There are millions of blind people who are hoping that medical technology would enable them to see the world one day. Well, the day is not far when the use of a bionic eye would be a routine medical procedure, which gives near perfect vision.

Good slideshow describing the uncanny valley

Television's Six Million Dollar Man foresaw a future when man and machine would become one. New research at Tel Aviv University is making this futuristic "vision" of bionics a reality.

A team of researchers from the University of Washington studied the brain's activity while controlling a cursor on a computer using the keyboard. The team discovered that reacting with a cursor causes brain signals to become stronger than the signals created during day-to-day activities. They are hopeful that their findings will help speed up the recovery time of patients that suffer from strokes. Further work needs to be done on researching the process of having someone imagine how to do something that they don't think they can do, such as imagining how to move your arm. After some practice, patients in the study were able to move the computer cursor without having to imagine how to move their arms first to perform the action. Their research was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA's graduate student research program, and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

A group of researchers at the University of Leicester are looking into ways to improve prosthetics and how the brain controls them. The study is led by a combined effort between Dr.TomMathesonandProfessorRodrigoQuianQuiroga,aProfessorofBioengineering. The team received £800,000 in funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). They are tasked with researching the brain and studying sensory-motor control of the limbs. They will be studying the nerve activity in locusts. The team is hopeful that their research will help them to better understand medical disorders that prevent limb movements. They hope that this will help develop better prosthetics and improve the quality of life of people. The study was posted on the University of Leicester website (http://www.le.ac.uk).

Dr. Furey's article

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have successfully implanted a device in a monkey, giving it control to move a mechanical arm with its brain. This technology could assist disabled people and help them to live a normal life. Oscar Pistorius uses carbon fiber-composite legs and is one of the fastest athletes in the world. He wanted to participate in the Beijing Olympics but was rejected because the bionic prosthetics apparently gave him an advantage over normal athletes. This poses one ethical issue if bionics become mainstream. People might decide to get rid of their human legs and replace them with these for an advantage.