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 Careers
Mitx Prototype Course Opens For Enrollment
In December, MIT announced the launch of an online learning initiative called "MITx." Starting this week, interested learners can now enroll for free in the initiative’s...
From ACM News
The Mathematics of Taste
The design of aromas—the flavors of packaged food and drink and the scents of cleaning products, toiletries and other household items—is a multibillion-dollar business...
From ACM TechNews
The Quantifier
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Polina Golland is a principal investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where...
From ACM News
How Research Goes Viral
Scores of interesting new findings from the biosciences may speed around the globe at the click of a mouse, but one thing particularly encourages other researchers...
From ACM TechNews
3-D Cameras For Cellphones
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are developing a three-dimensional device that provides more accurate depth information than Microsoft's Kinect...
From ACM News
Traditional Social Networks Fueled Twitter's Spread
We've all heard it: The Internet has flattened the world, allowing social networks to spring up overnight, independent of geography or socioeconomic status.
From ACM News
Need a New Material? New Tool Can Help
Thanks to a new online toolkit developed at MIT and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, any researcher who needs to find a material with specific properties—whether...
From ACM News
Data Mining Without Prejudice
A new technique for finding relationships between variables in large data sets makes no prior assumptions about what those relationships might be.
From ACM TechNews
Sharpening the Lines
Researchers at MIT and the University of Utah have developed a technique that they say surpasses the fundamental limits of microchip design and could lead to more...
From ACM TechNews
Streamlining Chip Design
MIT researchers have developed a system that enables hardware designers to specify, in a single programming language, all of the functions they want a device to...
From ACM News
Putting the 'art' in Artificial Intelligence
Like many kids, Antonio Torralba began playing around with computers when he was 13 years old. Unlike many of his friends, though, he was not playing video games...
From ACM News
Robots in Reality
Consider the following scenario: A scout surveys a high-rise building that's been crippled by an earthquake, trapping workers inside. After looking for a point...
From ACM News
Important Step Toward Computing with Light
There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips—devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their...
From ACM TechNews
Searching For Balloons in a Social Network
In the process of winning DARPA's Red Balloon Challenge, the MIT researchers collected and analyzed a large amount of data on the size and scope of Internet connections...
From ACM News
Tiny Stamps for Tiny Sensors
Advances in microchip technology may someday enable clinicians to perform tests for hundreds of diseases—sifting out specific molecules, such as early stage cancer...
From ACM News
Seeing Through Walls
Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what’s going on behind solid walls.
From ACM TechNews
An Oracle for Object-Oriented Programmers
MIT researchers have developed Matchmaker, a system that automatically determines how objects in a large software project interact so it can inform new objects...
From ACM TechNews
Take Control of Your Phone's Sensors
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab have developed Funf, a phone-based data collection system for self-tracking applications.
From ACM News