vinci

Congrats to David A. of Torrington, Conn., for winning a Guild Wars 2 Collector's Edition and five game access codes in last week's giveaway. This week's prize is the best Black Friday deal you could possibly get -- a free Android touch-screen tablet designed, tested, and FDA-approved for children 18 months and older.

Yes, the 7-inch Vinci Tab II is a tablet just for children -- or, as my CNET colleague James Martin likes to call it, a "chablet." It comes preloaded with educational material designed to simulate a kindergarten curriculum and aimed at engaging developing minds in areas such as social skills; language and literacy; and math and logical reasoning. Apps can be used in English, French, Spanish, and Chinese. … Read more

Any budding Dr. Frankensteins in the house? Here's a robot that's not only good for DIY surgery, it's open-source too.

The Raven II was developed at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Washington and modeled on a system originally designed for military use. Five newly completed systems are being shipped to test centers throughout the U.S.

While the da Vinci Surgical System has been widely used for prostate and other surgeries because it's minimally invasive, the machine is very expensive and not portable. It also uses proprietary software.

The Raven II is more affordable at about $250,000 and its Linux-based operating system lets users modify code. Seven Raven IIs at centers including Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University will be linked together for collaborative experiments, according to UC Santa Cruz. … Read more

The miracle of life, brought to you by a robot.

An Irish couple who lost their unborn son last year recently welcomed a daughter into the world with help from the da Vinci Surgical System robot.

Anne and Patrick O'Mahony became the parents of 6-pound baby Lucy at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) last week.

The robot was used to perform a minimally invasive cervical stitch to treat the mother's weak cervix.

The condition can cause the cervix to not close fully during pregnancy, increasing the likelihood of miscarriage. She lost her son at five months.

Conventional cervical stitches may require weeks or months for recovery. Using the da Vinci robot for the procedure can help get the patient back to her normal routine within a week. … Read more

Robots operating on humans. It sounds like something out of "Star Wars" (where Luke was nursed back to health by 2-1B).

But it's here, and according to a study we wrote about this week, robot surgery to remove cancerous prostate glands is safe in the long term and in fact may be more beneficial than traditional surgery. Granted, setups like the da Vinci robot surgical system still require the help of their human overlords, but that doesn't mean they're not a little bit creepy. Some things just take an exclusively human touch.

A robotic mechanic working on my car is OK. I'd let an automaton pick out my daily clothes and even dress me. And Japan might be onto something with its android caregivers for the elderly. But what do you, the readers of Crave, think about robot surgeons? Would you let a robot operate on you? … Read more

Robot-assisted surgery to remove cancerous prostate glands is safe over the long term and has a major complication rate of less than 1 percent, according to research published by the journal European Urology.

An earlier study showed almost 87 percent of patients had no recurrence of cancer after five years, according to a release by the Henry Ford Health System. The procedure removes the entire prostate gland and some surrounding tissue.

Researchers followed 3,317 patients at the Vattikuti Urology Institute in Detroit from January 2005 to December 2009. The institute is known for the work of Dr. Mani Menon, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you want your kids to get a leg up on their future digital careers, consider starting them young. Very young. The Vinci is a touch-screen tablet for babies and infants up to age 3 that helps tots learn about the world and stimulates their curiosity through interactive content.

Introduced at CES and launching in the first half of 2011, the Vinci has a BPA-free silicone handle that fits little hands, a 7-inch screen, a micro SD card slot and USB connectivity, built-in speaker and microphone, as well as a 3-megapixel camera. In order to protect wee ones from … Read more

Guided by surgeons at a console, the da Vinci Surgical System enables access to the thyroid through the armpit, thereby doing away with the neck incision that has led to the hallmark scar of thyroid surgery, a team of surgeons in Georgia and Texas says.

The group adds that the robots first helped revolutionize urologic and gynecologic surgery in recent years, and that the thyroid gland--roughly the size of a kiwi that sits beneath the Adam's apple--can be accessed without too much trouble through the armpit.

The thyroid controls the body's metabolic rate, and diseases both benign … Read more

Glyn Moody has written a lengthy, probing piece on the bust-up of the Open Document Format and its weird morphing into Compound Document Format, with a twist of Da Vinci. At the heart of the change? Microsoft Sharepoint.

While most of the open-source world sleeps, Microsoft is gearing up for a truly innovative take on its next-generation operating system. Sharepoint, not Windows, is the future of Microsoft's intended dominance.

This line of thinking probably explains the widespread incomprehension that greeted the [Open Document] Foundation's decision to abandon ODF. Supporters of the latter believe that it is by far the best document format, one that provides numerous benefits to users, notably freedom from lock-in. Hiser couldn't agree more: "We don't want OOXML to ever see the light of day, and certainly we feel deeply that it needs to be rejected by ISO finally and conclusively." But he adds:… Read more

As we in the U.S. prepare to stuff ourselves silly with turkey and fixin's on Thanksgiving, here's a neat view of another famous meal from the past: Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Last Supper. The map approach allows you to zoom in to tremendous detail and pan around, so close can you get in fact that cracks in the paint appear like roads in a landscape. View it here.