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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.


It’s True: False News Spreads Faster and Wider. And Humans Are to Blame.
From ACM News

It’s True: False News Spreads Faster and Wider. And Humans Are to Blame.

What if the scourge of false news on the internet is not the result of Russian operatives or partisan zealots or computer-controlled bots? What if the main problem...

Neuron Creation in Brain's Memory Centre Stops After Childhood
From ACM News

Neuron Creation in Brain's Memory Centre Stops After Childhood

Every day, the human hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory, creates hundreds of new nerve cells—or so scientists thought.

NASA Juno finds Jupiter's Jet-Streams Are ­nearthly
From ACM News

NASA Juno finds Jupiter's Jet-Streams Are ­nearthly

Data collected by NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter indicate that the atmospheric winds of the gas-giant planet run deep into its atmosphere and last longer than similar...

Does a Quantum Equation Govern Some of the ­niverse's Large Structures?
From ACM News

Does a Quantum Equation Govern Some of the ­niverse's Large Structures?

Researchers who want to predict the behavior of systems governed by quantum mechanics—an electron in an atom, say, or a photon of light traveling through space—typically...

FBI Chief Signals Need to ­nderstand Potential Threats Tied to Cryptocurrency
From ACM News

FBI Chief Signals Need to ­nderstand Potential Threats Tied to Cryptocurrency

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday said the bureau must be prepared to confront a new set of emerging cyber threats.

Google Researchers Are Learning How Machines Learn
From ACM News

Google Researchers Are Learning How Machines Learn

Machines are starting to learn tasks on their own. They are identifying faces, recognizing spoken words, reading medical scans and even carrying on their own conversations...

Wanna See Around Corners? Better Get Yourself a Laser
From ACM News

Wanna See Around Corners? Better Get Yourself a Laser

You can't see the bunny, but the picosecond laser certainly can.

Latest ­S Weather Satellite Highlights Forecasting Challenges
From ACM News

Latest ­S Weather Satellite Highlights Forecasting Challenges

The United States filled a crucial gap in its weather-forecasting arsenal when it launched its latest geostationary satellite on 1 March. The craft will enable...

AI's Dirty Little Secret: It's Powered by People
From ACM News

AI's Dirty Little Secret: It's Powered by People

There's a dirty little secret about artificial intelligence: It's powered by hundreds of thousands of real people.

The Decentralized Internet Is Here, With Some Glitches
From ACM News

The Decentralized Internet Is Here, With Some Glitches

I usually write in Google's online word processor Google Docs, even when noting the company's shortcomings.

These Provocative Images Show Russian Trolls Sought to Inflame Debate Over Climate Change, Fracking and Dakota Pipeline
From ACM News

These Provocative Images Show Russian Trolls Sought to Inflame Debate Over Climate Change, Fracking and Dakota Pipeline

Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change, a finding that underscores how the Russian...

Has Dopamine Got ­s Hooked on Tech?
From ACM News

Has Dopamine Got ­s Hooked on Tech?

In an unprecedented attack of candour, Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that the social network was founded not to...

Spoof, Jam, Destroy: Why We Need a Backup for GPS
From ACM News

Spoof, Jam, Destroy: Why We Need a Backup for GPS

Earth got a warning shot on January 25, 2016. On that day, Air Force engineers were scheduled to kill off a GPS satellite named SVN-23—the oldest in the navigation...

Astronomers Detect Light from the ­niverse's First Stars
From ACM News

Astronomers Detect Light from the ­niverse's First Stars

Astronomers have for the first time spotted long-sought signals of light from the earliest stars ever to form in the Universe—around 180 million years after the...

A New Data Trove Could Teach Computers to Tell Blind People What They Need to Know
From ACM TechNews

A New Data Trove Could Teach Computers to Tell Blind People What They Need to Know

Researchers are publishing a database of images and challenging the machine-vision community to use it to train machines as effective assistants for those with...

Enigma: Up Close with a Nazi Cipher Machine
From ACM News

Enigma: Up Close with a Nazi Cipher Machine

A black metal mechanical device resembling a typewriter sits in a wooden box.

How Flashing Lights and Pink Noise Might Banish Alzheimer's, Improve Memory and More
From ACM News

How Flashing Lights and Pink Noise Might Banish Alzheimer's, Improve Memory and More

In March 2015, Li-Huei Tsai set up a tiny disco for some of the mice in her laboratory. For an hour each day, she placed them in a box lit only by a flickering...

Curiosity Tests a New Way to Drill on Mars
From ACM News

Curiosity Tests a New Way to Drill on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has conducted the first test of a new drilling technique on the Red Planet since its drill stopped working reliably.

China's Internet ­nderground Fights for Its Life
From ACM News

China's Internet ­nderground Fights for Its Life

For years, thousands of virtual private networks (VPNs) have allowed people in China to circumvent restrictions on internet access and visit Facebook, Google, YouTube...

If There's Life on Saturn's Moon Enceladus, It Might Look Like This
From ACM News

If There's Life on Saturn's Moon Enceladus, It Might Look Like This

Saturn's moon Enceladus has become an alien-hunting hot spot, and not just for the tinfoil hat crowd.
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