Monday, February 24, 2014

Blog 20 - February 24, 2014

Howdy. Thanks for logging in .


And thank you for last week's discussion. Some of you really put a lot of thought into your responses and I appreciate your candor.


Hanging with the medical technology topic, here are a couple links to articles about coming technology. I'll post a directive Wednesday. Actual reading needs to occur here:


http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/top-10-medical-innovations-2014


https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/bioengineering/top-5-medical-technology-innovations


Wednesday Edit:
Pick one of these innovations, tell us which one and then tell us how it might affect you or a family member.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Blog 19 - February 17, 2014

Howdy.


Moving on to medical technology.


Go here. Watch this. No words from me until Wednesday.


WARNING: There is footage of actual operations in this video. Look away if you squeamish during those parts.


http://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_mohr_surgery_s_past_present_and_robotic_future.html


Wednesday edit
My words for the week: READ THEM ALL.


I thought I would get a little personal this week. Pretty recently the Lanham household was visited by the big C word. Cancer. Scary just to look at isn't it? Kinda makes my skin crawl just seeing it sitting there.



Anyway, Mr. L (who I lovingly refer to as Better Half) was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he had a radical robotic prostatectomy. That's right, ROBOTIC. Oh the technology implications . . . His surgeon actually sat ACROSS THE ROOM as he operated on Mr. L! Just like a video game. He has these goggles he looks into and he moves his thumbs and across the room the robotic arms that were INSIDE MY HUSBAND proceeded to do all the things that surgeons used to do the old way. Except when he was done, Mr. L only had 5 small incisions instead of one great big huge one. MUCH faster recovery time.


What Catherine Mohr DIDN'T tell you in that video is that she's one of the inventors of the DaVinci system (girl power!).


She also didn't mention that there are about 2600 DaVinci robots in use in this country at the cost of about $2 million apiece, plus about $300,000 per year for maintenance. The math is staggering.



So go take a look at the pictures of the robot. Also, take a look at the article about Catherine Mohr (girl power!), who is one of the designers of the Da Vinci system.



For credit this week you may 1) give an opinion about the use of the robot. You may 2) reference another article about the robot (please leave me a link). You may 3) give me an opinion about Catherine Mohr. You may also 4) reply to someone else's post.



Please remember: you must advance the discussion in some manner to get credit. "That's cool" or "I like that" is not advancing the discussion. Not now, not in May at the end of the year. You must TELL ME WHY!


http://tinyurl.com/2mhxoh


http://singularityhub.com/2009/07/27/catherine-mohr-promises-more-robotic-surgery/



Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Blog 18 - February 9, 2014

Hi!

So it's time for a topic switch. Know what that means? That's right . . . THINK GEEK WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/

So for credit this week, pick a product and GIVE US THE LINK and then tell us why you love it or think it's abundantly stupid. You MUST PROVIDE THE LINK so that the rest of us can go and look at it.

Your blog should look a little something like this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/c427/

So this is a hateful little noisemaker that you hide to drive people nuts. NOT that *I* would ever do something like that. Wouldn't it be great to watch somebody run around the house / office trying to find the source of the sound?!?
Lanham, 1st period

You must give us the link.You must give an opinion.You must sign and put your class period.

This is one of the RARE times when you can go ahead and blog on Tuesday. Be sure to check back on Thursday during blog time if you do that so you can see what everybody else is shopping for.

Talk to me . . .

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Blog 17 - February 3, 2014

Hola homies!

Let's talk about CES again. Not surprisingly, most of you said you would like to attend this event in the future. Me too. But midweek when there aren't one gogillion people there.

So lets look at the numbers from this year's attendance. Please follow these links:



http://www.ce.org/Blog/Articles/2014/January/2014CES/CES2014-by-the-Numbers



http://www.cepro.com/article/ces_2014_attendance_tops_150000/



Read Tuesday. Blog Thursday. Wednesday Edit: Pick a number in one of the two above articles and tell us which one and why it surprised you.


Example: I'm choosing the exhibitor number from the second article. It surprised me because I don't even know where you could physically put 3200 vendors!


Talk to me . . .