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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.


Mitx Prototype Course Opens For Enrollment
From ACM Careers

Mitx Prototype Course Opens For Enrollment

In December, MIT announced the launch of an online learning initiative called "MITx." Starting this week, interested learners can now enroll for free in the initiative’s...

From ACM News

The Mathematics of Taste

The design of aromas—the flavors of packaged food and drink and the scents of cleaning products, toiletries and other household items—is a multibillion-dollar business...

From ACM News

Speed Limit For Birds

The northern goshawk is one of nature’s diehard thrill-seekers.

The Quantifier
From ACM TechNews

The Quantifier

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Polina Golland is a principal investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where...

How Research Goes Viral
From ACM News

How Research Goes Viral

Scores of interesting new findings from the biosciences may speed around the globe at the click of a mouse, but one thing particularly encourages other researchers...

3-D Cameras For Cellphones
From ACM TechNews

3-D Cameras For Cellphones

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are developing a three-dimensional device that provides more accurate depth information than Microsoft's Kinect...

Traditional Social Networks Fueled Twitter's Spread
From ACM News

Traditional Social Networks Fueled Twitter's Spread

We've all heard it: The Internet has flattened the world, allowing social networks to spring up overnight, independent of geography or socioeconomic status.

Need a New Material? New Tool Can Help
From ACM News

Need a New Material? New Tool Can Help

Thanks to a new online toolkit developed at MIT and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, any researcher who needs to find a material with specific properties—whether...

Data Mining Without Prejudice
From ACM News

Data Mining Without Prejudice

A new technique for finding relationships between variables in large data sets makes no prior assumptions about what those relationships might be.

Sharpening the Lines
From ACM TechNews

Sharpening the Lines

Researchers at MIT and the University of Utah have developed a technique that they say surpasses the fundamental limits of microchip design and could lead to more...

Streamlining Chip Design
From ACM TechNews

Streamlining Chip Design

MIT researchers have developed a system that enables hardware designers to specify, in a single programming language, all of the functions they want a device to...

Putting the 'art' in Artificial Intelligence
From ACM News

Putting the 'art' in Artificial Intelligence

Like many kids, Antonio Torralba began playing around with computers when he was 13 years old. Unlike many of his friends, though, he was not playing video games...

Robots in Reality
From ACM News

Robots in Reality

Consider the following scenario: A scout surveys a high-rise building that's been crippled by an earthquake, trapping workers inside. After looking for a point...

Important Step Toward Computing with Light
From ACM News

Important Step Toward Computing with Light

There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips—devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their...

Searching For Balloons in a Social Network
From ACM TechNews

Searching For Balloons in a Social Network

In the process of winning DARPA's Red Balloon Challenge, the MIT researchers collected and analyzed a large amount of data on the size and scope of Internet connections...

Tiny Stamps for Tiny Sensors
From ACM News

Tiny Stamps for Tiny Sensors

Advances in microchip technology may someday enable clinicians to perform tests for hundreds of diseases—sifting out specific molecules, such as early stage cancer...

Seeing Through Walls
From ACM News

Seeing Through Walls

Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what’s going on behind solid walls.

An Oracle for Object-Oriented Programmers
From ACM TechNews

An Oracle for Object-Oriented Programmers

MIT researchers have developed Matchmaker, a system that automatically determines how objects in a large software project interact so it can inform new objects...

Take Control of Your Phone's Sensors
From ACM TechNews

Take Control of Your Phone's Sensors

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab have developed Funf, a phone-based data collection system for self-tracking applications. 

Smarter Robot Arms
From ACM News

Smarter Robot Arms

A combination of two algorithms developed at MIT allows autonomous robots to execute tasks much more efficiently—and move more predictably.
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