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
GPS Glitch Threatens Thousands of Scientific Instruments
Researchers worldwide are racing to get ahead of a bug in the US Global Positioning System (GPS) that could cause data loggers, including thousands of scientific...
From ACM Opinion
Beware of Plausible Predictions of Fantasy Materials
The hunt is on for materials that have exotic properties, to enhance quantum computers, touch screens and electronic displays, and to double the efficiency of solar...
From ACM News
Siberia's Ancient Ghost Clan Starts to Surrender Its Secrets
Samantha Brown didn't have high hopes when she opened the ziplock bag containing some 700 shards of bone. It would be a lot of work to analyse them and none was...
From ACM News
Four New DNA Letters Double Life's Alphabet
The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals—guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and...
From ACM News
Japan's Hayabusa2 Craft Touches Down on Asteroid Ryugu
It was a brief but historic tap on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, at 7:29 am Japan time on 22 February. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down at its target...
From ACM News
Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO Set to Double Its Detecting Power
Spotting gravitational waves is due to become an almost hourly event in the next decade. Starting around 2023, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory...
From ACM News
Extreme Chemistry: Experiments at the Edge of the Periodic Table
If you wanted to create the world's next undiscovered element, number 119 in the periodic table, here's a possible recipe.
From ACM News
Hidden History of the Milky Way Revealed by Extensive Star Maps
Last April, Amina Helmi felt goose bumps while driving to work in the northern Netherlands. It had nothing to do with the weather—it was pure anticipation. Just...
From ACM News
Earth's Magnetic Field Is Acting p and Geologists Don't Know Why
Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth's north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron...
From ACM News
China Becomes First Nation to Land on the Moon's Far Side
A Chinese probe has made a historic touch-down on the far side of the Moon, according to the country's state-run media. It is the first time a probe has visited...
From ACM News
These Dusty Young Stars Are Changing the Rules of Planet-Building
Some 100,000 years ago, when Neanderthals still occupied the caves of southern Europe, a star was born.
From ACM News
Asteroid-Sampling Mission Zeroes In on Tiny Space Rock
For the second time this year, a spacecraft is about to partner with an asteroid in an intimate dance.
From ACM News
The Microscope Revolution that's Sweeping Through Materials Science
Scientists can't study what they can't measure, as David Muller knows only too well.
From ACM News
Largest Overhaul of Scientific nits Since the French Revolution Wins Approval
In the biggest overhaul of the international system of units since 1875, countries have voted to redefine four basic units of measurement—the ampere, the kilogram...
From ACM News
World’s First Automated Volcano Forecast Predicts Mount Etna's Eruptions
Smoke filled the cabin as the Boeing 747 plunged towards snow-covered mountains in southern Alaska. All four engines had shut down, and it took the pilots eight...
From ACM News
'Reprogrammed' Stem Cells Implanted Into Patient with Parkinson's Disease
Japanese neurosurgeons have implanted 'reprogrammed' stem cells into the brain of a patient with Parkinson's disease for the first time.
From ACM News
Machine Learning Spots Natural Selection at Work in Human Genome
Pinpointing where and how the human genome is evolving can be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
From ACM News
The World's Strongest MRI Machines Are Pushing Human Imaging to New Limits
On a cold morning in Minneapolis last December, a man walked into a research centre to venture where only pigs had gone before: into the strongest magnetic resonance...
From ACM News
Happy with a 20% Chance of Sadness
In the winter of 1994, a young man in his early twenties named Tim was a patient in a London psychiatric hospital.
From ACM News