Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2011
From ACM News
Astronomers Plead For Space Telescope's Life
NASA officials and leading astronomers say the James Webb Space Telescope, successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, should still fly despite mounting criticism, cost increases, and disagreements within the astronomy community…
From ACM News
Schmidt Avoids a Gates-Like Disaster in D.c.
Eric Schmidt cut a confident figure today prior to his testimony before U.S. lawmakers, who later appeared determined to find out if Google abuses its supremacy on the Web.
From ACM News
Privacy at Risk: Who's Watching You?
The notion of Big Brother has been around for decades, but technology has long lagged behind the Orwellian imagination. Not any more; in the era of smartphones, face recognition, and the omnipresent Internet, the stakes are…
From ACM TechNews
Gamers Succeed Where Scientists Fail
Gamers have produced an accurate model of the structure of a retrovirus enzyme within three weeks, according to University of Washington researchers.
From ACM TechNews
Data May Not Compute
The fast pace of technology's advance has left some data behind as data stored on tapes, floppy disks, and other media that is now unreadable by modern computers is essentially lost.
From ACM TechNews
5 More Tech Breakthroughs: Innovations in Access, Power and Control
Five new technology breakthroughs could change the way users power and interact with their devices and access the Internet.
From ACM TechNews
White House Targets Innovative Education Technologies
The White House has formed a nonprofit organization, Digital Promise, to create new learning technologies that will help improve the performance of U.S. students.
From ACM TechNews
Escaping Legacy It Systems
MIT researchers have developed a computer model of a corporate information infrastructure that could help information technology managers predict the effects of changes to their networks.
From ACM News
Submarine Cable Map
TeleGeography’s interactive submarine cable map is based on TeleGeography's authoritative Global Bandwidth research and depicts 188 active and planned submarine cable systems and their landing stations.
From ACM News
Turn Your Smart Phone Into a Robot Remote Control
Android and iPhone users alike are newly empowered over robots, in two very different ways.
From ACM News
Nasa Announces Two Game-Changing Space Technology Projects
NASA has selected two game-changing space technology projects for development. The selections are part of the agency's efforts to pursue revolutionary technology required for future missions, while proving the capabilities…
From ACM News
News Mining Might Have Predicted Arab Spring
You could have foreseen the Arab Spring if only you'd been paying enough attention to the news. That's the claim of a new study that shows how data mining of news reportage can reveal the possibility of future crises well…
From ACM News
A Future For Drones: Automated Killing
One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, GA, two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green, and blue tarp.
From ACM News
The No-Name Companies Selling More Phones Than Samsung, Lg, and Apple Combined
MicroMax. Spice. Tianyu. Maxx Mobile. Videocon. Karbonn. These are some of the hundreds of small cell phone makers that are eating up market share across the developing world.
From ACM News
nbridled Ingenuity at Maker Faire
Around noon this past Sunday, I found myself asking a young girl why, even though the music-producing device she and her family had made was called "Slugophone," the small display box at their booth contained a caterpillar…
From ACM TechNews
Synchronized Swimming: Patrolling For Pollution with Robotic Fish
Michigan State University researchers want to develop robotic fish that can navigate underwater and patrol for pollution in oceans, lakes, and rivers.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Sequence Dark Matter of Life
University of California, San Diego researchers have developed a method to sequence the genomes of thousands of bacteria species, including microorganisms that produce antibiotics and microbes that live in the human body.
From ACM TechNews
Could Silicon Be Ideal in Quantum Computing?
Sandia National Laboratory researchers have found that one way to reduce noise in a quantum system is to use silicon.
From ACM TechNews
Caring, Empathetic Robots the Goal of Ou Professor's Research
University of Oklahoma professor Dean Hougen is studying whether robots can learn to care for one another, and possibly humans.
From ACM News
Blood Vessels from Your Printer
Researchers have been working at growing tissue and organs in the laboratory for a long time. These days, tissue engineering enables us to build up artificial tissue, although science still hasn’t been successful with larger…
From ACM News
Printing Off the Paper
Imagine being able to "print" an entire house. Or a four-course dinner. Or a complete mechanical device such as a cuckoo clock, fully assembled and ready to run. Or a printer capable of printing … yet another printer?
From ACM News
Shwetak Patel: 2011 Macarthur Fellow
Shwetak Patel is a computer scientist who has invented a series of sensor technology systems for home environments with the goal of saving energy and improving daily life through a broad range of applications. Much of his…
From ACM News
Kinect Assists At-Risk Older Adults
Kinect and other computer technology, like Doppler radar, are being used to detect the early onset of illness and the risk of falling in older adults.
From ACM News
The Last Days of the Old Parking Meter
Motorists' bane, magnet for thieves, and memorialized in the Beatles' "Lovely Rita," the diminutive parking meter has led an outsize life. But its days in New York City are about to expire.
From ACM TechNews
Smartphone Battery Life Could Dramatically Improve With New Invention
University of Michigan researchers have developed the Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening system, which features a subconscious mode for smartphones and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices that could extend battery life by more than 50…
From ACM News
The America Invents Act and the Individual Inventor
Much has been said about how the newly passed patent reform legislation, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, benefits large corporations. While that argument certainly can be made, Congress did not forget the individual inventor…
From ACM TechNews
5 Game-Changing Ideas For Federal Cyber R&d
The Leap-Ahead R&D & Coordination program is one of 12 initiatives included in the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiatitive, which consists of several mutually reinforcing efforts to help secure the U.S. in cyberspace…
From ACM TechNews
Monitoring Patients sing Intelligent T-Shirts
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid researchers have developed an intelligent t-shirt that monitors human vital signs, such as body temperature and heart rate, and can locate patients within a hospital.
From ACM TechNews
Schoolchildren to Be Taught How to Write Software
The British government has decided to start teaching pre-General Certificate of Secondary Education students how to write software as part of its effort to transform information technology education in schools.
From ACM TechNews
'internet of Things' Is Set to Come
Oxfam charity shops will use technology developed by a U.K. consortium to create an Internet of things this fall.