Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
Practicing Medicine at the Nanoscale
Modern medicine is largely based on treating patients with "small-molecule" drugs, which include pain relievers like aspirin and antibiotics such as penicillin.
From ACM News
Teaching Robots Lateral Thinking
Many commercial robotic arms perform what roboticists call "pick and place" tasks: The arm picks up an object in one location and places it in another.
From ACM TechNews
MIT Researchers Improve Quantum-Dot Performance
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a process that produces quantum dots that are uniform in size and shape, give off brightView...
From ACM News
Storing Data in Individual Molecules
Moore's law—the well-known doubling of computer chips' computational power every 18 months or so—has been paced by a similarly steady increase in the storage capacity...
From ACM TechNews
The Robotic Equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed milli-motein, a tiny robot that could lead to future devices that can fold themselves into almost...
From ACM News
The Robotic Equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife
The device doesn't look like much: a caterpillar-sized assembly of metal rings and strips resembling something you might find buried in a home-workshop drawer.
From ACM News
Proving Quantum Computers Feasible
Quantum computers are devices—still largely theoretical—that could perform certain types of computations much faster than classical computers; one way they might...
From ACM Opinion
3 Questions: A Web For Everyone
During the opening ceremonies of this summer’s Olympic games in London, a musical performance culminated with a stage-set house rising into the rafters to reveal...
From ACM TechNews
'Invisibility' Could Be a Key to Better Electronics
MIT researchers have applied the concept of harnessing cloaking mechanisms developed to conceal objects from view to the movement of electrons, which could lead...
From ACM TechNews
Mit's Csail Launches New Center to Tackle the Future of Wireless and Mobile Technologies
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory recently launched Wireless@MIT, an interdisciplinary center focused on developing next-generation...
From ACM TechNews
MIT Team Builds Most Complex Synthetic Biology Circuit Yet
MIT researchers have developed circuit components that do not interfere with one another, enabling them to produce complex synthetic circuits.
From ACM News
Automatic Building Mapping Could Help Emergency Responders
MIT researchers have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving.
From ACM TechNews
One-Molecule-Thick Material Has Big Advantages
MIT researchers have developed a method for using molybdenum disulfide to make a variety of electronic components.
From ACM News
New Router Enhances the Precision of Woodworking
Anyone who has tried to build a piece of furniture from scratch knows the frustration of painstakingly cutting pieces of wood, only to discover that they won't...
From ACM TechNews
Research pdate: Chips With Self-Assembling Rectangles
MIT researchers have developed an approach to creating the array of wires on microchips that uses a system of self-assembling polymers. The process produces arrays...
From ACM News
Researchers Amplify Variations in Video, Making the Invisible Visible
At this summer's Siggraph—the premier computer-graphics conference—researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present new...
From ACM News
The Robot Revolution Is Just Beginning
When industrial robots were first introduced in the early 1960s initially on automobile assembly lines—computers were still in their infancy, so the robots were...
From ACM News
Simulating Tomorrow's Chips
Most computer chips today have anywhere from four to 10 separate cores, or processing units, which can work in parallel, increasing the chips' efficiency. But the...
From ACM TechNews
Chips as Mini Internets
MIT researchers have established theoretical limits on the efficiency of packet-switched on-chip communication networks, and have presented measurements from a...
From ACM News