Thin sheets of polymer coated with living muscle could be used to test new drugs, repair damaged body parts, or even create life-like bio-machines, researchers say. The Harvard University team created the "muscular thin films" by attaching muscle cells to elastic polymer sheets. By laying down striped patterns of proteins on these polymers, they were able to make the muscle cells arrange themselves into muscle fibres, similar to those in animals. When shocked with electricity, the resulting hybrid material can be made to bend, roll up, or wriggle, at a rate that can easily be controlled. Join discussion...

Doctors reattached the right foot of a 13-year-old girl involved in a gruesome amusement park accident, but her left foot was too severely damaged to repair, her family and doctor said in a statement Tuesday. Kaitlyn Lasitter of Louisville remained in stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., Dr. Douglas Weikert, a surgeon and assistant professor at Vanderbilt, said in the statement. Join discussion...

"No shirt, no shoes, no service." It's a common enough sign in store windows and other establishments, though, who would ever be seen without shoes? Shoes are essential to civilized life, and they bring with them a distinctly civilized manner of walking: lock the knee, and brace a controlled fall on the heel; roll the foot forward, rocking into another locked-knee heel-fall. It's difficult to walk any other way while wearing shoes, and you'll often find this described as the way humans walk. But Join discussion...