Communications of the ACM
Pen-Based Computing: Still Looking For The Write App
The sector, once popular, is searching for applications and users.
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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2013 Chemistry Nobel Goes to Computer Modeling of Chemical Reactions
What is actually happening at the atomic scale when two elements react?
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Cache and Not Carry: Next Mars Rover to Collect Samples For Return to Earth—someday
Have rover, need payload. That's the state of things for NASA, which is planning to launch its next rover to Mars in 2020.
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Integrating Left Brain and Right, on a Computer
As computers have matured over time, the human brain has no way of keeping up with silicon's rapid-fire calculating abilities.
From ACM Opinion
Bluebrain: Noah Hutton's 10-Year Documentary About the Mission to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain
"Nothing quite like it exists yet, but we have begun building it," Henry Markram wrote in the June 2012 issue of Scientific American. He was referring to a "fantastic...
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Quantum Manipulation and Measuring Win Nobel Prize in Physics
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland for experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual...
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'part-Time' Scientists Aim to Develop Autonomous Rover to Compete For Lunar X Prize
Some people try to make the most of their spare time by exercising, volunteering, or simply recharging their batteries. Others like to use that time to build robots...
From ACM Opinion
Intel Futurist on Why We Should Not Fear the Future
Much of Intel's success as a microprocessor manufacturer over the past four decades has come from the company's ability to understand and anticipate the future...
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Snowflake Growth Successfully Modeled from Physical Laws
Windswept from cloud to cloud until they flutter to Earth, snowflakes assume a seemingly endless variety of shapes.
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A Bit of Progress: Diamonds Shatter Quantum Information Storage Record
The quantum world and the everyday world of human experience are supposed to be two different realms. Quantum effects, as demonstrated in the lab, are usually confined...
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One Thing Is Certain: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Is Not Dead
What Einstein's E=mc2 is to relativity theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is to quantum mechanics—not just a profound insight, but also an iconic formula...
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Entanglement: Bill Joy and Danny Hillis
Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor...
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Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain-Waves on the Fly
A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel.
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Inside the Mind of a Video Game Champ
If there is one general rule about the limitations of the human mind, it is that we are terrible at multitasking.
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The $1,000 Human Genome?
The race to the $1,000 genome heated up today as Life Technologies, based in Carlsbad, Calif., announced it will debut a new sequencing machine this year that...
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One-Atom-Tall Wires Could Extend Life of Moore's Law
There may be a bit more room at the bottom, after all.
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Tiny Biocomputers Move Closer to Reality
Several research groups are developing DNA-based circuits that could one day monitor and treat disease from inside the body.
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Did a U.s. Radar Research Station Disable Russia's Phobos Probe?
Soon after the ill-fated Phobos-Grunt spacecraft stalled in Earth orbit, a former Russian official implicated "powerful American radars" in Alaska. Is there a...
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IBM Simulates 4.5% of the Human Brain, and All of the Cat Brain
Supercomputers can store more information than the human brain and can calculate a single equation faster, but even the biggest, fastest supercomputers in the world...
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Precision-Controlled Microbots Show They Could Take On Industrial-Scale Jobs
A pioneering research institute that introduced the computer world to the mouse, hypertext, and networks is now setting its sights a bit lower.
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