Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
How Personal Genomics Could Change Health Care
Several months after deciphering his genetic code last year, Stanford bioengineer Stephen Quake approached a cardiologist colleague. Early analysis of his DNA had...
From ACM TechNews
Peeking Into Users' Web History
In a test of Google's privacy protections, European researchers were able to hijack Google's personalized search suggestions to reconstruct users' Web search histories...
From ACM TechNews
A Flexible Color Display
Hewlett-Packard Labs researchers are testing a flexible, full-color display that saves power by reflecting ambient light instead of using a backlight.
From ACM News
Keeping Medical Data Private
Researchers at Vanderbilt University have created an algorithm designed to protect the privacy of patients while maintaining researchers' ability to analyze vast...
From ACM News
Combing Medical Records For Research
When the stimulus bill passed last year--allocating $20 billion to help doctors and hospitals adopt electronic medical records (EMRs)--many scientists were excited...
From ACM News
Fingertip Bacteria: A Promising Forensic Tool
It's not just our genomes that make us unique. The genomic profile of bacteria that rub off our fingertips and onto objects we touch--a computer keyboard, for instance...
From ACM TechNews
Putting the Web in a Spreadsheet
IBM researchers have developed BigSheets, a data analysis tool based on Hadoop designed to help users analyze large Web data sets. BigSheets uses Hadoop to comb...
From ACM News
Touch Screens that Touch Back
Forget putting your phone on vibrate. A novel "high-definition" touch-feedback display can give a touch screen the feel of a textured surface. The technology was...
From ACM News
Making Sense of Mountains of Data
"How do you take a big collection of things and make sense out of it?" asks Gary Flake, founder and director of Microsoft Live Labs, a division of the softwarePivot...
From ACM News
Augmented Identity
An application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona...
From ACM News
A Faster Wireless Web
Transfers of large amounts of data across the Internet to wireless devices suffer from a key problem: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used to send and receive...
From ACM News
Wi-Fi at the Speed of Light
A wireless network that uses reflected infrared light instead of radio waves has transmitted data through the air at a speed of one gigabit per second—six to 14...
From ACM News
A 50-Watt Cellular Network
An Indian telecom company is deploying simple cell phone base stations that need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. It will soon announce plans to sell...
From ACM News
Getting a Grip on Online Buzz
Big-name companies increasingly recognize the importance of discussions about their products on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But keeping track...
From ACM News
Searching For Disease Clues in Genetic Diversity
Over the last few years, scientists have discovered hundreds of genetic variants linked to disease. But the vast majority of that research has focused on people...
From ACM News
New Life For Magnetic Tape
Music lovers may have long forsaken them, but magnetic tapes still reign supreme when it comes to storing vast amounts of digital data. And new research from IBM...
From ACM News
How Google Ranks Tweets
To deliver useful search returns from the so-called real-time Web--such as seconds-old Twitter "tweets" reporting traffic jams--Google has adapted its page-ranking...
From ACM News
Trading Shares in Milliseconds
Today's stock market has become a world of automated transactions executed at lightning speed. This high-frequency trading could make the financial system more...
From ACM TechNews
Splitting p Search
Researchers at Yahoo!'s Labs in Barcelona, Spain, have developed a distributed search approach that spreads the search index and additional data out over a larger...
From ACM News