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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.


First Experimental Demonstration of a Quantum Enigma Machine
From ACM News

First Experimental Demonstration of a Quantum Enigma Machine

One of the great unsung heroes of 20th century science was a mathematician and engineer at the famous Bell Laboratories in New Jersey called Claude Shannon.

Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive
From ACM News

Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive

Your smartphone allows you to get almost instantaneous answers to the most obscure questions. It also allows you to waste hours scrolling through Facebook or looking...

5 Things That Give Self-Driving Cars Headaches
From ACM News

5 Things That Give Self-Driving Cars Headaches

Fully automated cars don’t drink and drive, fall asleep at the wheel, text, talk on the phone or put on makeup while driving.

Mobile Phone Records Reveal Largest Gathering in the History of Humanity
From ACM News

Mobile Phone Records Reveal Largest Gathering in the History of Humanity

Mobile phones have revolutionized the way scientists study human behavior, allowing them to watch people on a scale that has never been previously imagined.

Researchers ­ncover a Flaw in Europe's Tough Privacy Rules
From ACM News

Researchers ­ncover a Flaw in Europe's Tough Privacy Rules

Europe likes to think it leads the world in protecting people’s privacy, and that is particularly true for the region’s so-called right to be forgotten.

CRISPR Gene-Editing System ­nleashed on RNA
From ACM News

CRISPR Gene-Editing System ­nleashed on RNA

Researchers who discovered a molecular "scissors" for snipping genes have now developed a similar approach for targeting and cutting RNA.

Fifty Years of Moon Dust: Surveyor 1 Was a Pathfinder For Apollo
From ACM News

Fifty Years of Moon Dust: Surveyor 1 Was a Pathfinder For Apollo

Before humans could take their first steps on the moon, that mysterious and forbidding surface had to be reconnoitered by robots.

Plan to Synthesize Human Genome Elicits Mixed Response
From ACM News

Plan to Synthesize Human Genome Elicits Mixed Response

Proposals for a large public-private initiative to synthesize an entire human genome from scratch—an effort that could take a decade and require billions of dollars...

Pc Hardware Is Physically Leaking Your Encryption Keys
From ACM News

Pc Hardware Is Physically Leaking Your Encryption Keys

Your computer has an aura. That sentence causes me actual physical pain to type, but there's not really a better way to put it—whether you're surfing really fucked...

Pluto's Heart: Like a Cosmic 'lava Lamp'
From ACM News

Pluto's Heart: Like a Cosmic 'lava Lamp'

Combining computer models with topographic and compositional data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last summer, New Horizons team members have determined...

This 'demonically Clever' Backdoor Hides In a Tiny Slice of a Computer Chip
From ACM News

This 'demonically Clever' Backdoor Hides In a Tiny Slice of a Computer Chip

Security flaws in software can be tough to find. Purposefully planted ones—hidden backdoors created by spies or saboteurs—are often even stealthier.

Digital Forensics: From the Crime Lab to the Library
From ACM News

Digital Forensics: From the Crime Lab to the Library

When archivists at California's Stanford University received the collected papers of the late palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 2004, they knew right away they...

Doubling Down on Schrodinger's Cat
From ACM TechNews

Doubling Down on Schrodinger's Cat

A team of Yale University researchers has created a more exotic version of the classic Schrodinger's cat paradox. 

Tech Turns to Biology as Data Storage Needs Explode
From ACM News

Tech Turns to Biology as Data Storage Needs Explode

Researchers have decoded the genomes of mammoths and a 700,000-year-old horse using DNA fragments extracted from fossils in the past few years. DNA clearly persists...

Rosetta's Comet Contains Ingredients For Life
From ACM News

Rosetta's Comet Contains Ingredients For Life

Ingredients regarded as crucial for the origin of life on Earth have been discovered at the comet that ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has been probing for almost two...

Nasa Radar Finds Ice Age Record in Mars' Polar Cap
From ACM News

Nasa Radar Finds Ice Age Record in Mars' Polar Cap

Scientists using radar data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have found a record of the most recent Martian ice age recorded in the planet's north...

Shoot an Atom Into Silicon, and You May Have the Beginnings of a Quantum Computer
From ACM TechNews

Shoot an Atom Into Silicon, and You May Have the Beginnings of a Quantum Computer

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories say they have devised a possible first step toward the creation of a practical quantum computer. 

Artificial Intelligence Is Far From Matching Humans, Panel Says
From ACM News

Artificial Intelligence Is Far From Matching Humans, Panel Says

Never mind Terminator-like killer robots. Artificial intelligence researchers are grappling with more realistic questions like whether their creations will take...

Illuminating Life's Building Blocks
From ACM News

Illuminating Life's Building Blocks

Biophysicist Joerg Bewersdorf says that 2006 was fluorescence microscopy's annus mirabilis—a 'miraculous year' as momentous in its own way as 1905, when Albert...

Meet Terrapattern, Google Earth's Missing Search Engine
From ACM News

Meet Terrapattern, Google Earth's Missing Search Engine

"Why don't you click on the tennis court?" Golan Levin, an associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, suggested.  
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