VR + Complex Surgery ... Cartwheel Galaxy ... Amazon + iRobot
Dear all,
Hope everyone is doing well. Here is another edition of the SciTech newsletter.
Some bits,
Think of robotic vaccuum cleaner and the chances are that you may not think beyond Roomba. Now, Amazon has finalized a deal to acquire iRobot, the makers of the popular vaccum cleaner Roomba for a cool $1.7 B in an all cash deal.
More bad news on the crypto winter. And this time its for for India crypto traders. The Indian government has frozen the assets of WazirX, a popluar crypto exchange in India on suspicion of foriegn exchange violations.
The UK’s Home Office and Ministry of Justice plans to 24/7 track specific convicted immigrants using smartwatches. In addition to tracking, the convicts are required to scan their face 6 times a day. Concerns remain, as facial recognition technologies have a poor record in recognizing people of color.
Some TV screens in a few 7-11 stores in Taiwan started displaying the message “Warmonger Pelosi, get out of Taiwan”. While some say that it the result of cyberattacks after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, authorities have not confirmed whether it was a China backed cyberattack.
Some Bytes
Using VR to train for one of the most complex surgery.
4 year old Arthur and Bernardo were conjoined twins with a rare case of craniopagus, a situation where the skulls, tissues and blood vessels fused together. It means the twins are bedridden with no possibility of of seeing each other face to face.
A team of doctors scanned the conjoined twins using CT and MRI scans and created a virtual reality model for months to analyze, strategize and train for the most complex separation surgery on record.
After 7 surgeries that spanned 33 hours and involved around a 100 clinicians, Arthur and Bernardo are able to see each other again. This is definitely the best usecase of Virtual Reality that I have read so far.
Cartwheel Galaxy
When two vehicles collide at a high speed, it is a tragedy. But when two high speed galaxies collide, it is a photo opportunity.
Galaxies are spiral or elliptic. This myth was recently broken by the recent images released from the James Webb Telescope, which unveiled to the world a beautiful Cartwheel galaxy.
As per NASA, the resulting shape is due to a intense high speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller one.
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Hope this edition of newsletter was informative. Till the next edition, Stay Safe and Healthy.
Regards
- 3MTB Team