Senor Parrot’s Perch

Well, maybe here’s a career for a video gamer with good eye-thumb coordination – RoboSurgeon! At HeraldTribune.com there’s a fascinating article titled For Human Hearts, Renovation by Robot on heart surgery using a robot with tiny arms and hands that wield the sutures and tiny scalpels to make the cuts.

Because of it’s size and dexterity it can operate inside of a human through a much smaller opening. The surgeon twists and fiddles with small controllers attached to the mini surgical samurai to direct its slicing and sewing inside the patient, hence the critical need for that eye-thumb brain connection. The surgeon and spectators watch the entire procedure from the inside the patient via the video delivered by the robot’s miniature camera eye. The manufacturer, Intuitive Surgical, names this robot the da Vinci Si HD System.

Here’s a promo video from their site. The surgeon’s control of the robot is very cool.

There are not many surgeons qualified to operate using a robotic surgeon. There are many others who feel that there are too many risks associated with the procedures at this time. However there are some great advantages. For starters, these robotic mini-surgeons eliminate the need to saw the patient’s sternum in two, and also the subsequent pulling apart of the rib cage in order to make enough room for your surgeon’s hands, which you can imagine, must be at least as big as catcher’s mitts. Then, there is the reduced chance of infection because the surgical area is so much smaller and there is less exposure to airborne microbes. A team of additional medical personnel stand by to immediately pursue traditional surgery should something occur that requires their intervention.

The surgery isn’t perfect and some doctors qualified to perform the surgery won’t do so because of the risks and drawbacks, such as lengthier surgeries and longer time under anesthesia.

I remember when my father underwent a quadruple bypass (when he was my age). His recovery was agony, in part because of the pain of recovery from having his sternum separated. Then, he was limited in what he could lift in order not to put additional pressure on it. I don’t believe that he would have been a candidate, though, because his liver was sufficiently impaired that the anesthesia was a big concern, since it would tax his liver. (Your liver cleans stuff out of your blood, like anesthetic drugs, alcohol, and other goodies.)

So, the upshot is, go ahead, get that kid of yours an Xbox and save a life. That mind-boggling waste of time today may be saving skill of tomorrow. Think of it, your child may someday to become the virtual pilot of a mini anti-cancer submarine swimming through a patient’s veins, zapping cancer cells before they zap another healthy cell. Then, you’ll be proud to proclaim, “It was the video game console we bought him when he was just 8-years old. He almost didn’t graduate from high school, but look at him today!”

Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys and Gulls

By Lucy Nolan

Illustrated by Connie McLennan

ISBN: 978-1-934359-96-9
Published by Sylvan-Dell Publishing, emphasizing Science and Math through Literature

Twinkle, twinkle, starfish dear,
hiding in the shallows here.
Just beneath the waves you lie,
like a star tossed from the sky
Twinkle, twinkle, starfish dear,
hiding in the shallows here.

Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys and Gulls, written by Lucy Nolan and illustrated by Connie McLennan, is a collection of  fun and entertaining parodies of many favorite Mother Goose nursery rhymes. But the rhymes inside Mother Osprey are parodies with purpose. Math and counting skills, science and history are all lessons taught in these poems.  Don’t think “Boring” when you see that this book teaches hard subjects like math or science. The rhymes and illustrations are pure enjoyment in themselves.

Most of Lucy Nolan’s rhymes are pure silly fun that kids will enjoy listening to over and over and even memorizing; the rest vividly illustrate a point in time from history. An appendix in the back adds more facts and explanations that the parent or teacher can use to draw young listeners further into a teaching moment. A map shows where each of the habitats is located.

Twinkle,  Twinkle starfish dear, quoted above, places the starfish in its natural habitat and opens up rich opportunities for discussing the shallows and beaches along a rocky coast. What other animals life nearby? What do they eat? What eats them?

But Lobster Pies is just plain silly:

Old Mrs. Wise
made lobster pies all on a winter’s day;
her greedy son
grabbed every one
and took them clean away.

What a surprise
for Junior Wise
lay inside that croaker sack.
When he sat on a bench
to eat a pinch,
the lobster pies pinched back!

