|
SPORTSCIENCE |
sportsci.org |
|
Perspectives: Internet |
|
***** MOVING TOGETHER #24 ***** |
Software: The Virtual Surgeon - ACL Reconstruction
Medium: CD-ROM
Authors: Professor George Bentley, ChM FRCS; Russell E. Windsor, MD;
Mr. Andrew Williams, FRCS Orth
Cost: $250 (US) 150 £ (UK) Shipping & handling $5 (US)
3£ (UK)
Publisher: TVF Multimedia, 375 City Road, London EC1 1TP, UK
Telephone: +44 171 837 3369
On-line: http://www.thevirtualsurgeon.com
E-Mail: knee=AT=thevirtualsurgeon.com
The Virtual Surgeon - Elective Knee Surgery is a compelling piece of new software available on CD-ROM. Designed for surgeons, trainees and students; it has implications for a wider audience. A subset of the CD-ROM entitled "3D Anatomy of the Knee" can be purchased for $99 (US). It is an excellent cost effective alternative for anyone interested in the anatomy of the knee but not the surgical procedures associated with ACL insult.
If you are interested in the latest surgical procedures associated ACL reconstruction this is the multimedia answer to your prayers. You can jump back and forth between live video and visually rich 3D animation of exactly the same procedures. Both video and animation have exactly the same narration. The use of the same narration is a nice usability feature that keeps you oriented when you jump between modes. For the "left brainers" amongst us who need / like words, the authors have provided a third alternative to the 3D animation and the live video- plain old text. The text is divided into the same sections stage that the animation / video follows. The text can be especially useful for cross-referencing and checking on details missed in the narration.
The interface is quit intuitive and within a few minutes most folks will be able to navigate around. If all else fails you can head to the on-line help menu found on the navigation bar of each page. A nice key stroke that I later read in the help menu allows you to zoom in and out of the 3D animation using the shift and control keys. This produces a nice smooth transition whereas the on screen controls are a bit jerky. A right button click revels the anatomical name for the tissue clicked on. Instructions for the Mac equivalent of right click does not appear in the help menu and the usual flurry of "option", "control" and "shift" keystrokes did not solve the problem.
If you are impressed with technology and in particular medical technology this state-of-the-art CD-ROM is right up your alley. There is a built-in scrapbook to save 3D shots for later pasting in presentations.
Still not sure of you want to shell out the money? Then check out their Web site or email them for a free sample CD-ROM. The sample CD has a limited menu of options but has the "look and feel" of the actual CD. This is a good option that will facilitate your final decision of whether this product will meet your needs.
KEN'S NOTE: Hey all you sporty technology geeks, can you pass this up: over 36 presentations with a focus on sport and PE. This is the event that you should be at this year. The presentations are by people in our field sharing their real world experience and knowledge. Join us at the National Technology Conference.
Sponsored by NASPE and Southern District AHPERD
Chattanooga, TN - July 29-Aug.1, 1999
See more information at: http://www.aahperd.org.
Click on Districts, then click on Southern District
Access the site at: http://playlab.uconn.edu/frl.htm
Andrew Yiannakis, Ph.D.
Professor & Director
Laboratory for Leisure, Tourism & Sport
Univ. of Connecticut
U-110, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
Phone: (860) 486-1117/ Fax: (860) 486-1123
NIH EYES PLAN FOR ONLINE PREPRINT PUBLISHING. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is considering a plan to build a Web-based public clearinghouse for biomedical research papers. The project has the backing of NIH Director Harold Varmus and a number of other high-ranking public health officials, but the agency says it's not ready to discuss specifics at this point. One dilemma has been how to avoid siphoning off too much income from some scientific societies that rely on their publishing activities for continued viability. The NIH site likely would be modeled loosely on the e-print archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which have become a major repository for information on physics and astronomy. A "streamlined" peer review process would ensure that information stored on the NIH site would have merit among the biomedical community. (Science 12 Mar 99)
Welcome to siforwomen.com, the online companion to Sports Illustrated for Women magazine. We're thrilled that so many girls and women fell in love with our two test issues in 1997. We're sorry we've been on the sidelines so long, but we think you'll find as you browse this website -- and our Spring issue, which reaches newsstands starting the first week of March (the first of four specials we have planned for 1999) -- that we never stopped thinking about you. http://cnnsi.com/siforwomen/
POCKET-SIZE WEB SERVER. A professor of computer science at Stanford University has created a tiny Web server about the size of a business card and only a quarter-inch thick. Vaughan Pratt developed the device "initially just for the impact... Fifty years ago, a computer with less computational power than a modern pocket calculator filled a whole room, and ran programs consisting of only a few hundred instructions. Today we can fit the extensive software needed to drive a World-Wide Web server into a computer the size of a box of matches." Pratt's server uses a 486 processor and runs the Linux operating system. http://wearables.stanford.edu/ (Chronicle of Higher Education 26 Feb 99)
