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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


Supercomputer Hunts Child Abusers
From ACM TechNews

Supercomputer Hunts Child Abusers

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are using the Jaguar supercomputer to analyze Internet traffic, looking for clues that will lead law enforcement officers...

From ACM TechNews

Tongue Clicks to Control Wheelchairs

The University of Bristol's Ravi Vaidyanathan is leading a research effort to develop an in-ear device that would enable people to control a wheelchair by clicking...

Microsoft Develops Shape-Shifting Touchscreen
From ACM TechNews

Microsoft Develops Shape-Shifting Touchscreen

Microsoft has filed a patent application to add real texture to a tactile touchscreen. A layer of shape-memory plastic placed above a touchscreen would distort...

World's First Ice Touchscreen Virtually Burns
From ACM TechNews

World's First Ice Touchscreen Virtually Burns

Nokia researchers have built a computer touchscreen using a block of ice. The researchers say the screen is a step toward a world in which all sorts of surfaces...

From ACM TechNews

Ice and a Slice Makes Transistors More Precise

Transistors can be built more precisely by using ice as a mask, according to researchers at Harvard University. The ice lithography process resembles how computer...

From ACM TechNews

Army Avatars Join the Battle For Hearts and Minds

Researchers at the University of Southern California are developing realistic, immersive virtual-reality programs for the U.S. military in which the soldiers are...

From ACM TechNews

Part Moth, Part Machine: Cyborgs Are on the Move

Researchers are developing methods to produce complex behavior from robots by tapping into the nervous system of living organisms and using algorithms that already...

From ACM TechNews

Prizewinning Chatbot Steers the Conversation

A chatbot named Suzette recently won the Loebner prize, awarded for a version of the Turing Test, because the system successfully fooled a human judge into thinking...

Better Hands May Help Robots Grasp Meaning
From ACM News

Better Hands May Help Robots Grasp Meaning

Two recent studies show that roboticists are applying some fresh thinking to the building and operation of robot hands, and a third suggests why the work is so...

Robot Limbs to Plug Into the Brain with Light
From ACM News

Robot Limbs to Plug Into the Brain with Light

Imagine a bionic arm that plugs directly into the nervous system, so that the brain can control its motion, and the owner can feel pressure and heat through their...

Cellphones Reveal Emerging Disease Outbreaks
From ACM News

Cellphones Reveal Emerging Disease Outbreaks

Your cellphone could be a key tool in the fight against disease by relaying a telltale signature of illness to doctors and agencies monitoring new outbreaks.

Robot Arm Punches Human to Obey Asimov's Rules
From ACM News

Robot Arm Punches Human to Obey Asimov's Rules

Isaac Asimov would probably have been horrified at the experiments under way in a robotics lab in Slovenia. There, a powerful robot has been hitting people over...

The Green City That Has a Brain
From ACM News

The Green City That Has a Brain

The planned city of PlanIT Valley in northern Portugal is aiming to be an environmentally sustainable city. And, like an organism, it will have a brain: a central...

The Smartphone's Shape-Shifting Future
From ACM News

The Smartphone's Shape-Shifting Future

The smartphone of the future might lose its sleek, solid shell to become a shape-shifter, able to alter its appearance to signal an alert in situations where...

Computer Beats Human at Shogi, Japanese Chess, For First Time
From ACM News

Computer Beats Human at Shogi, Japanese Chess, For First Time

A computer has beaten a human at shogi, otherwise known as Japanese chess, for the first time. Shogi is more complex than western chess, offering about 10224...

From ACM News

Body Organs Can Send Status ­pdates to Your Cellphone

For cardiac patients such as myself, too much excitement can be a shocking experience. If my heart rate gets too high the implanted defibrillator in my chest can...

From ACM News

You Too Can Have a Dream Body

If you dislike the way you look on video, a new kind of image-manipulation software could make you feel better about yourself.

From ACM News

Breaking the Noise Barrier: Enter the Phonon Computer

Noise is a chip designer's worst enemy. But handled properly it could become a powerful ally—and usher in the age of phonon computing.

From ACM News

Charge Your Phone With a Beach Towel

With a view to bringing down the costs of solar cells, Brian Korgel and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a light-harvesting ink that...

From ACM TechNews

Nokia Touchscreen Creates Texture Illusion

Nokia has developed a prototype of its N900 smartphone featuring technology that lets users feel the texture of icons on the screen. "The idea is to have everything...
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