Surgeons in Sweden have replaced the cancerous windpipe of a Maryland man with one made in a laboratory and seeded with the man’s cells.

The windpipe, or trachea, made from minuscule plastic fibers and covered in stem cells taken from the man’s bone marrow, was implanted in November. The patient, Christopher Lyles, 30, whose tracheal cancer had progressed to the point where it was considered inoperable, arrived home in Baltimore on Wednesday. It was the second procedure of its kind and the first for an American.

When light hits Barbara Campbell’s eyes, it triggers no response in her retinas, and no signals flash up her optic nerves to her brain. A genetic disease killed off her retinas’ photoreceptor cells, leaving her completely blind by her 30s. But where her body failed her, technology rescued her. In 2009, at the age of 56, Campbell had an array of electrodes implanted in each eye, and she now makes her way through the world more confidently, aided by bionic vision.

Two independent teams have made ultrathin, cabon-based membranes with extraordinary properties that could be used in a range of applications, from water filtration to petroleum processing. One team, based at the University of Manchester in the UK, has made membrane from graphene oxided that appears to be highly permeable to water while being impermeable to all other liquids and gases. The other group, at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science, has made membranes from diamond-like carbon (DLC) that are highly permeable to certain organic solvents, but not others.

A new study has uncovered how targeted suppression of the immune system may prevent type 1 diabetes or induce sustained remission.

What’s been marked as a first-in-the-nation launch, New Hanover County, N.C., will begin a phased deployment later this month of a “super Wi-Fi” network in the TV white space spectrum. “We will be using this new technology to extend our networks outdoors into our parks and gardens to provide enhanced services to our citizens,” said county Board of Commissioners Vice Chairman Jason Thompson, in a statement.

A robotic warplane that can take off and land from U.S. Navy carriers by itself won’t do much good if it runs out of fuel in midair. That’s why the Navy recently completed flight tests to see how well the unmanned military drone could belly up to a flying fuel tanker.

Mechanical property changes in cells may be responsible for the progression of cancer—a discovery that could pave the way for new ways to predict, treat, and prevent the disease.

In 1999, professors Robert Twiggs of Stanford University and Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University began to standardize the satellite business. They designed a small orbital unit-–a four-inch cube with little metal feet–-that was wide enough for solar cells, basing their design on a plastic display box for Beanie Babies. Their “CubeSat” had enough room for a computer motherboard and a few other parts necessary to do limited experiments in space, such as monitoring weather or photographing Earth. The design would significantly lower the cost for students to conduct experiments in space. CubeSats could be launched at the same time and piggyback on larger, more expensive missions, mitigating the expense of getting satellites into orbit.

That buzz you hear above your head is the sound of the Pentagon cutting its budget.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta detailed today how the Obama administration plans to achieve $487 billion in cuts over the next decade, in part by reducing the number of ships, planes and troops, but continuing to fund elite special forces — and support technologies like unmanned drones.

By altering root growth, scientists believe they are a step closer to breeding hardier crops that are more adaptable to environmental conditions and better able to fend off parasites.

So, you’re standing in the security line at the airport when you realize that bottle of duty-free Jameson is still in your bag. Also, you just cracked the seal on some not-so-easily-chuggable Kombucha. And that priced-gouged bottle of sunscreen you bought in Tulum? It was almost $10 and it’s still nearly full.

Normally, these liquid-filled bottles would need to be surrendered to the trash can held by a smirking TSA agent. But have no fear frequent fliers, new screening methods may soon be clear for take off.

Tiny substances called nanomaterials have moved into the marketplace over the last decade, in products as varied as cosmetics, clothing and paint. But not enough is known about their potential health and environmental risks, which should be studied further, an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday.

Nanoscale forms of substances like silver, carbon, zinc and aluminum have many useful properties. Nano zinc oxide sunscreen goes on smoothly, for example, and nano carbon is lighter and stronger than its everyday or “bulk” form. But researchers say these products and others can also be ingested, inhaled or possibly absorbed through the skin. And they can seep into the environment during manufacturing or disposal.