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The article offers the author's comments on a proposal by the Publications Board of the Association for Computing Machinery to bring together conference papers and publishing of journal articles on computer science research. According to the author, compared to journal reviewing, conference process has clear advantages that this proposal maintains.

Excerpts from blogs posted on the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Web site are presented, as well as reader comments related to the blogs, on topics such as reading academic research papers, encouraging students to create computer programs, and the significance of Web visibility.

In this article, various experts on computer science (CS) offer guides relating to the best of CS research. Particular focus is given to how to determine what papers are worth taking the time to read. Additional topics discussed include the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), how datacenters are changing the way Web servers are designed and the notion of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

The article presents some abstracts of papers related to computer science which appeared in the publications of the Association for Computing Machinery. The first abstract entitled "A Complexity Theory Based on Boolean Algebra," by S. Skyum and L.G. Valiant, was published in the April 1985 issue of the "Journal of the ACM." According to the paper, a projection of a Boolean function is a function obtained by substituting for each of its variables a variable, the negation of a variable, or a constant. The abstract entitled"Optimal Static Load Balancing in Distributed Computer Systems," by Asser N. Tantawi and Don Towsley, was published in the April 1985 issue of the "Journal of the ACM." According to this paper, a distributed computer system that consists of a set of heterogeneous host computers connected in an arbitrary fashion by a communications network is considered. A general model is developed for such a distributed computer system, in which the host computers and the communications network are represented by product-form queuing networks.

The article presents information on the professional activities of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Papers describing original research are sought for the Fifteenth ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, which is scheduled to be held from April 25, 1983 to April 27, 1983 in Boston, Massachusetts. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest include: algorithms and data structures; automata and formal languages; computability; complexity theory, etc. A call for participation has been issued for the Tenth Annual Conference of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics, which is scheduled to be held from July 25, 1983 to July 29, 1983 in Detroit, Michigan. Submissions are invited for both technical program paper and panel sessions. Previously unpublished papers in all areas of computer graphics and interactive techniques are sought. Appropriate topics include display techniques; graphics software systems and languages; graphics hardware; robotics; and any applications of graphics. Video or film material that is an integral component of the work must accompany the paper.

The article presents abstracts of research papers related to computer science, which have been published in various publications of the Association for Computing Machinery. The research paper "Complexity of Network Synchronization," examines the problem of simulating a synchronous network by an asynchronous network. A new simulation technique, referred to as a synchronizer, which is a new, simple methodology for designing efficient distributed algorithms in asynchronous networks, has been proposed. The synchronizer exhibits a trade-off between its communication and time complexities, which is proved to be within a constant factor of the lower bound. The article "How to Assign Votes in a Distributed System," discusses distributed processing. In a distributed system, one strategy for achieving mutual exclusion of groups of nodes without communication is to assign to each node a number of votes. Only a group with a majority of votes can execute the critical operations, and mutual exclusion is achieved because at any given time there is at most one such group.

The article presents some abstracts of papers related to computer science which appeared in other publications of the Association for Computing Machinery . The abstract entitled "Generating Binary Trees Using Rotations," by David Zerling, was published in the July 1985 issue of the "Journal of the ACM." In this paper, the authors developed a new algorithm that, for the first time, exploited the rotational geometry of binary trees to enable to lexicographically generate the computer representations of these trees in average time O(1) per tree. The abstract entitled "Uniform Hashing is Optimal," by Andrew C. Yao, was published in the July 1985 issue of the "Journal of the ACM." The abstract entitled "Adding Range Restriction Capability to Dynamic Data Structures," by Dan E. Willard and George S. Lueker, was published in the July 1985 issue of the "Journal of the ACM." According to this paper, a database is said to allow range restrictions if one may request that only records with some specified field in a specified range be considered when answering a given query.

The article reports on some professional activities taking place in the United States related to computer science. As a cooperative venture undertaken by 15 organizations, the "National Educational Computing Conference," held in Kansas City, Missouri, has presented a major work regarding computers in instruction to promote interaction among all levels in computer uses in education. It also intends to develop and coordinate the various professional groups involved with computer uses in instruction and to produce a proceedings documenting the status of computers in education. Papers are invited from individuals representing all academic disciplines and research areas in educational computing. It further reports that papers describing original research in the formal analysis of computing problems are being sought for the "Fourteenth Annual Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on Theory of Computing," held during May 5-7, 1982, in San Francisco, California. The Fifteenth Annual Simulation Symposium is to be held during March 17-19, 1982, in Tampa, Florida. The list contains information about some other activities as well.

The article presents a list of papers, courses and magazines downloaded, in July 2005, from the Association of Computing Machinery's digital library. Some of the papers that were downloaded are: "Architectures for a Temporal Workflow Management System," by Carlo Combi, Giuseppe Pozzi and published in the March 2004 issue of the journal "Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing"; and "The Google File System," by Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff and Shun-Tak Leung and published in the October 2003 issue of the journal "Proceedings of the 19th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles." Some of the courses that were downloaded are: Introduction to the Java Programming Language; UML Fundamentals; Data Modeling; Beginning to Program With the Java Programming Language; Project Management: Initiation and Plan Launch; and Basic Programming in C.

