The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
WikiTrust, developed by University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) researchers, helps users evaluate information published on Wikipedia by automatically assigning a reliability color code to the text, based on the reliability…
ACM has submitted comments on the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top Fund program that stress the need to ensure the level of support and attention devoted to computer science education is at least equal to that committed…
Enigma@home is attempting to break one of three original messages generated by the Enigma machine, which was intercepted by the Allies in 1942. The Enigma M4 machine is believed to have been used by Germany to encipher the signals…
College students seeking careers in computer science and engineering have the best chance of being hired in the wake of the recession, according to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas survey of 150 human resource (HR) executives.
The Kentucky Community & Technical College System (KCTCS) is using three-dimensional (3D) technology to enable students to interact with the content covered in courses rather than merely read textbooks. For example, nursing…
European researchers have created a legal analysis query engine that combines artificial intelligence, game theory and semantics to offer advice, conflict prevention and dispute settlement for European law, and it even supports…
University of Alberta researchers Marcia Spetch and Vadim Bulitko have completed a study on the decisions humans make when hiding and searching for objects. They are contributing to research that can make video-game characters…
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently released a report that outlines several scenarios in which attacks against vital elements of the U.S.'s IT infrastructure could cause massive disruptions. The report, "IT Sector…
University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) researchers have received a five-year, $5 million National Science Foundation grant to establish the Simulation, Visualization and Real-time Predictions (SiViRT) Center for interdisciplinary…
Rutgers University is among a group of New Jersey colleges that are working to get more women interested in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This fall Rutgers opened its second all-women…
University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) researchers have received more than $2 million from the National Science Foundation to investigate the public's use of social media during crisis situations. The researchers, led…
Engineers around the world are exploring all kinds of possibilities for wearable robot interfaces, from brain implants to touch interfaces. Professor Jacob Rosen and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz's Bionics…
Tel Aviv University professor Eran Halperin and researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have developed a mathematical formula that can be used to protect genetic privacy while providing researchers with the raw…
University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) researchers have developed a new method for blacklisting spam, distributed denial-of-service attacks, worms, and other network attacks. The predictive blacklisting method, which was…
The second draft of a U.S. Senate cybersecurity bill scales back language that would give the president the ability to shut down the Internet in an emergency. The bill, first introduced in April by Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W…
University of Glasgow researchers created a system using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to search a document index 20 times faster than a system based on standard processors. The researchers plan to develop the system…
The fifth edition of the European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) will take place in Paris on October 8-9, 2009, with a special workshop for new (and not so new) department heads on Oct. 7 and the first-ever ACM Europe award reception…
Queen's University Belfast and Imperial College London have launched a program that will conduct research into the interaction of light with matter at the nanoscale level. The research could lead to the development of computers…
When eBay Inc.'s PayPal unit suffered a worldwide outage early last month, Sailrite Enterprises Inc., a sailing supply company based in Churubusco, Ind., lost its critical customer payment services for six hours. The next day…
An international team of researchers has designed a new graphite-based, magnetic nano-material that acts as a semiconductor and could help material scientists create the next generation of electronic devices like microchips.…
A team of engineers at Johns Hopkins University have devised innovative computer software that can sift through hundreds of genetic mutations and highlight the DNA changes that are most likely to promote cancer. Its inventors…
One of the early promises of software-as-a-service and cloud computing was that it would allow start-ups to directly market their Web services while skipping the expensive, lengthy process of creating an ecosystem of partners…
Gaze into the electron microscope display in Frances Ross’s laboratory here and it is possible to persuade yourself that Dr. Ross, a 21st-century materials scientist, is actually a farmer in some Lilliputian silicon world.…
Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech professor Jean Peccoud has been awarded a three-year, $1.42 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a Web-based computer-aided design (CAD) environment…
As federal agencies continue to brainstorm ways to effectively oversee cybersecurity, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is increasing its foothold as one of a handful of key players in securing government computer…
A $30 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation will enable the University of Chicago to expand and extend until 2011 the operation of TeraGrid, a national system of interconnected supercomputers devoted to leading…
The promise of parallel computing has run afoul of the harsh reality of Amdahl's Law, which puts a ceiling on the benefit of converting sequential code to parallel code. The upshot is that parallelism will not necessarily reap…
Researchers working in medical nanorobotics are creating technologies that could lead to novel health-care applications, such as new ways of accessing areas of the human body that would otherwise be unreachable without invasive…
Researchers are addressing the computing challenges of older individuals, whose needs are different — and too often disregarded.
Scientists share knowledge and seek collaborators at computational sustainability conference.