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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.


Mummy Dna ­nravels Ancient Egyptians' Ancestry
From ACM News

Mummy Dna ­nravels Ancient Egyptians' Ancestry

The tombs of ancient Egypt have yielded golden collars and ivory bracelets, but another treasure—human DNA—has proved elusive.

How a Gene Editing Tool Went From Labs to a Middle-School Classroom
From ACM News

How a Gene Editing Tool Went From Labs to a Middle-School Classroom

On a Saturday afternoon, 10 students gather at Genspace, a community lab in Brooklyn, to learn how to edit genes.

Got a Face-Recognition Algorithm? ­ncle Sam Wants to Review It
From ACM News

Got a Face-Recognition Algorithm? ­ncle Sam Wants to Review It

The nation's top-level intelligence office, the Director of National Intelligence, wants to find "the most accurate unconstrained face recognition algorithm."

Software Simplified
From ACM News

Software Simplified

In 2015, geneticist Guy Reeves was trying to configure a free software system called Galaxy to get his bioinformatics projects off the ground.

Cassini Finds Saturn Moon May Have Tipped Over
From ACM News

Cassini Finds Saturn Moon May Have Tipped Over

Saturn's icy, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus may have tipped over in the distant past, according to recent research from NASA's Cassini mission.

High-Silica 'halos' Shed Light on Wet Ancient Mars
From ACM News

High-Silica 'halos' Shed Light on Wet Ancient Mars

Pale "halos" around fractures in bedrock analyzed by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover contain copious silica, indicating that ancient Mars had liquid water for a long...

Is China Outsmarting America in A.i.?
From ACM Careers

Is China Outsmarting America in A.i.?

Sören Schwertfeger finished his postdoctorate research on autonomous robots in Germany, and seemed set to go to Europe or the United States, where artificial intelligence...

New Scaling Law Predicts How Wheels Drive Over Sand
From ACM News

New Scaling Law Predicts How Wheels Drive Over Sand

When engineers design a new aircraft, they carry out much of the initial testing not on full-sized jets but on model planes that have been scaled down to fit inside...

Heads ­p: Augmented Reality Prepares For the Battlefield
From ACM News

Heads ­p: Augmented Reality Prepares For the Battlefield

At last week's Pentagon Lab Day in Washington, DC, the Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) and Army Research...

Russian Hackers Are ­sing 'tainted' Leaks to Sow Disinformation
From ACM News

Russian Hackers Are ­sing 'tainted' Leaks to Sow Disinformation

Over the past year, the Kremlin's strategy of weaponizing leaks to meddle with democracies around the world has become increasingly clear, first in the US and more...

What Self-Driving Cars See
From ACM News

What Self-Driving Cars See

Giant tech companies are fighting over the technology in court. Start-ups around the world are racing to develop new versions of it. And engineers say it is essential...

When Hatred Goes Viral: Inside Social Media's Efforts to Combat Terrorism
From ACM News

When Hatred Goes Viral: Inside Social Media's Efforts to Combat Terrorism

On New Year's Eve in 2015 local and federal agents arrested a 26-year-old man in Rochester, N.Y., for planning to attack people at random later that night using...

That Time the Soviets Bugged Congress, and Other Spy Tales
From ACM News

That Time the Soviets Bugged Congress, and Other Spy Tales

During a private meeting in the Oval Office earlier this month, President Donald Trump is understood to have disclosed highly classified intelligence to two senior...

Detecting Life In Space: The Red Edge
From ACM News

Detecting Life In Space: The Red Edge

The universe's "most interesting star" just started acting up again.

Next-Gen Computing: Memristor Chips That See Patterns Over Pixels
From ACM TechNews

Next-Gen Computing: Memristor Chips That See Patterns Over Pixels

Researchers say they have developed a memristor computer circuit prototype that has the potential to process complex data faster and using much less power than...

Curiosity May Be Vital For Truly Smart AI
From ACM News

Curiosity May Be Vital For Truly Smart AI

A computer algorithm equipped with a form of artificial curiosity can learn to solve tricky problems even when it isn't immediately clear what actions might help...

Earth-Observing Companies Push For More-Advanced Science Satellites
From ACM Careers

Earth-Observing Companies Push For More-Advanced Science Satellites

Never have so many private eyes looked down at Earth.

A Brief History of Seti@home
From ACM Careers

A Brief History of Seti@home

The year was 1999, and the people were going online. AOL, Compuserve, mp3.com, and AltaVista loaded bit by bit after dial-up chirps, on screens across the world...

River Channels on Three Worlds Reveal a History of Shifting Landscapes
From ACM News

River Channels on Three Worlds Reveal a History of Shifting Landscapes

At this point, we've worked out the basics of the processes that produced the topography around us here on Earth.

Microsoft Has a Plan to Add Dna Data to its Cloud
From ACM TechNews

Microsoft Has a Plan to Add Dna Data to its Cloud

Microsoft Research plans to have a DNA-based data storage system functioning within a data center by 2020.
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