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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Memristors' Current Carves Protected Channels
A circuit component touted as the "missing link" of electronics is starting to give up the secrets of how it works.
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How Computers Got US Into Space
When you look back at the past 50 years of human spaceflight, don't forget the computer scientists who helped make it possible.
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Toward Faster Transistors
In the 1980s and '90s, competition in the computer industry was all about "clock speed"—how many megahertz, and ultimately gigahertz, a chip could boast. But...
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Quantum Calculations Can Make Atomic Clocks of the Future Far More Accurate
New calculations of how atoms swell when they’re warmed up can help make the next generation of atomic clocks 10 times more precise.
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How to Control Complex Networks
At first glance, a diagram of the complex network of genes that regulate cellular metabolism might seem hopelessly complex, and efforts to control such a system...
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The Future Revealed in the Past
Over the past 30 years, designer, writer, researcher Bill Buxton has been collecting input and interactive devices whose design struck him as interesting, useful...
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The Man Who Invented the Microprocessor
Ted Hoff saved his own life, sort of. Deep inside this 73-year-old lies a microprocessor—a tiny computer that controls his pacemaker and, in turn, his heart.
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3-D Printers May Someday Allow Labs to Create Replacement Human Organs
The machine looks like the offspring of an Erector Set and an inkjet printer. The "ink" feels like applesauce and looks like icing. As nozzles expel the pearly...
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How Three-Dimensional Transistors Went from Lab to Fab
Intel's new three-dimensional transistor design, announced last week, is the culmination of more than a decade of research and development work that began in...
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Bin Laden's Computers Will Test U.s. Forensics
For the U.S. government, the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan represents a unique opportunity to test advanced computer forensics techniques called...
From ACM TechNews
Unthinking Machines
An artificial intelligence panel discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's recent Brains, Minds and Machines symposium called for a return to the...
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Good Thinking, Einstein
The longest experiment in space physics began with three men in a university swimming pool arguing about Einstein. It ended Wednesday, after 52 years and $750...
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Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building pward
Intel announced that by building a key portion of a microprocessor's transistor above the chip's surface, it has found a way to make smaller, faster, lower-power...
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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...
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The Ph.d. Problem: Are We Giving Out Too Many Degrees?
In developed nations, the number of Ph.D.s given in the sciences each year has grown by almost 40% since 1998, reaching about 34,000 doctorates in 2008. This...
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Origami: Not Just For Paper Anymore
While the primary job of DNA in cells is to carry genetic information from one generation to the next, some scientists also see the highly stable and programmable...
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Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
More than 30 years after they left Earth, NASA's twin Voyager probes are now at the edge of the solar system.
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Digging Deeper, Seeing Farther: Supercomputers Alter Science
Inside a darkened theater a viewer floats in a redwood forest displayed with Imax-like clarity on a cavernous overhead screen.
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Mars's Frozen Ocean of Carbon Dioxide
Mars is a dry, frigid, dusty, nearly airless place. A couple of billion years ago, though, it wasn't much different from Earth.
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