Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2014
From ACM News
The Mammoth Cometh
The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his knees and remained in that position, speechless, for 20 minutes.
From ACM News
Computer Models Help nravel Mystery of Puebloans' Disappearance
Remember playing "The Oregon Trail" computer game in middle school?
From ACM News
Xi Jinping Leads Internet Security Group
President Xi Jinping will head the central Internet security and informatization leading group, according to a statement released after the first meeting of the group on Thursday.
From ACM News
Autonomous Drones Flock Like Birds
A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock.
From ACM TechNews
Hp Launching New Scholarship Program For Women in Information Security
Women interested in the theory and practice of cybersecurity can now turn to a new scholarship program launched by Hewlett-Packard to support their studies.
From ACM TechNews
Creating Animated Characters Outdoors
A new method for motion capture that works without markers immediately transfers actors' movements to virtual characters in near-real time.
From ACM TechNews
New Map of Twitterverse Finds 6 Types of Networks
Researchers have found most of the information being discussed on Twitter falls into six distinct patterns or networks.
From ACM TechNews
Kaist Developed an Extremely Low-Powered, High-Performance Head-Mounted Display Embedding an Augmented Reality Chip
The new K-Glass head-mounted display features an Augmented Reality chip based on the Visual Attention Model, which mimics the human brain's visual data processing.
From ACM TechNews
Necklace Projectors Will Throw Emails Onto the Floor
Researchers have created a projector embedded in jewelry to enable consumers to use their hands or the floor as a screen for reading email and other digital information.
From ACM News
How an nlikely Group of High-Tech Wizards Revived Obama's Troubled Healthcare.gov Website
Last Oct. 17—more than two weeks after the launch of HealthCare.gov—White House chief of staff Denis McDonough came back from Baltimore rattled by what he had learned at the headquarters of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid…
From ACM News
Publishers Withdraw More Than 120 Gibberish Papers
The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.
From ACM News
An Artificial Hand with Real Feeling
Igor Spetic's hand was in a fist when it was severed by a forging hammer three years ago as he made an aluminum jet part at his job.
From ACM News
The Spy Tech That Might Have Kept El Chapo Invisible For So Long
Joaquin Guzman, better known by the nickname "El Chapo," didn't get to be one of the world's most notorious and elusive drug lords without knowing a thing or two about how to cover his tracks.
From ACM TechNews
On the Road to Mottronics: Researchers at the Advanced Light Source Find Key to Controlling the Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Mott Thin Films
Researchers have found the conducting and insulating phases of ultra-thin films of Mott materials can be controlled by applying an epitaxial strain to the crystal lattice.
From ACM TechNews
As Military Robots Increase, So Does the Complexity of Their Relationship With Soldiers
U.S. military personnel are forming complex emotional ties with robots, in a growing trend that might foreshadow the future of human-robot interactions.
From ACM TechNews
Virtual Reality Headset Helps Navy Simulate Future Workspaces
Project BlueShark is helping the Navy experiment with a virtual reality headset for applications such as providing ship operators with a 3D view of their environments.
From ACM TechNews
Google Powers Forest Protection Effort
An online community-oriented map could fill a key role in the effort to protect forests around the world.
From ACM News
How Much Is the Internet of Everything Worth? Cisco Says $19 Trillion
Are you curious why everyone is talking about the Internet of everything?
From ACM News
Brainy Computer Chip Ditches Digital For Analog
Part of the European Human Brain Project aims to mimic the brain for better computing.
From ACM News
Nasa's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza
NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets.
From ACM Opinion
The Weirdest Thing About the Apple Security Bug Is How Simple It Was
So for the past 18 months, there has been a horrific security hole in many of Apple's products that has allowed "man in the middle" attacks on supposedly secure Internet communications.
From ACM News
Nasa's Latest Robot: A Rolling Tangle of Rods That Can Take a Beating
Space-bound robots tend look like tanks and are about as flexible as the Tin Man after a rainstorm.
From ACM News
The nlikely Tale of How Arm Came to Rule the World
This is a story about ARM Holdings, the mobile technology company.
From ACM News
Augmented Reality Gets to Work
For Thomas Caudell, it started with a desire to make it easier to build airplanes.
From ACM TechNews
Faster Computer Performance Targeted By Memory Consortium
The Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium has proposed a faster and more power-efficient specification for its emerging Hybrid Memory Cube memory technology.
From ACM TechNews
Self-Completing Programs
The Sketch programming language enables programmers to leave out some coding details, with Sketch filling in the blanks.
From ACM TechNews
Cockpit For Apps: Minority Report Meets Google Glass
A "personal cockpit" would provide a good way for people to interact with their apps in the near future, according to researchers at the University of Manitoba.
From ACM TechNews
Consortium Aims to Boost Minority Faculty in STEM Fields
The California Alliance for Graduate Education and Professoriate is trying to solve the problem of having too few minority Ph.D. students in STEM fields.
From ACM TechNews
From a Distance: New Technique For Repair Work
Companies operating globally could use a new platform to enable local engineers to collaborate with experts abroad in real time to address issues with production.
From ACM News
Scientists Re-Weigh the Electron, Get More Precise Mass
Ernest Rutherford, pioneer in studying the world inside atoms, famously remarked that all science is either physics or stamp collecting.