Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2013
From ACM News
How to se a Million-Core Supercomputer—without It Blowing p in Your Face
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a supercomputer named "Sequoia" puts nearly every other computer on the planet to shame.
From ACM News
Winners of 10th Annual International Science & Technology Visualization Challenge Announced
The National Science Foundation, along with the journal Science, today announces the 53 winners and honorable mentions of the International Science & Technology Visualization Challenge, a highly competitive contest jointly sponsored…
From ACM TechNews
Google Developer Competition Aims at Chrome Os Security
Google will offer $3.1 million in prize money to developers who can help find serious security flaws in the code of its Chrome operating system.
From ACM TechNews
Hevc Video Standard Finished; High-End Improvements Coming
The Moving Picture Experts Group has developed the High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC). The video-compression technology will enable higher-quality video, and also doubles video quality for a given network data capacity.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Present a Software Package For All Types of Imaging
Max Planck Institute researchers recently released Numerical Information Field Theory (NIFTY), a program that can be used to map dimensions or spherical projections without encoding the dimensional information in the algorithm…
From ACM News
First Look at an Atom's Shadow
Nearly 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Democritus theorized the existence of atoms by imagining what happens if you break a material into its smallest possible units. Last year physicist Dave Kielpinski of Australia's…
From ACM TechNews
Intel Futurist Says the Cloud Will Deliver nimagined Benefits to Government Services
Intel futurist David Johnson says that as people become more surrounded by data-driven intelligence about their lives, the power of aggregating information to the cloud has the potential to result in benefits and government services…
From ACM Careers
Google Asks: How Much Is Mapping Worth?
How much has mapping software changed your life?
From ACM News
Hackers in China Attacked The Times For Last 4 Months
For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Looking For Technology to Create 'transient Electronics' Devices
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Vanishing Programmable Resources program was established to foster the development of "transient electronics" that dissolve when triggered.
From ACM TechNews
Microscopic Leds Could Speed p Wireless Communication
Researchers believe microscopic LEDs could make wireless communication even faster. A team led by Strathclyde University is developing a visible light communication system that transmits data at up to 10 gigabits per second…
From ACM News
A Digital Paradise By the Dashboard Light
The driver of the first Corvette, in 1953, was welcomed by a lovely fan of numbers—a sweeping, eye-catching speedometer denominated in 10-mile-per-hour intervals up to 160.
From ACM TechNews
IBM Sends Watson to Ny College to Boost Its Skills
IBM announced that it will provide Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a Watson supercomputing system. IBM says RPI's artificial intelligence researchers will be able to help boost Watson's cognitive capabilities.
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Researchers Break Million-Core Supercomputer Barrier
Researchers at Stanford University's Center for Turbulence Research used the Sequoia IBM BlueGene/Q supercomputer with more than 1 million computing cores to solve a complex fluid dynamics problem.
From ACM TechNews
Rice Technique Points Toward 2-D Devices
Rice University researchers have developed a method to make patterns in atom-thick layers of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride, which could lead to the creation of two-dimensional electronics.
From ACM TechNews
A Boost to Your Mobile Signal
European Union-funded researchers are developing femtocells, small mobile telephony cells that improve both wireless connectivity and coverage at the local level, and that free up mobile network capacity by diverting data traffic…
From ACM News
Rio De Janeiro Brings Qr Codes to Its Streets
Rio de Janeiro is adding something new into its trademark black-and-white mosaic pavements: QR codes.
From ACM News
Computer Scientists Take Road Less Traveled
Not long ago, a team of researchers from Stanford and McGill universities broke a 35-year record in computer science by an almost imperceptible margin — four hundredths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth…
From ACM News
Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. Period.
Facebook recently ran an experiment. Inside a test lab, somewhere behind the scenes at the world's most popular network, engineers sidled up to a computer server loaded with software that typically drives the Facebook website…
From ACM News
The Inside Story Of Siri's Origins
The world got its first inkling of the quick wit that would make Apple's Siri an icon during a packed press conference held before an auditorium of tech elite.
From ACM News
Has Chip and Pin Had Its Day?
Go to a cash machine in Japan or Poland and there's a good chance you'll find a finger-sized scanner next to the keypad.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Communication: Each Photon Counts
Researchers say they have developed ultrafast, efficient, and reliable single-photon detectors, which makes possible the application of the latest advances in optical data transmission or quantum computation, the researchers…
From ACM TechNews
Sinister Code-Breakers, Beware
Governments used cryptography in the mid-20th century to encrypt top-secret messages or communications, but today cryptography is used more widely to address the challenges of the 21st century, says Northeastern University professor…
From ACM TechNews
In Massive Online Course Offered By Stanford, Teams nleash Diverse Approaches to Creativity
An online course on creativity open to thousands of students worldwide proved a unique teaching and learning experience that will help shape the future of online education, says Stanford University professor Tina Seelig.
From ACM News
Lens-Less Camera Emerges from Metamaterials Work
U.S. scientists have used metamaterials to build the imaging system, which samples infra-red and microwave light.
From ACM News
Mathematical Breakthrough Sets Out Rules For More Effective Teleportation
For the past 10 years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of 'entanglement' may hold the key to eventual teleportation of information.
From ACM News
Two Science Projects to Receive Award of 1 Billion Euros
Projects to imitate the brain and to develop new materials for information technology have won awards of about 1 billion euros (U.S. $1.34 billion) each were announced by the European Commission.
From ACM News
Senior Military Official Rejects Claims About Explosion at Fordo Enrichment Facility
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri on Monday categorically denied the recent media reports about an explosion at Fordo uranium enrichment facility.
From ACM News
How Google's Jeff Dean Became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
"The speed of light in a vacuum used to be about 35 mph. Then Jeff Dean spent a weekend optimizing physics."—Jeff Dean Facts
From ACM News
11 Body Parts Defense Researchers Will se to Track You
Cell phones that can identify you by how you walk. Fingerprint scanners that work from 25 feet away. Radars that pick up your heartbeat from behind concrete walls. Algorithms that can tell identical twins apart. Eyebrows and…