Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2012
From ACM News
Proving Quantum Computers Feasible
Quantum computers are devices—still largely theoretical—that could perform certain types of computations much faster than classical computers; one way they might do that is by exploiting "spin," a property of tiny particles of…
From ACM News
Bend Me, Shape Me: Flexible Phones 'out By 2013'
Imagine treating your phone like a piece of paper.
From ACM News
Teaching Tiny Drones How to Fly Themselves
Thanks to the wars in the Middle East, drones like the Predator have become household names.
From ACM TechNews
Java Inventor James Gosling Building Smart Marine Robots
Java inventor James Gosling is using Java's security framework to design marine robots that can be sent across the ocean to gather weather data or carry out research projects.
"I'm using all the crypto [application programming…From ACM TechNews
Privacy Professor to Try to Break Do Not Track Logjam
Ohio State University professor and new World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) co-chair Peter Swire is attempting to create a standard way to let users stop Web sites from tracking their online behavior.
As former W3C co-chair…From ACM News
Researchers Create Versatile 3D Nanostructures sing Dna 'bricks'
From ACM News
What Dna Actually Looks Like
DNA, we are taught early on, is colorful.
From ACM News
Despite Ceasefire, Israel-Gaza War Continues Online
It's been a week since Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire pausing their war in Gaza. But on the internet, a different kind of fighting never stopped—and has actually intensified since the rockets stopped falling and the warplanes…
From ACM News
Auto-Immune: 'symbiotes' Could Be Deployed to Thwart Cyber Attacks
Anti-hacker defenses have long focused mainly on protecting personal computers and servers in homes and offices.
From ACM TechNews
Cybercity Allows Government Hackers to Train For Attacks
The Pentagon is building a virtual city that will enable government hackers to practice attacking and defending the computers and networks that increasingly run the world's water, power and other critical systems.
From ACM TechNews
niversities Report Highest-Ever R&d Spending of $65 Billion in Fy 2011
U.S. university spending on R&D in all fields rose 6.3 percent in fiscal year 2011, according to a U.S. National Science Foundation Survey. Much of the spending increase can be attributed to the American Recovery and Reinvestment…
From ACM TechNews
Smallest Logic Circuit Fabricated With Single-Electron Transistors
Researchers from South Korea, Japan, and the United Kingdom have fabricated a half-adder logic circuit using only five transistors.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data + Semantic Web: Love at First Terabyte?
The Semantic Web has been slow to catch on with enterprises, but Cambridge Semantics chief technical officer Sean Martin believes big data could give Semantic Web technologies a boost.
From ACM News
Web Monitor: 100 Percent of Syria's Internet Just Shut Down
It appears that the Syrian government may have just taken a drastic measure it has conspicuously avoided over the nearly two years of fighting: cutting itself off from the Internet. Renesys, a Web-monitoring service, reported…
From ACM News
Courts Divided Over Searches of Cellphones
Judges and lawmakers across the country are wrangling over whether and when law enforcement authorities can peer into suspects' cellphones, and the cornucopia of evidence they provide.
From ACM News
ndisclosed Finding By Mars Rover Fuels Intrigue
The Mars rover Curiosity has found something—something noteworthy, in a pinch of Martian sand. But what is it?
From ACM Careers
Want a Flying Drone? These Students 3D-Printed Their Own
It was supposed to be a big moment for the two brothers—both University of Virginia engineering students—the culmination of months of designing and refining.
From ACM TechNews
How Google Plans to Find the ngoogleable
Google's stated mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. To achieve this goal the company needs to utilize experience sampling. Research in this area may take Google in new directions…
From ACM TechNews
Putting More Cores to Work in Server Farms
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne researchers, working in the EcoCloud research center, have found that reorganizing the inner architecture of the processors used in massive data processing centers can result in significant…
From ACM TechNews
Women Band Together, Make Inroads Into Tech
The computer science field remains dominated by men. The U.S. National Science Foundation says the number of women graduating with computer science degrees has fallen to 17 percent in 2010. The field's slow growth, especially…
From ACM TechNews
Cambridge to Study Technology's Risk to Humans
The potential risks that super intelligent technologies pose to humans will be the focus of the proposed Center for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University. The center study the idea that machines with artificial…
From ACM TechNews
Integrity of Internet Is Crux of Global Conference
At the recent World Conference on International Telecommunications, representatives from more than 190 governments, telecommunications companies, and Internet groups met to update a global treaty on technical standards and discuss…
From ACM TechNews
Engineers Pave the Way Towards 3-D Printing of Personal Electronics
University of Warwick researchers say they have developed a simple and inexpensive conductive plastic composite that can be used to produce electronic devices using 3-D printers.
From ACM News
Fbi ses Twitter, Social Media to Look For Securities Fraud
The FBI sees social media as a potential breeding ground for securities fraud, and has agents scouring Twitter and Facebook for tips, according to two top agents overseeing a long-running investigation into insider trading in…
From ACM News
How Google Plans to Find the ngoogleable
From ACM Opinion
In China, 25 Million People se Only Their Cell Phones to Read Books
On vacation in China earlier this month, I stopped by Shanghai's seven-story downtown "Book City," bustling with activity on a weekday afternoon that, as a publisher, I found exceptionally gratifying.
From ACM News
Another Year, Another Doubling of Data Traffic (blame Video!)
Demand for mobile data continues to rise: Doubling in the past 12 months according to a new report for Ericsson. Smartphones are obviously part of the equation, but so too are tablets; particularly video consumption, which accounts…
From ACM News
Desperate, Hockey Fans Root For Virtual Team
Pat Hickey, who covered his first Montreal Canadiens game in 1968 for the now-defunct Montreal Star, and who has chronicled the team's exploits over the past 22 years for the Montreal Gazette, is pleasantly surprised by the team's…
From ACM TechNews
Penn Researchers Make Flexible, Low-Voltage Circuits sing Nanocrystals
University of Pennsylvania researchers have shown that nanocrystals of the semiconductor cadmium selenide can be "printed" or "coated" on flexible plastic to create high-performance electronics.
From ACM News
Two Apps Aim To Tell The Truth And Nothing But The Truth
Two new software tools — both works-in-progress — are being built to help online readers distinguish truth from BS.