Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2011
From ACM News
Drone Pilots: The Future of Aerial Warfare
To understand how important remotely piloted aircraft are to the U.S. military, consider this: The U.S. Air Force says this year it will train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.
From ACM News
Robots in Reality
Consider the following scenario: A scout surveys a high-rise building that's been crippled by an earthquake, trapping workers inside. After looking for a point of entry, the scout carefully navigates through a small opening…
From ACM TechNews
Five Reasons the .s. Tech Lead Is in Danger
The United States is falling behind other countries in the race to build the next generation of supercomputers.
From ACM TechNews
Web Crawler Takes Aim at Child Exploitation
Simon Fraser University researchers have developed a Web crawling tool for tracking Web sites that exploit children, which could aid police in their investigations.
From ACM News
It's a Drone's World. We Just Live in It
Drones have had a profound effect on the way America fights its wars, allowing it to fight in new theaters while minimizing the risk to troops.
From ACM TechNews
Making Collective Wisdom Wiser
Tel Aviv University researchers have developed database technology that can automatically evaluate information submitted by the crowd.
From ACM TechNews
Linking Supercomputers to Simulate the Sun, the Climate and the Human Body
The European Union funded research that developed a European infrastructure for supercomputing, enabling researchers to simulate the fusion of the sun, create new climate models, and build a biologically accurate virtual human…
From ACM TechNews
11 Programming Trends to Watch
Eleven recent trends demonstrate how the programming industry is changing, with many new Java virtual machine-dependent languages are being developed, such as JRuby, Scala, Cloture, and Groovy.
From ACM News
Fliers Must Turn Off Devices, but It's Not Clear Why
Millions of Americans who got on a plane over the Thanksgiving holiday heard the admonition: "Please power down your electronic devices for takeoff."
From ACM News
Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon
A Silicon Valley startup that collates threats has quietly become indispensable to the U.S. intelligence community.
From ACM TechNews
Google sability Chief: Ideas Have to Be Discoverable
Google's Dan Russell recently spoke to New Scientist on improving searches.
From ACM TechNews
A Computer That Thinks Like the niverse
The development of a quantum computer would be another leap forward for the computing industry, writes the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Joshua Rothman.
From ACM Careers
Picture This: Better Decisions Through Data Visualization
Can you visualize data? That’s the question raised by the Data Visualization Student Challenge, a U.S. Department of Transportation competition that invited college students to turn reams of dry numbers into visually compelling…
From ACM TechNews
This Year's H-1b Cap Is Reached at Quicker Pace
The annual H-1B cap has been reached two months ahead of last year's pace, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on Nov. 23.
From ACM News
Important Step Toward Computing with Light
There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips—devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their computational tasks. Now, researchers at MIT have filled in a crucial…
From ACM News
Community Colleges Boost CS & STEM Research
Statistics and anecdotal evidence confirm that efforts to increase computer science and STEM research opportunities at community colleges are making headway.
From ACM News
Cyber War Threatens Iran: Passive Defense Organization Chief
Until the next Iranian calendar year (which begins on March 20, 2012) cyber attacks will pose serious threats to Iran and that is why the Passive Defense Organization has established a joint center with the cooperation of…
From ACM News
Cyberwar Storm Clouds Are Gathering
Cyberspace. Some call it the new domain of war, after land, sea, air, and space.
From ACM News
Millions of Printers Open to Devastating Hack Attack, Researchers Say
Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it easy to commit…
From ACM Careers
Cloud Centers Bring High-Tech Flash but Not Many Jobs to Beaten-Down Towns
Here in this once-thriving town of furniture makers and textile mills, where Main Street businesses have vanished, nearby fast-food joints have closed and unemployment is rampant, government officials have lined up behind…
From ACM News
Turn On the Server. It
To satisfy our ever-growing need for computing power, many technology companies have moved their work to data centers with tens of thousands of power-gobbling servers. Concentrated in one place, the servers produce enormous…
From ACM TechNews
Kilobots Are Leaving the Nest
Harvard University computer scientists and engineers have developed technology designed to test collective algorithms on hundreds or even thousands of tiny robots called Kilobots.
From ACM TechNews
Dod Looks to Make a Game of Software Testing
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently launched the Crowd Sourced Formal Verification project, which aims to use crowdsourcing technology to provide a fun way for the public to participate in software verification…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Spots Micro Clue to Lies
Oxford University researchers are developing software that can recognize micro-expressions that appear when people lie.
From ACM TechNews
Q&a: Exascale Now a Global Race For Tech
Peter Beckman, director of the Exascale Technology and Computing Institute at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, recently spoke with Computerworld about current developments in exascale computing.
From ACM News
Patent Office Highlights Jobs's Innovations
The United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va., recently unveiled an exhibit of 30 giant iPhone-like models honoring the inventions of the late Steve Jobs.
From ACM News
How Games Are Driving a Mobile Graphics Revolution
The needs of players are helping to push advances from chip makers like Qualcomm and Nvidia.
From ACM News
The Big Data Boom Is the Innovation Story of Our Time
The data revolution has turned customers into unwitting business consultants, as our purchases and searches are tracked to improve everything from Web sites to delivery routes.
From ACM News
How Private Is Your Email? It Depends
Do the police need a warrant to read your email? Believe it or not, two decades into the Internet age, the answer to that question is still "maybe." It depends on how old the email is, where you keep it—and it even depends on…
From ACM News
Will Your Mall Be Tracking Your Cellphone Today?
Some shoppers looking for Black Friday deals will find a surprise waiting for them at the mall—sensors that track their every move.