Communications of the ACM
A Healthy Dose of AI
Building artificial intelligence into medical devices can speed diagnoses and potentially improve treatments and outcomes.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Writing Programs Using Ordinary Language
In a pair of recent papers, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have demonstrated that, for a few specific tasks, it's...
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New System ses Low-Power Wi-Fi Signal to Track Moving Humans—even Behind Walls
The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects.
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Valuing Versatility
It's often said that we live in an age of increased specialization: physicians who treat just one ailment, scholars who study just one period, network administrators...
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Can Control Theory Make Software Better?
Researchers recently demonstrated the application of control theory principles to formal verification, in a method that could benefit approximate computation.
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How to Predict the Progress of Technology
Moore’s Law and Wright’s Law offer the best predictions of the pace of technological progress, researchers say.
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Storing Data in Individual Molecules
Moore's law—the well-known doubling of computer chips' computational power every 18 months or so—has been paced by a similarly steady increase in the storage capacity...
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Research Update: Multiple Steps Toward the 'quantum Singularity'
Four groups of researchers recently reported the completion of an experiment that involves generating individual photons and synchronizing their passage through...
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Proving Quantum Computers Feasible
Quantum computers are devices—still largely theoretical—that could perform certain types of computations much faster than classical computers; one way they might...
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'Invisibility' Could Be a Key to Better Electronics
MIT researchers have applied the concept of harnessing cloaking mechanisms developed to conceal objects from view to the movement of electrons, which could lead...
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Mit's Csail Launches New Center to Tackle the Future of Wireless and Mobile Technologies
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory recently launched Wireless@MIT, an interdisciplinary center focused on developing next-generation...
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MIT Team Builds Most Complex Synthetic Biology Circuit Yet
MIT researchers have developed circuit components that do not interfere with one another, enabling them to produce complex synthetic circuits.
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Research pdate: Chips With Self-Assembling Rectangles
MIT researchers have developed an approach to creating the array of wires on microchips that uses a system of self-assembling polymers. The process produces arrays...
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Finding Good Music in Noisy Online Markets
Columbia University researchers began an online social-media marketing experiment in 2004, creating nine versions of a music download site that presented the same...
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New Mathematical Framework Formalizes Oddball Programming Techniques
MIT researchers have developed a mathematical framework that enables developers to reason rigorously about sloppy computation, providing mathematical guarantees...
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The Robot Revolution Is Just Beginning
When industrial robots were first introduced in the early 1960s initially on automobile assembly lines—computers were still in their infancy, so the robots were...
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Chips as Mini Internets
MIT researchers have established theoretical limits on the efficiency of packet-switched on-chip communication networks, and have presented measurements from a...
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Shifting Sands
Sand in an hourglass might seem simple and straightforward, but such granular materials are actually tricky to model.
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Self-Sculpting Sand
Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool.
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Guiding Robot Planes with Hand Gestures
Aircraft-carrier crew use a set of standard hand gestures to guide planes on the carrier deck. But as robot planes are increasingly used for routine air missions...
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