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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.


Dead Stars 'to Guide Spacecraft'
From ACM News

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.

Systems to Handle Big Data Might Be This Generation's Moon Landing
From ACM News

Systems to Handle Big Data Might Be This Generation's Moon Landing

An effort to build a radio telescope that can see back 13 billion years to the creation of the universe is prompting a five-year €32 million ($42.7 million) effort...

­.s. Outgunned in Hacker War
From ACM News

­.s. Outgunned in Hacker War

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's top cyber cop offered a grim appraisal of the nation's efforts to keep computer hackers from plundering corporate data networks...

How the Cost of Computation Restricts the Processes of Life
From ACM News

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...

More Energy Efficient Transistors Through Quantum Tunneling
From ACM TechNews

More Energy Efficient Transistors Through Quantum Tunneling

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Pennsylvania State University say they have made breakthroughs in the development of tunneling field effect transistors...

Sanjeev Arora Wins 2011 Acm-Infosys Award
From ACM News

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. 

Richard Clarke on Who Was Behind the Stuxnet Attack
From ACM News

Richard Clarke on Who Was Behind the Stuxnet Attack

The story Richard Clarke spins has all the suspense of a postmodern geopolitical thriller.

'mount Sharp' on Mars Links Geology's Past and Future
From ACM News

'mount Sharp' on Mars Links Geology's Past and Future

One particular mountain on Mars, bigger than Colorado's grandest, has been beckoning would-be explorers since it was first sighted from orbit in the 1970s.

The '80s Called, and They Want Their Cellphones Back
From ACM News

The '80s Called, and They Want Their Cellphones Back

Julie Barbour-Issa calls her eight-year-old cellphone "the dinosaur. It's a brick, and I could use it as a weapon in an emergency," says the 30-year-old Norwood...

Eye-Tracking Computers Will Read Your Thoughts
From ACM News

Eye-Tracking Computers Will Read Your Thoughts

Consider, for a moment, the following list: Republican. Abortion. Democrat. Future. Afghanistan. Health care. Same-sex marriage.  

Cassini Spacecraft For Saturn Moon Pass
From ACM News

Cassini Spacecraft For Saturn Moon Pass

The Cassini spacecraft is to make its lowest pass yet over the south pole of Enceladus, an active moon of Saturn which may harbour a liquid water ocean.

Nasa Probe Offers New View of Mercury: Alien World Right in Our Back Yard
From ACM News

Nasa Probe Offers New View of Mercury: Alien World Right in Our Back Yard

The overheated, underappreciated runt of the solar system is finally getting some attention.

China's Not-So-Super Computers
From ACM News

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.

Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them.
From ACM News

Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them.

AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, "I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart." That, he figured, would help him "discover things like time machines, robots...

Controversy Surrounds Russia's Claim that Cosmic Rays Caused Mars Mission Failure
From ACM News

Controversy Surrounds Russia's Claim that Cosmic Rays Caused Mars Mission Failure

A heartbreaking, out-of-the-gate failure of Russia's sample return mission early this year created a wide circle of disappointment.

The Spanish Link in Cracking the Enigma Code
From ACM News

The Spanish Link in Cracking the Enigma Code

A pair of rare Enigma machines used in the Spanish Civil War have been given to the head of GCHQ, Britain's communications intelligence agency.

From ACM News

The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs

His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents' garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from...

Scale-Out Processors: Bridging the Efficiency Gap Between Servers and Emerging Cloud Workloads
From ACM TechNews

Scale-Out Processors: Bridging the Efficiency Gap Between Servers and Emerging Cloud Workloads

EPFL professor Babak Falsafi recently presented "Clearing the Clouds: A Study of Emerging Workloads on Modern Hardware," which received the best paper award at...

Microsoft Builds a Browser for Your Past
From ACM News

Microsoft Builds a Browser for Your Past

Mining personal data to discover what people care about has become big business for companies such as Facebook and Google. Now a project from Microsoft Research...

Preserving Digital Data
From Communications of the ACM

Preserving Digital Data

Scientific data is expanding at an unprecedented rate. While new tools are helping preserve this data, funding must be increased and policy coordination needs improvement...
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