You might think Microsoft’s research centers would be all about software, security, mobile technology and the like, but the company’s New England research group highlights in its year-end wrap-up the work it has done in areas such as economics, biology and maybe less surprisingly, social media.

While managers may anticipate how cloud computing will one day ease IT headaches, the purveyors of cloud services themselves still need to further fine-tune the way their cloud services are metered and managed in order to make truly flexible cloud computing a reality.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has awarded the 2009 A.M. Turing Award to Charles P. Thacker, for his work in pioneering the networked personal computer.