Slashdot Mirror
Solar Surgery
Chris writes "Scientists in Israel have developed a device based on a concave dish that intensifies sunlight by a factor of 15,000. By focusing this light into an optical fiber and delivering it to an operating theatre, the team says its solar-surgery setup promises to be a low-cost alternative to laser surgery." Everyone who used to operate on GI Joe figures with a magnifying glass is cheering for this to be commercially successful.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
And what happens when it's cloudy?
Now I only have to hope my surgery doesn't get rained out.
--
"That's Homer Simpson sir. One of your drones from secotr 7G."
Middle of surgery a cloud rolls in front of sun.
Doctor:Oh shit!
Nurse:Doctor, it looks like we won't have sunlight for another 20 mintues.
Patient:Can I get some more anestesia then?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Humm... Sun Light? Does anyone else see a problem with this? This machine sounds like the Skin Cancer 2000.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Since operations now can only take place on sunny days, surgeons won't be able to golf as much.
Cheaper than Frikin laser beams!
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
I'm sure you'll all slam me if I'm wrong,
but doesn't laser surgery use specify frequencies of light to localise the burning amongst other things?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
if you live anywhere but Seattle.
When do we get to see the real-world equivalent of that?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
They best be putting those giant "WARNING: Sunshine in use" sirens up everywhere they use this.. There's a reason we stay underground...
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
This is a great invention for Vegans...all their cooking must be done in the sun. Now they have a natural alternative to pollution-spewing lasers.
Maybe now I can finally get that extra-dark tan I want.
...
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/games/showca rds/A/ant_city.html
Funny you should mention ants.
There's an old film(1973) called phase IV that's exactly what your going on about!!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It seems to me that the real importance of this is the ability to be able to have a mobile surgery suite that can be taken to places where reliable electrical power does not exist, or perhaps field surgical hospitals in disaster areas. And yes, that IS big news to the poster that suggested that this was somehow misdirected priorities.
What about the opposite?
A surge in sunlight (solar flare, whatever else)...
Doctor: Oh shit!
Nurse: Doctor, it looks like you've gone through the patient, and through the operating desk, and floor. And the blood is pouring down into the coffee vending machine on the next floor! (sorry about the morbidness of that last bit)
Patient: (not very well at the moment, and not saying anything)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Despite all the jokes on here about it, I think it has applications in 3rd. world countries where reliable electrical power isn't a given.
In countries like the United States, every hospital has backup power generators, uninterrupted power supplies, and so forth -- on top of being connected to a pretty reliable power grid. I can't see someone choosing sunlight over an electrically powered laser beam for surgery. The greater initial expense of the laser is quickly offset by money lost on surgeries that couldn't be performed due to weather conditions.
In a relatively undeveloped country, however, this might make a lot of sense! It could give new options to doctors who simply couldn't count on a laser-based setup to function reliably, or couldn't afford it to begin with.
It is interesting to use concentrated sunlight for surgery, but electricity is still a more reliable way to generate light. I would imagine that some high intensity incandescent lights could be concentrated similar to sunlight, and woundn't be dependent on weather and the earth's rotation.
Where this technology might be useful is in remote areas where electricity is not available. But where electricity is plentiful, this technology seems more like a novelty, like "Sun Tea".
The article was a little short on details. I work for some ophthalmologists, and they use different types of lasers for different purposes. The way it was explained to me, the main differences were in the wavelengths they use. Excimer lasers are good for LASIK and such, while argon or krypton lasers are used for retinal repairs. Carbon dioxide produces an infrared laser for photocoagulation or for cutting.
Since it's still in the nascent stage,it will be interesting to see what they eventually come up with, especially if they can isolate different wavelengths.
To all you lame yuppy idiots replying with "oh its cloudy" here are some questions you should have asked
.........
1. What is the annual amount of sunshine where this is to be used? [hint: chances are its high]
2. What is the cost of this device and its use say versus the laser setup [hint: chances are their low]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
sergon in the second grade. before i even knew it!! had i realized that i coulda made some serious lunch money. well, i guess i put in my pro-bono time.
if it took them a med-school degree to figure that out maybe i need to start a med-school too. after all, i know all about mag glasses and insects, GI joes... by grade school. talk about the brains!! now all i need to add is the damn optical fiber. I even injected frogs with ink. how many years before *they* figure that one??
then get your ass kicked by the power puff girls...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They're not exactly talking about shipping this (after the obvious years of research ahead of it) to the Dr. Nicks of Springfield, USA--as the article stated, it's intended for third world countries, where people can't afford shoes, let alone high-tech medical care. The doctors in these areas are not necessarily any less skilled than the guy at your local hospital that charges a $150 consultation fee, they just have a sense of duty to *help* people as opposed to using their degrees to make wads of money. "...the something's connected to the...red thing...the red thing's connected to my...wrist watch...uh oh..."
Consider the possibilities this brings to field surgery in wartime or in developing countries.
With this invention, certain surgeries that are not possible in areas without electricity or expensive equipment can be performed.
It's not as though they will be replacing equipment in hospitals in a town near you...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Doctor: "Nurse what happened? I just hit him with a small burst of sun light and he went up in flames."
