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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


Amputees Could Get a Helping Hand in the Virtual World
From ACM News

Amputees Could Get a Helping Hand in the Virtual World

What is the best way to for someone to get used to their artificial limb? Put them in a virtual environment. So says Anthony Steed, a computer scientist at University...

From ACM TechNews

Sending Botnets the Way of Smallpox

University of Tulsa researchers have published a legal study on three "technically feasible" compulsory vaccination scenarios that governments could consider to...

Safety Issues Loom as Humanoid Invasion Approaches
From ACM TechNews

Safety Issues Loom as Humanoid Invasion Approaches

As robot technology advances, and their use puts them in closer contact with humans, safety has become a top priority for some researchers. 

From ACM News

For Smaller Chips, Borrow 18th-Century Tricks

A new take on a centuries-old printing technique could shrink silicon chips and lead to advances in ultra-high-density computer storage. Computer chips are made...

Body Acoustics Can Turn Your Arm Into a Touchscreen
From ACM TechNews

Body Acoustics Can Turn Your Arm Into a Touchscreen

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have developed Skinput, a skin-based interface that turns the human body into a touchscreen. 

­sb Fingerprints Identify 'pod Slurping' Data Thieves
From ACM TechNews

­sb Fingerprints Identify 'pod Slurping' Data Thieves

Intellectual property thieves who engage in so-called pod-slurping attacks leave a "USB fingerprint," according to Vasilios Katos and Theodoros Kavallaris of the...

From ACM TechNews

Boring Conversation? Let Your Computer Listen For You

Researchers are developing software that can make conversing with a computer more productive. Existing automatic speech recognition technology is unreliable. 

From ACM News

Cellphone Traces Reveal You're So Predictable

We may all like to consider ourselves free spirits. But a study of the traces left by 50,000 cellphone users over three months has conclusively proved otherwise...

From ACM News

Typos May Earn Google $500m a Year

Google may be earning $500 million a year via companies and individuals who register deceptive Web site addresses. The claim centers on a controversial scheme known...

­.s. Networks and Power Grid ­nder (mock) Cyber-Attack
From ACM News

­.s. Networks and Power Grid ­nder (mock) Cyber-Attack

Unknown hackers have taken out U.S. cellphone networks in an ongoing cyber-attack that will soon knock out parts of the nation's electricity grid – say the officials...

From ACM TechNews

Organic Crystals Promise Low-Power Green Computing

Researchers at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have discovered ferroelectric behavior in crystalline croconic acid, which...

Smart Dust Could Give Early Warning of Space Storms
From ACM News

Smart Dust Could Give Early Warning of Space Storms

A SWARM of "smart dust" spacecraft, positioned at a sweet spot between the Earth and the sun, could alert us to the approach of dangerous space storms well before...

Unplugged: Goodbye Cables, Hello Energy Beams
From ACM News

Unplugged: Goodbye Cables, Hello Energy Beams

LET'S face it: power cables are unsightly dust-traps. PCs, TVs and music players are becoming slicker every year, but the nest of vipers in the corner of everyAn...

Internet Backbone Breaks the 100-Gigabit Barrier
From ACM TechNews

Internet Backbone Breaks the 100-Gigabit Barrier

A new 900-kilometer fiber-optic link between Paris and Frankfurt is the first step to creating a high-speed Internet backbone with enough capacity to satisfy bandwidth...

How Crowdsourcing Is Helping in Haiti
From ACM TechNews

How Crowdsourcing Is Helping in Haiti

The revolution in texting, social networking, and crowdsourcing has enabled innovations such as the 4636 texting service, which is aiding the disaster relief efforts...

To Beat Spam, Turn Its Own Weapons Against It
From ACM TechNews

To Beat Spam, Turn Its Own Weapons Against It

Researchers from the International Computer Science Institute and the University of California, San Diego have developed a method for blocking the most common type...

Spasers Set to Sum: A New Dawn For Optical Computing
From ACM News

Spasers Set to Sum: A New Dawn For Optical Computing

It's a laser, but not as we know it. For a start, you need a microscope to see it. Gleaming eerily green, a "spaser" is a single spherical particle just a few tens...

From ACM News

Touchscreen Merges the Real and Digital Worlds

For all the advances in table-top and tablet computing, some design professionals will always prefer the feel of pen on paper to stylus on glass. A new device could...

How Touch Screens Could Shrug Off Shoulder Surfers
From ACM TechNews

How Touch Screens Could Shrug Off Shoulder Surfers

Users of touch-screen gadgets must contend with snoopers, and researchers at Britain's Newcastle University and elsewhere are working on alternative input mechanisms...

From ACM News

Microsoft's Body-Sensing, Button-Busting Controller

A LONG-lived videogaming skill could be on the way out this year as Microsoft hones an add-on to its Xbox 360 console aimed at making button-studded games controllers...
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