Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
Informatics: Make Sense of Health Data
If you are wondering whether exposure to some chemical could increase your chances of getting colon cancer, you could easily find supportive evidence from animal...
From ACM Opinion
Modelling: Build Imprecise Supercomputers
Today's supercomputers lack the power to model accurately many aspects of the real world, from the impact of cloud systems on Earth's climate to the processing...
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
Lust and the Turing Test
By and large, we watch movies to be entertained, not to be provoked into deep thought. Occasionally, a film does both.
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
Statistics: P Values Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg
There is no statistic more maligned than the P value.
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
Top 10 Hubble Images
As the famous telescope turns 25, scientists who worked on the project choose their favourite pictures.
From ACM Opinion
Don't Edit the Human Germ Line
It is thought that studies involving the use of genome-editing tools to modify the DNA of human embryos will be published shortly.
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
Microscopy: Hasten High Resolution
The best electron and scanning probe microscopes today can resolve individual atoms and chemical bonds.
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
Human Spaceflight: Find Asteroids to Get to Mars
Interplanetary flight is the next giant leap for humans in space. Yet consensus on even the smallest steps forward has proven elusive.
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