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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


SETI Researchers Want to End the Alien-Detection Hype
From ACM News

SETI Researchers Want to End the Alien-Detection Hype

Researchers looking for signals from technologically advanced aliens pick up countless strange pings—but so far, nothing has convinced them that a message really...

AI-Equipped Robots Develop Situational Awareness in Earth's Most ­ncertain Environment
From ACM TechNews

AI-Equipped Robots Develop Situational Awareness in Earth's Most ­ncertain Environment

Researchers have created algorithms to teach robots to adapt to changing conditions related to protecting and preserving underwater infrastructure.

An AI-Driven Robot Hand Spent a Hundred Years Teaching Itself to Rotate a Cube
From ACM News

An AI-Driven Robot Hand Spent a Hundred Years Teaching Itself to Rotate a Cube

AI researchers have demonstrated a self-teaching algorithm that gives a robot hand remarkable new dexterity.

Blockchain, Once Seen as a Corporate Cure-All, Suffers Slowdown
From ACM News

Blockchain, Once Seen as a Corporate Cure-All, Suffers Slowdown

Corporate America's love affair with all things blockchain may be cooling.

Beyond Silicon: $1.5-billion ­.S. Program Aims to Spur New Types of Computer Chips
From ACM TechNews

Beyond Silicon: $1.5-billion ­.S. Program Aims to Spur New Types of Computer Chips

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced $75 million in new grants to revitalize the computer chip industry.

Facebook Identifies an Active Political Influence Campaign ­sing Fake Accounts
From ACM News

Facebook Identifies an Active Political Influence Campaign ­sing Fake Accounts

Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified a political influence campaign that was potentially built to disrupt the midterm elections, with the company ...

Neural Network Implemented with Light Instead of Electrons
From ACM News

Neural Network Implemented with Light Instead of Electrons

Neural networks have a reputation for being computationally expensive. But only the training portion of things really stresses most computer hardware, since it...

Cell-Sized Robots Can Sense Their Environment
From ACM TechNews

Cell-Sized Robots Can Sense Their Environment

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed cell-sized robots that can sense their environment, store data, and conduct computational tasks...

How Robot Hands Are Evolving to Do What Ours Can
From ACM News

How Robot Hands Are Evolving to Do What Ours Can

A robotic hand? Four autonomous fingers and a thumb that can do anything your own flesh and blood can do? That is still the stuff of fantasy.

Scientists Perfect Technique to Boost Capacity of Computer Storage a Thousandfold
From ACM TechNews

Scientists Perfect Technique to Boost Capacity of Computer Storage a Thousandfold

A team of researchers has refined a method to enable a 1,000-fold enlargement of computer storage capacity, and used it to fabricate atomic-scale circuits.

The Hackers Teaching Old DNA Sequencers New Tricks
From ACM News

The Hackers Teaching Old DNA Sequencers New Tricks

In a basement storeroom at Stanford University in California, the guts of a dozen DNA sequencers lie exposed—hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cameras and...

NIH Partners With Google Cloud to Speed ­p Medical Breakthroughs
From ACM TechNews

NIH Partners With Google Cloud to Speed ­p Medical Breakthroughs

A new U.S. National Institutes of Health program aims to help researchers accelerate biomedical advances by providing access to commercial cloud computing technologies...

World's Largest Robot Hauls Ore Through Western Australia
From ACM TechNews

World's Largest Robot Hauls Ore Through Western Australia

The world's largest robot is an autonomous train that hauls tons of material across Australia.

The Ethics of Computer Science: This Researcher Has a Controversial Proposal
From ACM Opinion

The Ethics of Computer Science: This Researcher Has a Controversial Proposal

In the midst of growing public concern over artificial intelligence (AI), privacy and the use of data, Brent Hecht has a controversial proposal: the computer-science...

How They Did It (and Will Likely Try Again): GR­ Hackers vs. ­S Elections
From ACM News

How They Did It (and Will Likely Try Again): GR­ Hackers vs. ­S Elections

In a press briefing just two weeks ago, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that the grand jury assembled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller had returned...

A Fault-Tolerant System for Stopping 'Leaks' in Quantum Computers
From ACM TechNews

A Fault-Tolerant System for Stopping 'Leaks' in Quantum Computers

Researchers at Yale University have designed a system to prevent future quantum computers from "leaking" errors in ancillary quantum bits to logical qubits.

Wild About Tech, China Even Loves Robot Waiters That Can't Serve
From ACM News

Wild About Tech, China Even Loves Robot Waiters That Can't Serve

The mind-reading headsets won't read minds.

Augmented Reality Makes Robots Better Coworkers
From ACM TechNews

Augmented Reality Makes Robots Better Coworkers

Roboticists from the University of Colorado, Boulder are investigating the use of augmented reality to improve human-robot collaboration.

Rethinking Autonomous Vehicles
From ACM News

Rethinking Autonomous Vehicles

Consumer fears intensify as self-driving car fatalities dent the driverless dream.

There's Water on Mars! Signs of Buried Lake Tantalize Scientists
From ACM News

There's Water on Mars! Signs of Buried Lake Tantalize Scientists

A large saltwater lake seems to lurk under ice near Mars's south pole.
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