Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2014
From ACM TechNews
Researcher Takes a Muscular Approach to Robotics
A team at Harvard University has developed a robotic device to restore movement for sufferers of neuromuscular disorders that affect the foot and ankle.
From ACM Careers
Virtual Games Bring Pinball to New Audiences
The flashing lights, cool sound effects and high-speed bouncing ball action have made pinball simulators a hugely popular genre of video game, not to mention big business for the software houses that develop them.
From ACM Careers
Yahoo Expands Research Labs in Search of Personalized, Mobile Experiences
There are many conflicting opinions about what troubled Web giant Yahoo must do to turn itself around, but critics and company leaders at least agree on one thing: fresh ideas must be part of the solution.
From ACM News
2013 Visualization Challenge
With a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a love of Asian art, it may have been inevitable that Greg Dunn would combine them to create sparse, striking illustrations of the brain.
From ACM News
New 'Mask' APT Campaign Called Most Sophisticated
A group of high-level, nation-state attackers has been targeting government agencies, embassies, diplomatic offices and energy companies with a cyber-espionage campaign for more than five years that researchers say is the most…
From ACM TechNews
DARPA Thinks the Future of Surveillance Looks Like Siri
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Dan Kaufman says an innovation gap exists as the private sector advances in areas in which the government was once primarily responsible for research breakthroughs.
From ACM TechNews
Snowden sed Low-Cost Tool to Best NSA
Edward Snowden used inexpensive and widely available software to "scrape" the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) networks, according to intelligence officials.
From ACM News
Can a Statistical Model Accurately Predict Olympic Medal Counts?
If someone asked you to predict the number of medals each country is going to win in this year's Olympics, you'd probably try to identify the favored athletes in each event, then total each country's expected wins to arrive at…
From ACM TechNews
Wikipedia vs. the Small Screen
The Wikipedia Foundation formed a team of software developers to focus on developing the site for use with mobile devices.
From ACM TechNews
Tim Berners-Lee: We Need to Re-Decentralize the Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee called on the public to refocus on a decentralized, open Internet.
From ACM News
The Robots That Saved Pittsburgh
It's hard to pinpoint the moment Pittsburgh began its three-decade climb back from the dead, but Red Whittaker marks the comeback from the instant he heard the ominous clack of a door closing behind him when he entered a secured…
From ACM TechNews
Edison Electrifies Scientific Computing
The U.S. National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, recently accepted Edison, a new flagship supercomputer designed for scientific productivity.
From ACM News
This Iphone-Size Device Can Hack A Car, Researchers Plan To Demonstrate
Auto makers have long downplayed the threat of hacker attacks on their cars and trucks, arguing that their vehicles' increasingly networked systems are protected from rogue wireless intrusion.
From ACM TechNews
Google's Ray Kurzweil Envisions New Era of Search
In an interview, Google engineering chief Ray Kurzweil discussed a new type of search engine that he is developing, noting that search engines will have increasingly human-like problem-solving capabilities in the years to come…
From ACM News
NASA's Troubled $8-Billion Hubble Successor Is Back on Track
The Hubble Space Telescope is still operating, but its successor is already waiting in the wings.
From ACM TechNews
Model Predicts Growth, Death of Facebook and Other Membership-Based Websites
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a computational model to assess the viability of websites and social networks and predict which sites are sustainable and which are not.
From ACM TechNews
The Public Eye?
In 2011, the Indian government launched the UIDAI program to collect the iris patterns and fingerprints of all of its 1.2 billion citizens within three years. The program relies on algorithms developed by University of Cambridge…
From ACM Opinion
When Will Genomics Cure Cancer?
Since the beginning of this century, the most rapidly advancing field in the life sciences, and perhaps in human inquiry of any sort, has been genomics.
From ACM News
'alan Turing: His Work and Impact' Named 2013 Prose Award Winner
The PROSE Awards, one of the most prestigious competitions in professional and scholarly publishing, praised the work as a fitting tribute to the life of the legendary mathematical and scientific genius.
From ACM News
IBM and PARC to Design Sensitive Electronics for Military that Shatter to Dust on Command
Two U.S. companies are joining a military research program to develop sensitive electronic components able to self-destruct on command to keep them out of the hands of potential adversaries who would attempt to counterfeit them…
From ACM News
A Robotic Hand, This Time with Feeling
A Dutch man who lost his left hand in a fireworks accident nine years ago is now able to feel different kinds of pressure on three fingers of a prosthetic, robotic hand.
From ACM News
New Surveillance Technology Can Track Everyone in an Area for Several Hours at a Time
Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape.
From ACM News
Perfecting the Art of Sensible Nonsense
As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996, Amit Sahai was fascinated by the strange notion of a "zero-knowledge" proof, a type of mathematical protocol for convincing someone that something is…
From ACM News
Fda Approves Pill Camera to Screen Colon
A kinder, gentler approach to one of the most dreaded exams in medicine is on the way: U.S. regulators have cleared a bite-size camera to help screen patients who have trouble with colonoscopies.
From ACM News
Attempting to Code the Human Brain
Somewhere, in a glass building several miles outside of San Francisco, a computer is imagining what a cow looks like.
From ACM News
Mind Meld: The Genius of Swarm Thinking
Iain Couzin does not have fond memories of field research.
From ACM News
Government Wants You to Broadcast Your Driving Data—Eventually
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it's finally ready to consider regulations that might require "light vehicles" to communicate with each other about…
From ACM News
Evidence Emerges That Google's Quantum Computer May Not Be Quantum After All
Back in 2011, the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin paid a cool $10 million for the world's first commercial quantum computer from a Canadian start up called D-Wave Systems.
From ACM News
The Laws of Computing
Expert witnesses in computing sciences navigate complex issues and sometimes-hostile lawyers in order to bring focus and resolution to high-profile legal disputes.
From ACM News
When No One Is Just a Face in the Crowd
Hey, big spenders.