June 2008 - Vol. 51 No. 6

June 2008 issue cover image

Features

Opinion Editorial pointers

Editorial Pointers

With this issue, we close one chapter in the evolving history of Communications and prepare to write another. Indeed, it is only fitting that a publication dedicated to chronicling how science and technology change our world take a look within to assess how best to recharge the editorial direction driven by those changes. The editorial […]
News News track

News Track

Researchers at IBM Almaden Research Center have demonstrated the feasibility of a class of data storage called racetrack memory that combines the data storage of a magnetic hard disk with the speed and strength of flash memory at relatively low cost. Technology Review reports that, unlike flash, racetrack memory would not degrade over time. A […]
Opinion Forum

Forum

The theft scenario explored in "The Illusion of Security" (Mar. 2008) by David Wright et al. was realistic, with one exception, though it didn’t detract from the article’s conclusions. Wright et al. wrote: "A third driver, not so dissimilar from the first, is that the data thieves are also impelled by the profit motive." The […]
Research and Advances Organic user interfaces

Introduction

Throughout the history of computing, developments in human-computer interaction (HCI) have often been preceded by breakthroughs in display and input technologies. The first use of a cathode ray tube (CRT) to display computer-generated (radar) data, in the Canadian DATAR [6] and MIT’s Whirlwind projects of the early 1950s, led to the development of the trackball […]
Research and Advances Organic user interfaces

Dynamic Ferrofluid Sculpture: Organic Shape-Changing Art Forms

From ancient times, standing sculptures in Japan and elsewhere were made of materials such as clay, stone, wood, or metal. Materials were formed, modeled, modified, cut, and reshaped using processes appropriate for them, and the forms and textures of sculptures made from the materials did not change except by abrasion or surface corrosion. The invention […]
Opinion Inside risks

Risks of Neglecting Infrastructure

The September 2006 column ("The Foresight Saga") discussed failures in critical infrastructures due to lack of foresight in backup and recovery facilities. This column considers some of the causes and effects of another common kind of missing foresight: inadequate infrastructure maintenance. Civilization and infrastructure are intimately intertwined. Rising civilizations build and benefit from their infrastructures […]

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