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
Team Develops New Model For Animated Faces and Bodies
Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University 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
Flame and Stuxnet Cousin Targets Lebanese Bank Customers, Carries Mysterious Payload
A newly uncovered espionage tool, apparently designed by the same people behind the state-sponsored Flame malware that infiltrated machines in Iran, has been found infecting systems in other countries in the Middle East, according…
From ACM News
Disney Researchers Add Virtual Touch to the Real World
Researchers at Disney have demonstrated a computer interface that changes the way ordinary, everyday objects feel using a weak electric signal fed through a user's entire body.
From ACM News
Why Apple Will Turn to Holograms
Look around your office hallway or college campus and you'll see people holding interactive panes of glass.
From ACM News
Augmented Reality Is Finally Getting Real
In the summer of 2009, Yelp quietly added a feature to its iPhone app that blurred the line between the real and the virtual. If you held your handset up and looked at the world through its screen, you'd see little floating tags…
From ACM News
Commercial Blue-Sky Research Lives on at Ibm's Watson Center
In the decades following World War II, the U.S. emerged as the leading center of scientific research through the efforts of three types of institutions: its research universities, national labs like Fermi and Livermore, and commercial…
From ACM TechNews
New Generation of Virtual Humans Helping to Train Psychologists
University of Southern California professor Albert Rizzo has created virtual humans who can interact with therapists via a computer screen and realistically display the symptoms of a patient with clinical psychological disorders…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientist Seeks to Improve Portability of Mobile Device Applications
Virginia Tech computer scientist Eli Tilevich is working to solve the problems of porting applications across mobile devices and platforms.
From ACM TechNews
Jernej Barbic Releases Comprehensive 3D Deformable Object Library For Free
University of Southern California professor Jernej Barbic recently released Vega, a library of three-dimensional deformable modeling software, for free open source download.
From ACM TechNews
German Computer Scientists Join Forces to Make Interactive 3D Graphics Part of the World Wide Web
Researchers at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and Fraunhofer Institute are working to describe computer scenes in spatial detail directly within a Web site's code.
From ACM TechNews
Touch Your Philodendron and Control Your Computer: Technology Turns Any Plant Into an Interactive Device
Disney Research scientists have developed Botanicus Interactus, technology that enables houseplants to control a computer or other digital device.
From ACM Careers
Curiosity's Martian Playground Is Technically Located in Pasadena
Seventeen miles from downtown L.A., on the campus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, there's a small stretch of earth covered in beach sand, decomposed granite, brick dust, and volcanic cinders. The grainy layer…
From ACM News
Average Web App Attacked Every Three Days
Do not envy the life of a Web app. It's a brutal, public existence filled with attacks from all sides. In fact, a new report by Imperva sheds some light on this sad life, showing that a typical Web app is attacked once every…
From ACM News
New Router Enhances the Precision of Woodworking
Anyone who has tried to build a piece of furniture from scratch knows the frustration of painstakingly cutting pieces of wood, only to discover that they won't fit together because the cutting was not quite accurate enough.
From ACM News
Appeals Court Oks Warrantless Wiretapping
The federal government may spy on Americans' communications without warrants and without fear of being sued, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a decision reversing the first and only case that successfully challenged President…
From ACM News
Disinformation Flies in Syria's Growing Cyber War
On Sunday, it was a hijacked Reuters Twitter feed trying to create the impression of a rebel collapse in Aleppo. On Monday, it was another account purporting to be a Russian diplomat announcing the death in Damascus of Syrian…
From ACM TechNews
Silicene: The Future of Electronics?
Italian researchers say they have developed a new kind of silicene, an atomically thin form of silicon, that could revolutionize nanoelectronics.
From ACM TechNews
Interdisciplinary Research Leads to Reduced Construction Costs and Multiple Awards
Virginia Tech professor Mani Golparvar-Fard has developed the 4 Dimensional Augmented Reality system, which automatically analyzes physical progress on large-scale construction projects.
From ACM TechNews
Tired of Security Problems? Change Rules of Writing Code
Security researcher Dan Kaminsky believes rethinking the basic rules of computer science can dramatically improve computer security, and argues that "there's not enough science [being done]."
From ACM TechNews
Massive Data For Miniscule Communities
Michigan State University researchers have developed a computational technique that relieves logjams that commonly occur in big data sets.
From ACM News
Software Enables Pcs to Solve Problems That Once Required the Cloud
A new software program running on a single laptop or PC can, in some cases, solve bigger problems in less time than other available distributed frameworks.
From ACM Opinion
How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking
In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed.
From ACM Opinion
Why Drone Pilots Deserve Medals
The escalating dependence on drone pilots, as Maj. Dave Blair agonized in the May-June issue ofAir & Space Power Journal, is undercutting the ability to award combat medals.
From ACM Opinion
His Other Car Is on Mars
On Earth, Scott Maxwell drives his red Prius without paying much attention to the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.
From ACM News
Nasa's Curiosity Rover Caught in the Act of Landing
An image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the Curiosity rover still connected to its 51-foot-wide (almost 16 meter) parachute as it descended…
From ACM TechNews
In the Olympics of Algorithms, a Russian Keeps Winning Gold
Since 2005, Google researcher and former Moscow State University student Petr Mitrichev has led the world in algorithmic programming.
From ACM TechNews
Mapping the Future of Climate Change in Africa
Researchers at TACC are working on the Climate Change and African Political Stability program, which features an online mapping tool that analyzes how climate and other factors interact to threaten the security of African communities…
From ACM TechNews
Learning Machines Scour Twitter in Service of Bullying Research
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are developing a computational method for searching through social media posts to find mentions of bullying events.
From ACM TechNews
Rutgers Engineers Design Cell Phone App to Reduce Distracted Driving
Researchers at Rutgers University and the Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a smartphone application that can identify where a cell phone user is sitting in a car and automatically adjust the phone's settings to…
From ACM TechNews
Stanford's Hottest Major: Computer Science
More than 220 Stanford University students, in a class of about 1,700, chose computer science as their major last year, a 25 percent increase from the previous record in 2000-2001, according to a Stanford School of Engineering…