Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
Why Science Needs More Research Software Engineers
Ten years after their profession got its name, research software engineers seek to swell their ranks.
From ACM Opinion
How Language-Generation AIs Could Transform Science
University of Michigan's Shobita Parthasarathy warns that software designed to summarize, translate, and write like humans might exacerbate distrust in science....
From ACM Opinion
Crypto and Technology for the People
Brown University professor Seny Kamara talks about the intersection between social responsibility and cryptography/technology
From ACM Opinion
AI Pioneer: 'The Dangers of Abuse Are Very Real'
Yoshua Bengio is one of three computer scientists who last week shared the US$1-million A. M. Turing award—one of the field's top prizes.
From ACM Opinion
The Ethics of Computer Science: This Researcher Has a Controversial Proposal
In the midst of growing public concern over artificial intelligence (AI), privacy and the use of data, Brent Hecht has a controversial proposal: the computer-science...
From ACM Opinion
How an nderwater Sensor Network Is Tracking Argentina's Lost Submarine
On 15 November, Argentina's Navy lost contact with the ARA San Juan, a small diesel-powered submarine that had been involved in exercises off the east coast of...
From ACM Opinion
The Scientist Who Spots Fake Videos
Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, specialises in detecting manipulated images and videos. Farid, who provides his...
From ACM Opinion
Nasa Science Chief: 'i Have No Worries About the Resilience of This Country'
Solar physicist Thomas Zurbuchen became NASA's science chief in October, replacing astronaut John Grunsfeld. Just one month later, the US political system wentwhen...
From ACM Opinion
Why Big Pharma Wants to Collect 2 Million Genomes
Five months after announcing its intentions to gather genome sequences from 2 million people, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has selected geneticist David Goldstein...
From ACM Opinion
Obama's Top Scientist Talks Shrinking Budgets, Donald Trump, and His Biggest Regret
John Holdren is no stranger to the spotlight. Over his long career in science, Holdren—a physicist by training—has worked on controversial issues such as climate...
From ACM Opinion
The Physicist Who Studies Isis Communities Online
Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida, studies patterns that emerge in complex systems.
From ACM Opinion
Go Players React to Computer Defeat
For decades, the ancient game of Go has stood out as the one board game that computers couldn't crack.
From ACM Opinion
Genomics Pioneer Jun Wang on His New AI Venture
Jun Wang is one of China's most famous scientists.
From ACM Opinion
Crispr Germline Engineering—the Community Speaks
With the first papers appearing in the literature that describe CRISPR-Cas9 engineering of human reproductive cells, are we at a new Asilomar moment?
From ACM Opinion
Mercury Mission Set to End with Dramatic Crash
On 30 April, after more than four years in orbit around Mercury, NASA's MESSENGER probe will plunge to its doom.
From ACM Opinion
Smartphones Set For Large-Scale Health Studies
Countless owners of smartphones and wearable devices are already using their devices to track their sleep, exercise, blood pressure and other measures of health...
From ACM Opinion
The Mathematics Behind Internet Virality
For a few days in late February, the world stopped to argue over a photograph.
From ACM Opinion
Space-Time Visionary
Thanks to theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, real science is embedded in Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar, in which explorers seek a new home for humankind.
From ACM Opinion
The Sci-Fi Optimist
Best-selling science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson's works cover everything from cryptography to Sumerian mythology.
From ACM Opinion
Take a Virtual Voyage Into Darwin's Library
In his celebrated journey around the world on the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836, Charles Darwin collected a plethora of information on the geology, animals, plants...12