Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2012
From ACM News
In Cyberattacks, Hacking Humans Is Highly Effective Way to Access Systems
The emails arrived like poison darts from cyberspace.
From ACM News
Larry Roberts Calls Himself the Founder of the Internet. Who Are You to Argue?
In 1966, the U.S. Department of Defense hired Roberts to design the ARPAnet, a computer network that would connect various research outfits across the country.
From ACM News
Automatic Building Mapping Could Help Emergency Responders
MIT researchers have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving.
From ACM TechNews
Google Spans Entire Planet With Gps-Powered Database
A new Google research paper details the workings of the Spanner data storage and compilation system, billed as the first database capable of quickly storing and retrieving information across a worldwide network of data centers…
From ACM TechNews
Itu Predicts 25 Billion Networked Devices By 2020
There will be as many as 25 billion devices online by 2020 as the Internet of things revolution takes off, and the proliferation of technologies such as machine-to-machine communications will be the primary driver of the growth…
From ACM Careers
Warehouse 'bots Do Battle to Make Same-Day Delivery a Reality
The robots zipping across the aluminum grid look less like Star Wars droids and more like little red wagons.
From ACM Careers
On Waterfront, Rise of the Machines
In the rising light of a mid-September morning, the CSAV Pyrenees, a blue-water freighter sailing out of Suape Port in Brazil, was lashed to its lines at Berth 59 of the Port Newark Container Terminal.
From ACM TechNews
Meet Mira, the Supercomputer That Makes niverses
One of the largest and most complex universe simulations ever attempted will be run in October by Mira, the world's third fastest supercomputer.
From ACM TechNews
c Berkeley Researchers May Track Twitter Hackers
A $10 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation will enable University of California, Berkeley researchers to spend the next five years exploring how to contest hackers on social networking sites.
From ACM TechNews
Google Adds Coral Reef Panoramas to Street View Maps
Google recently added panoramas of coral reefs to its Street View services, enabling users to navigate their way around the sites.
From ACM News
Nasa Rover Finds Old Streambed on Martian Surface
NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving.
From ACM News
Why Your Next 'passw0rd' Might Not Be a Password
It's been a rough year for passwords. First, 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords were leaked online. Soon after, millions of passwords from eHarmony and Yahoo users were published by hackers.
From ACM TechNews
Georgia Tech Creating High-Tech Tools to Study Autism
Georgia Tech researchers have developed two tools that automatically measure children's behavior to provide insight into behavioral disorders such as autism.
From ACM TechNews
sing Artificial Intelligence to Chart the niverse
Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics researchers have developed an AI algorithm to help chart and explain the structure and dynamics of the universe.
From ACM TechNews
Nist's Hash Algorithm Refresh Possibly Premature
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology soon will announce the winning hash algorithm, which eventually will become the next-generation industry standard SHA-3.
From ACM TechNews
Hitachi Targets 2015 For Data Storage That Last 100 Million Years
Hitachi hopes to bring new storage technology capable of holding data for hundreds of millions of years to market by 2015.
From ACM News
Apple-Google Maps Talks Crashed Over Voice-Guided Directions
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt says Apple should have continued to use Google’s mapping application in iOS 6 instead of swapping it out for its poorly received home-brewed replacement, and given the sour reception Apple’s Maps…
From ACM TechNews
Jazz-Singing Robot Could Shed Light on Consciousness
The University of Palermo's Antonio Chella is working to teach a singing robot how to improvise jazz duets with a human with hopes of learning more about the nature of consciousness.
From ACM News
m Researchers Mine Data to ncover Terrorist Threats
U.S. counterterrorism efforts monitor and sort vast databases of information for clues on potential plots. Now a team of University of Maryland researchers have used data-mining techniques employed by online giants like Google…
From ACM News
Hubble Goes to the Extreme to Assemble Farthest-Ever View of the niverse
Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe.
From ACM Opinion
Why Everyone (not Just Geeks) Should Care About Big Data
Hugo Campos has a cardiac defibrillator implanted in his body. It sends data about his heart to his doctors and back to the manufacturer, but it takes days to get access to this data himself—if he can access it all.
From ACM TechNews
Machine Learning Saves Babies!
Hospitals collect an enormous amount of data on premature babies. Computer scientists are using machine learning to find common patterns in the data, create new measures for predicting declines in health, and form new treatment…
From ACM TechNews
Self-Driving Cars a Reality For 'ordinary People' Within 5 Years, Says Google's Sergey Brin
Self-driving, autonomous vehicles will be available for "ordinary people" in less than five years and they will be much safer than those driven by humans, says Google CEO Sergey Brin.
From ACM TechNews
Dbtoaster Breaks p Data Jams in Server Farms
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne researchers have developed DBToaster, a system designed to improve the flow of database queries into server farms by accelerating the pace of operations by a factor of 100.
From ACM TechNews
3-D Display Screen on Mobile Devices Could Be on the Horizon
The University of Bristol is leading the development of three-dimensional display technology that would enable the screen of a mobile device to physically mutate to show hilly terrain and buildings as it visually displays a street…
From ACM TechNews
10 Hot It Skills For 2013
The demand for high-tech professionals continues to rise, as 33 percent of IT professionals in Computerworld's 2013 Forecast survey say they plan to hire more workers in the next 12 months.
From ACM Opinion
Meet Mira, the Supercomputer That Makes niverses
Cosmology is the most ambitious of sciences. Its goal, plainly stated, is to describe the origin, evolution, and structure of the entire universe, a universe that is as enormous as it is ancient.
From ACM Opinion
Who's Behind the Wheel? Nobody.
The Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca is a 2.2-mile asphalt roller coaster plunging and soaring across California's tawny Monterey highlands.
From ACM TechNews
12 Technologies to Watch in STEM Education
The New Media Consortium has released a technology outlook to watch for in science, technology, engineering, and math education over the next five years.
From ACM TechNews
New Server Cooling Technology Deployed in Pilot Program at Calit2
Calit2 recently developed Cool-Flo, cooling technology that could improve energy efficiency and enable higher-performance computing.