The debate about computers and intelligence must go on - we have more to learn, and more people need to convert their strong opinions to measured arguments. There is no reason to panic, however.

For years we humans have worried about plagues, asteroids, earthquakes, eruptions, fires, floods, famines, wars, genocides, and other uncontrollable events that could wipe away our civilization. ...

Liah Greenfeld and Mark Simes have long worked together, integrating the perspectives of two very different disciplinary traditions: cultural history/historical sociology and human neuroscience. ...

The Priesthood of the Singularity posits a fast approaching prospect of machines overtaking human abilities (Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Viking Press, 2006) on the basis of the exponential ...

In this paper a look is taken at artificial intelligence and the ways it can be brought about, either by means of a computer or through biological growth. ...

The state of the art in automating basic cognitive tasks, including vision and natural language understanding, is far below human abilities. Real-world reasoning, which is an unavoidable part of many ...

To jumpstart this symposium, Espen Andersen describes the debate surrounding "technological singularity" and questions whether this is something that will happen---and if so, what the consequences might be. ...

Multicore CPUs and GPUs have brought parallel computation within reach of any programmer. How can we put the performance potential of these machines to good use? ...

Synchronization bugs such as data races and deadlocks make every programmer cringetraditional locks only provide a partial solution, while high-contention locks can easily degrade performance. Maurice Herlihy proposes replacing locks ...

In order to determine (and shape) the long-term impact of MOOCs, we must consider not only cognitive and technological factors but also cultural ones, such as the goals of education ...

Multicore processors dominate the commercial marketplace, with the consequence that almost all computers are now parallel computers. To take maximum advantage of multicore chips, applications and systems should take advantage ...

Database management systems are necessary for transaction processing and query processing. Today, parallel database systems can be run on multicore platforms. ...

Is the MOOCs phenomenon a disruptive innovation or a transient bubble? It may be partly both. Broadcasting lectures and opening up courses via MOOCs by itself poses little change of ...

Early graphical processing units (GPUs) were designed as high compute density, fixed-function processors ideally crafted to the needs of computer graphics workloads. Today, GPUs are becoming truly first-class computing elements ...

Fred Siff warns us that online learning, and in particular MOOCs, are threatening to overrun not just old models of instruction but the very nature of higher education institutions themselves. ...

In the past, parallel processing was a specialized approach to high-performance computing. Today, we have to rethink the computational cores of algorithmic and data structures applications. ...

This article will briefly describe some of the cost issues associated with MOOCs and suggest a perspective through which drastic tuition savings might someday be achieved, possibly through the assistance ...

Computing education has some significant education challenges today. We aren't diverse enough, and we need to be able to develop more teachers. ...

This article looks at the constantly evolving landscape of digital devices, and analyzes the growing inefficiency of hardware specifications to properly represent the overall value perceived by the user. ...

Is the MOOC honeymoon winding down? ...

Whether MOOCs can provide a good education and broaden educational opportunities at lower cost is an ongoing discussion. In this article Stanford professor, John C. ...

As a discipline, we have been discussing parallel programming for years. After all these years, do we know the right language abstractions for parallel programming? Would we recognize the right ...

In this interview conducted by Ubiquity editor Walter Tichy, Prof. ...

Where does computer science as an intellectual discipline fit in human discourse? Over a dozen contributors have looked at this question of identity from as many viewpoints. ...

Advanced educational technologies are developing rapidly and online MOOC courses are becoming more prevalent, creating an enthusiasm for the seemingly limitless data-driven possibilities to affect advances in learning and enhance ...

Chips with multiple processors, called multicore chips, have caused a resurgence of interest in parallel computing. Multicores are now available in servers, PCs, laptops, embedded systems, and mobile devices. ...

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) enable the delivery of high-quality educational experiences to large groups of students. Coursera, one of the largest MOOC providers, developed a program to provide students ...

Assessment in traditional courses has been limited to either instructor grading, or problems that lend themselves well to relatively simple automation, such as multiple-choice bubble exams. ...

MOOCs have fueled both hope and anxiety about the future of higher education. Our objective in this symposium is to surface and explore some of the open questions which have ...

The Computer Science Unplugged project provides activities that enable students to engage with concepts from computer science without having to program. ...

This article is a personal account of the methodological evolution of software engineering research from the 1970s to the present. ...

In this latest installment of "The Science in Computer Science," Prof. Paul Rosenbloom continues the discussion on whether or not computer science can be considered a "natural science." ...

In this twelfth piece of the Ubiquity symposium discussing science in computer science, Erol Gelenbe reviews computation in natural systems, focusing mainly on biology and citing examples of the computation ...