Surgery means dealing with blood, guts and sharp instruments. Playing a game means dealing with bugs and wonky physics. So it shouldn't be surprising to hear that a surgery game might feature some bloody nightmare fuel whenever things go wrong.

Realistic rendering of smoke and blood isn't just a game developer problem. Engineers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have come up with a novel way to give surgical students the virtual blood and gore they need.

We've seen the Xbox 360 Kinect control robots before, but never robots with tasks this important. A group of graduate engineering students at the University of Washington are using Microsoft's device to guide the actions of surgical robots.