Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2013
From ACM TechNews
A Computer Scientist's Approach to Medicine
Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist Stephanie Seneff applies her natural language processing research to solving biological problems.
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputer Boosted With Graphic Processors
The Swiss National Supercomputing Center is developing a new supercomputer system that will consume less power than its current flagship supercomputing system.
From ACM TechNews
Inspired By Ruby on Rails, Grails to Go Beyond Web App Dev
Open source web application framework Grails has been available since 2007, and has been used to deploy Netflix to the Amazon Web Services cloud.
From ACM News
In Memoriam: Mary Jean Harrold 1947 — 2013
Georgia Institute of Technology School of Computer Science professor Mary Jean (Tomlinson) Harrold passed away on Thursday after a lengthy battle with cancer.
From ACM News
Apple: The 64-Bit Question
There's been an interesting sideshow in tech land since Apple unveiled the iPhone 5S last week: Does having the first 64-bitmicroprocessor in a phone mean anything?
From ACM News
Rsa Tells Its Developer Customers: Stop Using Nsa-Linked Algorithm
From ACM Opinion
Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction
How will police use a gun that immobilizes its target but does not kill? What would people do with a device that could provide them with any mood they desire? What are the consequences of a massive, instant global communications…
From ACM TechNews
Ipad App Teaches Students Key Skill For Success in Math, Science, Engineering
Researchers have developed an iPad app designed to help students learn spatial visualization, which is needed to do well in science, math, and engineering.
From ACM TechNews
Alan Turing’s Story Could Be Rebooted By Calls to Pardon Late Computer Legend
More than 50 years after the death of computing pioneer Alan Turing, a movement is cresting to reboot the record of the British mathematician's life.
From ACM TechNews
Large-Scale Pilot to Get a Read on Super Wi-Fi
The Gigabit Libraries Network will conduct a large-scale pilot of Super Wi-Fi at U.S. public libraries in the months ahead.
From ACM News
Google May Ditch 'cookies' As Online Ad Tracker
Google, the world's largest Internet search company, is considering a major change in how online browsing activity is tracked, a move that could shake up the $120 billion digital advertising industry.
From ACM TechNews
Security Researchers Create ndetectable Hardware Trojans
A new paper shows how integrated circuits used in computers, military equipment, and other critical systems can be compromised during the manufacturing process.
From ACM TechNews
Rice Prof’s Sleuthing Helps Id Lost Van Gogh
A statistical analysis of X-ray images of the canvas beneath a painting helped to identify it as an authentic work by Vincent Van Gogh.
From ACM News
NASA Curiosity Rover Detects No Methane on Mars
Data from NASA's Curiosity rover has revealed the Martian environment lacks methane. This is a surprise to researchers because previous data reported by U.S. and international scientists indicated positive detections.
From ACM News
Secret Court Declassifies Opinion Providing Rationale For Metadata Sharing
For the first time, the United States' most secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), has published its legal rationale as to why the telecom metadata sharing program under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act…
From ACM Opinion
The New National Identity Is What Smartphone You Prefer, and Nobody's Quite Sure Why
In a fascinating note at Asymco, mobile analyst and ex-Nokian Horace Dediu details how people's taste in smartphones varies from place to place:
From ACM News
Lowering the Energy Overhead For Data
U.S. data centers are now eligible to receive Energy Star certification, if they are sufficiently energy efficient.
From ACM News
Improving the Big Data Toolkit
Open source software tends to march into the marketplace step by step, a quiet but steady strategy compared with the grand marketing events of the commercial software world. And Hadoop, the bedrock software of the fast-growing…
From ACM News
Google vs. Death
In person, it can be a little hard to hear Larry Page.
From ACM News
NASA's Plutonium Problem Could End Deep-Space Exploration
In 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft left Earth on a five-year mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Thirty-six years later, the car-size probe is still exploring, still sending its findings home.
From ACM TechNews
Can Supercomputers Predict the Future?
Supercomputers could predict major upheavals with some degree of confidence, according to a Georgetown University researcher.
From ACM TechNews
Graphene Could Yield Cheaper Optical Chips
A new application for graphene in photodetectors could convert optical signals to electrical signals in integrated optoelectronic computer chips.
From ACM TechNews
Research Brings nbreakable Phones One Step Closer
A new method for transferring versatile electronics onto a flexible surface could contribute to the development of flexible displays, solar cells, and energy harvesters.
From ACM TechNews
Tri-City Hockey Crowds to Be Taped For .s. Security Research
Researchers will videotape the crowd at the season opener for the Tri-City Americans hockey team in an attempt to improve facial recognition technologies.
From ACM Careers
Teaching Computers to See–by Learning to See Like Computers
By translating images into the language spoken by object-recognition systems, then translating them back, researchers hope to explain the recognition systems' failures.
From ACM Opinion
Behold! Jonathan Ive's Apple
Apple is today releasing the much-anticipated iOS 7, and with it, the biggest overhaul of its mobile operating system since it debuted in 2007 with the original iPhone.
From ACM News
Nasa's Asteroid-In-A-Bag Recipe
"It’s not as crazy as it seemed at the beginning," Charles Elachi, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the Washington Post, about NASA's latest plan for a splashy, manned flight to outer space. NASA, you see…
From ACM Opinion
Ios 7, Thoroughly Reviewed
When we reviewed iOS 6 a year ago, we called it a "spit-and-polish" release and stand by that assessment today.
From ACM News
Ambivalence on Civil Liberties, Terrorism
When it comes to the balance between civil liberties and the war on terrorism, Americans seem to want the best of both worlds.
From ACM News
Harvey's Injury Shows Pitchers Have a Speed Limit
Glenn Fleisig's rather unusual laboratory has a pitcher's mound and a home plate, and when he rigs people up to throw a baseball, their motion is analyzed with sensors feeding into computers.