Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2011
From ACM News
Headless, Humanoid Robot Preps For Army Duty
Sauntering toward you like a mechanized zombie is the Army’s newest recruit: a robot with a blinking red light where its head should be.
From ACM TechNews
To Diagnose Heart Disease, Visualization Experts Recommend a Simpler Approach
Harvard University researchers have developed HemoVis, a method for visualizing human arteries that, in clinical testing, increased diagnostic accuracy from 39 percent to 91 percent.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientist Seeks the Real Meaning of Language
Researchers at Columbia University and the City University of New York are developing computational methods to detect deception in English, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic speakers.
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Offers $50,000 Prize If You Can Figure Out These Shredded Puzzles
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced the $50,000 Shredder Challenge, which asks participants to devise new methods or techniques for piecing together a series of shredded documents.
From ACM TechNews
New Tool Clears the Air on Cloud Simulations
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers and international collaborators have developed the Cloud-Feedback-Model Intercomparison Project Observation Simulator Package, which will enable scientists to better represent…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Create Transistors From Natural Cotton Fibers
Cornell University professor Juan Hinestroza was part of an international team that recently developed transistors using natural cotton fibers.
From ACM News
A Deeper Look Into Space
NASA hopes the James Webb Space Telescope, which can detect ancient light that its predecessors can’t, will reveal more information about the origins of the universe than the Hubble Space Telescope currently can.
From ACM News
China Tangles with Internet Access
Internet giants like Google and Twitter have had to beat a retreat from China after being blocked or restricted, and now, some tech lobbies are stepping up pressure on Congress and the White House to do more. They say companies…
From ACM News
In Surprise, China nveils Supercomputer Based on Its Own Chips
China has made its first supercomputer based on Chinese microprocessor chips, an advance that surprised high-performance computing specialists in the United States.
From ACM News
The Making of Arduino
How five friends engineered a small circuit board that’s taking the DIY world by storm.
From ACM Opinion
The Genius of Jobs
One of the questions I wrestled with when writing about Steve Jobs was how smart he was. On the surface, this should not have been much of an issue.
From ACM News
Kevin Mitnick Rates Today's Blackhats
Kevin Mitnick was hacking when the LulzSec kids were still in training pants.
From ACM News
IBM Simulates 4.5% of the Human Brain, and All of the Cat Brain
Supercomputers can store more information than the human brain and can calculate a single equation faster, but even the biggest, fastest supercomputers in the world cannot match the overall processing power of the brain. Andas…
From ACM TechNews
Can Software Patch the Ailing Power Grid?
A consortium providing the technology for a large-scale smart grid project says the software is nearly complete.
From ACM TechNews
New Technology Pinpoints Anomalies in Complex Financial Data
Battelle researchers at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed Anomalator, analytical software designed to recognize anomalous information that can help regulators, investors, and advisers better manage…
From ACM TechNews
Lack of Confidence as Professionals Spurs Women to Leave Engineering, Study Finds
Women who start college aiming to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career because they lack confidence, according to a recent American Sociological Review paper.
From ACM TechNews
Wholesome Data: sing It to Promote Healthy Behaviors
Edmund Seto, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, develops censor and cell phone technologies to connect people to relevant, real-time data about themselves and their environments.
From ACM TechNews
Xml Encryption Cracked, Exposing Real Threat to Online Transactions
Ruhr-University Bochum researchers have demonstrated a technique for breaking the encryption used to secure data in online transactions, posing a serious threat on all currently used implementations of XML encryption.
From ACM News
Apple Patent ses 3d Gestures to Control an Ipad
Forget relying solely on touch to control your Apple device. On future iPads, you may be able to control your tablet from across the room using 3D gestures, such as a swirl or swipe of the hand.
From ACM News
Is Checking Sports Scores or Personal Email at Work a Crime?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has agreed to reconsider a 2-1 ruling issued in April that critics said made it a crime to violate an employer's computer access policy.
From ACM News
Microsoft Sees Screens Everywhere in Futuristic Video
Say what you will about Microsoft's execution in developing cool products and services consumers want, where rivals such as Apple and Google have stolen a beat or three on the software giant. One thing Microsoft doesn't lack…
From ACM News
A Social-Media Decoder
From his 24th-floor corner office in midtown Manhattan, the veteran CBS research chief David Poltrack can gaze southward down the Avenue of the Americas, its sidewalks teeming.
From ACM Opinion
Ice Cream Sandwich: A Deep-Dive Tour With Android
There are few things in this world I despise more than software updates. Downloading hundreds of files, waiting for the progress bar to fill, restarting the device—it’s all a thankless chore. Usually.
From ACM News
Nasa in Final Preparations For Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby
NASA scientists will be tracking asteroid 2005 YU55 with antennas of the agency's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., as the space rock safely flies past Earth slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov. 8. Scientists…
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Couple Printed Logic With Printed Memory
Transistors have been combined with memory in a printed electronic device that offers an affordable way to read, write, and process small amounts of data by Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and Thinfilm Electronics.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Hackers: Cracking the ncrackable Code
Norwegian University of Science and Technology researcher Vadim Makarov has developed a quantum cryptography method to defend against attacks of quantum key distribution systems.
From ACM News
How Yahoo Spawned Hadoop, the Future of Big Data
The email went to Eric14. His real name is Eric Baldeschwieler, but no one calls him that. At fourteen letters, Baldeschwieler is a mouthful, and he works in a world where a name takes a backseat to an online handle.
From ACM TechNews
Science Fiction-Style Sabotage a Fear in New Hacks
The U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit group that helps the U.S. government identify vulnerabilities for cyberattacks, has replicated the recent attack that sabotaged centrifuges used in Iran's nuclear program.
From ACM TechNews
Professor Steven Bellovin Discusses Computer Security
Columbia University professor Steven Bellovin says in an interview that he is working on the idea of private search, which allows users to work together, but not know what each person is specifically searching for.
From ACM News
Why Cgi Humans Are Creepy, and What Scientists Are Doing About It
A century ago, psychologists identified "the uncanny" as an experience that seems familiar yet foreign at the same time, causing some sort of brain confusion and, ultimately, a feeling of fear or repulsion. Originally no more…