Duke University engineers think they've made an important step towards developing robotic surgeons that operate independently. The robot they used in their experiments—which were just feasibility studies, and were not performed on real people—uses 3-D ultrasound as its eyes, and an AI program that processes the 3-D information it gathers to determine the robot's next steps.

Yes, there are some great robot fight scenes, nefarious villains, a few human interest plotlines, even characters that seem like genuine people, but the new movie Iron Man is really about the lab, and its ridiculously cool toys.

Soon youll be able to ditch your game pad and Wiimote. A new camera system for computers and consoles will track your movements in three dimensions—essentially turning your body into the game controller. For example, play Rock Band by waving your hands at imaginary drums, or dodge punches in a fighting game.

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OK, they are not the most objective source, but graphics processor manufacturer nVidia does make a pretty convincing argument for spending more money on a computers graphics card and less on the main processor—in certain conditions.

So it's not happening quite as quickly as we'd been told in previous stories on the subject, but the 3D revolution does seem to be coming. One of the hold-ups has been convincing theater owners to upgrade to projection and display systems that can handle this new wave of 3D tech—it takes around $75,000 to switch over an old theater. But the 3D companies have been arguing that this upgrade enables theaters to become more than just movie houses: They can show concerts, sporting events, even operas in 3D, and charge more per seat.

Let's get to the limitations right away: Mac and even Firefox users will have to sit this one out, since it only runs on a PC, in Internet Explorer. And XP is probably your best bet, too, since Vista users have apparently reported some glitches when using the beta version of this very cool new interactive tool.

All that aside, though, the Visible Body, a new, and free, interactive experience from Argosy Publishing, is pretty mind-blowing. It's Gray's Anatomy in 3-D. (The book, people, not the show.)

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Florida International University have developed a technique that enables them to identify the weak spots in a structure from afar.

The program they developed, Scan and Solve, uses 3D data of an object to predict where it is most likely to fracture, and how its faulty spots will be affected by outside forces such as gravity or other forms of strain.