Nursery rhymes satisfy at many levels: they’re great fun to listen to, with their rhymes and the rhythm of their meter. They’re pleasing for the strength of their imagery. They easily capture a child’s imagination, slipping into their memories and never losing their ability to bring enjoyment. Children seem to never tire of repeating them over and over and the verses are a natural invitation to singing. Nursery rhymes teach children language skills and the repetition packs information into their young, developing brains and they help develop their ears for word use and phrasing.

Mother Osprey is a perfect gift for your child or your child’s classroom teacher, whether in preschool, kindergarten, or the early grades. The rhymes are a perfect starter to get children to focus on some part of the environment, or a place. They introduce elements of nature in an interesting way, which leads naturally to a discussion of what is in the rhyme.

This video is from TechRepublic. It shows a robot developed by Boston Dynamics and Sandia National Laboratories for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It’s easy to imagine the military uses for this thing. The landing looks a bit tough for a manned ride-along.

Here is a link to Sandia’s article on the robotic jumping jackaroo.

Pink Tentacle has this post and video of a Japanese robot from the University of Tokyo that pitches with amazing accuracy. An updated version of a robot constructed first in 2003, this new model has super sensitive control of its fingers. The batter is a robot from MIT.

The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

It’s been a tough ride on the roller coaster for Pluto. Once the favorite planet of children, now ingominiously referred to as a dwarf planet, the status of Pluto had become something of an astronomer’s political football a few years back. In a day and age when we’re supersizing our meals, we are downsizing planets. How this came to be is richly detailed, albeit somewhat one-sidedly, in Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s very entertaining and informative book entitled The Pluto Files:The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet.

It is a very aptly titled book. It’s irreverent, funny and enlightening. It is also a great example of how science can be discussed on a layman’s level. Tyson’s sense of humor and pugnacious spirit shows on every page in clearly written prose. If it’s something you need to know to understand the topic, Tyson is very able to explain it in a way you can understand.

Covering the history of Pluto from the early search for Planet X through it’s (more…)

Robots are good for a lot of things, but this is about as good as it gets! I have discovered that someone has made a robot that can make your coffee for you. Now I love my daily grind, but if someone, or something, can grind and brew it for me, well, how can it get any better?Robot Living reported on this fabulous development from Japan.

I’m showing this to the rest of the family and hinting that it would be great for next year’s Father’s Day. I drink enough coffee, all by myself, that Ancora opened a shop around the corner just for me, their best customer.

I’m intrigued by the programming involved. I wonder if I could pull this off with a Lego Robot? Anybody know?

The Snake Scientist (Scientists in the Field)
By Sy Montgomery
Photos by Nic Bishop

Bob Mason is a snake scientist. Every year he travels to Manitoba, Canada to study the red-sided garter snakes that mass in amazing numbers about 100 miles north of Winnipeg. By the time the book was written, he had spent 15 years studying these snakes. Along the way he’s made some pretty amazing discoveries about snakes, including how they use their super-sniffing tongues – they smell with their tongues, to follow pheromone trails that lead them where they are going.

The book is a very enjoyable read, aimed at kids at about 5th grade and up. Author Sy Montgomery does a good job of describing the entire milieu of the research in a way that is easy to understand. He also poses questions like a scientist, which is the first step in designing experiments that give reliable results.

Nic Bishop photographed the book. He’s well known for his nature photography and he’s written or collaborated in a number of good books. In The Snake Scientist he found more folks happy to hold snakes than I thought possible. If you’re creeped out by the slithering serpents, then the photographs may spoil the pleasure of reading this book. But if you’re the type who is ready for anything, especially if its a photograph of someone else with a snake, and not yourself, you’ll enjoy this informative venture into science.

Pelican’s Catch (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection)

By Janet Halfmann,

Illustrated by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin

Pelican’s Catch (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection) traces a single day in the life of a young brown pelican. Having just learned to fly, the 11-week old pelican awakens and joins a group of pelicans that are flying overhead on their way to catch their breakfast. Brown Pelican still has a lot to learn, diving over and over into the clear blue ocean that surrounds the mangrove tree island where it lives before it gains its first catch.

