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
A Speech Synthesizer Direct to the Brain
Could a person who is paralyzed and unable to speak, like physicist Stephen Hawking, use a brain implant to carry on a conversation?
From ACM News
Ibm: Commercial Nanotube Transistors Are Coming Soon
For more than a decade, engineers have been fretting that they are running out of tricks for continuing to shrink silicon transistors.
From ACM News
The Space-Based Quantum Cryptography Race
One of the great benefits of quantum communication is the ability to send messages from one point in space to another with perfect security.
From ACM Opinion
Ray Kurzweil Says He's Breathing Intelligence Into Google Search
The big announcements at Google's I/O event in San Francisco Wednesday didn't mention Web search, the technology that got the company started and made it so successful...
From ACM News
The Thought Experiment
I was about 15 minutes late for my first phone call with Jan Scheuermann.
From ACM News
Neuroscience's New Toolbox
The hypothalamus is a small structure deep in the brain that, among other functions, coördinates sensory inputs—the appearance of a rival, for example—with instinctual...
From ACM Careers
How Ebay's Research Laboratories Are Tackling the Tricky Task of Fashion Recommendations
If you've ever puzzled over what to wear in the morning, you might also have wondered whether you could leave the choice to an algorithm that could recommend a...
From ACM News
How Statisticians Found Air France Flight 447 Two Years After It Crashed Into Atlantic
"In the early morning hours of June 1, 2009, Air France Flight AF 447, with 228 passengers and crew aboard, disappeared during stormy weather over the Atlantic...
From ACM Opinion
How the .s. Could Escalate Its Name-and-Shame Campaign Against China's Espionage
Earlier this week the U.S. Department of Justice indicted five Chinese military officers for industrial espionage, accusing them of leading attacks on the computers...
From ACM Opinion
Three Questions with the Man Leading Baidu's New AI Effort
Artificial intelligence is guided by the far-off goal of having software match humans at important tasks.
From ACM News
The Emerging Science of Superspreaders (and How to Tell If You're One of Them)
Who are the most influential spreaders of information on a network?
From ACM News
Do We Need Asimov's Laws?
In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots...
From ACM News
sing ltrasound to Feel Virtual Objects
A startup called Ultrahaptics aims to make gesture control and virtual reality more engaging by using ultrasound waves to let you feel like you’re touching virtual...
From ACM News
Increasingly, Robots of All Sizes Are Human Workmates
Most industrial robots are far less friendly than the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which is safe enough to be a surprisingly popular means of feline transportation...
From ACM News
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2014
Technology news is full of incremental developments, but few of them are true milestones.
From ACM News
Jupiter's Radio Emissions Could Reveal the Oceans on Its Icy Moons, Say Planetary Geologists
Among the most exciting destinations in the Solar System are Jupiter's icy moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
From ACM News
Microrobots, Working Together, Build with Metal, Glass, and Electronics
Someone glancing through the door of Annjoe Wong-Foy's lab at SRI International might think his equipment is infested by ants.
From ACM News
World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics
In less than 60 days, Brazil will begin hosting soccer's 2014 World Cup, even though workers are still hurrying to pour concrete at three unfinished stadiums.
From ACM Opinion