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
I think the obivous issues with clouds and night issues and such will cause some serious issues with the usefulness of this. What surgeon wants a tool that only works 4-6 hours during the day, assuming there aren't any clouds. I don't want my surgery to be schedualed depending on the weather.
All you need is a good size, unexpected, solar flare during an operation and 6 hours later the surgeons will be trying to explain to you why you now have a second rectum! :)
You smell something burning?.......
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Hibbert: This is such a beautiful day, I don't know why we don't operate outside more often.
[Tennis ball falls from sky into open wound, ECG flatlines]
Hibbert: Time of death.. 10:15.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Forget about ants, I want to cook chicken. Do you think that those guys were practicing on dead chicken breasts, and not eating the results?
I've always wondered about the idea of having natural light in a large building. I wonder if you could concentrate the light this much, it would be economical to run one 'super fiber' down 30 stories, then split it out. I would love being able to get natural light instead of the flourecent stuff...
There are limits, though. The thing that a laser is real good for is high precision procedures (think Lasik) that will still require all the infrastructure to operate robotic machinery (computer, electrical power, etc.) Also, the big health issue in real poor countries is access to sanitation, trained health care workers, and vaccines (on that last, say what you will about Bill Gates, but he recognizes his philanthropy is better spent on vaccines than PDAs and gizmos for third world hospitals - the knee juerk techno solution I would've lunged at).
Still, this is a great development. Will it completely change health care in poor coutnries? No. But it is another (very useful) tool in the toolbox for health care in poor countries.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
This is like a WMD against the ant community. (Then again, so is a shoe).
It burns!
I'm the stranger...posting to
We won't be able to perform that emergency bypass operation until daylight.
But we're in Alaska!
Yes Sir, and that means we only have to wait another couple of weeks.
I'd hate to be *under the knife* when a bird suddenly cuts off my source of light.
I'd also like to be assured, before they put me under, that they can complete the operation while the sun is still up. "I'm sorry sir... but there was this bird... and, well... and then the sun went down... and... well... oh well.".
I believe so. You can dye a tumour a certain colour and then the light can be set to only burn dyed cells (I am sure that there will be some means to select certain wavlengths). Also, you can't switch a scalpel on and off, meaning you have to cut through healthy tissue to cut out unhealthy tissue below. Think keyhole surgery.
Would someone doing a rain dance during surgery be charged with attempted murder?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
If all other news reporting had to stop except the top six news items of the day we wouldn't have HEARD of:
The bombing of the asprin plant in attempt to hit Bin Laden - precursor to the attack on the Twin Towers.
Israel's handling of the Palestinian Occupation and the "Suicide/Homicide Bombers" - until the middle east was ACTUALLY at open war (which they aren't quite, unless you count the bombers and the missiling of the Palestinian infrastructure as war).
The friction between India and Pakistan until they were at actual war (which they also aren't yet).
Argentina's financial troubles (or Japan's, or Korea's, or ...)
let alone what attacks the US might be THINKING about.
The way you hear about what YOU consider important is for people to talk about EVERYTHING that THEY consider important - separated into appropriate venues for each class of topics, so you can find the ones you are looking for.
THIS venu is "News for Nerds - Stuff that Matters" (to Nerds).
It is for recent news - and time-limited discussions - about technical issues and other things that will immediately affect MY life (some of which MAY change the ground rules underlying regional and global wars as a side-effect).
It is NOT for an endless 15th-generation rehash of the establishment media's top six propaganda pieces about recent developments in decades, centuries, or millenia-old conflicts halfway around the world.
If you want a venu where slashdot-style discussions can be held on THOSE subjects, by all means START one. The slashcode is free and can be found here, or by following the "code" link on most pages of this site. Hosting is cheap until your traffic gets large - after which you have a lot of people you can dun for contributions or whose attention you can rent to interested parties to cover your costs.
Meanwhile get out of OUR faces. The imminent death of mankind has been predicted continuously for at least two millenia, and probably since language was invented. It hasn't happened yet. Most of us are only interested when an issue for Nerds arises in the latest developments, while the rest will visit other, more appropriate, venues when they ARE interested.
Once you get your site set up, its existence will be "News for Nerds" and suitable meat for an item announcing its presence, and an advertisement in a sigline on YOUR postings - which will remain visible if your postings here are on-topic for THIS venue and thus don't get moderated down.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You could get skin cancer while having skin cancer removed.
"Derp de derp."
This just in. Device prototype stolen by lone assassin who charges $1 million her hit. British secret service sending their top agent to retrieve.
I don't know about elementary school, but it looks like a They Might Be Giants Song. http://www.crosswinds.net/~lyricsarchive/round7/gr eg7.html
There are several ways to solve this, and one of them is extremely clever. Let the light pass though a lens (rather than strictly using mirrors for all your lenses). Different frequencies (colors) of light will refract slightly differently (well, the ones off-axis), unless you have chosen the lens material carefully to avoid this. (Yes, think of the pretty rainbow that a prism makes from sunlight.) These different colors will focus at different distances from that lens. By positioning the end of the optic fiber at different distances from the lens, you selectively pick up different wavelengths.
