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Cinematic and Scientific Techniques Combine to Show How a Long-Extinct Creature Moved
From ACM Opinion

Cinematic and Scientific Techniques Combine to Show How a Long-Extinct Creature Moved

The trolls and orcs in The Lord of the Rings films aren't real. The dragons and dire wolves on the hit television show Game of Thrones are simulated. The dinosaurs...

Dreaming of Death Rays: The Search for Laser Weapons
From ACM Opinion

Dreaming of Death Rays: The Search for Laser Weapons

Lasers first emerged nearly 60 years ago, but the idea of using powerful beams of heat or light is hardly new.

Classical and Quantum Computers Are Vying for Superiority
From ACM Opinion

Classical and Quantum Computers Are Vying for Superiority

Will 2019 be the year when quantum computers show they have the right stuff? Google says so; one of the company's labs, in Santa Barbara, California, has promised...

Science Candidates Prevail in ­S Midterm Elections
From ACM Opinion

Science Candidates Prevail in ­S Midterm Elections

Results from the United States' midterm elections are still pouring in, but a handful of candidates with backgrounds in science or technology have already nabbed...

Trolling, Hacking and the 2016 ­S Presidential Election
From ACM Opinion

Trolling, Hacking and the 2016 ­S Presidential Election

Late in 2016, then-US President Barack Obama mused in an interview with The New Yorker magazine that he had probably been elected because his campaign had begun...

Forgotten Heroes of the Enigma Story
From ACM Opinion

Forgotten Heroes of the Enigma Story

Alan Turing's crucial unscrambling of German messages in the Second World War was a tour de force of codebreaking.

Billion-Dollar Telescopes Could End ­p Beyond the Reach of ­S Astronomers
From ACM Opinion

Billion-Dollar Telescopes Could End ­p Beyond the Reach of ­S Astronomers

Every ten years, US astronomers set research priorities for the following decade.

AI Can Be Sexist and Racist; It's Time to Make It Fair
From ACM Opinion

AI Can Be Sexist and Racist; It's Time to Make It Fair

When Google Translate converts news articles written in Spanish into English, phrases referring to women often become "he said" or "he wrote."

Before Reproducibility Must Come Preproducibility
From ACM Opinion

Before Reproducibility Must Come Preproducibility

From time to time over the past few years, I've politely refused requests to referee an article on the grounds that it lacks enough information for me to check...

Richard Feynman at 100
From ACM Opinion

Richard Feynman at 100

A pre-eminent twentieth-century physicist and a Nobel laureate: Richard Feynman was certainly those. He was also much more.

 The Illusion of Time
From ACM Opinion

The Illusion of Time

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality.

Regulate Artificial Intelligence to Avert Cyber Arms Race
From ACM Opinion

Regulate Artificial Intelligence to Avert Cyber Arms Race

Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent, sophisticated and destructive. Each day in 2017, the United States suffered, on average, more than 4,000 ransomware attacks...

Tom Lehrer at 90: A Life of Scientific Satire
From ACM Careers

Tom Lehrer at 90: A Life of Scientific Satire

In 1959, the mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer—who turns 90 this month—performed what he characteristically called a "completely pointless" scientific song...

Einstein, Bohr and the War Over Quantum Theory
From ACM Opinion

Einstein, Bohr and the War Over Quantum Theory

All hell broke loose in physics some 90 years ago. Quantum theory emerged—partly in heated clashes between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.

The Ageless Appeal of 2001: A Space Odyssey 
From ACM Opinion

The Ageless Appeal of 2001: A Space Odyssey 

In 1968, film-maker Stanley Kubrick and his screenwriting colleague, science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, presented 2001: A Space Odyssey. Half a century later...

Cambridge Analytica Controversy Must Spur Researchers to Update Data Ethics
From ACM Opinion

Cambridge Analytica Controversy Must Spur Researchers to Update Data Ethics

Revelations keep emerging in the Cambridge Analytica personal-data scandal, which has captured global public attention for more than a week. But when the dust settles...

Fourier's Transformational Thinking
From ACM Opinion

Fourier's Transformational Thinking

When you listen to digital music, the harmonies and chords that you hear have probably been reconstructed from a file that stored them as components of different...

Does Your Code Stand ­p to Scrutiny?
From ACM Opinion

Does Your Code Stand ­p to Scrutiny?

Computer code written by scientists forms the basis of an increasing number of studies across many fields—and an increasing number of papers that report the results...

How to Make Replication the Norm
From ACM Opinion

How to Make Replication the Norm

Replication is essential for building confidence in research studies, yet it is still the exception rather than the rule.

Technology to Watch in 2018
From ACM Opinion

Technology to Watch in 2018

For all the excitement surrounding the gene-editing tool CRISPR, it is not that efficient or precise. It's hard to make many changes at once.
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