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Jul 21 2009

Practice Makes Perfect, Even For Brain-Controlled Prosthetics

Those who learn by repetition rely on "muscle memory," a sense that practice trains muscles to perform specific actions without thought. But does muscle memory exist if no actual muscles are involved? According to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS Biology, the answer is a clear "yes." These findings strengthen hope for the future of brain-controlled prosthetics, or "neuroprosthetics", and may aid the development of robotic body extensions whose control is truly intuitive.
Architecture and Hardware
Jul 7 2009

How Computing Is Changing Journalism

Computing has influenced many fields in a big way, and journalism is one of them. There’s an ongoing trend away from print media and toward digital, and this is helping to create a new discipline known as computational journalism. Computational journalism combines data, algorithms, and knowledge to produce information, and may eventually perform some of the media's watchdog role.
Computing Applications
Jul 2 2009

Award-Winning Paper Reveals Key to Netflix Prize

When the organizers of the Netflix Prize contest announced late last week that one team had met the requirement for the $1 million Grand Prize, Yehuda Koren, a member of the seven-person multinational team, was in Paris to present a paper at KDD-09, the 15th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. The ideas he laid out won the conference's Best Paper Award — and, not coincidentally, had much to do with reaching the contest's target of improving the accuracy of Netflix movie recommendations by 10 percent.
Computing Applications
Jun 1 2009

Micromedicine to the Rescue

Medical researchers have long dreamed of "magic bullets" that go directly where they are needed. Now micromedicine and nanotechnology are making a range of molecules formerly inaccessible as drugs available to be delivered at the right place and time to affect specific actions. 
Architecture and Hardware
Jun 1 2009

Content Control

Entertainment businesses say digital rights management prevents the theft of their products, but access control technologies have been a uniform failure when it comes to preventing piracy. Fortunately, change is on the way.
Computing Applications
Jun 1 2009

A Digital Trail Is Forever

The data trail we generate through our everyday activity can be reassembled into a detailed account of our past, present, and possibly even future. Where and under what circumstances can we "reasonably" expect privacy online?
Computing Applications
May 1 2009

Learning Goes Global

In a world that's increasingly global and interconnected, international education is growing, changing, and evolving. More than 1.5 million students a year study at schools outside their country's borders, and the nature and types of available programs are expanding, ranging from short-term programs of eight weeks or less to master's programs with a full term abroad.
Computing Applications
Apr 14 2009

Tech Mainstays Promote Machines That Fix Themselves

Technology companies are embracing self-healing technology, a computing strategy that could have a major impact on the data center and the desktop. IBM uses self-healing technologies in WebSphere, DB2, the Lotus Foundations product line, and its Power servers. And Sun Microsystems has designed predictive self-healing modules that enable Solaris to self-diagnose and mitigate problems.
Architecture and Hardware

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