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 Communications of the ACM
Gradual Evolution
Dynamically typed languages adopt features of static typing to cope with growth.
From Communications of the ACM
General Agreement
Leslie Lamport contributed to the theory and practice of building distributed computing systems that work as intended.
From Communications of the ACM
Backing Creativity
Hacker spaces are spreading around the world, though some government funding is raising questions.
From Communications of the ACM
Proofs Probable
Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali laid the foundations for modern cryptography, with contributions including interactive and zero-knowledge proofs.
From Communications of the ACM
Digging For Drug Facts
With the right approach, data mining can discover unexpected side effects and drug interactions.
From Communications of the ACM
Automating Scientific Discovery
Computer scientists are teaching machines to run experiments, make inferences from the data, and use the results to conduct new experiments.
From Communications of the ACM
Gaining Wisdom from Crowds
Online games are harnessing humans' skills to solve scientific problems that are currently beyond the ability of computers.
From Communications of the ACM
Remaking American Medicine
Developing an IT ecosystem for health could improve — and transform — the practice of medicine.
From ACM News
Finding Experts: It's Who You Know
While current expert-finding methods provided the best expert in six out of 10 searches, a new user-oriented method finds the best one nine times out of 10, according...
From Communications of the ACM
Sorting Through Photos
Teaching computers to understand pictures could lead to search engines capable of identifying and organizing large datasets of visual information.
From Communications of the ACM
Twitter as Medium and Message
Researchers are mining Twitter's vast flow of data to measure public sentiment, follow political activity, and detect earthquakes and flu outbreaks.
From Communications of the ACM
Straightening Out Heavy Tails
A better understanding of heavy-tailed probability distributions can improve activities from Internet commerce to the design of server farms.
From Communications of the ACM
New Search Challenges and Opportunities
If search engines can extract more meaning from text and better understand what people are looking for, the Web's resources could be accessed more effectively.12