|
|
Monday, October 11, 2004
|
|
| |
Scrubbing up for robotic surgery in space
The is a report about NASA'S NEEMO 7 experiment where 4 astronauts will work in an undersea lab off Key Largo, FL to test the remote surgical options for spaceflights.
The surgeon will be controlling the Zeus system robotic arms from his hospital in Ontario. The procedure will be a cholecystectomy (gall bladder excision) performed on a surgical training dummy.
The dilemma is whether the ISS [International Space Station] should be equipped with a telerobot rather than having to bring an astronaut down to Earth when they need surgery. Flying an astronaut down is a half-billion dollar decision...
One of the parameters for this procedure is the issue of latency. If the signal is delayed by more than 0.7 seconds, a surgeon will begin to have problems controlling the robot. This should not affect operations on the ISS, but for deeper space missions - such as one to Mars - more autonomous robots would have to be used.
What isn't mentioned is if there is uncontrollable bleeding, obviously there is no option to convert to an open procedure.
11:27:00 AM 
|
|
First Thoughts - HP iPaq hx4700
This is BargainPDA's mini-review of this new VGA screen iPaq with WiFi/Bluetooth, and magnesium alloy case. It's unique among handhelds in that it uses a trackpad for navigation.
First impressions from this and other reviewers rave about the quality of the screen. It can offer 4x the resolution of the QVGA on other handhelds.
At $650, this is the most expensive handheld.
9:01:08 AM
|
|
Lawmakers Urge FCC to Regulate VoIP
I found the link to this story from a post, Regulatory pains for VoIP? by Om Malik.
U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) and 61 other members of Congress urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Tuesday to "immediately declare" that the FCC has sole jurisdiction to regulate Voice over IP services.
Om's reaction: But if the lobbying effort fails, you can pretty much kiss the independent business goodbye, because most companies would be left dealing with 52-state level regulatory regimes.
5:38:24 AM
|
|
Wide-Area Wireless Data, Forever Evolving
This is about cellular services for enterprise access. It's a good summary about the existing services: GPRS and CDMA2000 1XRTT, and enhancements as well as other technologies that are slated for implementation.
For the issue of latency:
Equally important is latency--the time it takes packets to traverse the network. New cellular technologies still have relatively high latency, in the range of 200 to 300 milliseconds. This is better than previous wireless services, though still high compared with Wi-Fi and wireline networks, where latency is usually under 30 ms. For perspective, Internet latency typically ranges from 20 ms to 100 ms, depending on the number of hops. For downloading e-mail, file transfers and streaming audio/video, latency in the 200-ms range is not an issue. Even VoIP (voice over IP) becomes feasible at 200 ms maximum latency. But for applications that must transfer a lot of individual objects, such as database transactions, that latency feels sluggish compared with other broadband connections. Still, these new networks are faster than any previous wireless WAN technology, and more than capable of supporting a wide range of apps. And latency will continue to decline, with future 3G technology versions expected to reach about 100 ms.
5:24:02 AM
|
|
|
|
© Copyright
2004
Bill Koslosky, MD.
Last update:
11/10/2004; 7:33:27 AM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves
(blue) Manila theme. |
|
|
