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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.


Graphene: 'miracle Material' Will Be in Your Home Sooner Than You Think
From ACM Opinion

Graphene: 'miracle Material' Will Be in Your Home Sooner Than You Think

Just under 10 years ago, the Dutch-British physicist Andre Geim stumbled across a substance that would revolutionize the way we understand matter and win him and...

New Kind of Microscope Uses Neutrons
From ACM News

New Kind of Microscope Uses Neutrons

Researchers at MIT, working with partners at NASA, have developed a new concept for a microscope that would use neutrons—subatomic particles with no electrical...

Quantum Computer Passes Math Test, But Doesn't Answer the Big Question
From ACM News

Quantum Computer Passes Math Test, But Doesn't Answer the Big Question

Is the world's first commercial quantum computer the real deal or not?

Early Humans Saw Black Hole Light in the Night Sky
From ACM News

Early Humans Saw Black Hole Light in the Night Sky

Some 2 million years ago, around the time our ancestors were learning to walk upright, a light appeared in the night sky, rivalling the moon for brightness and...

Did a Hyper-Black Hole Spawn the ­niverse?
From ACM News

Did a Hyper-Black Hole Spawn the ­niverse?

It could be time to bid the Big Bang bye-bye. Cosmologists have speculated that the Universe formed from the debris ejected when a four-dimensional star collapsed...

Supercomputers Help Solve a 50-Year Homework Assignment
From ACM TechNews

Supercomputers Help Solve a 50-Year Homework Assignment

A group of theoretical physicists is using supercomputers to try to understand why the early universe ended up with an excess of matter. 

Seeing Light in a New Way
From ACM News

Seeing Light in a New Way

Scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are challenging the conventional wisdom about light, and they didn't need to go...

Some Robots Are Starting to Move More Like Humans
From ACM News

Some Robots Are Starting to Move More Like Humans

Robots usually look rigid and nonhuman, with joints engineered to avoid the elasticity that can make their movements less predictable and harder to control.

Cache and Not Carry: Next Mars Rover to Collect Samples For Return to Earth—someday
From ACM News

Cache and Not Carry: Next Mars Rover to Collect Samples For Return to Earth—someday

Have rover, need payload. That's the state of things for NASA, which is planning to launch its next rover to Mars in 2020.

Creating Matter That Behaves Like Luke Skywalker’s Light Saber
From ACM TechNews

Creating Matter That Behaves Like Luke Skywalker’s Light Saber

Scientists have created a new photon-based matter that is essentially like the light sabers in the movie Star Wars. 

Science Benefits From Diverse Landing Area of Nasa Mars Rover
From ACM News

Science Benefits From Diverse Landing Area of Nasa Mars Rover

NASA's Curiosity rover is revealing a great deal about Mars, from long-ago processes in its interior to the current interaction between the Martian surface and...

Why Space Telescope Mirror Is Most Complex Ever Built
From ACM News

Why Space Telescope Mirror Is Most Complex Ever Built

"You will not be touching anything."

Bringing 'common Sense' to Text Analytics
From ACM News

Bringing 'common Sense' to Text Analytics

Bringing "common sense" to artificial intelligence is one of the biggest challenges in computer science: It entails equipping computers with the shared knowledge...

Making the Internet Safe For Gadgets
From Communications of the ACM

Making the Internet Safe For Gadgets

Initiatives favor direct connections, named resources, and cryptography.

Software Helps Linguists Reconstruct, Decipher Ancient Languages
From Communications of the ACM

Software Helps Linguists Reconstruct, Decipher Ancient Languages

Linguists who once spent an entire career reconstructing a major language family now can accomplish that in just a few hours.

Man Controls New Prosthetic Leg ­sing Thought Alone
From ACM News

Man Controls New Prosthetic Leg ­sing Thought Alone

A man missing his lower leg has gained precise control over a prosthetic limb, just by thinking about moving it—all because his unused nerves were preserved during...

Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction
From ACM Opinion

Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction

How will police use a gun that immobilizes its target but does not kill? What would people do with a device that could provide them with any mood they desire? What...

NASA Curiosity Rover Detects No Methane on Mars
From ACM News

NASA Curiosity Rover Detects No Methane on Mars

Data from NASA's Curiosity rover has revealed the Martian environment lacks methane. This is a surprise to researchers because previous data reported by U.S. and...

Nasa's Asteroid-In-A-Bag Recipe
From ACM News

Nasa's Asteroid-In-A-Bag Recipe

"It’s not as crazy as it seemed at the beginning," Charles Elachi, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the Washington Post, about NASA's latest...

How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them
From ACM Opinion

How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them

I like to think of my Roomba as cute and industrious.
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