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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.


Is Water the Key to Cheaper Nanoelectronics?
From ACM TechNews

Is Water the Key to Cheaper Nanoelectronics?

Researchers have developed a way to use water to transfer layers from one surface to another by exploiting the fact that different materials have different hydrophilicity...

What Would It Take to Put a Walking Robot on the Moon?
From ACM TechNews

What Would It Take to Put a Walking Robot on the Moon?

Astro-Technology SOHLA, a small cooperative of companies in Osaka, Japan, wants to put an autonomous humanoid robot on the moon. 

Schrodinger's Cash: Minting Quantum Money
From ACM TechNews

Schrodinger's Cash: Minting Quantum Money

MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has brought quantum money a step closer to reality by outlining a computationally secure quantum money scheme founded on the type...

Can We Make a Conscious Machine?
From ACM News

Can We Make a Conscious Machine?

Challenges don't get much bigger than trying to create artificial consciousness. Some doubt if it can be done--or if it ever should. Bolder researchers are notAntonio...

Babbage Nanomachine Promises Low-Energy Computing
From ACM TechNews

Babbage Nanomachine Promises Low-Energy Computing

Boston University researchers have created a nanoscale mechanical logic gate that could form the basis of tiny mechanical computers, descendants of Babbage's mechanical...

Electronics 'Missing Link' Brings Neural Computing Closer
From ACM TechNews

Electronics 'Missing Link' Brings Neural Computing Closer

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Assistant Professor Wei Lu is leading a research effort to make brain-like computers using memristors. 

Amputees Could Get a Helping Hand in the Virtual World
From ACM News

Amputees Could Get a Helping Hand in the Virtual World

What is the best way to for someone to get used to their artificial limb? Put them in a virtual environment. So says Anthony Steed, a computer scientist at University...

From ACM News

For Smaller Chips, Borrow 18th-Century Tricks

A new take on a centuries-old printing technique could shrink silicon chips and lead to advances in ultra-high-density computer storage. Computer chips are made...

From ACM News

Cellphone Traces Reveal You're So Predictable

We may all like to consider ourselves free spirits. But a study of the traces left by 50,000 cellphone users over three months has conclusively proved otherwise...

­.s. Networks and Power Grid ­nder (mock) Cyber-Attack
From ACM News

­.s. Networks and Power Grid ­nder (mock) Cyber-Attack

Unknown hackers have taken out U.S. cellphone networks in an ongoing cyber-attack that will soon knock out parts of the nation's electricity grid – say the officials...

Smart Dust Could Give Early Warning of Space Storms
From ACM News

Smart Dust Could Give Early Warning of Space Storms

A SWARM of "smart dust" spacecraft, positioned at a sweet spot between the Earth and the sun, could alert us to the approach of dangerous space storms well before...

Unplugged: Goodbye Cables, Hello Energy Beams
From ACM News

Unplugged: Goodbye Cables, Hello Energy Beams

LET'S face it: power cables are unsightly dust-traps. PCs, TVs and music players are becoming slicker every year, but the nest of vipers in the corner of everyAn...

Spasers Set to Sum: A New Dawn For Optical Computing
From ACM News

Spasers Set to Sum: A New Dawn For Optical Computing

It's a laser, but not as we know it. For a start, you need a microscope to see it. Gleaming eerily green, a "spaser" is a single spherical particle just a few tens...

From ACM News

Touchscreen Merges the Real and Digital Worlds

For all the advances in table-top and tablet computing, some design professionals will always prefer the feel of pen on paper to stylus on glass. A new device could...

From ACM News

Microsoft's Body-Sensing, Button-Busting Controller

A LONG-lived videogaming skill could be on the way out this year as Microsoft hones an add-on to its Xbox 360 console aimed at making button-studded games controllers...

Medibots: The World's Smallest Surgeons
From ACM News

Medibots: The World's Smallest Surgeons

A man lies comatose on an operating table. The enormous spider that hangs above him has plunged four appendages into his belly. The spider, made of white steel,...

Virtual Crashes and Clatters Get Real
From ACM News

Virtual Crashes and Clatters Get Real

The clatter of a dropped trash can and the crash of a cymbal – both easily recognisable sounds. That's why computer games or CGI movies that feature such noises...

From ACM News

Quantum Computers Are Coming

WHATEVER happened to quantum computers? A few years ago, it seemed, it was just a case of a tweak here, a fiddle there, and some kind of number-crunching Godzilla...

Electronics 'Missing Link' ­nited With Rest of the Family
From ACM TechNews

Electronics 'Missing Link' ­nited With Rest of the Family

Memristors were identified by Hewlett-Packard (HP) as the missing link of electronics 18 months ago, and since then the same team of HP researchers has upgraded...

From ACM TechNews

After Boom, Is Wikipedia Heading For Bust?

The explosive growth of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia is petering out, while a less welcoming attitude toward new contributors could negatively affect the archive's...
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