Computing in the Real World Is the Grandest of Challenges
Cyber-physical systems are no longer a sideline for computing—they are a core concern for computer scientists and engineers. Source: New feed
Cyberthreats under the Bed
Internet-connected toys provide an often-overlooked avenue for breaching personal data, especially of those most vulnerable. Government and private measures can minimize the risks, but responsibility for monitoring smart toy usage ultimately lies with parents. Source: New feed
Breathing-Based Authentication on Resource-Constrained IoT Devices using Recurrent Neural Networks
Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have shown promising results in audio and speech-processing applications. The increasing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices makes a strong case for implementing RNN-based inferences for applications such as acoustics-based authentication and voice commands for smart homes. However, the feasibility and performance of these inferences…
Synthetic Bacteria Drive New Ingestible Gut Sensor
An ingestible capsule pairs bacteria with electronics to monitor blood in the GI tract Photo: Lillie Paquette/MIT School of Engineering In the latest edition of “What would you be willing to swallow?”, researchers at MIT today unveiled an ingestible sensor that combines engineered bacteria with ultra-low-power microelectronics to sense changes…
Engineered Band Gap Pushes Graphene Closer to Displacing Silicon
A new method for engineering a band gap into graphene maintains its attractive electronic properties Illustration: Philip Krantz Graphene might be the best conductor of electrons we know. However, as a pure conductor it can’t stop the flow of electrons like a semiconductor such as silicon can. Silicon’s ability to create an…
Coding for Catastrophe: Contest Seeks Apps to Mitigate Effects of Natural Disasters
Got a great idea for an app to help people deal with a natural disaster? Call for Code wants to hear from you Illustrations: iStockphoto and Shutterstock The United Nations’ Human Rights Office, the American Red Cross, the David Clark Cause, and IBM today announced Call for Code, a contest…
The Birth of Digital Poetry
An English professor rediscovered how some of the best poets in the world were coding poetry algorithms in the 1960s Photo: Micheline Pelletier Decaux/Getty Images Photo: Micheline Pelletier Decaux/Getty Images Programmer Poet: Acclaimed author J.M. Coetzee developed software for composing verse on an early British supercomputer. When we think of people…
3 Obstacles to Moving Social Media Platforms to a Blockchain
Taiwan’s PTT bulletin board system sees distributed ledgers as key to its future Photo: iStockphoto On average, there about 10 million active sessions a day on Taiwan’s version of reddit, a 25-or-so-year-old bulletin board system called PTT. That’s a respectable number considering Taiwan’s total population is 24 million. But lately…
International Neuroscience Initiatives through the Lens of High-Performance Computing
Neuroscience initiatives aim to develop new technologies and tools to measure and manipulate neuronal circuits. To deal with the massive amounts of data generated by these tools, the authors envision the co-location of open data repositories in standardized formats together with high-performance computing hardware utilizing open source optimized analysis codes.…
It's Never Too Early To Think About 6G
Companies have barely begun deploying 5G networks, but that just means researchers are thinking about what comes next Photo-illustration of 6G. The first thought that popped into your head as soon as you read this article’s headline was likely something along the lines of “Wait, I thought we were still…