Firsts

Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden.  I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but it's not a city many Americans know about.  And the following news articles may have been trumped by stories about Ebola, ISIS, or even a Comic Sans typewriter on the main page of CNN, but I'm so proud of the research that is being done locally and I want to give a little shout-out.

Researchers at the local hospital and technical university have come up with the first brain-controlled prosthetic arm.  When an amputation happens above the elbow it is particularly difficult to create a prosthesis that mimics natural movement, and even those designed for below-the-elbow amputations are based on upper-arm muscle movement.  So this guy being able to control a prosthetic arm in much the same way you control your real arm... Well, that's incredible.

But wait!  There's more.  Sweden is very parent-friendly, and womb transplants have been performed successfully in other countries, so it shouldn't surprise me to learn that Gothenburg just had the first baby born to a woman with a transplanted uterus.  The donor is even a living post-menopausal friend of the mother, which just warms my heart.

Science is awesome.