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 News
The Campaign to Digitize Your Wallet Is Intensifying
Last week, Starbucks joined forces with Square, a technology start-up that lets you pay for things with a smartphone. Coming from a company whose cafes seem to be on every corner, that's a powerful endorsement. Does that mean…
From ACM TechNews
Prototype System Goes After Dns-Based Botnets
Researchers at the University of Georgia and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed Pleiades, a prototype system that can better detect Domain Name Generation (DGA)-based botnets without the normal time-intensive…
From ACM TechNews
New Technique Improves Rendering of Smoke, Dust and Participating Media
Researchers at the Karlsruhe Technical Institute, Disney Research, and the University of Montreal say they have developed a new and efficient way to simulate how light is absorbed and scattered in scenes filled with smoke or…
From ACM TechNews
Google Releases New Web Development Aids
Google has released Leak Finder, a tool for finding memory leaks in JavaScript code and a library written in Dart for accessing popular Google APIs.
From ACM TechNews
IBM Claims Spintronics Breakthrough With 'Waltzing Electrons' Observations
A team from IBM and ETH Zurich University have directly mapped the formation of a spin helix in a semiconductor for the first time, a development that could lead to spintronics replacing electronics and smaller computing devices…
From ACM News
Analysis Reveals Flame Malware's Process Injection Tricks
As researchers continue to pull apart the Gauss malware code, looking for spreading mechanisms and infection vectors, there is still some work being done on Gauss's cousin Flame, as well.
From ACM News
Reprogrammed Mars Rover Getting Ready to Roll
NASA's Curiosity rover is almost fully reprogrammed for its two-year, $2.5 billion science mission on Mars, and mission managers say it should be ready to take its first short drive in about a week.
From ACM News
Boeing Technology Enables Drones to Swarm Like Insects
Engineers at Boeing Co. and Johns Hopkins University have devised technology that enables drones to function like a swarm of insects that can communicate and carry out tasks together in mid-flight.
From ACM News
Success of Wpi’s Robotics Program Inspires Other niversities
The success of the nation’s first undergrad robotics engineering program has inspired two universities that are now experiencing the very same challenges.
From ACM News
Color Printing Reaches Its ltimate Resolution
The highest possible resolution images—about 100,000 dots per inch—have been achieved, and in full-color, with a printing method that uses tiny pillars a few tens of nanometers tall.
From ACM TechNews
What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? CM Software ncovers Stylistic Core
CMU researchers have developed visual data-mining software that can automatically detect the subtle features that make cities unique, such as street signs, street lamps, and balcony railings.
From ACM TechNews
The Future of the Internet Is…a La Carte
The U.S. National Science Foundation recently asked a team of researchers to develop the key components for a networking architecture that could serve as the backbone of a new Internet that gives users more choices about which…
From ACM TechNews
Developer Interview: How Haiku Is Building a Better Beos
BeOS, an operating system that was originally designed for Apple hardware but was passed over for NeXT's OpenStep, has found a new life thanks to Haiku.
From ACM TechNews
Most STEM Degrees to Latinos Granted by Schools in Six States
A recent Excelencia in Education report featured an analysis of institutions awarding certificates or degrees to Latino students in STEM fields.
From ACM News
Slow, But Rugged, Curiosity's Computer Was Built For Mars
The electronic brain controlling NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has far less horsepower than the microchips typically found in a modern smart phone.
From ACM News
Report from the Drone Convention: Unmanned Vehicles Find New Uses
Drone makers and robotics manufacturers are looking for—and finding—new uses for devices that were once limited to the worlds of science and the military.
From ACM News
Nasa Drivers Await Chance to Operate Biggest, Baddest Mars Rover
The San Gabriel Mountains rise over a rough patch of sun-baked volcanic boulders, dusty flagstones, and earthen slopes.
From ACM News
Nasa pgrades Mars Curiosity Software ... from 350m Miles Away
Picture doing a remote software upgrade. Now picture doing it when the machine you're upgrading is a robotic rover sitting 350 million miles away, on the surface of Mars.
From ACM TechNews
A Battery That Folds!
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology researchers have developed a super-thin, flexible, all-solid-state battery that could one day lead to phones and gadgets that can be folded.
From ACM TechNews
A Simple Way to Help Cities Monitor Traffic More Accurately
Ohio State University researchers have developed software to identify in-road loop detectors, which are used to monitor traffic, that are prone to splashover, and reprogram them to get more accurate numbers.
From ACM TechNews
Engineering Team Develops Chip for Mars Rover
University of Tennessee at Knoxville researchers have designed a tiny microchip that is being used to help control the rover that recently landed on Mars.
From ACM TechNews
How to Share Personal Data While Keeping Secrets Safe
Cornell University researchers have developed a new mathematical technique that allows for the sharing of large data sets of personal data without compromising any one individual's privacy.
From ACM Opinion
Nasa Mohawk Guy Bobak Ferdowsi on Sci-Fi, Legos, and Becoming a Meme
As space geeks watched nervously to see if NASA's Curiosity rover would land safely on Mars, many found themselves wondering, "Hey, who's that cool dude with the stars-and-stripes mohawk?"
From ACM News
My Life as a Telecommuting Robot
I was strolling down the hall to a meeting on a Wednesday afternoon when I suddenly blacked out, coming to a halt.
From ACM News
Dinner and a Robot: My Night Out With a Pr2
On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of dining at the exclusive Willow Garage in Menlo Park, Calif.
From ACM Opinion
Robot Master
When you visit Manuela Veloso at Carnegie Mellon University, you're not guided to her office by a security officer or even issued instructions by a secretary at reception. Instead, one of Veloso's autonomous CoBots (short for…
From ACM News
New Google Tools to Make the Search Engine More All-Knowing
When Google imagines the future of Web search, it sees a search engine that understands human meaning and not just words, that can have a spoken conversation with computer users and that gives users results not just from the…
From ACM TechNews
Microswimmers: Research Shows Micron-Scale Swimming Robots Could Deliver Drugs & Carry Cargo Using Simple Motion
Georgia Tech researchers are using computational models to design swimming micro-robots that can carry cargo and navigate in response to light.
From ACM TechNews
Artist Tests Superstition on the Stock Market With Robot Analyst
An automated program has been created to buy and sell stocks based on superstition rather than logic.
From ACM TechNews
Geek Squad Exec: 'what Happens If More of Our Innovators Are Women?'
Best Buy's Geek Squad Summer Academy has grown from a one-day, one-city, all-girls camp into a nationwide coed program that will host nearly 10,000 students in more than 20 U.S. states this summer.