Communications' Virtual Extension brings more quality articles to ACM members. These articles are now available in the ACM Digital Library.
CACM Staff
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The hegemony of the traditional desktop operating system is starting to fracture with the emergence of a new generation of Web browsers that may finally herald the long-awaited convergence of Web and OS.
Today's automated systems provide enormous safety and convenience. However, when glitches, problems, or breakdowns occur, the results can be catastrophic.
Researchers are using tools from information theory and computer science to facilitate the automatic creation of nanoscale structures.
Health and Biomedical Informatics
Instant access to authorized electronic medical records promises faster, better, more affordable care.
Designers of the German supercomputers that won the latest Green500 prize, which rewards not just computing power but energy efficiency, did not set out to win the award, but they did think carefully about energy consumption. "Nowadays, supercomputers use so much energy that it's probably more money than the purchase price," says physics professor Tilo Wettig of the University of Regensburg, so "power efficiency is extremely important."
Netbook Apps Demand Dedicated Development Techniques
Netbooks have grown in popularity and with them a demand for software. But developers who assume there's no need to create applications differently when they enter the netbook space are dead wrong, experts say.
Long Tail Criticism Might Affect E-Business Strategies
The Long Tail theory embraced by online businesses has taken some recent criticism, raising questions about whether businesses should change their e-strategies.
Communications' Virtual Extension brings more quality articles to ACM members. These articles are now available in the ACM Digital Library.
Implementing Electronic Medical Records
Despite a number of challenges, patients' medical records are slowly making the transition to the digital age.
The Expeditions in Computing program provides scientists with the funding to work on ambitious, often multidisciplinary research.
Electronic Paper’s Next Chapter
The technological challenge for researchers working on the next generation of electronic paper is to render color as brightly as traditional paper, without increasing power requirements or end-user costs.
Deep Data Dives Discover Natural Laws
Computer scientists have found a way to bootstrap science, using evolutionary computation to find fundamental meaning in massive amounts of raw data.
Moving Beyond Text-Based Video Search
Current disputes on the appropriate format for conducting searches of online video threaten to dredge up old battles on the superiority of linear, textual styles of presentation versus visual-spatial representations. The conflict centers on whether the underlying qualitative meaning of a video is best captured through text or whether tools developed for the analysis of static visual features are portable to a video environment.
Rewiring Cities For a More Convenient Future
Over the next few years, several Chinese cities aim to add broadband and other services that establish them as "e-cities" or "digital cities." The cities will use a combination of communications and computing infrastructure to help create "a more convenient society for citizens, business and the government," according to a company that will manage e-city implementations for Nanjing and Haineng.
Communications' Virtual Extension brings more quality articles to ACM members. These articles are now available in the ACM Digital Library.
Advocates seek to protect users from potential business practices, but defenders of the status quo say that concerns are overblown.
Dealing with terabytes of data is not the monumental task it once was. The difficult part is presenting enormous amounts of information in ways that are most useful to a wide variety of users.
To create shape-shifting robotic ensembles, researchers need to teach micro-machines to work together.
Materials Restore Functionality in a Snap
Researchers are working on "self-healing" electronic materials that could lead in time to computer components that can fix themselves when they break.
New Ranking Algorithm Separates Digital Wheat from Chaff
The ranking algorithm called SPEAR (SPamming-resistant Expertise Analysis and Ranking), developed by PhD candidates Ching Man Au Yeung of the University of Southampton and Michael G. Noll of Hasso Plattner Institute, uses mutual reinforcement and time stamps to identify expert contributors to social bookmarking sites and their recommended content.
Communications' Virtual Extension brings more quality articles to ACM members. These articles are now available in the ACM Digital Library.
The promise of parallel computing has run afoul of the harsh reality of Amdahl's Law, which puts a ceiling on the benefit of converting sequential code to parallel code. The upshot is that parallelism will not necessarily reap rewards.
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