US NOW HAS AN INFORMATION-AGE ECONOMY. Replacing an industry classification that has existed for 60 years, the US Commerce Department has introduced a new system that recognizes this leap into the information age. Using the new system, the government reports that in 1997 computers and electronics manufacturing for 1.7 million of the country's jobs at 17,000 locations. The Commerce Department also says that more e-mail than snail mail was sent in 1997, and that US consumers bought more computers than automobiles. [The report is silent on the question of whether there were more computer crashes than automobile crashes, but if there weren't the highways would be impassable.] The government developed the new classification system because "in an information-based economy, the quality of information determines the quality of policy." (USA Today 17 Mar 99)
COMING TO TERMS WITH BYTES Computer terminology is becoming more precise: the International Electrotechnical Commission, which creates standards for electronic technologies, is adopting new prefixes to describe data values. The new term "kibibyte" will more accurately describe the number of bytes in a kilobyte -- rather than being 1,000, as could be inferred by the prefix "kilo," a kilobyte actually has 1,024 (2 to the 10th power) bytes. The metric prefixes currently employed -- kilo, mega, giga, etc. -- accumulate as a power of 10, rather than the binary system used in computer code. Thus, the Commission will use kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi , pebi and exbi to express exponentially increasing binary multiples (2 to the 10th power, 2 to the 20th power, etc.). "There was a need to straighten this out," says Barry Taylor of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. (Science 12 Mar 99)
ONLINE SURFERS AVERAGE SIX HOURS A WEEK ON THE NET. A recent poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates indicates that the average online computer user in the US spends six hours a week surfing the Web. That time does not include sending and receiving e-mail, which is the most popular online activity. Sixty-three percent of online users say they use e-mail "often," a 10% increase since September 1998. The next most popular activity (39%) was conducting research for work or school. Thirty-one percent of users shop online, with books the most frequently purchased item (software ranked in second place). (Reuters 24 Mar 99)
Brrrreakthrough: The PC-Enabled Fridge. Jeannine Parker of Magnitude Associates on the implications of the Web-enabled refrigerator. http://newsletter.association.org/199903/parker.html
CHEAP PCs LEAD TO BREAKTHROUGH: COMPUTERS NOW IN 50 PERCENT OF HOMES. The number of US homes with personal computers has surpassed the halfway mark. Although this development is not a surprise, it has happened more quickly than many insiders anticipated. While the increasing popularity of the Internet probably is a factor, figures show that the introduction of a wider range of PCs costing less than $1,000 has democratized computer ownership. Half of the low-priced PC customers never previously owned a computer. Households that earned less than $35,000 in yearly income accounted for 56 percent of $1,000-or-less PCs sales. The number of PCs sold at retail cost of $1,000 or less has dramatically risen from 25 percent in the beginning of 1997 to today's 61 percent. (San Jose Mercury News Online 04/11/99)
COMPUTER DISPLAY CLIPS ONTO EYEGLASSES. MicroOptical will demonstrate technology that the company calls the first practical head-mounted display (HMD) at next month's Society for Information Display conference. Eyeglass Display can be clipped onto or built into ordinary eyeglasses. Traditionally, workers who require a hands-free screen have had to use heavy and costly headgear. MicroOptical's Tom Holzel says the concept of HMDs is popular, but "nobody's gotten the ergonomics right." The Eyeglass Display is "a featherweight personal display with an appearance nearly indistinguishable from conventional glasses," says Holzel. The display is located either in the temple piece of the eyeglasses or in an L-shaped optics module that clips onto the temple. A small lens/mirror combiner sits in front of the eye, either on a transparent stalk or as part of the eyeglass lens, and reflects images into the eye. The stalk or lens provides the optical path from the display to the combiner. The Eyeglass Display uses "see-through" monitor technology, allowing users to easily switch their focus between the display image and their normal view of the world. (EE Times Online 04/22/99)
Moving Together is not an official publication of Maharishi University of Management. It is nothing other than a personal try to share/create a collective wisdom in the area of technology as it impacts professional Kinesiologists.
Ken Daley
kdaley=AT=mum.edu
http://www.mum.edu/exss_dept/daley.html
Associate Professor
Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences
Maharishi University of Management
Fairfield, Iowa USA 52557
Member of the Internet Developers Association
|
|