Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2014
From ACM Opinion
'glass Brain' Offers Tours of the Space Between Your Ears
Former Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart takes pride in his brain.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Octopus Takes to the Sea
Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas researchers have nearly doubled the swimming speed of their robotic octopus.
From ACM News
Existing Delivery Techniques Could Hinder Internet Protocol Revolution
Named Data Networking Consortium supports an emerging Internet architecture designed for an increasingly mobile world.
From ACM Careers
The Google Formula For Success
Can Google’s winning ways be applied to all kinds of businesses?
From ACM TechNews
nderwater Robot For Port Security
A new submersible robot has a flattened panel on one side so it can slide along an underwater surface to perform ultrasound scans.
From ACM TechNews
Graphene Reduces Complexity and Cost of Touchscreens
Researchers say graphene-treated nanowires can be used to produce flexible touchscreens at a fraction of the current cost.
From ACM News
Hong Kong Protesters se a Mesh Network to Organise
Hong Kong's mass protest is networked. Activists are relying on a free app that can send messages without any cellphone connection.
From ACM News
Computer Scientist Gérard Berry Is Awarded the 2014 Cnrs Gold Medal
This year's CNRS Gold Medal has been awarded to Gérard Berry, holder of the first chair in computer science at the Collège de France since 2012.
From ACM News
Radio Waves Offer Cheap Gesture Detection on Smartphones
A research project at the University of Washington shows a way to add gesture control to phones without requiring sophisticated new sensors.
From ACM TechNews
New Technology May Lead to Prolonged Power in Mobile Devices
New technology accesses the power of a single electron to control energy consumption inside transistors, which could lead to wearable computers with built-in power sources.
From ACM TechNews
New Discovery Could Pave the Way For Spin-Based Computing
Researchers have found a way to fuse electricity and magnetism in a single material, which they say could lead to ultrahigh density storage and computing architectures.
From ACM TechNews
Dartmouth's New Zebra Bracelet Strengthens Computer Security
Dartmouth College researchers have developed wearable computer security technology that authenticates users while they are using a device.
From ACM TechNews
Code the Ode: Center For Digital Humanities Marries Technology and Humanistic Studies
Princeton University's new Center for Digital Humanities will support interdisciplinary initiatives across the humanities, computer sciences, and library sciences.
From ACM TechNews
Putting the Squeeze on Quantum Information
Researchers have demonstrated that information stored in quantum bits can be exponentially compressed without losing data.
From ACM TechNews
Supercomputer shers in New Era of Australian Research
The Pawsey Supercomputing Center recently installed the final stage upgrade for Magnus, the most advanced scientific supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere.
From ACM TechNews
Companies Rush to Fix Shellshock Software Bug as Hackers Launch Thousands of Attacks
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week warned about the newly discovered Shellshock bug affecting a widely used Bash Unix shell.
From ACM Opinion
A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How To Write Proofs
Believe it or not, I do have friends who would describe themselves as not liking math, and every so often one of them will share this meme on Facebook: And then Satan said, "Put the alphabet in math."
From ACM News
Shellshock: 'deadly Serious' New Vulnerability Found
A "deadly serious" bug potentially affecting hundreds of millions of computers, servers and devices has been discovered.
From ACM News
Drone Exemptions For Hollywood Pave the Way For Widespread se
The commercial use of drones in American skies took a leap forward on Thursday with the help of Hollywood. The Federal Aviation Administration said six companies could use camera-equipped drones on certain movie and television…
From ACM TechNews
Build Something
Research has found that giving students a sense of the usefulness of their studies to the greater world can help improve learning. For the computer sciences one way of doing this is the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software…
From ACM TechNews
Geo-Ranking the Internet
Many factors can affect how resilient and durable access to the Internet can be in a given country, and a pair of German researchers have defined nine factors that can be aggregated to measure Internet resiliency at the national…
From ACM TechNews
'dr. Fill' Vies For Crossword Solving Supremacy, but Still Comes p Short
Computers have long been able to beat even the best human opponents at games such as chess, but humans remain dominant when it comes to the crossword puzzle.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook, Intel Back Effort to Lift Engineer Diversity
Rectifying a lack of diversity among computer science undergraduates is the goal of the BRAID program, to which Facebook, Intel, Google, Microsoft, and others will contribute $1.35 million over the next three years to 15 universities'…
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Fabric Could Bring 'active Clothing,' Wearable Robots
Purdue University researchers are developing a robotic fabric that moves and contracts and is embedded with sensors. The researchers say the fabric could be used to create active clothing and a new class of soft robots.
From ACM News
The Solace of Oblivion
October 31, 2006, an eighteen-year-old woman named Nikki Catsouras slammed her father's sports car into the side of a concrete toll booth in Orange County, California.
From ACM News
Tiny Robot Learns to Fly a Real Plane
A small, hobby-sized robot could herald the pilot of the future.
From ACM News
The Anita Borg Institute and Harvey Mudd College Launch Initiative to Increase the Diversity in Computer Science ndergraduate Majors at 2014 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting
"BRAID" will work with 15 CS departments to increase the percentage of their undergraduate majors that are female and minorities.
From ACM TechNews
Video Games Could Dramatically Streamline Education Research
Washington State University researchers have developed a computational modeling method for conducting research on science curricula in classrooms.
From ACM TechNews
Fingertip Sensor Gives Robot nprecedented Dexterity
Researchers have developed a robot equipped with tactile sensors that enable it to grasp a USB cable draped over a hook and insert it into a USB port.
From ACM TechNews
Googlex to Circle the Earth With Internet-Connected Balloons
GoogleX's Project Loon aims to provide wireless Internet access to billions of people living in remote locations by building a ring of balloons around the Earth.