Communications of the ACM
Rethinking Public Broadband
U.S. infrastructure shortcomings re-ignite public/private debate over broadband.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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How to Program Unreliable Chips
As transistors get smaller, they also become less reliable.
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Big Plans For Small Spacecraft
It's hard to miss the rocket engine in Paulo Lozano's MIT office.
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Making Martian Clouds on Earth
At first glance, Mars' clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA's Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude...
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New Kind of Microscope Uses Neutrons
Researchers at MIT, working with partners at NASA, have developed a new concept for a microscope that would use neutrons—subatomic particles with no electrical...
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Bringing 'common Sense' to Text Analytics
Bringing "common sense" to artificial intelligence is one of the biggest challenges in computer science: It entails equipping computers with the shared knowledge...
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Artificial-Intelligence Research Revives Its Old Ambitions
The birth of artificial-intelligence research as an autonomous discipline is generally thought to have been the monthlong Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial...
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Terramechanics Research Aims to Keep Mars Rovers Rolling
In May 2009, the Mars rover Spirit cracked through a crusty layer of Martian topsoil, sinking into softer underlying sand.
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Views You Can se? How Online Ratings Affect Your Judgment
Are you influenced by the opinions of other people—say, in the comments sections of websites?
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Research Update: Genome Editing Becomes More Accurate
Earlier this year, MIT researchers developed a way to easily and efficiently edit the genomes of living cells. Now, the researchers have discovered key factors...
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Writing Programs Using Ordinary Language
In a pair of recent papers, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have demonstrated that, for a few specific tasks, it's...
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New System ses Low-Power Wi-Fi Signal to Track Moving Humans—even Behind Walls
The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects.
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Seeing the Human Pulse
Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new algorithm that can accurately measure the heart rates of people...
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Making Quantum Encryption Practical
One of the many promising applications of quantum mechanics in the information sciences is quantum key distribution (QKD) in which the counterintuitive behavior...
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Valuing Versatility
It's often said that we live in an age of increased specialization: physicians who treat just one ailment, scholars who study just one period, network administrators...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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...
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