Many from my generation remember staying up to watch Steve Austin and Jamie Summers on The Six Million Dollar Man  and The Bionic Woman. They were ordinary people who lived the life of superhero spies thanks to bionics – mechanical limbs that gave them super speed and strength plus sensors that gave them super sight and hearing. At the time, it was science fiction. And, that extent of bionics is still in fiction, but the reality is much, much closer. Thanks to recent advances in surgical techniques and the development of new materials like carbon nanotubes, we are getting much closer to being able to provide replacements for those who have lost limbs and/or senses.  And, while bionics represents a big leap forward,  Todd Kuiken, a physician and biomedical engineer at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), cautions, “[W]e are giving people tools. They are better than what previously existed. But they are still crude, like a hammer, compared to the complexity of the human body.” To learn more, read the National Geographic article here. And, check out the bionics interactive image here.