Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2008
From ACM TechNews
High Speed Broadband Will Create Energy Bottleneck and Slow Internet, Study Says
A surge in energy consumption caused by the increased adoption of broadband will continue to slow the Internet, concludes a University of Melbourne study presented at the Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT. …
From ACM TechNews
Berkeley Lab Team Wins Special ACM Gordon Bell Prize For Algorithm Innovation
ACM's Gordon Bell Prize for special achievement in high performance computing has been won by a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for their work concerning nanostructures'…
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Turns to Open-Source Problem-Tracking Databases
The recent launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour will involve the first live test of new software that was designed to streamline the process of problem reporting and analysis. The Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA's …
From ACM TechNews
Software For Safe Bridges
Inspectors might not have to examine bridges for visible damage directly on site as a result of new software that has been developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern…
From ACM TechNews
Internet's Bandwidth Health Still in Trouble, Report Says
Demand for Internet bandwidth will exceed the Internet's capacity by 2012, predicts a new Nemertes Research report. Nemertes originally projected that Internet traffic would eclipse capacity by 2010, but the firm has since adjusted…
From ACM TechNews
Google Executive rges Improvements to Technology Infrastructure
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the U.S. federal government should invest in green technology and a national computer infrastructure to help create jobs and foster American innovation. Schmidt, part of President-elect Barack Obama's…
From ACM TechNews
Multi-Core and Parallel Programming: Is the Sky Falling?
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Marc Snir acknowledges that multicore parallelism is difficult, and this difficulty can give rise to divergent perspectives. One perspective is that parallel programming is…
From ACM TechNews
Nasa Tests First Deep-Space Internet
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers have successfully tested the first deep space communications network based on the Internet, using the Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol to transmit dozens of images to…
From ACM TechNews
A Future Without Programming
Do-it-yourself applications development is on the rise as business users increasingly turn to codeless programming tools to create applications. "We also have a whole new wave of business users that are not intimidated by the…
From ACM TechNews
It Sector Adds Jobs Despite Economic Turmoil
New statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor show that the IT profession may be stronger than the rest of the job market. Although 240,000 jobs were lost nationwide in October, the IT profession actually grew during this period…
From ACM TechNews
IBM Tries to Bring Brain Power to Computers
IBM Research has been working on a project to give computers the same processing capabilities as the human brain. The goal is to integrate brain-related senses such as perception and interaction into hardware and software to…
From ACM TechNews
It Security Education Continues to Evolve
IT security and cyberforensics are two areas with a critical need for more workers, writes Purdue University professor Eugene Spafford, chair of ACM's US Public Policy Committee. Spafford says that computer science education…
From ACM TechNews
Cell Phones Linked to Track Real-Time Traffic
The Mobile Millennium trial, a real-time wireless traffic network for San Francisco, launched this month and will link together GSM-based cell phones equipped with special software. The pilot project, which hopes to have 10,000…
From ACM TechNews
Researcher: Self-Driving Cars Could Save U.s. Auto Industry
Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun says the U.S. auto industry's best hope for long-term survival is to take a leadership role in developing self-driving cars. Thrun says the United States is lagging behind Europe,…
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputers Break Petaflop Barrier, Transforming Science
The surpassing of petaflop speeds by a new breed of supercomputers could facilitate a profound scientific transformation by bringing simulation to the cutting edge of science, according to leading researchers. "The new capability…
From ACM TechNews
What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?
In 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Ellen Spertus published the paper, "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?" Nearly 20 years later there are even fewer women entering the field, and the…
From ACM TechNews
The First Metropolitan Quantum Cryptography Network Will Be Available in Spain By 2010
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid School of Computing researchers have developed a prototype metropolitan quantum-key distribution network that will be ready for deployment by Telefonica on any Spanish urban telecommunications…
From ACM TechNews
New Regulations Will Soon Swell It Workloads
IT will have to assume a major workload increase to satisfy new government regulations expected to emerge next year in response to the current financial turmoil, analysts and industry experts say. "The last two tsunamis to hit…
From ACM TechNews
It Salaries Take Tiny Leaps
Salaries for information technology (IT) professionals have essentially stalled, reveals Computerworld's 22nd annual Salary Survey. The survey, based on responses from 6,801 U.S. IT workers, found that total compensation rose…
From Communications of the ACM
The Limits of Computability
Computational complexity and intractability may help scientists better understand how humans process information and make decisions.
From Communications of the ACM
Analyzing Online Social Networks
Social network analysis explains why some sites succeed and others fail, how physical and online social networks differ and are alike, and attempts to predict how they will evolve.
From Communications of the ACM
Damage Control
The U.S. patent system is overdue for reform, but what needs fixing, and how, is a matter of some dispute.
From Communications of the ACM
User-Centric Services Provisioning in Wireless Environments
To date, services provided for mobile users are still hard to build. Two main challenges need to be considered. The first challenge is about the personalized access to services.…
From Communications of the ACM
A European Perspective of VoIP in Market Competition
The debate on the future of VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is not new. For some time now this technological innovation has been considered one of main drivers for reshaping the telecommunications industry.
From Communications of the ACM
Education: Reprogramming College Preparatory Computer Science
The college preparatory computer science education curriculum must be improved, beginning with the earliest phases of the process.