Surgeons learn breast operations online

Surgeons are learning how to perform breast operations online in the first course of its kind in the world, reports the BBC.

The University of East Anglia e-learning course qualifies trainee breast surgeons as specialists in breast cancer and breast reconstruction surgery. 80% of the course is e-learning-based with just 20% involving practical skills, including surgery.

Students will primarily be taught via online video lectures and seminars. They are also encouraged to discuss cases in chat rooms with other students.

Command training - or, in some cases, online instruction - will be required for all hands as the Navy moves to lift an 18-year ban on gays serving openly, the US Navy's top officer said in a message, writes Navy Times.

The training will be recorded for active-duty sailors and reservists, defence contractors and some Navy civilians, according to NAVADMIN 041/11 released by chief of naval operations Gary Roughead.

“It is important for our sailors to understand what this change means to them, their families and our Navy,” Roughead said in the one-minute-long video.

A new university that teaches students in some of the most remote classrooms in Britain with one of the world's largest videoconferencing networks has been formally unveiled in Inverness, states The Guardian.

The University of the Highlands and Islands has pioneered distance-learning by building one of biggest digital networks of its kind to link 13 colleges and nearly 100 learning centres from the Outer Hebrides to coastal towns in the Highlands and on the north-east coast to Shetland.

Awarded full university status by the privy council last week, UHI has effectively rewired the area by installing its own super-fast broadband network over an area the size of Belgium, with video conference suites at 60 sites.