March 2014 - Vol. 57 No. 3

Features

Opinion Mar 1 2014

Boolean Satisfiability: Theory and Engineering

The Boolean Satisfiability Problem is a problem of central importance in computer science. At the same time, it is a paradigmatic constraint-satisfaction problem with numerous applications, including hardware and software design, operations research, bioinformatics, and more.

Moshe Y. Vardi

Computing Applications

Opinion Letter from the President Mar 1 2014

What If It’s Us?

If there are intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, why have we not yet detected any evidence of them? Noted science fiction writer David Brin has a particularly scary answer to the question. What if we are the ones who are supposed to light the galaxy?

Vinton G. Cerf

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Letters to the Editor Mar 1 2014

Develop Research Culture in the Arab Middle East

The Arab Middle East needs a cultural revolution in terms of research, especially in computer science.

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Mar 1 2014

Capturing and Structuring Data Mined from the Web

Kate Matsudaira considers not only how to mine data from the Web, but what to do with it once you have it.

Kate Matsudaira

Computing Applications

News Mar 1 2014

Reading Brains

The first steps have been taken toward enabling a computer to perceive one's thoughts.

Erica Klarreich

Computing Applications

News Mar 1 2014

World Without Wires

Capturing electricity from ambient RF transmissions can keep low-power applications off the grid.

Keith Kirkpatrick

Architecture and Hardware

News Mar 1 2014

Playing at Health

Developers try to tap the beneficial effects of video games.

Neil Savage

Computing Applications

Metia Interactive managing director Maru Nihoniho

Opinion Legally speaking Mar 1 2014

Mass Digitization as Fair Use

Considering the implications of the late-2013 ruling in favor of Google in the Authors Guild case.

Pamela Samuelson

Computing Applications

Mass Digitization as Fair Use, illustration

Opinion Computing ethics Mar 1 2014

Why Software Engineering Courses Should Include Ethics Coverage

Encouraging students to become comfortable exercising ethical discernment in a professional context with their peers.

Arvind Narayanan and Shannon Vallor

Computing Applications

Why Software Engineering Courses Should Include Ethics Coverage, illustrative photo

Opinion The profession of IT Mar 1 2014

‘Surfing Toward the Future’

A new report from Chile about improving economic competitiveness advances a novel interpretation of innovation. Timing is everything.

Peter J. Denning

Computing Applications

Opinion Broadening participation Mar 1 2014

The Impact of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Codifying human rights and inclusiveness in a technical context for people with disabilities.

Richard Ladner

Computing Applications

The Impact of the United Nations Convention, illustration

Opinion Viewpoint Mar 1 2014

How to Build a Bad Research Center

Sharing lessons learned from experiences creating successful multidisciplinary research centers.

David Patterson

Computing Applications

How to Build a Bad Research Center, illustration

Practice Mar 1 2014

Eventually Consistent: Not What You Were Expecting?

Methods of quantifying consistency (or lack thereof) in eventually consistent storage systems.

Computing Applications

Practice Mar 1 2014

The API Performance Contract

How can the expected interactions between caller and implementation be guaranteed?

Robert F. Sproull and Jim Waldo

Architecture and Hardware

Practice Mar 1 2014

Scaling Existing Lock-Based Applications with Lock Elision

Enabling existing lock-based programs to achieve performance benefits of nonblocking synchronization.

Andi Kleen

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2014

Making Parallel Programs Reliable with Stable Multithreading

Stable multithreading dramatically simplifies the interleaving behaviors of parallel programs, offering new hope for making parallel programming easier.

Architecture and Hardware

Making Parallel Programs Reliable with Stable Multithreading, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2014

Using Targeted Conferences to Recruit Women Into Computer Science

To inspire women to major in CS, take them to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Christine Alvarado and Eugene Judson

Computing Applications

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing poster

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2014

Big-Data Applications in the Government Sector

In the same way businesses use big data to pursue profits, governments use it to promote the public good.

Gang-Hoon Kim, Silvana Trimi, and Ji-Hyong Chung

Computing Applications

Big-Data Applications in the Government Sector, illustration

Research and Advances Review articles Mar 1 2014

Trends in Steganography

Methods for embedding secret data are more sophisticated than their ancient predecessors, but the basic principles remain unchanged.

Elżbieta Zielińska, Wojciech Mazurczyk, and Krzysztof Szczypiorski

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2014

Technical Perspective: Smartphone Security ‘Taint’ What It Used to Be

The TaintDroid project takes a runtime taint tracking approach toward analyzing Android apps.

Dan Wallach

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2014

TaintDroid: An Information Flow Tracking System For Real-Time Privacy Monitoring on Smartphones

Today's smartphone operating systems frequently fail to provide users with adequate control over and visibility into how third-party applications use their privacy-sensitive data. We address these shortcomings with TaintDroid.

Computing Applications

Opinion Last byte Mar 1 2014

Puzzled: Solutions and Sources

Last month (February 2014) we posted three games in which you were asked to pick a positive integer. The question in each was: What is the highest number you should think about picking? Here, we offer solutions to all three.

Peter Winkler

Computing Applications

Opinion Last byte Mar 1 2014

Q&A: RISC and Reward

Having helped develop Reduced Instruction Set Computing and Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks, David Patterson has set his sights on interdisciplinary research.

Leah Hoffmann

Computing Applications

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