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
'Optical Tweezers' and Tools sed for Laser Eye Surgery Snag Physics Nobel
Optical physicists Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland have won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for "groundbreaking inventions in the field of...
From ACM News
How to Make a Robot se Theory of Mind
Imagine standing in an elevator as the doors begin to close and suddenly seeing a couple at the end of the corridor running toward you.
From ACM News
How Cryptojacking Can Corrupt the Internet of Things
Cyber criminals shut down parts of the Web in October 2016 by attacking the computers that serve as the internet's switchboard.
From ACM News
New AI System Can Imagine What It Hasn't Seen
"Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don't we do something about natural stupidity?" computer scientist Steve Polyak once joked.
From ACM News
Gravitational Waves Reveal the Hearts of Neutron Stars
Inside a neutron star—the city-size, hyperdense cinder left after a supernova—modern physics plunges off the edge of the map.
From ACM TechNews
How Close Are We, Really, to Building a Quantum Computer?
Intel Labs' Jim Clarke observes that the race to develop the first practical quantum computer is fraught with challenges.
From ACM Opinion
How Close Are We, Really, to Building a Quantum Computer?
The race is on to build the world's first meaningful quantum computer—one that can deliver the technology's long-promised ability to help scientists do things like...
From ACM Careers
The Most Important Inventor You've Never Heard Of
When The Economist called Stanford Ovshinsky "the Edison of our age," the name might have been unfamiliar to most people, but the comparison was apt.
From ACM News
The Milky Way's Speediest Stars Could Solve a 50-Year-Old Mystery
Ken Shen was racing against the sun.
From ACM News
Human Brain Gain: Computer Models Hint at Why We Bested Neandertals
The parallel existence of an intelligent species closely related to us has long fascinated scientists and the public alike.
From ACM News
'Bar Codes' Could Trace Errant Brain Wiring in Autism and Schizophrenia
Neuroscientists today know a lot about how individual neurons operate but remarkably little about how large numbers of them work together to produce thoughts, feelings...
From ACM TechNews
How Twitter Bots Help Fuel Political Feuds
Researchers in the U.S. and China are studying a "misinformation network" related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
From ACM News
Looking for Planet Nine, Astronomers Gaze into the Abyss
It's been just over two years since Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin made an explosive claim: Based on the orbital motion of objects in the...
From ACM News
Spot the Fake: Artificial Intelligence Can Produce Lifelike Photographs
Fraudulent images have been around for as long as photography itself. Take the famous hoax photos of the Cottingley fairies or the Loch Ness monster.
From ACM News
Newer Horizons: Scientist Pitch Pluto Probe as a nique Deep-Space Telescope
A maverick group of astronomers is proposing to radically reshape one of NASA's most successful missions in the modern era, the New Horizons probe that flew by...
From ACM News
Does a Quantum Equation Govern Some of the niverse's Large Structures?
Researchers who want to predict the behavior of systems governed by quantum mechanics—an electron in an atom, say, or a photon of light traveling through space—typically...
From ACM News
Programming a DNA Clock
Nature is a master at constructing biological machines and circuits, including the ones that maintain the body's internal clock, copy genes or help cells move. ...
From ACM News
A New Recipe For Hunting Alien Life
Imagine stepping into a time machine, one that could traverse not only billions of years but also countless light years of space, all in search of life in the universe...
From ACM Opinion
Meltdown and Spectre Expose the Dark Side of Superfast Computers
Hundreds of gadget makers and software companies at this week's annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas are staking the success of their newest products...
From ACM TechNews