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.
From ACM News
Next Mars Rover Faces Race Against Time, Funding
NASA's next Mars rover faces looming technical, financial, and scheduling challenges before its planned launch in November, according to an internal audit released...
From ACM News
Air France Crash Probe Raises Pilot Training Questions
Air France Flight 447 stalled high over the Atlantic Ocean and plunged into the sea even as the pilots repeatedly tried to pull the nose up—a reaction opposite...
From ACM News
One Brain, Hundreds of Eyes: DARPA Plots Manhunt Master Controller
Thought military tracking technology couldn’t get any creepier? Hold onto your tinfoil hats and hide behind the nearest curtain because the next generation of...
From ACM News
Bill Would Keep Big Brother's Mitts Off Your Gps Data
The reauthorization of the Patriot Act looks like a forgone conclusion. But next month, a bipartisan band of legislators will try to mitigate a different kind...
From ACM News
Automotive Black Boxes, Minus the Gray Area
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will later this year propose a requirement that all new vehicles contain an event data recorder, known more...
From ACM News
Crazy Military Tracking Tech, From Super Scents to Quantum Dots
Scents that make you trackable, indoors and out. Nanocrystals that stick to your body, and light up on night-vision goggles. Miniradar that maps your location...
From ACM News
Bin Laden Compound Now a Virtual Training Ground for Commandos
To passers-by, T.J., a fit 20-something, is running around a red felt carpet about half the size of a basketball court inside a convention center. In his mind...
From ACM News
Darpa Apes Nick Fury to Map Social Networks
If the military is going to disrupt insurgent cells or understand how revolutionary movements congeal, it needs to perceive the connections between people that...
From ACM News
May 5, 1992: Wolfenstein 3-D Shoots First-Person Shooter Into Stardom
Id Software releases Wolfenstein 3-D, launching a huge computer-game category.
From ACM News
Army Wants Its Computers Acting Like Human Brains
The brain is our body’s natural multi-system parallel processing organ. Its job, on a continuous basis, is to compute a huge onslaught of incoming data and spit...
From ACM News
Csi Bin Laden: Commandos Use Thumb, Eye Scans to Track Terrorists
The U.S. forces that killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound were more than expert marksmen. Some of them were forensics experts as well, using sophisticated...
From ACM News
Hoops 2.0: Inside the Nba
Outside Oracle Arena, it’s a balmy 65-degree spring day. But up in the building’s rafters, 80-odd feet above the hardwood floor, the air is crisp and the view...
From ACM News
Why Cisco's Flip Flopped in the Camera Business
Cisco is shutting down a business unit that it bought for over half-a-billion dollars: the Flip camcorder division. That's a shame, considering how high the Flip...
From ACM News
Military
The Pentagon has spent decades and gazillions of dollars trying to build the perfect translation device. Now, its far-out research arm is looking at a new direction...
From ACM News
'predator' Smart Camera Locks Onto, Tracks Anything
Zdenek Kalal’s Predator object-tracking software is almost uncanny. Show anything to its all-seeing camera eye, and it will quickly learn to recognize it and...
From ACM News
The 'Panda' That Hates Farms: A Q&A With Google
Google's new update to its search engine addressed the growing complaint that low-quality content sites (derisively referred to as content farms) were ranked higher...
From ACM News
Is the Navy Trying to Start the Robot Apocalypse?
Whenever the military rolls out a new robot program, folks like to joke about SkyNet or the Rise of the Machines. But this time, the military really is starting...
From ACM News
Thinking Your Way Through Traffic in a Brain-Control Car
John Prine wasn’t far off when he sang in "Living In the Future" that "we're all driving rocket ships and talking with our minds." We're still waiting for our...
From ACM News
The Secret World of Printing Concept Cars in 3D
The work that goes into building a physical model of a concept car is usually hidden behind closed doors, known only to engineers sworn to secrecy and similarly...
From ACM News