Along the way, Halfmann depicts the life of a brown pelican very well. She has written this nonfiction book in a story format which allows her to show the bird’s habitat, social life, physical characteristics and behavior withinin the interesting narrative arc of a single day. The facts about the bird aren’t presented as scientific data, but rather as the features and elements of this bird and its environment.

The illustrations by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin are superb. The birds soar and dive with so much life and drama. And the final page is enough to make you quit your job and move to Puerto Rico. Say- I do have a friend from Puerto Rico. I’ve met some of his family that live there. Maybe, just maybe, I could do a bit of couch surfing until I can find a job on a boat down there.

I first learned about this book through a review on someone’s blog. I really don’t recall whose it was, but it may have been this review over at The Well Read Child. It does look familiar. I checked out some of the other spots that review science and nonfiction regularly and found this excellent interview with author Janet Halfmann over at Lori Calabrese’s blog Lori Calabrese Writes! I was unfamiliar with Janet Halfmann before reading this book. But now, after reading Lori’s interview with her, I’m looking for more of Janet Halfmann’s books.

The Warlord’s Puzzle

The Warlord’s Beads

The Warlord’s Fish

The Warlord’s Messengers (Warlords)

The Warlord’s Alarm, A Mathematical Adventure

Children’s Books by Virginia Walton Pilegard
Illustrated by Nicolas Debon

Also in the series, The Warlord’s Puppeteers and The Warlord’s Kites, which I haven’t read.

Powerful, rich and proud, the Warlord always seems to find himself in a bind. Young Chuan somehow always gets him out with one sort of invention or another, and always with good, old fashioned clever thinking. Always using his brain, Chuan, and sometimes with the help of his friend Jing Jing, solves every problem using mathematical or scientific principals learned illustrated in another context.

These books are very fun to read. Despite the “Warlord” in every book, there is no violence, except in one, where the young boy, Chuan, and the artist to whom he is apprenticed are kidnapped. Each book emphasizes problem solving, which makes them ideal for stimulating younger students eager to learn. They would also make a great supplement for learning about ancient Chinese culture since they are set in feudal China. At the end of each book, author Virginia Walton Pilegard shows how the Chinese really did use solutions similar to Chuan’s and she includes a fun craft or other activity for kids that applies the same science. The publisher also has study guides available at their website.

Study Guides:
The Warlord’s Beads
The Warlord’s Fish
The Warlord’s Kites
The Warlord’s Puppeteers
The Warlord’s Puzzle

Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock
Illustrated by Carolyn Conahan
ISBN 9781570916694

On the strength of several reviews a couple months ago, I went out and got Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock and Illustrated by Carolyn Conahan. I read it through quickly and found it quite good. I thought it would be over the head of my 6-year old, but I also thought that this book may help turn her into a junior naturalist. We learn a lot looking at the world around us and books like Bubble Homes and Fish Farts help us know what to look for and how to look. In particular, this book helps explain how animals use bubbles to survive and thrive in their environment.

My family spends a lot of time exploring a local lake in kayaks or sailboats and we enjoy looking for cool stuff. My 6-year old has an old root beer bottle with a cap that she uses to collect her lake specimens, usually weeds and other floating stuff. She’s already beginning to look closely at nature. As we read through the book last night I spent time talking about what we might find in the lake that’s making those bubbles we see from time to time. Now, we have even more things to look for now. I then reminded her of the spittlebugs inside the foamy bubbles on many of the plants in the neighborhood that we look at while walking the dog. All this was fun for her and made a connection in her mind.

Along the way in this book, I did learn about fish FaRTs, that is, Fast Repetitive Ticks. Herring, at night, swallow air and pass it out the other end, possibly using this to communicate amongst themselves in the dark ocean waters. There’s an experiment for you – how do you test the communication theory? I remember when I was young, and way up north in the frigid taconite country of Hibbing, Minnesota. In winter we’d all be outside shivering and talking excitedly but never hear a word that another was saying. Our words froze up in our breath and fell onto the snow covered playground with hushed clunks. We’d pick a few of our frozen conversations up and take them inside, where they’d thaw out and produce a random, nonsense conversation as our words escaped their frosty prisons. Maybe herring farts will be like that. We just need to pop the bubbles to hear what they’re saying. I can see a research grant proposal here! Stranger ones have been funded.