News
Dual-Core Smartphones on the Horizon
Smartphones with dual-core Arm processors could add faster processing, video capabilities.
From ACM News
A Surfboard Gets an Onboard Computer
Computers are everywhere these days—even on surfboards. University of California, San Diego mechanical engineering undergraduates outfitted a surfboard with a computer and accompanying sensors.
From ACM News
Atom Images Raise Quantum Computer Hopes
Fast quantum computers made of atoms trapped by beams of light could be a step closer, thanks to the first images of the individual atoms in such a grid.
From ACM News
What Does 'p vs. Np' Mean For the Rest of Us?
A proposed "proof" is probably a bust—but even failed attempts can advance computer science.
From ACM News
New Facebook Location Feature Sparks Privacy Concerns
Moments after Facebook introduced a new feature called Facebook Places on Wednesday that allows its users to share their location and find their friends, advocates raised flags over online privacy.