Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2013
From ACM News
Cyborg Parts
Lab-made organs could do more than just serve as ready options for patients in need: with the right blend of biology and materials science, they might even be able to endow people with superhuman abilities.
From ACM News
Exotic Optics: Metamaterial World
Tom Driscoll would be happy if he never heard the phrase "Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak" again.
From ACM News
Nsa Claims It 'touches' Only 1.6 Percent of Internet Traffic
Just hours after President Obama defended the National Security Agency's activities, the foreign surveillance agency released a document in which it claims to review only a small faction of Internet traffic on a daily basis.
From ACM News
The Science Behind the Netflix Algorithms That Decide What You'll Watch Next
If you liked 1960s Star Trek, the first non-Trek title that Netflix is likely to suggest to you is the original Mission: Impossible series (the one with the cool Lalo Schifrin soundtrack).
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Working on Tech to Take Humans to Mars – and Bring Them Back
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration is working on the technologies needed to take astronauts to Mars and back.
From ACM News
Nsa to Cut System Administrators By 90 Percent to Limit Data Access
The U.S. National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people…
From ACM TechNews
Searching Big Data For 'digital Smoke Signals'
Development and aid programs are embracing the emerging field known as big data for development.
From ACM TechNews
Hive-Mind Solves Tasks Using Google Glass Ant Game
Swarm! is a game that connects Google Glass wearers to a virtual ant colony and asks them to solve real-world problems.
From ACM TechNews
Seeing Depth Through a Single Lens
A newly developed method allows photographers to create a three-dimensional image through a single lens, without moving the camera.
From ACM TechNews
Next Step in Facial Imaging
A new system capable of recording moving human images in three dimensions allows scientists to research facial movement.
From ACM News
Silent Circle Follows Lavabit in Shuttering Encrypted Email
Silent Circle shuttered its encrypted email service on Thursday, the second such closure in just a few hours in an apparent attempt to avoid government scrutiny that may threaten its customers' privacy.
From ACM News
Integrating Left Brain and Right, on a Computer
As computers have matured over time, the human brain has no way of keeping up with silicon's rapid-fire calculating abilities.
From ACM News
Bigshot Diy Camera Aims to Teach Kids Tech Basics
Owners of Bigshot's device need to assemble its parts in a specific sequence to make it work. An online guide explains the science behind them.
From ACM News
Moore's Law Could Stay On Track with Extreme v Progress
Long-awaited improvements in photolithography could pave the way for the continued shrinking and scaling of microprocessors into the second half of this decade and beyond.
From ACM News
N.s.a. Said to Search Content of Messages to and From U.s.
The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans' email and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according…
From ACM TechNews
Xerox Scanners Found to Sometimes Alter Numbers
Xerox scanners sometimes randomly alter numbers on documents when reproducing them if a specific combination of image quality and compression settings are used.
From ACM TechNews
Understanding Interface Properties of Graphene Paves Way for New Applications
A new technique to improve the stretchability of graphene should help engineers and designers create new technologies that utilize the material.
From ACM TechNews
Congress Posts .s. Code in Xml
The U.S. House of Representatives has published all 51 titles of the U.S. Code in XML format for download, as part of the its open government initiative.
From ACM TechNews
3D Ir Images Now in Full Color
A new non-destructive three-dimensional (3D) imaging technique provides molecular-level chemical information on biological and other specimens.
From ACM Opinion
If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?
Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the mid-to-late 1990s.
From ACM News
Museums Go Mobile
Mobile apps are redefining and reinventing the modern museum, ushering in a new era of interactivity and immersion.
From ACM News
A Videogame That Recruits Players to Map the Brain
I'm no neuroscientist, and yet, here I am at my computer attempting to reconstruct a neural circuit of a mouse’s retina.
From ACM News
One Year Later, Nasa Looks Back at Curiosity Rover's Scariest Moment
For the Curiosity rover, it's just another day on Mars—but back on Earth, Tuesday was a day to look back at the $2.5 billion mission's first year, including a moment when it looked as if the mission might be lost.
From ACM News
Emotion-Sniffing Is Next Trick Your Phone Is Learning
Rice University scientists, working with Microsoft Research, have created something rather surprising—a long-term-mood detecting device that can ascertain a user's emotions with up to 93% accuracy.
From ACM News
Helping the Deaf to 'See' and 'Feel' Sound
Earlier this summer in a packed and freezing-cold auditorium in Doha, the all-female team of students from Qatar University burst into cheers and tears as they were pronounced winners of the country’s INJAZ Young Enterprise of…
From ACM News
Maths Quiz Helps Paralyzed People Talk With Their Eyes
Giving fully conscious but paralysed people hard sums to do might seem like adding insult to injury. But because such brain teasers make the pupils of the eyes involuntarily dilate, it's providing a simple way for doctors to…
From ACM TechNews
Japan Sends Talking Robot Into Space as Part of Program to Help Lonely People
A talking robot is expected to reach the International Space Station in the next six days.
From ACM TechNews
Simulating 1 Second of Real Brain Activity Takes 40 Minutes and 83k Processors
The world's fourth-fastest supercomputer needed 40 minutes to simulate one second of actual brain activity.
From ACM TechNews
Toward Harmonized Aircraft Communication
The European Union is funding a project to merge a full range of aircraft communications applications and services into a coherent digital architecture.
From ACM TechNews
Reliable Communication, nreliable Networks
Researchers recently unveiled a new framework for analyzing ad hoc networks.