Alex Smith was 11 years old when he lost his right arm in 2003. A drunk driver operating a boat collided with his family's vessel on Lake Austin, sending him overboard. He hit a propeller, and his arm was severed in the water. A year later, he got a myoelectric arm, a type of prosthetic powered by the electrical signals in his residual limb's muscles. But Smith hardly used it because it was 'very, very slow' and had a limited range of movements. He could open and close the hand, but not do much else. He tried other robotic arms over the years, but they had similar problems. 'They're just not super functional,' he says. 'There's a massive delay between executing a function and then having the prosthetic actually do it. In my day-to-day life, it just became faster to figure out other ways to do things.' Recently, he's been trying out a new system by Austin-based startup Phantom Neuro that has the potential to provide more lifelike control of prosthetic limbs. The company is building a thin, flexible muscle implant to allow amputees a wider, more natural range of movement just by thinking about the gestures they want to make....

Most women with breast cancer undergo lumpectomy surgery to remove the tumor and a rim of healthy tissue surrounding the tumor. After the procedure, the removed tissue is sent to a pathologist to look for signs of disease at the edge of the tissue assessed. Unfortunately, about 20 percent of women who have lumpectomies must undergo a second surgery to remove more tissue. Now, an MIT spinout is giving surgeons a real-time view of cancerous tissue during surgery. Lumicell has developed a handheld device and an optical imaging agent that, when combined, allow surgeons to scan the tissue within the surgical cavity to visualize residual cancer cells. The surgeons see these images on a monitor that can guide them to remove additional tissue during the procedure. In a clinical trial of 357 patients, Lumicell's technology not only reduced the need for second surgeries but also revealed tissue suspected to contain cancer cells that may have otherwise been missed by the standard of care lumpectomy....

The first fully automated dental procedure on a human has been completed in Barranquilla, Colombia. US-based company Perceptive used a robotic arm, artificial intelligence and 3D imaging to complete the work. 'We're excited to successfully complete the world's first fully automated robotic dental procedure,' Dr Chris Ciriello, CEO and founder of Perceptive, said in a statement. 'This medical breakthrough enhances precision and efficiency of dental procedures, and democratizes access to better dental care, for improved patient experience and clinical outcomes.' Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams travelled to the International Space Station in June and were initially scheduled to spend just over a week onboard. However, after two months, the pair remain in orbit with no return date set. The mission is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which partners the US space agency with American private industry and has seen investment in multiple companies to support transportation to and from the International Space Station....

Benjamin Warf, a renowned neurosurgeon at Boston Children's Hospital, stands in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. More than 3,000 miles away, his virtual avatar stands next to Matheus Vasconcelos in Brazil as the resident practices delicate surgery on a doll-like model of a baby's brain. With a pair of virtual-reality goggles, Vasconcelos is able to watch Warf's avatar demonstrate a brain surgery procedure before replicating the technique himself and while asking questions of Warf's digital twin. And that's the goal: Warf's digital twin bridged the distance, allowing him to be functionally in two places at once. 'It was my first training using this model, and it had excellent performance,' says Vasconcelos, a neurosurgery resident at Santa Casa de Sao Paulo School of Medical Sciences in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 'As a resident, I now feel more confident and comfortable applying the technique in a real patient under the guidance of a professor.' Warf's avatar arrived via a new project launched by medical simulator and augmented reality (AR) company EDUCSIM. The company is part of the 2023 cohort of START.nano, MIT.nano's deep-tech accelerator that offers early-stage startups discounted access to MIT.nano's laboratories....