Welcome to the March 26, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing
timely information for IT professionals three times a week. ACM
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(click here). HEADLINES AT A GLANCE Ancient Sites Spotted From
Space, Say Archaeologists BBC News (03/20/12) Computer science
techniques have enabled archaeologists to discover about 9,000
possible early human settlements across 23,000 square miles in
northeastern Syria. Researcher Jason Ur used computers to scan
images for soil discoloration and mounds caused when mud-brick
settlements collapsed. Ur says surveying the same sites on the
ground would have taken him a lifetime. "With these computer
science techniques, however, we can immediately come up with an
enormous map, which is methodologically very interesting, but
which also shows the staggering amount of human occupation over
the last 7,000 or 8,000 years," says Ur. He previously used
declassified spy satellit