Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2016
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
National Academies Communication Awards Nominations Due February 8
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is accepting nominations for its 2016 Communications Awards. The awards recognize individuals or teams who published innovative works during 2015 that help the public…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USPTO Patent Public Advisory Committee Meeting on February 4, 2016
The USPTO Patent Public Advisory Committee will hold its next quarterly meeting on Thursday, February 4, 2016, from 9 am to 3:40 pm at the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. The meeting is open to the public. The meeting will…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM Applauds Computer Science for All Initiative
Statement by ACM President Alexander L. Wolf and ACM CEO Bobby Schnabel on US President Obama’s “Computer Science for All” Announcement ACM applauds U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic announcement of the Computer Science…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Connecting Designers and Developers
In The Verge: " ... after Etsy completed an IPO that valued it at $3.5 billion, the craft marketplace is expanding. The company is introducing Etsy Manufacturing, a new service that will link Etsy sellers — who often make items…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CPG Using Uber Methods
Have covered the topic of retail compliance many times in this space. Technology combined with crowdsourcing has already been used for some time. Note the connection to data analytics applications.Retail Solutions PartnersCPG…
From insideHPC
Mira Supercomputer Shaping Fusion Plasma Research
The IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer Mira, housed at the Argonne national laboratory Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ACLF), is delivering new insights into the physics behind nuclear fusion, helping researchers to develop…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House Roundtable on Cybersecurity of Hospitals and Medical Devices
The following is a guest post from CCC Council Member Kevin Fu, the Associate Professor of EECS at the University of Michigan and Chief Scientist of Virta Labs, Inc. Last month, the White House quietly convened a group of medical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Monitoring Machinery Health
In the CACM: A favorite topic in manufacturing, to predict and improve maintenance. " ... An artificial intelligence algorithm created by University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) principal research scientist Rodrigo Teixeira…
From insideHPC
Poznan Launches Eagle Supercomputer with Liquid Cooling from CoolIT Systems
Today CoolIT Systems announced that it has successfully completed the second deployment of its Rack DCLC liquid cooling solution at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) in partnership with Huawei. "We are pleased…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
An Online Community for CS Teachers Using Microsoft Tools
One thing I am constantly looking to do is to learn from other computer science teachers. There are some good online communities for this purpose. I’m a member of a couple of Facebook groups for example. And I regularly follow…
From Schneier on Security
Security vs. Surveillance
Both the "going dark" metaphor of FBI Director James Comey and the contrasting "golden age of surveillance" metaphor of privacy law professor Peter Swire focus on the value of data to law enforcement. As framed in the media,…
From insideHPC
LLNL Teams with Industry to Advance Energy Technologies using HPC
Today Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announced the selection of six industry projects for the advancement of energy technologies using high performance computing. Called the "hpc4energy incubator," this pilot program…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Benefits of the Data Lake
In DSC: Overview of major benefits of Data Lakes. " ... And in nutshell Data Lake is a data store and processing data system, where an organization can place internal data, external data, partner’s data, competitor data, business…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The 2016 Knuth Prize
A non-annoucement annoucement Crop from Farkas Prize src Michel Goemans is the chair of this year’s ACM/IEEE Knuth Prize committee. He teaches at MIT and among many wonderful achievements co-won the 2000 MOS/AMS Fulkerson Prize…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gimball Drones in Ice Caves
This piece in IEEE Spectrum shows the use of a Flyability Gimball drone being flown in an ice cave. Impressive video, that shows how the drone can survive collisions. This has similarities to an industrial inspection and…
From Schneier on Security
Paper on the Going Dark Debate
I am pleased to have been a part of this report, part of the Berkman Center's Berklett Cybersecurity project: Don't Panic: Making Progress on the "Going Dark" Debate From the report: In this report, we question whether the "going…
From The Eponymous Pickle
We Don't Understand the Language of the Brain
Despite all the success in artificial neural networks for pattern recognition, we still don't understand how the brain works. A number of efforts are underway. An overview in Scientific American. What do we really know about…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Freezers Reading your Emotions?
A retail freezer reading your emotions? " ... Then there's a grocery store freezer case that can help you decide what you want to buy by reading your facial expression through cameras installed on top of it. It makes suggestions…
From insideHPC
High Performance Computing for Energy Project Kicks off at BSC
High Performance Computing for Energy (HPC4E) project officially launched this week with a kick-off meeting for partners at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Coordinated by BSC and running through November 2017, the …
From insideHPC
John Zannos to Chair OpenPOWER Foundation
Today the OpenPOWER Foundation announced the election of John Zannos from Canonical as Chair and Calista Redmond from IBM as President of the OpenPOWER Foundation Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2016. Zannos and Redmond…
From Putting People First
The secret UX issues that will make (or break) self-driving cars
In an unassuming research lab, Volkswagen is solving problems that Tesla and Google haven’t come close to cracking. Cliff Kuang reports for Fast Company. In his article he features the work of Brian Lathrop, who runs the UX group…
From insideHPC
Video: Storage Architecture for Innovation & Research at the University of Florida
In this video from the DDN booth at SC15, Dr. Erik Deumens of the University of Florida describes why unpredictable and less standard architectures and system configurations are necessary to meet the agility, availability and…
From Putting People First
Do patients really want to be empowered?
Katherine Benjamin, digital services manager at NHS England, asks some clever questions in this Medium piece: “Digital health services and wearable technologies are meant to empower users to change behaviours and become better…
From insideHPC
Seismic Processing Places High Demand on Storage
Oil and gas exploration is always a challenging endeavor, and with today's large risks and rewards, optimizing the process is of critical importance. A whole range of High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies need to be employed…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Great Innovative Idea- Querying Historical Maps as a Unified, Structured, and Linked Spatiotemporal Source
The following Great Innovative Idea is from Yao-Yi Chiang from the University of Southern California. His Querying Historical Maps as a Unified, Structured, and Linked Spatiotemporal Source paper was the first place winner at…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nokia and IOT Security
In CWorld: " ... The NetGuard platform is designed to monitor and control all the security components on a network .... The company's NetGuard Security Management Center is designed to monitor and control all the security components…
From insideHPC
DDN WOS Object Storage Wins 2016 Storage Visions Award
Today DDN announced that its WOS 360 v2.0 object storage software was named a Visionary Product in the Professional Class Storage category at the fifteenth Annual Storage Visions Conference. The groundbreaking WOS enables organizations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Macy's Taps Etsy
Recently did my first shop at Etsy recently for quality handmade items. Nice, simple, online experience. Surprised a retail giant like Macy's would engage. To engage Millenials they say. In Retailwire.
From insideHPC
UCLA Researchers Simulate Injured Human Leg
Researchers at UCLA have created the first detailed computer simulation model of an injured human leg--complete with spurting blood. The simulation is designed to make training for combat medics more realistic. "To create the…
From insideHPC
Interview: Sugon Looks to Grow New HPC Markets in the West
Sugon is one of the top HPC vendors in China. With plans to expand operations in the West, the company is once again sponsoring the ISC 2016 conference. "Sugon, use to be called Dawning, rooted from the Institute of Computing…