It’s the beginning of a brave new world. An autonomous robot at Duke took a bioposy (using a turkey breast and a grape) using real-time 3D ultrasound scans.

Macworld reports that Kaweah Delta Health Care District is initiating a trial of 100 iPad for health care workers. They are accessing hospital computer systems via Citrix which eliminates a lot of the HIPAA concerns, but they make no mention of how well the iPad’s touch interface works on systems designed for keyboard and mouse.

http://www.macworld.com/article/150742/2010/04/ipad_hospitals.html?lsrc=rss_main

Avaya purchased the Nortel enterprise division and received web.alive as part of the package. Click HERE to see a short demonstration of their technology.  It uses the UnReal 3 engine that has been modified to work over the web in a fully firewalled environment. It also supports 3D sound via a company Nortel bought in 2008.

So the client ends up with a rich 3D world complete with 3D sound.

Unless you’re in a media blackout, you already know the iPad will arrive this Saturday. Seton Hall announced it’s “giving” an iPad to all of full time students in the fall. Gee, I wonder if their technology fee will magically increase by $599?

The best iPad coverage I’ve found is in PC Magazine (of all places). They provide both video, slides, and text descriptions. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362063,00.asp

Virtual Worlds is reporting that There.com will shut down their public environment this week. They were funded via the micro-payment model and said the economic downturn hit their customers hard, thus virtual purchases stopped. It will be interesting to see how the other micro-payment funded systems survive reduced consumer demand.

One interesting side note, Forterra’s OLIVE, which was just sold to SAIC,  shared code base with There.com.

UPDATE:

Rumor at GDC2010 is that the There.com parent company has now shut it’s doors as well. This is unconfirmed and it’s not clear what happens to the Intellectual Property.

There is an old New Yorker cartoon that features two dogs. One says to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

Indeed, it has been common for people to hide behind fake personas online for most of the commercial life of the internet. Many did so with chat (remember AOL’s chat rooms?), and many do so with their avatars in Second Life and in online games (e.g. World of Warcraft).

But at least one place on the internet, what you see is what you get. A recent study shows, at least for subset of the population on Facebook,  users present a truer representation of themselves.

see No Lie! Your Facebook Profile Is the Real You | Wired Science | Wired.com.

This 3 year old Duke Visualization Friday video is fascinating, “Medical Imaging Simulation of Mice and Men”, by Paul Segars. Dr. Segars uses Voxelman data to build his own 3D NURBS based model of every organ, bone, nerve in the body. Then MRI data is combined from other colleagues to construct formulas for scaling the organs from 90th percentile to 10th percentile people as well as youth to elderly. Using a different set of data, they simulate heart and lung movement, both independently and then as a complete body system. Finally to complete their “phantom” patient, they generate photo realistic MRI data sets for the given organ constructs, complete with disease conditions.

Go to iTunesU and search for Paul Segars.

-Michael

I’d be surprised if this video hasn’t gone viral in the Medical Simulation community. Check out “If it Weren’t for You” for a laugh.

Then screen down on the livinginsim.com site for an ad for Havidol – When more isn’t enough.

Interesting article that mirrors our own frustrations with Second Life as a virtual reality engine. We look forward to seeing progress on Duke’s OpenCobalt project.

Thanks to Amy Coppedge for this reference.

-Michael

Another Engadget podcast on an iPhone app, PocketCPR, to teach better CPR technique. These guys are building a plastic holder for the iPhone that will allow an EMT to provide CPR for extended periods. But there is a 2 handed technique to hold the iPhone without the plastic holder.

While I see it as useful for training, the creators intend to use it for emergencies as well.

-Michael