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HoloLens will help a children's hospital perform critical surgeries
A UK children's hospital plans to use Microsoft's HoloLens and Surface Hub during critical operations like heart surgery, Microsoft announced. Alder Hey hospital will employ the Surface Hub to let medical personnel collaborate and share images, while the HoloLens will be used directly in operating theaters. "Imaging a patient's heart from the inside and from the outside is absolutely essential," said Alder Hey cardiac surgeon Rafael Guerrero. "Microsoft HoloLens and mixed reality will, in the future, enable me to have a patient's scans in front of me while I'm doing the operation."
Google Maps and NASA invite you to peer into the Black Marble
If you've had your fill of that Black Marble animation from last week, how's about a more interactive jaunt around the globe? Google has now joined hands with NASA and NOAA to use stunning imagery of an illuminated, cloud-free Earth captured by the Suomi NPP satellite and put a map of the sleeping world right under your fingertips. The data was collected over 312 passes by the satellite using a new ultra high-sensitivity sensor dubbed the "day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite", and then mapped over existing "Blue Marble" pictures. If you think a nocturnal orbit around our home planet beats having a gander at faraway nebulas, but you can't quite afford a boarding pass, then a jump to the source link is most definitely in order.
Alt-week 12.08.12: The oldest known dinosaur, lighting up a space station and the black marble
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. While some refer to it as a lonely planet, we prefer to think of it as unique. Where else can you find such diverse biology that dates back millions of years, that also has a space station hovering delicately above it. A planet where several millennia of human evolution gave birth to the comedy animated gif? Precisely. One of a kind. This is alt-week.
