One thing that science fiction has taught us is that robots are cool… at least until they take over the world. But some robots are cooler than others.

I had the opportunity recently to visit Intuitive Surgical with my alumni group from RPI. Intuitive Surgical is located here in Silicon Valley. They make surgical robots. These are not self-guided robots but instead a 4 armed robot that let’s a trained surgeon do the kind of surgery that used to be done with laparoscopic instruments. Laparoscopic surgery is very useful but is a difficult skill to learn. As you move your hand to the right, the instrument moves to the left. Combine the non-intuitive movement with small spaces and small video cameras and you can see why it might take some practice before you would be ready for surgery.

What the robots that Intuitive Surgical creates do is make the whole experience much more intuitive. How intuitive. I was amazed. They gave us basically no training and then let us sit down at very expensive robots and do remote surgery. OK, we weren’t able to get real volunteers for surgery so we were doing tasks like unwrapping a hershey’s kiss or a starburst candy. And we could! The surgical instruments seemed like a natural extension of our normal limbs and their motions an natural extension of our normal motions.

What kind of things can someone who is trained in the system accomplish. I loved this video on folding origami with the robot. Skip to the end to see the size of the crane that is being folded.

With a growing number of surgeons trained on the machines they are finding more and more uses including operations not previously possibly. Robots are cool.

Well, a new study claims that those who pack on more pounds are actually more sociable and less anxious than people who are not overweight.

According to recent headlines, research suggests “Fat People Are Extroverts.” A study of more than 30,000 adults aged 40-64 looked at body mass index and its relationship to personality.

The results:

• Extroverted men were 1.73 times more likely to be obese than introverted men;
• Extroverted women were 1.53 times more likely to be obese than introverted women.
• Anxious people were twice as likely to be underweight.

From this we learn:

• Comfort food actually does work
• The wrong people may be anxious about their health (skinny people live longer according to other studies)
• A really good excuse to ask for a second piece of cake

“A person with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education.”

Studies have shown that the amount of formal education individuals have can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.

A recent study, published in the journal Neurology, suggests that once memory loss has begun, the rate of loss increases among those with more education.

So what it seems to be is that people who have more education have a better quality of life for longer should they succumb to Alzheimer’s. Because of alternate pathways in the brain they are not symptomatic as soon. So by the time Alzheimer’s becomes obvious, they are much further along in the degenerative process and therefore decline much more quickly from when the symptoms are noticed.

A brain-damaged man who could communicate only with slight eye or thumb movements for six years can speak again, after stimulating electrodes were placed in his brain, researchers report.

read more | digg story

A woman fitted with the world’s first “bionic arm” controlled by thought alone has been given back a sense of feeling.

The bionic arm: Click to enlarge

Claudia Mitchell, 26, a former US marine, regained the ability to carry out simple tasks such as cutting up food when she was fitted with the prosthetic arm last year.

Now doctors have re-routed the ends of arm nerves to a patch of skin on her chest — allowing her to regain the sensation of having her lost hand touched.

A new study of her wrist, hand and elbow function found she could use the artificial limb intuitively and could perform tasks four times quicker than with a conventional prosthesis.

read more | digg story

The dye in your blue jeans could soon be used to kill cancer cells, say scientists. The common dye found in blue jeans and ballpoint pens is called phthalocyanine and is a light-activated, or photosensitive, agent with cell-destroying properties.

read more | digg story

As reality gets closer to science fiction The Washington Journal reports about Claudia Mitchell who has become the first woman to receive a bionic arm:

Mitchell, who lives in Ellicott City, is the fourth person — and first woman — to receive a “bionic” arm, which allows her to control parts of the device by her thoughts alone. The device, designed by physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, works by detecting the movements of a chest muscle that has been rewired to the stumps of nerves that once went to her now-missing limb.

No mention is made in the story about whether its still makes the same noise as in the 6 Million Dollar Man.

read more | digg story

Some stories about technology are hard to swallow. This story about a camera that is small enough to swallow would be an exception.

read more | digg story