Second generation of surgical robots

A research center intended to help in the development of medical robots will be established by the University of California, Berkeley. The robots to be developed will be able to conduct surgical tasks that are low-level as well as repetitive. This will alleviate doctors enabling them to concentrate on the most challenging and complex operation aspects. As such, the goal is to help surgeons focus on aspects of surgery that are critical rather than honing in on subtasks that are repetitive and tedious.

Some tasks pertinent to bone surgery can be conducted single-handedly by the robots. This includes peculiar aspects of knee and hip replacement. However, surgery that is fully automated by robots on soft tissues is not covered by current technology.

The surgical robot currently being used is the da Vinci surgical robot. It was developed by Intuitive Surgical of Sunnyvale, California and operated by surgeons who control instruments remotely from workstations that are inserted through small incisions. This is normally conducted through minimal invasive procedures. Overall, automated surgical tasks are currently not conducted by the system although doctors are given a high level of precision.

Census with cellphones

Census scientists have been greeted with an interesting development as they can locate calls through identification of cellphone towers that send and receive them. In turn, call density can be used around the cell towers in the estimation of the local population density. This particular strategy can be attributed to the discovery that 96% of the world’s people have cellphone subscriptions that are active. Additionally, the number of mobile subscribers in developing countries has gone beyond the total population as some individuals have more than one phone while rates related to subscriptions continue to increase reaching heights of about 90%.

            Secondly, through the use of call records, researchers can estimate population density around every tower from call density while taking note of variations in the usage of the phone between areas of high and low coverage. The results are indicative of dynamic population trends across weeks and seasons which cannot be reflected in a traditional survey-based census. An example of this can be drawn from the holiday season where populations in cities dropped while transit sites saw a sharp increment.  However, during the course of a week, weekdays are when people travelled to cities for work and to rural areas during weekends.

            Furthermore, in low income countries, mobile records are representative of an efficient and easy alternative. This is because census data may be outdated or unreliable. Take for example the Democratic Republic of Congo where census was last conducted in 1984. Interestingly, about 70% of the people have mobile subscriptions.

            Another important issue to consider is the recent Ebola outbreak in which cellular records could prove to be a vital tool for population movement tracking. Better access to updated data from affected countries could lead to more accuracy in information on the movement of populations. This in turn would be helpful to governments to coordinate outbreak responses.

Forum Three - Social Game Perspective

Title: An Independent Social Game Company’s Perspective

Author: Jimmy Gambier

In conclusion, the social game company’s perspective with regard to HCI can be broken down into three observations with the first being traditional gamers experiencing difficulty accepting skill levels of players in social games (Gambier, 2012). This is owed in part to the fact that social games were more in line with the number of friends that could be hooked into the virtual Ponzi scheme of sorts. However, the general masses responses were in fact positive in this regard.

Another observation to note is in relation to statistics drawn up by firms.  Some companies show that the success of games is based not only on a measurement of fun but through elicitation of addictive player behaviors (Gambier, 2012). Social games are sometimes also referred to as virtual skimmer boxes and it owes this observation to the fact that the evolution of gaming has boiled down to new states of being.

The final observation is a result of growing competition. This in turn has led to the tremendous strides taken to improve the quality of games (Gambier, 2012). As such, the range of production budgets can be from thousands to millions of dollars. Once a title is launched, millions can also be spent on advertising.

References

Gambier, J. (2012). An independent social game company's perspective. IEEE Computer, 45(2), 85-88.