THE NEW ARMS RACE

Speaking of strange limbs, the Pentagon has announced the completion of the first phase of a plan to someday regrow soldiers’ missing body parts. Working with a $570,000 grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) a company called Cellthera Inc. has succeeded in turning a batch of human skin into a mass of undifferentiated cells that can, theoretically, be turned into new body parts. Step two will involve turning the cellular ooze into muscle tissue, and someday, perhaps, they will be able to reach their ultimate goal to “fully restore the function of complex tissue after traumatic injury on the battlefield.” (Wired Blog)