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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Biohackers Gear p For Genome Editing
A complete lack of formal scientific training has not kept Johan Sosa from dabbling with one of the most powerful molecular-biology tools to come along in decades...
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Small Rocks Build Big Planets
The biggest planets in the Solar System may have gotten their start from the smallest of rocks: centimetre-sized pebbles that formed 4.5 billion years ago from...
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Superconductivity Record Sparks Wave of Follow-p Physics
Hydrogen sulfide—the compound responsible for the smell of rotten eggs—conducts electricity with zero resistance at a record high temperature of 203 kelvin (–70...
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Octopus Genome Holds Clues to Uncanny Intelligence
With its eight prehensile arms lined with suckers, camera-like eyes, elaborate repertoire of camouflage tricks and spooky intelligence, the octopus is like no other...
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3D-Printed Device Helps Computers Solve Cocktail-Party Problem
Artificial-intelligence researchers have long struggled to make computers perform a task that is simple for humans: picking out one person’s speech when multiple...
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How the Rubber-Duck Comet Got Its Shape
A year after the Rosetta space mission went into orbit around a comet shaped like a rubber duck, scientists say that they have worked out how the dusty iceball...
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Caution rged Over Editing Dna in Wildlife (intentionally or Not)
"Crap!" That was the first word out of Kevin Esvelt’s mouth as he scanned a paper1 published inScience last March.
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Earth's Ancient Magnetic Field Just Got a Lot Older
Earth developed a magnetic field at least four billion years ago, the latest research shows—more than half a billion years earlier than thought.
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Crumb of Mouse Brain Reconstructed in Full Detail
Six years might seem like a long time to spend piecing together the structure of a scrap of tissue vastly smaller than a bead of sweat.
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Hacked Molecular Machine Could Pump Out Custom Proteins
By hijacking the cellular machinery that makes proteins, bioengineers have developed a tool that could allow them to better understand protein synthesis, explore...
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Neanderthals Had Outsize Effect on Human Biology
Our ancestors were not a picky bunch.
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Vibrant Pluto Stuns Scientists
They are 5 billion kilometres from the Sun in the dim, far-flung outskirts of the Solar System, but Pluto and its large moon Charon turn out to be astonishingly...
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Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Gets a $100-Million Boost
You could say that the silence has been deafening.
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The 24/7 Search For Killer Quakes
At 17 minutes past midnight on Saturday 25 April, Rob Sanders's computer started chiming with alerts.
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Pluto Spacecraft Temporarily Loses Contact with Earth
Ten days before its historic flyby of Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft lost contact with mission control, for unknown reasons, for an hour and 21 minutes on...
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Machine Ethics: The Robot's Dilemma
In his 1942 short story 'Runaround', science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Laws of Robotics—engineering safeguards and built-in ethical principles...
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Computers Read the Fossil Record
For a field whose raison d'être is to chronicle the deep past, palaeontology is remarkably forward-looking when it comes to organizing its data.
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Pluto-Bound Probe Faces Its Toughest Task: Finding Pluto
Some 4.7 billion kilometres from Earth, the New Horizons spacecraft is heading for a historic rendezvous with Pluto. To achieve this, it will need to hit a very...
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Intriguing Geology of Ceres Revealed in New Pictures
Ceres, the largest asteroid in the Solar System, is finally getting its close-up. NASA's Dawn spacecraft arrived in March, and is now taking photographs from as...
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