December 2010 - Vol. 53 No. 12

Features

News Tapia conference letter Dec 1 2010

Created as a supportive networking environment for underrepresented groups in computing and information technology, the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference celebrates and attracts students and professionals from diverse backgrounds pursuing careers in our field.

David A. Patterson

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the editor Dec 1 2010

Science Has Four Legs

As an editor of The Fourth Paradigm and someone who subscribes to Jim Gray's vision that there are now four fundamental scientific methodologies, I feel I must respond to Moshe Y. Vardi's Editor's Letter "Science Has Only Two Legs" (Sept. 2010).

CACM Staff

News Dec 1 2010

In the Virtual Extension

The following synopses are from Virtual Extension articles that are now available in their entirety to ACM members via the Digital Library.

CACM Staff

BLOG@CACM Dec 1 2010

Security Advice; Malvertisements; and CS Education in Qatar

Greg Linden discusses security advice and the cost of user effort, Jason Hong considers the increase in malvertisements, and Mark Guzdial writes about gender and CS education in Qatar.

Greg Linden, Jason Hong, and Mark Guzdial

Computing Applications

Opinion CACM online Dec 1 2010

School Grades Need Improvement

Much has been written over the last decade about the abysmal state of the education arms race in the U.S., particularly in the STEM disciplines. Two recent reports show how little has been done to redirect that trend and what will happen if the spiral does not end.

David Roman

Computing Applications

News Dec 1 2010

The Eyes Have It

Eye-tracking control for mobile phones might lead to a new era of context-aware user interfaces.

Gregory Goth

Computing Applications

Queen's University associate professor Roel Vertgaal

News Dec 1 2010

Topic Models vs. Unstructured Data

With topic modeling, scientists can explore and understand huge collections of unlabeled information.

Gary Anthes

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Dec 1 2010

CSEdWeek Expands Its Reach

The second Computer Science Education Week is showing students, parents, and educators why computer science is important.

Marina Krakovsky

Computing Applications

News Dec 1 2010

The New Face of War

With the introduction of the sophisticated Stuxnet worm, the stakes of cyberwarfare have increased immeasurably.

Samuel Greengard

Computing Applications

News Dec 1 2010

A Matter of Privacy

Do consumers have enough control over their personal information or is more government regulation needed?

David Lindley

Computing Applications

Facebook Director of Public Policy Tim Sparapani

Opinion Emerging markets Dec 1 2010

The Coming African Tsunami of Information Insecurity

As the affordability and use of mobile phones in Africa increase, so too will security vulnerabilities.

Seymour Goodman and Andrew Harris

Computing Applications

Opinion Historical reflections Dec 1 2010

IBM’s Single-Processor Supercomputer Efforts

Imagine a CPU designed to issue and execute up to seven instructions per clock cycle, with a clock rate 10 times faster than the reigning supercomputer. This is the ACS-1 supercomputer designed more than 40 years ago.

Mark Smotherman and Dag Spicer

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Broadening participation Dec 1 2010

The Role of Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Contributing to an Educated Work Force

In order to thrive and even survive in the worldwide marketplace of ideas and innovation, the U.S. must aggressively meet the challenge of increasing the number of students who complete degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Ann Quiroz Gates

Computing Applications

Opinion The profession of IT Dec 1 2010

The Long Quest For -Universal Information Access

Digital object repositories are on the cusp of resolving the long-standing problem of universal information access in the Internet.

Peter J. Denning and Robert E. Kahn

Computing Applications

Opinion Kode Vicious Dec 1 2010

Literate Coding

While it is true that "programmers aren't English majors," there are many days that I wish they were, or that they knew one and offered to help with their science or math homework in return for some help making themselves better understood.

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Dec 1 2010

We Need a Research Data Census

The increasing volume of research data highlights the need for reliable, cost-effective data storage and preservation at the national scale.

Francine Berman

Computing Applications

Practice Dec 1 2010

A Conversation with Ed Catmull

Pixar's president Ed Catmull sits down with Stanford professor (and former Pixar-ian) Pat Hanrahan to reflect on the blending of art and technology.

CACM Staff

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Practice Dec 1 2010

The Theft of Business Innovation: An ACM-BCS Roundtable on Threats to Global Competitiveness

These days, cybercriminals are looking to steal more than just banking information.

Mache Creeger

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles Dec 1 2010

Certified Software

Only if the programmer can prove (through formal machine-checkable proofs) it is free of bugs with respect to a claim of dependability.

Zhong Shao

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles Dec 1 2010

Business Impact of Web 2.0 Technologies

What do wikis, blogs, podcasts, social networks, virtual worlds, and the rest do for corporate productivity and management?

Stephen J. Andriole

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Research and Advances Review articles Dec 1 2010

Bayesian Networks

What are Bayesian networks and why are their applications growing across all fields?

Adnan Darwiche

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Research and Advances Research highlights Dec 1 2010

Technical Perspective: Iterative Signal Recovery From Incomplete Samples

You are given a large set of data values, and you are requested to compress, clean, recover, recognize, and/or predict it. Sounds familiar? This is the essence of the fields of signal-and image-processing, machine-learning, data-mining, and statistics in general.

Michael Elad and Raja Giryes

Data and Information

Research and Advances Research highlights Dec 1 2010

CoSaMP: Iterative Signal Recovery From Incomplete and Inaccurate Samples

Compressive sampling (CoSa) is a new paradigm for developing data sampling technologies. The main computational challenge in CoSa is to reconstruct a compressible signal from the reduced representation acquired by the sampling device.

Deanna Needell and Joel A. Tropp

Data and Information

Research and Advances Research highlights Dec 1 2010

Technical Perspective: QIP = PSPACE Breakthrough

It is now clear that for a wide range of problems, quantum computers offer little or no advantage over their classical counterparts.

Scott Aaronson

Systems and Networking

Research and Advances Research highlights Dec 1 2010

QIP = PSPACE

The collection of computational problems having quantum interactive proof systems consists precisely of those problems solvable with an ordinary classical computer using at most a polynomial amount of memory (or QIP = PSPACE in complexity-theoretic terminology).

Rahul Jain, Zhengfeng Ji, Sarvagya Upadhyay, and John Watrous

Systems and Networking

Opinion Last byte Dec 1 2010

Puzzled: Solutions and Sources

It's amazing how little we know about the simple, ordinary, axis-aligned rectangle. Last month (p. 112) we posted a trio of brainteasers, including one as yet unsolved, concerning rectangles galore. Here, we offer solutions to at least two of them. How did you do?

Peter Winkler

Opinion Last byte Dec 1 2010

Future Tense: Rebirth of Worlds

Build a digital library of pioneering virtual worlds as a living laboratory of history and social science.

Rumilisoun

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Virtual extension Dec 1 2010

The Role of Conference Publications in CS

A bibliometric view of the publishing frequency and impact of conference proceedings compared to archival journal publication.

Massimo Franceschet

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Virtual extension Dec 1 2010

IT 2008: The History of a New Computing Discipline

The IT model curriculum represents an excellent starting point toward understanding more about IT as an academic discipline.

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Virtual extension Dec 1 2010

A Global Collaboration to Deploy Help to China

A firsthand account of an international team effort to install the Sahana disaster-management system in Chengdu, Sichuan after an earthquake.

Computing Applications

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