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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Self-Sculpting Sand
Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool.
From ACM TechNews
How the Cost of Computation Restricts the Processes of Life
Biologists and computer scientists have begun to examine what restrictions the theoretical limits of computation place on the way living things operate, which could...
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Dead Stars 'to Guide Spacecraft'
German scientists are developing a technique that allows for very precise positioning anywhere in space by picking up X-ray signals from pulsars.
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How the Cost of Computation Restricts the Processes of Life
Back in the 1960s, the IBM physicist Rolf Landauer showed that computation comes with a cost: every (irreversible) calculation, he said, always burns through a...
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Sanjeev Arora Wins 2011 Acm-Infosys Award
Sanjeev Arora, a computer scientist at Princeton University, is honored for breakthroughs that have advanced the power of computing.
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China's Not-So-Super Computers
The supercomputer in this southern boomtown is named Nebulae for the interstellar clouds of gas that give birth to stars.
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Genius and Tragedy at Dawn of Computer Age
One of the many myths about Apple is that the company's name is a reference to the half-eaten apple reportedly found beside the corpse of the British computer scientist...
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Snowflake Growth Successfully Modeled from Physical Laws
Windswept from cloud to cloud until they flutter to Earth, snowflakes assume a seemingly endless variety of shapes.
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Surprise! Astronomers Spot Life on Earth
No one knows when we'll spot life on another world, but everyone knows how it will happen.
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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...
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Tap the Genius of Babies and Youngsters to Make Computers Smarter
University of California, Berkeley researchers are studying how babies, toddlers, and preschoolers learn in order to program computers to think more like humans...
From ACM TechNews
Simulations and Mathematics Suggest That There Always Be a Facebook
National Center for Nuclear Research scientists are conducting research that could lead to the development of a field of mathematics focused on the theory of minority...
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Life on Mars? Funds to Find Answer Fade
Just as NASA is on the cusp of answering the most fascinating questions about Mars—is there, was there or could there be life there?—the money needed to provide...
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Software Translates Your Voice Into Another Language
Researchers at Microsoft have made software that can learn the sound of your voice, and then use it to speak a language that you don't.
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DARPA Director Bolts Pentagon For Google
Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon's premiere research shop to take a job with Google.
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A Bit of Progress: Diamonds Shatter Quantum Information Storage Record
The quantum world and the everyday world of human experience are supposed to be two different realms. Quantum effects, as demonstrated in the lab, are usually confined...
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Sometimes the Quickest Path Is Not a Sraight Line
Sometimes the fastest pathway from point A to point B is not a straight line: for example, if you're underwater and contending with strong and shifting currents...
From ACM TechNews
Internet Censorship Revealed Through the Haze of Malware Pollution
To explain how the Egyptian and Libyan governments shut down the Internet in their countries in early 2011, researchers at the University of California, San Diego...
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