This article reports on recent developments related to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The ACM Nominating Committee is preparing to nominate candidates for Regional Representatives to Council from the Northeast, North Central, Pacific, and South Central regions. The elected representatives--one from each region--will serve a three-year term effective from June 1, 1975. The Special Interest Group on Computer Uses in Education has proposed two sessions for ACM 74. A session of four technical papers has been proposed. These four papers exhibit a rich variety of types of computer use in learning. One emphasizes the technique of artificial intelligence. Another paper by a Japanese author describes an ambitious computer managed system. The third paper illustrates a system that couples tape recorders to a minicomputer. And the fourth paper suggests the important role of the computer in self-paced courses. A new Committee on International Scientific and Technical Information Programs has been established within the Commission on International Relations of the National Academy of Sciences--National Research Council.

An interview with David Blei, a professor at Columbia University and a recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)-Infosys Foundation Award, is presented. He discusses his 2003 paper on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). He talks about his favorite applications of LDA, such as its uses is in the digital humanities. He also discusses the Bayesian nonparametric methods and approximate posterior inference that he is working on.

The article presents information on some of the most popular papers from ACM's refereed journals and conference proceedings. Some of these topics are "Architectures for a Temporal Workflow Management System," "Piecewise-linear Surface Approximation from Noisy Scattered Samples," "Case Studies on Testing Object-Oriented Programs," "Distributed Ray Tracing," "Security in Embedded Systems," "UML Fundamentals," "Project Management: Initiation and Plan Launch," "The Profession of IT: Who are We," "Emerging Business Models for Mobile Brokerage Services," and "Physically-Based Computer Animation."

The article presents a review of the changing image of the periodical "Computing Surveys." During the last 2 years, Computing Surveys has introduced short, 2-page papers to complement the long 30- to 50- page traditional papers. Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)'s 50th anniversary year was commemorated with two special issues, one on perspectives in computing (March, 1996), examining current technology and one on strategic directions in computing (December, 1996) looking towards the future. The December, 1996 issue of the periodical demonstrates the feasibility of joint hard copy/electronic publication. It is economically feasible to publish a 1000-page special issue of which about 300 pages appear in hard copy and the remainder electronically. The ACM electronic repository in www.acm.org will increasingly supplement its hard-copy publications with electronic value. One of the side effects of short articles is to make "Computing Surveys" more participatory. Another participatory activity designed to recognize student talent is the ACM student paper competition.

The article focuses on the death of Edmund C. Berkeley, principal founder of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the preservation of Berkeley's records and papers at the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) in the University of Minnesota. The records date from the 1940s and contain correspondence, memoranda and subject files on the ethical use of computers, education in computing and computer programming languages. The author described the aim of the CBI to preserve valuable historical records and collections relating to computer organizations and professionals.

The article presents news briefs related to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Focusing on 1985 regional representatives election results, it states that regional representatives have been elected to serve from July 1, 1985, to June 30, 1988. Herbert Maisel has been appointed chairman of the Ad hoc Committee on Inter-society Liaison. Maisel is also a Council Member-at-Large and the chairman of the External Activities Board. The Berlin Continuing Engineering Education Program is offering its fall series of seminars on industrial electronics and robotics in Berlin. At its March 13, 1985 meeting the Executive Committee of the ACM approved joint membership agreements with the "Beigisch Instituut voor Regeltechniek en Automatizering" (BIRA). These agreements will take effect from July 1, 1985. Members of the BIRA are accepted as voting Members of ACM. It also notes that the technical contributions appearing in the ACM journals are normally original papers that have not been published elsewhere. Widely disseminated conference proceedings and newsletters are a form of publication, although they are usually only semi archival and are often unrefered.

This article offers information on the Computing Practices section of the magazine "Communications of the ACM." The section focuses on articles with a message about general ideas and techniques that can be transferred from one place to another. Instead of technical papers, the section concentrates on discussions of how, what, why and when to use the computing methods and systems. Topics that cover areas of interest to readers of the section include improvement of the systems design process, future of computing, and implication of new theory to application systems.

The article lists several publications from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Some of them are Proceedings of the Symposium on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems; Abstracts of the 1982 ACM Computer Science Conference; The Papers of the Thirteenth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education; 1981 Winter Simulation Conference Proceedings; ACM 81 Conference Proceedings; Proceedings of the 1981 Conference on Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture.

The article presents information related to the winners of various awards in computer science. The winner of the 1977 Turing Award is John Backus of International Business Machines Corp. Presented to an individual selected for his contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community, the Turing Award is Association of Computing Machinery's (ACM) most prestigious technical award. It is being given to Backus for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on Fortran, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages. The ACM Council has voted to double the amount of the Turing Award to $2000 effective with the next winner. The requirements on the part of the recipient, to give a lecture at the annual ACM meeting and to present a paper for publication, remain the same.