Computing2301 articles archived since 1845

Hands-Off Training: Google's Self-Driving Car Holds Tantalizing Promise, but Major Roadblocks Remain

Driverless automobiles lack common sense but are getting better at using mapping, GPS and sensing technologies to hold the road

Information Is Everywhere, How Can Science Protect It?

Editor's Note: The following blog post first appeared May 15 on the World Science Festival's Web site

Underscoring the importance of encryption in our increasingly data-driven digital lives, this year's World Science Festival features its first-ever session on cryptography, entitled "Keeping Secrets: Cryptography in a Connected World." During this discussion expect a well-rounded panel—including mathematician and computer scientist Brian Snow, scientist/journalist Simon Singh, cryptoanalyst Orr Dunkelman and cryptography researcher Tal Rabin—to break down cryptography, addressing its strengths and weaknesses as well as its impact on security and privacy...

Patent Watch: Registering Impacts in Sports

Patent no. 7,891,231 B2

Why Bayes Rules: The History of a Formula That Drives Modern Life

A new book about the now ubiquitous theorem traces its road from 18th-century theology to 21st-century robotic cars

Twitter Helped Doctors Tell Patients Where to Get Meds After Japan Earthquake

In the hours after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami hit Japan in March, essential infrastructure and communication were cut off, leaving many of the disasters' survivors without access to phones, electricity or water...

Participatory Urban Sensing

Through the use of sensors built into your mobile phone (cameras, motion sensors and GPS) and Web services that can aggregate and interpret the assembled information, a new collective capacity is emerging: one in which people like you participate in sensing and analyzing aspects of life that were previously invisible...

Program Hides Data in Executable Files

Hiding data in MP3s, for example, makes the file size noticeably larger. Now computer scientists have developed a system for hiding data in already large applications. Christopher Intagliata reports...

Microsoft's Skype Deal Promises Video Chat for Windows Phones

Microsoft added a key piece to its flagging mobile operating system business Tuesday when the company announced it is buying voice and video communications provider Skype Global for $8.5 billion...

Array of Hope: Australia and South Africa Vie for Massive Radio Telescope Project

The ambitious, unprecedentedly vast Square Kilometer Array project should open up new realms in astrophysics. But will it live up to its name?

Too Hard for Science? Simulating the Human Brain

Supercomputers may soon approach the brain's power, but much is unknown about how it works In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated...

Intel Enters the Third Dimension with Radical Chip Design

World's biggest chip manufacturer unveils radical chip design.

Cancer Testing? There's an App for That

Physicians are using smart phones to diagnose diseases, check blood cell counts and identify pathogens in drinking water

Artificial Intelligence: If at First You Don't Succeed...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The last symposium in M.I.T.'s 150-day celebration of its 150th anniversary (who ever said that geeks don't like ritual?) is devoted to the question: "Whatever happened to AI?"Of course, that is a particularly appropriate self-introspection for M.I.T...

From Dot.Coms to Cloud Computing: What's Old Is New Again

At times it seems cloud computing has no more definition than the atmospheric phenomenon after which it is named

Forecasting the Future of Cloud Computing

Scientific American examines cloud computing, a network-centric approach to delivering information and services

Forecast for Processing and Storing Ever-Expanding Science Data: Cloudy

Outsourced computing power and an abundance of data storage has researchers looking online for resources to help them tackle tough problems

Online 24/7: "Life Logging" Pioneer Clarifies the Future of Cloud Computing

Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, paperless for more than a decade, envisions data centers saturated with information and services readily available via the Internet

Robots Evolve to Look Out for Their Own

A robot must protect its own existence.

This mid-20th-century dictate to the robotic clade from science fiction author and biochemist Isaac Asimov seems cleanly in step with Darwinian theory and the biological world of survival of the fittest...

Extrasensory Pornception: Doubts about a New Paranormal Claim

Does new research prove paranormal precognition or normal postcognition?

Threat of Future Cyber Attacks by Al Qaeda Remains Low