Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2010
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Wants to Create Brainiac Bot Tots
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding scientist Shane Mueller's efforts to expand upon the Turing test as part of an attempt to determine the level of artificial intelligence in bot tots.
From ACM TechNews
.s. Stimulus Funding Is Boosting Innovation
The White House recently published its first analysis of the impact of the ARRA stimulus package on advances in science, claiming successes in funding innovation in fields such as solar power, electronic health records, and new…
From ACM TechNews
Navigation App Gives You Freedom to Explore
Swansea University's Simon Robinson and colleagues have developed a smartphone navigation application that gives pedestrians the opportunity to explore unfamiliar cities without getting lost.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientist Puts NSF Funding to Work for More Reliable Computing
University of California, San Diego professor Yuanyuan Zhou recently received several grants for research projects aimed at making computer systems more reliable by detecting software bugs and using software components to adapt…
From ACM News
The Big Promise of Big Data: What You Need to Know Today
In the never-ending quest for a competitive advantage, organizations are turning to large repositories of corporate and external data to uncover trends, statistics, and other actionable information to help decide on their…
From ACM News
Anticensorship Tool Proves Too Good to Be True
Experts warn that the software could identify those it claims to protect.
From ACM News
Campusreader Aims to Turn Electronic Tablets Into Tools
The iPad, Kindle, and other electronic reading tablets may prove to be game-changers to help people overcome barriers to effective reading and comprehension, say University of Oregon researchers.
From ACM News
Intel Puts Game Physics in the Cloud
Simulating the physics of light makes for games that better mimic the real world.
From ACM News
Tim Berners-Lee Calls For Free Internet Worldwide
Tim Berners-Lee said that he would like to see everybody given a low-bandwidth connection "by default."
From ACM News
Database Helps Researchers Identify Drug Targets
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have developed a new computational method that will provide scientists with a better mechanistic understanding of the differences between diseased and normal cells.
From ACM News
Scientists Reveal Battery Behavior at the Nanoscale
As industry seeks improved battery power sources, cutting-edge microscopy performed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing an unprecedented perspective on how lithium-ion batteries function…
From ACM TechNews
Why Isn't the Price of Broadband Obeying Moore's Law?
A new index from researchers at Northwestern University shows that the explosive pace in adopting broadband Internet access since 2004 has not led to a decline in prices, while the quality of broadband Internet access has been…
From ACM TechNews
Cern Collides With a Patent Reality
Previously reluctant to patent the inventions, the CERN particle physics laboratory recently struck a deal with the World Intellectual Property Organization to ensure that it profits from its innovations in fields including…
From ACM News
Steampunk Chip Takes the Heat
Steampunk, the reimagining of modern day technology through a Victorian perspective, has found an unlikely follower in the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). A DARPA-funded project has reinvented a type ofCharles…
From ACM News
Pew Study: We've Got Phone Apps, But Not All of S Are sing Them
Thirty-five percent of adults in the United States have "apps," or software programs on their cell phones now, but only 24 percent of them are actually using them; 11 percent of cell owners "are not sure if their phone is…
From ACM News
Computer in Wrapping-Paper Form
Investigators SUNY Binghamton are giving factory production of solar energy cells a modern makeover. Their new approach includes the use of "continuous electronic sheets," something like a computer flattened into wrapping paper…
From ACM News
Darpa Wants You To Build An Anti-Secrecy App
Usually the Pentagon expends time and technological effort to protect information. But now the far-out researchers at Darpa are looking for a few good futurists to help the Obama administration declassify reams of national…
From ACM News
Online Newsletter Targets Informatics Professionals
The Standards Standard online newsletter has been launched by the American Medical Informatics Association for health professionals working in the global informatics community.
From ACM News
The Next Stage of Online Video Evolution
HTML5 is changing the look of Web video, but can it edge out Flash?
From ACM News
Computers
A trio of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professors has launched a new high-performance computing center that will expand access to the supercomputing resources of a unique computer cluster composed of 5,760 scalar…
From ACM News
3D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution
Businesses in the South Park district of San Francisco generally sell either Web technology or sandwiches and burritos. Bespoke Innovations plans to sell designer body parts.
From ACM News
Museum Displays Personal Computer, Video Game Collection
The small town of Brantford, Ontario, located about an hour west of Toronto, has been been gaining a reputation, in nerd circles at least, as home to the Personal Computer Museum, a veritable treasure trove of machinery and…
From ACM News
Religious Search Engines Yield Tailored Results
In a world where Google has put every bit of information at our fingertips, some people are now demanding less information when they surf the Internet.
From ACM News
Number of New Computer Viruses at Record High
Cyber criminals are attracted to enormously popular Internet-based social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn, and are using such networks to attack Internet users.
From ACM TechNews
Most Influential Tweeters of All
Northwestern University researchers have designed a website that tracks the top trending topics on Twitter in real time. The website—pulseofthetweeters.com—uses an algorithm to rank the most influential people tweeting on…
From ACM TechNews
How Football Playing Robots Have the Future of AI at Their Feet
Research published in WIREs Cognitive Science details how robots designed to play football (called "soccer" in the U.S.) are propelling the development of robotic artificial intelligence that can be used for advanced applications…
From ACM TechNews
New Cctv Technology Helps Prevent Terror Attacks
The VTT Technical Research Center of Finland has developed image-processing technology that can analyze large amounts of video data automatically and quickly recognize potential risks.
From ACM News
FCC Move to Release 'white Spaces' Has Tech Firms Dreaming of Wireless Boom
Entire towns linked to the Web as giant hot spots with seamless wireless connections. Internet-connected refrigerators that monitor when it's time to get more milk and eggs.
From ACM TechNews
Electric Skin That Rivals the Real Thing
Two separate research groups have developed pressure-sensing devices that can match human skin in sensitivity and flexibility.
From ACM TechNews
Software Improves Yuma Proving Ground Test Equipment
Researchers at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground have developed a program that can determine the positional and angular motion of relatively stationary test objects during the various stages of their firing, using high-speed…