There was a Japanese company, which made (makes?) large sun-tracking Fresnel lenses, for placement on rooftops. At the focus of the lens, an optic fiber (maybe more of a light-pipe) collected the light, for piping into your building, so that you could have sunlight in your house. They took advantage of this spectrum-separating effect to exclude UV and IR as desired from the pipe.
(Those systems, although certainly quite a fine nerd-toy, were ghastly expensive, IMO. Sorry.)
Cool. So have "They Might Be Giants" covered every dopey science filmstrip song from the 60's and 70's? I'm an old guy -- They Might Be Giants are kinda after my music years...
SPF 15,000 Sunscreen??
You're right of course. Parallel rays and phase coherence are not the same thing. I was sloppy. Coherence and parallelism are properties of laser light, but coherence isn't a property of sunlight.
A half a degree of arc is significant for some of the precision applications of lasers, like holography and laser guidance and navigation, but they are close enough to parallel to be concentrated by a lens or a concave mirror and the light from a flourescent or incandescent bulb cannot be so concentrated. This is more than adequate for a solar substitute for laser surgery.
My high school physics teacher became a bit of a laughing stock when he left a concave mirror in the back seat of his car and left his sunroof open. The focal length of the mirror was pretty close to the height of his car roof. The burned line from the front to the rear of his car roof is fairly ample proof of this property of sunlight.
Which brings me to a question - just how "hot" would the temperature be at the focus of the device? I would think you would need an active water cooling system to keep from melting the glass of the fiber optic (unless the temp is below that of melting glass) - not enough technical details in the article to know for sure.
Also, as far as this device is concerned, could such concentrated sunlight be used to optically pump a dye (or similar) laser?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you must be very proud.
Burns: [stuffing money into his wallet] No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun.
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you must be very proud.
Burns: [stuffing money into his wallet] No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun.
And now Monty can add free surgery to the list of services provided by his nemesis!
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
Why not just use the sunlight for powering a laser via solar cells instead? You get just the wavelength you want, and could conceivably have a battery backup.
Light only has differing focal lengths when passing through a refractor (eg. a lens). Reflection (eg. mirrors) (which was mentioned in the article as the method of collection) has no different focal lengths for various wavelengths. I hope this clears things up.
I remember seeing something on TV a long time ago about some Japanese company that had done just that.
It placed solar collectors similar to those in the article on the roof and piped the sun down fiber optics into rooms. Cheap natural lighting even if you're in the middle of an office block.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
You mean somethng like this?
c fm ?TID=288
http://www.ecoworld.org/Air/articles/articles2.
Took less than a minute to look up on google. Probably less time than to type in your question to slashdot.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Actually, I built a CO2 laser from scratch. The (estimated) power output is 100 watts. Of course, that is coherent and focused, so it burns 1/4 holes in things quick :) I don't know what the efficiency is, since it runs on my general electric bill, but I'd be surprised if it was much over 5 %. Once you factor in the water cooling pumps, losses in the power supply, the amount the semitransparent front lense actually lets through, heat loss, etc. lasers (homebuilt, anyway) aren't real efficient. Fun project, just be real careful with used neon sign power supplies... they aren't always in the best of shape, and you don't usually get a second chance if you get zapped by one. Also, I had my lens holders cut by a waterjet shop... VERY nice. Self cooling; that rocks.
Sure, they have learned to live with terrorist attacks.
They know its only the natural side effect of a plan where they have to slowly anihilate an entire people with blockades and settlements, slowly robbing them of even more land and resources.
To make a cake you have to break some eggs, dont you? So if you dont mind getting 3-9 dead civilians every couple of weeks or so, you can use them as a justification to decimate entire towns "looking for terrorists"
This is the only way they can get a "final solution" to the palestinian problem without getting too many unconfortable accusations of genocide.
So the answer is yes, they are hardcore... and the only thing they are causing is more death and destruction of innocent lives, galvinizing both populations and making them even more hardcore...
No sig for the moment.
Doesn't that increase your UV radiation exposure by a factor of 15,000X, too? Sounds like a cancer risk to me unless they have a filter for that.
IANAMedProf either but I'm sure that some types of surgery carried out by laser can't really be done any other way.
The cost of sending people to train others how to use the equipment is probably much greater than the cost of the equipment itself... some organisations do think it's worth it for other solar technologies, so it's quite possible it could work here. $1000 for something reusable without need of sterilization at very high temperature for extended periods of time (*how* much fuel is needed each time?!) isn't that excessive.
In some circumstances sterilizing and reusing isn't deemed enough. (Though of course there are big problems with cheap reusable instruments too).In the UK I have seen chicken-sheds using solar power for heating incubators. (No doubt this is used in other countries too). The power from PV arrays is plenty to drive a motor to track the sun so that optimum lighting is maintained throughout the hours of daylight. Much better than using batteries containing fairly toxic chemicals don't you think?Way to go Israel.
This solar scalpel is gonna be a boon to mohels. Reduce the rate of infection by having the ultimate scalpel, a beam of light, anywhere in the world.
"The Bris will be in eight days... weather permitting."
Fire and Meat. Yummy.