Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2017
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
A Growth Mindset Workshop
I recently gave a workshop on the growth mindset with first year computer science students working as part of this amazing program. It went well, so it seems worth sharing. What follows is the workshop plan.
Take the following…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How quickly can you remove spaces from a string?
Sometimes programmers want to prune out characters from a string of characters. For example, maybe you want to remove all line-ending characters from a piece of text. Let me consider the problem where I want to remove all spaces…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Building AI
It has been long suggested that this would occur. This is still relatively hard, but we have seen apps like Watson Analytics show how it could be done. Though that is about data science, and this further embodies the logicIn…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Artificial Fingertip Feels
Artificial fingertip that ‘feels’ wins Harvard's robotics competition
TacTip, a 3D-printed tactile sensor (University of Bristol)
An open-source 3D-printed fingertip that can ‘feel’ in a similar way to the human sense of touch…
From insideHPC
PASC17 Plenary to Focus on Supercomputing Cosmology
Today the PASC17 Conference announced that this year’s plenary presentation will be entitled “Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe with Supercomputers.” The plenary presentation will be given by Katrin Heitmann, Senior Member…
From Schneier on Security
New White House Privacy Report
Two days ago, the White House released a report on privacy: "Privacy in our Digital Lives: Protecting Individuals and Promoting Innovation." The report summarizes things the administration has done, and lists future challenges…
From insideHPC
Video: How Persistent Memory Will Bring an Entirely New Structure to Large Data Computing
"As data proliferation continues to explode, computing architectures are struggling to get the right data to the processor efficiently, both in terms of time and power. But what if the best solution to the problem is not faster…
From ACM on Huffington Post
Computing and the Fight against Epidemics
By Alessandro Vespignani, Sternberg Distinguished Professor, Northeastern University Since the earliest times, humankind
From insideHPC
Atos Delivers Bull sequana Supercomputer to Hartree Centre
Today Atos announced the first installation of its Bull sequana X1000 new-generation supercomputer system, in the UK at the Hartree Centre. Founded by the UK government, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree…
From insideHPC
Video: Modern Code – Making the Impossible Possible
In this video, Rich Brueckner from insideHPC moderates a panel discussion on Code Modernization. "SC15 luminary panelists reflect on collaboration with Intel and how building on hardware and software standards facilitates performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scan and Go Again
Scan and Go Again In Retailwire.
by Matthew Stern with expert comments.
Some ideas were ahead of their time and that’s how Walmart appears to see its Scan & Go mobile app. The retailer is bringing the discontinued mobile checkout…
From insideHPC
China Oceanwide to Acquire IDG & IDC
"We will be fully honoring all IDC HPC contracts and deliverables, and will continue our HPC operations as before," said Earl Joseph of IDC. "Because the HPC group conducts sensitive business with governments, the group is being…
From Putting People First
Anthropologist Sally Applin on the automation of qualitative methods
Anthropology and its methodologies cannot easily be automated. However, both design and engineering based organizations are attempting it. Anthropologist Sally A. Applin argues that this is based in part on historic legacy systems…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Big Data to Knowledge Updates
The Data Science and the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have a number of upcoming opportunities, events, and announcements. Active BD2K Opportunities MD2K Training Opportunity…
From insideHPC
Oracle Cloud to add PBS Works for Technical Computing
Today Altair announced plans to build and offer HPC solutions on the Oracle Cloud Platform. This follows Oracle’s decision to name Altair PBS Works as its preferred workload management solution for Oracle Cloud customers. "This…
From insideHPC
Call for Proposals: SC17 Workshops
The SC17 conference is now accepting proposals for independently planned full- or half-day workshops. SC17 will be held Nov. 12-17 in Denver.
The post Call for Proposals: SC17 Workshops appeared first on insideHPC.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Help Every Child Learn to Read
Curious Learning.
Help Every Child Learn to Read
2 Years Of Early Literacy Education, Delivered By Smartphone Or Tablet.
Slides.
Created At MIT, Backed By Research. ....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Revealing the Limits of AI
So what can AI really do today? Here a list of questions which aim to indicate the current limitations. Includes inputs by Roger Schank, AI researcher we have followed for some time. Worth understanding if you are interested…
From insideHPC
Managing Lots of Tasks for Intel Xeon Phi
"OpenMP, Fortran 2008 and TBB are standards that can help to create parallel areas of an application. MKL could also be considered to be part of this family, because it uses OpenMP within the library. OpenMP is well known and…
From insideHPC
NERSC Selects Six Teams for Exascale Science Applications Program
Following a call for proposals issued last October, NERSC has selected six science application teams to participate in the NERSC Exascale Science Applications Program for Data (NESAP for Data) program. "We're very excited to
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Mobile Platforms for Early Literacy Education
This was quite good, included mention of the use of screen robots to provide learning companions to children. Quite a good example of the use of smartphones to teach up to Pre-K and K levels. Uses some AI avatar capabilities…
From insideHPC
Speeding Workloads at the Dell EMC HPC Innovation Lab
This is the final entry in an insideHPC series of features covering high performance system interconnect technology, HPC networking and computing. This entry is focused on the Dell EMC HPC Innovation Lab. The Dell EMC HPC Innovation…
From Computational Complexity
Infinite Series and Markov Chains
There's a wonderful new series of math videos PBS Infinite Series hosted by Cornell Math Phd student Kelsey Houston-Edwards. Check out this latest video on Markov Chains.
She gives an amazingly clear description of why…
From Putting People First
Social science must return to qualitative research to understand social and political shifts
Social science has become increasingly beholden to analysis derived from big data: large numerical sets analysed computationally, write Pamela Prickett and Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University. This, they say, “has brought…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Resolving Customer Disputes
Note the use of personality profiles. How accurately can this be done?Can AI resolve customer service disputes? by Matthew Stern
A phone call with a customer service (CS) representative can devolve into a nightmare for any…
From Schneier on Security
Heartbeat as Biometric Password
There's research in using a heartbeat as a biometric password. No details in the article. My guess is that there isn't nearly enough entropy in the reproducible biometric, but I might be surprised. The article's suggestion to…
From Putting People First
Don Norman on what Apple, Google and Tesla get wrong
Don Norman is a technological optimist. The author of The Design of Everyday Things and head of UC San Diego’s Design Lab believes that artificial intelligence might only take the worst parts of our jobs, and when it gets smart…
From Putting People First
[Report] Consuming Differently, Consuming Sustainably: Behavioural Insights for Policymaking
The objective of this report, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is to shed light on opportunities to strengthen the effectiveness of policies for sustainable consumption in both developed and developing…
From Putting People First
[Report] Behavioural Insights at the United Nations – Achieving Agenda 2030
In 2016, the UNDP Innovation Facility collaborated with the newly engaged UN Behavioural Science Advisor to work on behaviorally-informed design with 8 UNDP Country Offices in all 5 regions: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Ecuador…
From Putting People First
[Report] The truth about online consumers
During 2016, KPMG conducted an international study on consumer behaviors and preferences related to online shopping. The research was largely based on an online survey of 18,430 consumers living in more than 50 countries. The…