February 2013 - Vol. 56 No. 2

Features

Opinion Feb 1 2013

Positioning ACM For an Open Access Future

The age of open access is upon us. Increasingly, the consensus of authors and their funding institutions is that the fruits of taxpayer-supported research should be freely available. This is a compelling argument and a noble goal. But, achieving open access is not easy.

Ronald F. Boisvert and Jack W. Davidson

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Opinion From the president Feb 1 2013

Growing the ACM Family

I have been thinking about the demographics of the computing profession and wondering what steps ACM and its members might take to increase interest in this career across a full spectrum of potential candidates.

Vinton G. Cerf

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Feb 1 2013

When Reviews Do More Than Sting

Bertrand Meyer wonders why malicious reviews run rampant in computer science.

Bertrand Meyer

Computing Applications

News Feb 1 2013

Life in Simulation

Computational models are tackling the complexity of biology, from single-celled microbes to human organs.

Neil Savage

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Feb 1 2013

Revving the Rover

The new Mars rover has attracted plenty of attention for its planetary gymnastics, but the big breakthroughs are under the hood.

Alex Wright

Architecture and Hardware

News Feb 1 2013

A New Model For Healthcare

Computer modeling is radically redefining healthcare and epidemiology by providing new tools for understanding the impact of different intervention strategies.

Samuel Greengard

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

model of the spread of HIV in New York City

Opinion Privacy and security Feb 1 2013

The Tangled Web We Have Woven

Seeking to protect the fundamental privacy of network interactions.

Eben Moglen

Computing Applications

The Tangled Web We Have Woven, illustration

Opinion Inside risks Feb 1 2013

More Sight on Foresight

My previous column, "The Foresight Saga, Redux," began a discussion that is continued here regarding some lessons learned from the 2012 U.S. November elections. In addition, I reflect on the collateral effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Peter G. Neumann

Computing Applications

Opinion Kode Vicious Feb 1 2013

Divided By Division

Is there a "best used by" date for software?

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

Opinion Education Feb 1 2013

Reflections on Stanford’s MOOCs

New possibilities in online education create new challenges.

Steve Cooper and Mehran Sahami

Computing Applications

laptop displays Stanford Engineering Everywhere Web site

Opinion Economic and business dimensions Feb 1 2013

The Value of Microprocessor Designs

Applying a centuries-old technique to modern cost estimation.

Ana Aizcorbe, Samuel Kortum, and Unni Pillai

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Feb 1 2013

Cloud Services Certification

How to address the lack of transparency, trust, and acceptance in cloud services.

Ali Sunyaev and Stephan Schneider

Computing Applications

Cloud Services Certification, illustration

Opinion Viewpoint Feb 1 2013

The Explosive Growth of Postdocs in Computer Science

Considering the factors influencing the recent rapid increase in the number of postdoctoral positions in computer science.

Anita Jones

Computing Applications

The Explosive Growth of Postdocs in Computer Science, illustration

Practice Feb 1 2013

Rethinking Passwords

Our authentication system is lacking. Is improvement possible?

William Cheswick

Computing Applications

Practice Feb 1 2013

Thinking Methodically About Performance

The USE method addresses shortcomings in other commonly used methodologies.

Brendan Gregg

Architecture and Hardware

Thinking Methodically About Performance, illustration

Practice Feb 1 2013

A Decade of OS Access-Control Extensibility

Open source security foundations for mobile and embedded devices.

Robert N. M. Watson

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Feb 1 2013

New Approaches to Security and Availability For Cloud Data

Extending the data trust perimeter from the enterprise to the public cloud requires more than encryption.

Ari Juels and Alina Oprea

Architecture and Hardware

New Approaches to Security and Availability for Cloud Data, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Feb 1 2013

The Tail at Scale

Software techniques that tolerate latency variability are vital to building responsive large-scale Web services.

Jeffrey Dean and Luiz André Barroso

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Review articles Feb 1 2013

Symbolic Execution For Software Testing: Three Decades Later

The challenges — and great promise — of modern symbolic execution techniques, and the tools to help implement them.

Cristian Cadar and Koushik Sen

Architecture and Hardware

Symbolic Execution for Software Testing, illustration

Research and Advances Research highlights Feb 1 2013

Technical Perspective: Is Dark Silicon Real?

The microprocessor chip R&D community has been well aware of the so-called "power wall" challenge for over a decade. The following work by Esmaeilzadeh et al. is a landmark paper that opens our eyes to the unrelenting power challenge we face in the multicore era.

Pradip Bose

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Feb 1 2013

Power Challenges May End the Multicore Era

Tthe microprocessor industry has shifted to multicore scaling as its principal strategy for continuing performance growth. However, while transistor count increases continue, the per-transistor speed and energy efficiency improvements have slowed dramatically.

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Last byte Feb 1 2013

Puzzled: Tumbling Dice

These puzzles involve computing probabilities associated with dice.

Peter Winkler

Computing Applications

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