The Titanic and the Telesurgeon

Friends,

Here is SilvieÂ’s play that she wrote this morning, plus yet another
article about Mehran Anvari, chair of the Spiritual Assembly of the
BahaÂ’is of Hamilton.




Titanic, Almost Unsinkable, A Play


By Silvie Taylor (9 years old)


Dramatis Personae (Cast)

The Narrator - Silvie Taylor
Titanic - big box
The Master - Ling Ling Doll and small ball
Iceberg - Owowow, the wolf
Titanic passengers - a few masks, held by Thomas
Cedric - a small green canoe
Water - Blankey



Narrator: The Master is looking for a ship to take Him across the ocean.

Titanic passengers: You should go on this "unsinkable" one. BOOM BOOM

The Master: I choose to go on the Cedric.

Narrator: He goes on the Cedric.

Passengers: Suit yourself, we will go on this "safer" one.

Narrator: Two hours later they saw a huge iceberg. But they turned too
late. It scraped the ship and it sank.

Passengers: Help, help!

Narrator: Just as the Titanic sank, the Cedric came along. The
passengers jumped onto the Cedric.

Passengers: Thank you!

Narrator: Five days later the Cedric reached the other side of the
ocean. The end!




Telesurgeons would stitch astronauts in space

Pioneering Hamilton doctor will lead remote NASA team testing robotic
operations


The Hamilton Spectator, Monday, August 9, 2004, A5


By Jacquie de Almeida

A Hamilton surgeon who performed the world's first remote surgery using
robots is pushing the technology's boundaries.

Today at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope, Dr. Mehran
Anvari will announce the crew of Neemo 7, an international underwater
10-day mission to take place in October on a station off the coast of
Key Largo, Florida.

Its goal is to test telesurgical developments that would allow a
non-surgeon to perform assisted tele-surgery in a contained and extreme
environment.

The crew is made up of two American astronauts, Canadian astronaut Dave
Williams, and a surgeon from McMaster University's Centre for Minimal
Access Surgery (CMAS).

Neemo 7 (NASA's Extreme Environment Mission Operations 7), is a joint
project of the CMAS, the Canadian Space Agency, and NASA.

The astronauts will perform selected surgeries for the kinds of
emergencies that could arise on an extended space mission like acute
appendicitis, gall bladder, kidney stones, suturing severed arteries or
nerves and draining an abscess.

Hamilton based surgeons will telerobotically guide the astronauts in
testing new medical applications for the technology in an underwater
station called Aquarius. They will also look at behavioural and
physiological changes astronauts may have when performing surgery.

Last year, Anvari performed the world's first telerobotic assisted
surgery from St. Joseph's Healthcare, on a patient 400 kilometres away
in North Bay. While Anvari moved the robotic arms in Hamilton, another
set in North Bay responded within 140 miliseconds, less time than it
takes to blink an eye.

Anvari said the biggest obstacle to advancing telerobotic-assisted
surgery is the ability to imagine its benefits.

"It's important for policy-makers and funding agencies to be able to
say, `This is something for the future,'" he said.

"When we did our first telesurgery, many people said this is never going
to be possible. We've proven that it can make a big difference to
patients in rural Canada. To some extent the biggest issue is attracting
people's imagination to this technology and where this work can go."

Anvari said he could not release many details about the robot itself
prior to today's announcement but said it would eventually have up to
six arms set up on an operating bed platform, each one of them able to
move independently. It also has multiple joints that allows (sic) it to
move freely and with a surgeon's dexterity, he said.

The current robot design has surgical instruments affixed to the arms
but Anvari said the next generation will be able to pick up instruments.
He said one of the more exiting prospects of telesurgery is its
extra-terrestrial applications.

The technology has attracted interest for use in extended missions,
particularly if humans set up a station on Mars. But with a delay of up
to 30 minutes for a signal to travel back, the project will be looking
at developing preprogrammed robots.

"The robotics of today and the robotics of 15 or 20 years from now are
going to be very different and much more sophisticated," he said.

He added a robotic surgeon may be preferable to a human because it is
not affected by zero gravity. A human surgeon would have to be anchored
down in zero gravity, causing muscles to tense and exert more force on
surgical instruments.

Anvari said project co-ordinators aim to put telesurgery to use on the
International Space Station, with a time delay of about 200 to 300
milliseconds if the signal is direct and up to 800 milliseconds if the
signal has to travel via satellite.

More Neemo missions will help refine and improve telesurgical robotic
technology.




John Taylor
helpmatejet@yahoo.com
 
Blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
 
Badi Web Site: TBA