Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2012
From ACM TechNews
Skilled Work, Without the Worker
A new wave of robots is replacing workers around the world in the manufacturing and distribution industries as many factories that utilize robots are becoming more efficient than those that rely on hundreds of thousands of low…
From ACM News
Your Life Is Fully Mobile
Just as remarkable as the power of mobility, over everything from love to learning to global development, is how fast it all happened. It is hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many…
From ACM News
New Wave of Adept Robots Is Changing Global Industry
At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.
From ACM News
In Apple’s Patent Case, Tech Shifts May Follow
This week, nine jurors are expected to hunker down in a federal courthouse here to decide a case that could change how the world's smartphones and tablet computers look and work.
From ACM News
Google's Dremel Makes Big Data Look Small
Mike Olson runs a company that specializes in the world’s hottest software. He's the CEO ofCloudera, a Silicon Valley startup that deals in Hadoop, an open source software platform based on tech that turned Google into the most…
From ACM TechNews
Computing in the Net of Possibilities
A new information processing principle has been developed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.
From ACM News
Cyberwars Reach a New Frontier: The Airport
It sounds like an air traveler's nightmare: a sophisticated software attack that allows hackers to access internal airport computer systems and manipulate data as if they were authorized employees.
From ACM TechNews
Coders Get Instant Gratification With Khan Academy Programming
The Khan Academy, which has provided free video lectures on subjects such as mathematics, biology, and history since 2006, recently launched a computer science section.
From ACM TechNews
Playboy Centerfold Photo Shrunk to Width of Human Hair
A*STAR has printed a color photo measuring just 50 micrometers across.
From ACM TechNews
Climate Science Triggers Torrent of Big Data Challenges
ORNL supercomputers running models to assess climate change ramifications and mitigation tactics are rapidly generating a wide variety of big data in vast volumes.
From ACM TechNews
Carnegie Mellon and Disney Develop New Model for Animated Faces and Bodies
A team of researchers have developed a way of modeling dynamic objects, such as expressions on faces, gesticulations on bodies, and the draping of clothes.
From ACM News
Swarming p A Storm: Why Animals School And Flock
By tricking live fish into attacking computer-generated "prey," scientists have learned that animals like birds and fish may indeed have evolved to swarm together to protect themselves from the threat of predators.
From ACM News
Rover Reveals More of Martian Peak
Newly received images from NASA's Curiosity rover are filling out the high-resolution view of its surroundings at Gale Crater on Mars—and providing an up-close look at the six-wheeled craft's nuclear power source. But there are…
From ACM News
Future of Data: Encoded in Dna
In the latest effort to contend with exploding quantities of digital data, researchers encoded an entire book into the genetic molecules of DNA, the basic building block of life, and then accurately read back the text.
From ACM TechNews
Physicists Explore Spin Properties of Electrons in Graphene
Scientists from Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have used electrical resistance to examine the spin properties of electrons in graphene.
From ACM TechNews
5 Grand Challenges That Will Boost Future Optic, Photonic Technology
A recent U.S. National Research Council report defines research priorities that would lead to advances in optics and photonics, highlighting five challenges facing the nation that can be addressed with such advances.
From ACM TechNews
Wireless Power For the Price of a Penny
A new device known as a rectenna could lead to large-scale adoption of near-field communication technology at low cost.
From ACM News
How Governments and Telecom Companies Work Together on Surveillance Laws
When Americans are displeased with their politicians, they like to threaten to move to Canada. But if you're tempted to move north—or even further afield—to get away from plans for increased Internet surveillance by the government…
From ACM TechNews
MPEG Hammers Out Codec That Halves Bit Rate
The Moving Picture Experts Group has announced a new international standard for a video compression format.
From ACM News
Nasa Pulls Off 350-Million-Mile Software Patch
If you think it's tough to keep your computer or smartphone's software updated, try keeping a space robot updated from 350 million miles away.
From ACM News
How Big Data Became So Big
This has been the crossover year for Big Data—as a concept, as a term, and, yes, as a marketing tool.
From ACM News
Martian Computing Is Light on Ram, Heavy on Radiation Shielding
NASA's Curiosity Rover has had a historic week on the surface of Mars, executing a flawless landing on the Red Planet and firing up for its mission. But under the hood, the interplanetary explorer is powered by a pair of computers…
From ACM TechNews
NTU Scientist Invents Pocket Living Room TV
NTU researchers have developed Social Cloud TV, which they say is a multi-screen mobile social TV experience that enables users to have video and chat sessions on any number of connected mobile devices.
From ACM TechNews
Swiss Scientists Develop Algorithm to Sniff Out the Source of Malware and Spam Attacks
Researchers have developed an algorithm that can find the source of a computer virus, malware, or spam attack by checking only a small percentage of connections in a network.
From ACM News
Could the New Air Traffic Control System Be Hacked
The Federal Aviation Administration is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar upgrade of the nation's air traffic control system.
From ACM TechNews
Open Source Project to Get Gadgets Talking Via the Net
More than 5,400 developers have downloaded Webinos, an open source operating system developed with the support of more than 30 organizations that is designed to enable digital devices to communicate with each other.
From ACM TechNews
c San Diego Computer Scientists Explore Secure Browser Design
UCSD researchers say they have developed a new approach to secure browsing design.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientists Reveal How Aquatic Olympic Gold Is Captured--Above and Below the Surface
NYU researchers followed Olympic swimmers and divers during their training sessions and used motion-capture techniques to reveal their movement above and below the water's surface.
From ACM News
What's Next For Nasa? 10 Wild Newly Funded Projects
What's next for NASA now that Curiosity has touched down on Mars? For a sneak peek into what the space agency has in store, take a look at the 28 proposals for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which gives out awards…
From ACM News
Cheap Chips Herald Future of Wave and Pay
Small, cheap smart-tag devices that are printed as digital circuits in rolls like newspapers could help kickstart the wireless payment industry. The devices, known as rectennas, combine a rectifier—which converts current from…