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 TechNews
Using Computers and Sensors to Curb Electricity Use in Buildings
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed algorithms and a real-time occupancy sensor network to create a smart heating, ventilation...
From ACM TechNews
Mentorship Key For Women in It, Says Collaborate Panel
A recent panel discussion at the Collaborate 11 Oracle user conference concluded that mentors and sponsors are crucial to helping women advance their careers in...
From ACM TechNews
Aberdeen Researchers to Collaborate With India on Development of Trusted Mobile Technologies For Rural Healthcare
University of Aberdeen researchers, in collaboration with Indian institutions, are launching the TRUMP project, a three-year study to explore how mobile technologies...
From ACM News
Robots on the Farm
Commercial farms of the future may be staffed by robots that will identify, spray and pick individual pieces of produce from plants, even when their targets are...
From ACM TechNews
Computational Thinking 'vital For Child's Analytical Ability'
Computational thinking ought to be embedded within educational programs in order to cultivate children's analytical ability, says CMU professor Jeannette M. Wing...
From ACM News
Atlas Gives Scientists New View of the Brain
Scientists funded by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen unveiled a $55 million computerized atlas of the human brain Tuesday, offering the first interactive...
From ACM TechNews
Internet2 Turns 15. Has It Delivered on Its Promise?
The Internet2, which is reserved for research and education, recently received $100 million in new funding that will upgrade its backbone capacity to 8.8 terabytes...
From ACM TechNews
Reitinger's Quest: Build a Safer Internet
U.S. Department of Homeland Security deputy undersecretary Philip Reitinger has established the goal of developing a more secure Internet ecosystem, which he says...
From ACM News
How Google Is Teaching Computers to See
Computers used to be blind, and now they can see. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated algorithms, computers today can recognize and identify the Eiffel Tower...
From ACM News
IBM Says It Knows How Bad Your Commute Will Be
If you're a commuter stuck in traffic, it doesn't help you all that much to know what road conditions are like right now. You already know you're being delayed...
From ACM News
Why Cisco's Flip Flopped in the Camera Business
Cisco is shutting down a business unit that it bought for over half-a-billion dollars: the Flip camcorder division. That's a shame, considering how high the Flip...
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science Enrollments Rebound, p 10% Last Fall
Computer science enrollments increased for the third consecutive year at Ph.D.-granting institutions, are up 10 percent from a year ago, but are still below the...
From ACM TechNews
.s. Lagging in sing Technology, Study Shows
The World Economic Forum's annual study on national computing and communications technology use found that the United States ranked fifth out of 138 countries for...
From ACM TechNews
Robot Could Guide Humans Through Areas of Low Visibility
Sheffield Hallam University researchers are helping to develop a robot that can guide humans in areas of low visibility. The robot, which will be slightly larger...
From ACM News
Ibm's Watson Not As Smart As You Think
As smart as IBM's Watson supercomputer may have seemed while defeating two former Jeopardy champions, it wouldn't be able to hold a conversation with or speak...
From ACM TechNews
Students Turn Cell Phone Into Mobile Microscope
Students at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Central Florida have developed a way to turn smartphones into virtual microscopes that can...
From ACM News
Cameras Read License Plates, Helping City's Police
When Luis Zeledon was captured by detectives, it was probably safe to say that he had not intended to be found. He was hiding in someone else’s apartment in Queens...
From ACM News
Online Photos: Are They New Digital Fingerprints?
For Mike Smith, Facebook is a fort for communicating freely with friends online. Within the confines of that giant yet access-restricted network, the music-software...
From ACM News
Universities, Industry Clash on Need For Open-Source Fpgas
Would open-source field-programmable gate arrays simplify academic research on reconfigurable computing? Researchers say yes, but industry disagrees.
From ACM TechNews