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 Careers
Seeing Stars, Again: Naval Academy Reinstates Celestial Navigation
The same techniques guided ancient Polynesians in the open Pacific and led Sir Ernest Shackleton to remote Antarctica, then oriented astronauts when the Apollo...
From ACM News
The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy
In the Northern hemisphere's sky, hovering above the Milky Way, there are two constellations—Cygnus the swan, her wings outstretched in full flight, and Lyra, the...
From ACM News
Vast Cosmic Voids Merge Like Soap Bubbles
Vast regions of near-empty space in the Universe are growing and shrinking, much as bubbles merge and separate in soapsuds, astronomers have discovered.
From ACM News
How the Nsa Can Break Trillions of Encrypted Web and Vpn Connections
For years, privacy advocates have pushed developers of websites, virtual private network apps, and other cryptographic software to adopt the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic...
From ACM News
An Error Leads to a New Way to Draw, and Erase, Computing Circuits
For the physics researcher Andrew L. Yeats, a light-bulb moment led to an important new insight.
From ACM News
IBM Making Plans to Commercialize Its Brain-Inspired Chip
In August last year, IBM unveiled a chip designed to operate something like the neurons and synapses of the brain (see "IBM Chip Process Data Similar to the Way...
From ACM News
Sensors May Soon Give Prosthetics a Lifelike Sense of Touch
Prosthetic limbs may work wonders for restoring lost function in some amputees, but one thing they can't do is restore an accurate sense of touch.
From ACM News
Closest Northern Views of Saturn's Moon Enceladus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun returning its best-ever views of the northern extremes of Saturn's icy, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus.
From ACM News
An Algorithm Helps Robots Fall Safely
At a major robotics competition held in June, several multi-million-dollar robots struggled to perform even simple tasks like climbing a flight of stairs; someimpeccable...
From ACM News
Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away
Siri may be your personal assistant. But your voice is not the only one she listens to.
From ACM News
Pluto's Geology Is Unlike Any Other
Take a pinch of Mars, a sprinkle of Saturn's moon Iapetus and a dash of Neptune's moon Triton—and the recipe will yield something like Pluto.
From ACM Opinion
If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy
I knew we'd bought walnuts at the store that week, and I wanted to add some to my oatmeal.
From ACM Careers
Her Code Got Humans on the Moon—and Invented Software Itself
Margaret Hamilton wasn't supposed to invent the modern concept of software and land men on the moon.
From ACM TechNews
An Algorithm Might Save Your Life: How the Amazon and Netflix Method Might Someday Cure Cancer
Machine-learning algorithms underlying Amazon and Netflix recommendation engines might one day have a transformative effect on humanity.
From ACM News
How Soviets sed IBM Selectric Keyloggers to Spy on S Diplomats
A National Security Agency memo that recently resurfaced a few years after it was first published contains a detailed analysis of what very possibly was the world's...
From ACM News
Brain Scans Pinpoint Individuals from a Crowd
Our brains are wired in such distinctive ways that an individual can be identified on the basis of brain-scan images alone, neuroscientists report.
From ACM News
Fragment of Rat Brain Simulated in Supercomputer
A controversial European neuroscience project that aims to simulate the human brain in a supercomputer has published its first major result: a digital imitation...
From ACM TechNews
Magnetic Skyrmions at Room Temperature: New Digital Memory?
Researchers at the University of California, Davis and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology have made magnetic skyrmions at room temperature.
From ACM News
Inside China's Plan to Give Every Citizen a Character Score
Where you go, what you buy, who you know, how many points are on your driving licence, how your pupils rate you.
From ACM News