Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2014
From ACM News
Stodgy, Old Baseball Invents the Future of Instant Replay
Major League Baseball is not inclined to tinker much with America's pastime, aside from the occasional tweak to the number of teams in the playoffs.
From ACM News
Open Enigma Project Makes Encryption Machines Accessible
Enigma machines have captivated everyone from legendary code breaker Alan Turing and the dedicated cryptographers from England's Bletchley Park to historians and collectors the world over.
From ACM News
Human Evolution: The Neanderthal in the Family
Before ancient DNA exposed the sexual proclivities of Neanderthals or the ancestry of the first Americans, there was the quagga.
From ACM TechNews
Dell's New Research Division Wants Computers to Detect Your Mood
Dell Research is conducting experiments to detect a person's mood, for use in computers involved with education and communications.
From ACM TechNews
Dolphin Whistle Instantly Translated By Computer
The Wild Dolphin Project is developing algorithms to analyze animal sounds to determine if information is transmitted, in an attempt to understand animal behavior.
From ACM TechNews
Experts Say Nsa Rules Leave Privacy Vulnerable
Cybersecurity experts doubt U.S. President Barack Obama's assurance the U.S. National Security Agency is not spying on ordinary Americans' communications.
From ACM TechNews
Penn Scientists Teach Computer Programs How to Teach Programming
University of Pennsylvania researchers are developing "automated program synthesis tools" that check whether human-supplied code operates correctly.
From ACM TechNews
Lens-Free Camera Sees Things Differently
In a new system, a curved camera lens is replaced with a tiny sensor that uses a spiral shape to map light and a computer determines the resulting image.
From ACM TechNews
Linux Foundation Finds That Collaboration Pays Off
In a Linux Foundation survey of 700 business managers and software developers, 91 percent said collaborative software development is important to their business.
From ACM TechNews
How Twitter Knows You're Obese
A researcher contends Twitter and other social media can complement other data sources for public health officials to identify at-risk communities.
From ACM News
In New Case, Supreme Court Revisits the Question of Software Patents
If you write a book or a song, you can get copyright protection for it. If you invent a pill or a better mousetrap, you can patent it.
From ACM News
The Electronic Holy War
In May, 1997, I.B.M.'s Deep Blue supercomputer prevailed over Garry Kasparov in a series of six chess games, becoming the first computer to defeat a world-champion chess player.
From ACM News
Comet Lander Checks In with Earth
The Philae lander, which Europe hopes to put on the surface of a comet later this year, has been re-activated after three years in deep-space hibernation.
From ACM News
Search For Lost Jet Is Complicated By Geopolitics and Rivalries
The frantic hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been, in one way, a nearly miraculous display of international collaboration: 26 nations, many of them rivals, have opened up their territorial waters and airspace or have…
From ACM News
How the Nsa Would Get Phone Data nder Obama Administration's New Plan
One of the key points in the "fact sheet" that the White House published today about its plan to end the NSA's bulk collection of phone record data is that while the NSA will no longer have possession of phone data, it will still…
From ACM TechNews
Apple Seeks Greater Emoji Racial Diversity
Apple says it wants to boost the ethnic diversity of the emoji used in text-messaging apps.
From ACM TechNews
Cross-Industry Iot Group Pushes For Gear That Works Together
Five information technology and equipment firms launched the Industrial Internet Consortium Thursday to guide standards for the Internet of Things.
From ACM TechNews
The Curious Nature of Sharing Cascades on Facebook
Although the bulk of content on Facebook is shared only a few times, some can be reshared millions of times.
From ACM TechNews
Japanese Language Inspires Student to Develop nique Computer Game
Koe is a role-playing game that teaches users the Japanese language within the context of entertaining game play.
From ACM TechNews
Carnegie Mellon Robot Invites Humans to Play Mean Game of Scrabble
Victor is a Scrabble-playing social robot designed to help scientists better understand what it takes to get people to enjoy interacting with a robot.
From ACM News
Hypnotic Art Shows How Patterns Emerge From Randomness in Nature
British mathematician Alan Turing is perhaps best known for the Turing test, which determines if a computer can be considered intelligent based on whether it can pass for a human in conversation.
From ACM News
Consortium Wants Standards For 'internet of Things'
Attention: Internet of Things. For better or worse, big boys are in the room.
From ACM News
How Vintage Tech Helped S Track the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
The saga of MH370, the Malaysian Airlines flight missing for more than two weeks, seems to be entering its final chapter.
From ACM News
Justice Scalia Looks Forward to Hearing Nsa Spying Case
Justice Antonin Scalia signaled during a law school talk on March 21 that the Supreme Court is very much aware that legal challenges to the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance programs are headed toward the high…
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Arm Probes Chemistry of 3-D Objects By Mass Spectrometry
Researchers have developed a system that enables scientists to better simulate and analyze the chemical reactions of early Earth on the surface of real rocks.
From ACM TechNews
Don't Let Personal Data Escape Your Smartphone
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne researchers have developed an application that automatically secures shared information on a mobile phone.
From ACM TechNews
All Android Devices at Risk of Being Hacked When Installing Os System pdates
Security researchers have uncovered a new class of vulnerabilities in the Android operating system.
From ACM TechNews
niversity of Twente Tool Makes Scanning the Internet For Illegal Images Possible
A new system makes it possible to scan Internet traffic for illegal photographs without infringing on users' privacy rights.
From ACM Careers
Which College—and Which Major—will Make You Richest?
A Bachelor of Science from Harvey Mudd College, the small California science and engineering school, is the most valuable college degree in America.
From ACM News
New Focus For Robotics: Artificial Creativity
The founding director of the Center for Music Technology at Georgia Tech is exploring how creative robots can be.