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Inspired by Wii-hab, Armiger and colleague Vogelstein borrowed a colleague’s copy of Guitar Hero and attacked the controller with a soldering iron.

As part of DARPA's project to create viable full arm prosthesis, researchers at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory have hacked the controller of the Guitar Hero video game to accept residual nerve signals from electrodes attached to amputee limbs. The new system provides a positively more exhilarating twist on testing new electrodes and signal processing algorithms.

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Sugarfoot

Watch the video of "The Greatest Athlete Who Ever Lived."

Read the interview.

Dog trained in military prison to help amputee

Briseno, who lost both of his legs below the knees almost a year ago in an IED attack in Fallujah, is getting a specially trained guide dog to help him in his day-to-day tasks. The dog was trained through Carolina Canines for Veterans, an adjunct program of the local nonprofit Carolina Canines for Service. Briseno got Even, his new service dog, a black Labrador with a white belly, at a ceremony Friday.
The program is the first of its kind in the nation that allows Marine prisoners at Camp Lejeune to train service dogs for injured veterans returning from combat. Eve is the second dog released from the Veterans program since it started in January this year.

CAROLINA CANINES

VA Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine

PROVIDENCE –– More than 1,200 amputees have returned from war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other anti-terrorist military action –– of those, 877 have lost major limbs. At least 12,000 veterans are suffering from traumatic brain injury, according to U.S. Rep. James R. Langevin.

With better body armor and more advanced emergency response teams available for U.S. troops, more soldiers who would have perished in past conflicts are now surviving –– but they need critical rehabilitative care.

Top doctors working to revolutionize amputee health care and dramatically improve limb function will soon be working in a new $6.1-million building on the campus of the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center.

Yesterday, doctors and political leaders at a groundbreaking ceremony at the Chalkstone Avenue VA facility lauded the VA Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine. The center is a partnership between the Providence VA Medical Center, Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Disabled Talent Show set for Sunday in Taipei

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The 12th annual soiree of the “Crescent Beauty — Disabled Talent Show” featuring mainly performances of amputees, will take place at 7:00 p.m. on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 30 at the auditorium in National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei.
Jointly organized by the Fu-Li Rehabilitation Association for Teenaged Amputees of the ROC (FLRATA) and the Taipei Fubon Bank Foundation, the event will mark the forthcoming International Day of Disabled Persons designated on Dec. 3 by the United Nations.

There will be fashion show, play, dances, and other talent performances by physically challenged people in Taiwan. READ MORE

TAMPA - Susan Chiellini says it started with an e-mail four months ago.  A dog with an amputated paw on "death row" at a county animal shelter in Georgia was hours away from being euthanized. 

That e-mail set into motion a flurry of phone calls and e-mails that culminated three weeks ago with Chiellini adopting "Blaze," the dog she had seen in photos, but never in person until the day she brought him home.

Now Blaze is not only learning how to live in a third-floor apartment, but he's also learning how to use the new prosthetic Chiellini got for him through an orthotics company in Virginia.  She calls it his "bionic paw."

"Hopefully this will be proof that dogs don't have to have their whole leg amputated when they just have a paw injury," she explained.  "There are prosthetics that do work now." 

Chiellini marvels at what a great attitude Blaze has for a dog that's been through so much -- animal control, several different foster homes and kennels, and learning to live without a left front paw.

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Can dogs be fitted with prostheses?

Click here to find out.

OWW is 101

MOUNT STERLING, Ohio -- When the wheels of a train took William Arbogast's legs, no one was around to summon for help. Arbogast, a 21-year-old railroad brakeman, had been working between a pair of rail cars when the train suddenly jerked into motion. With one leg severed above the knee and the other just below, he dragged himself to a rail-yard shack that he set afire, praying that the blaze might attract attention.

Not many businesses are born of such a horrific incident, but out of Arbogast's worst nightmare emerged a Mount Sterling company -- now 101 years old -- that today is more likely to assist a victim of an Iraqi roadside bomb than a railroad accident....READ MORE

It's all just part of being a footballer. Everything except the orthodics (sic)

"It is always there, I am going to get niggles as I am learning how to change my running with orthodics (sic) and all these other weird things and it is just all part of being a footballer," he said.

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Even if it's said with an Australian accent...."orthodics" still not a word!

You knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time.

"An airline apologised for telling a disabled man he would have to pay to take a spare pair of prosthetic legs on holiday. Airline Jet2 said it had refunded double amputee Mick Skee and changed its guidelines. The 47-year-old, who lost both his legs after contracting meningococcal septicaemia in 2006, wanted to take an extra pair of prostheses on a trip to Majorca next May."

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Airline Jet2 has never heard of empowering its employees to make customer centric decisions on their own?

Seriously.  Maybe they should read this..."How the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company Is Redefining the Gold Standard" in Businessweek.