The newest version of the Robohand is made of snap-together parts, reducing the amount of hardware needed.
Credit Courtesy of Jen Owen of Jen Martin Studios
Makerbot's 3-D printer can be used to make the parts for the Robohand.
Credit Courtesy of Jen Owen of Jen Martin Studios
The newest version of the Robohand is made of snap-together parts.
Credit Courtesy of Makerbot
Richard Van As, a South African carpenter who lost a portion of his hand in an accident, assembles a Robohand and fits it to Liam Dippenaar. Liam was born without fingers on his right hand.
Credit Cindy Carpien / NPR
Ivan Owen, a special effects artist in Bellingham, Wash., creates large mechanical hands. He is also one of the creators of the Robohand.
Credit Courtesy of Paul McCarthy
Leon McCarthy, 12, does not have fingers on his left hand. He used a Robohand at school for the first time last month.
Credit Courtesy of Makerbot
One version of the Robohand includes 3-D printed parts assembled with metal hardware. New parts can be easily "printed" as the child grows.
Mary Louise Kelly used to cover the national security beat for NPR, but lately she's turned her attention to teaching and writing fiction. Her new novel, Anonymous Sources, followsrookie journalist Alexandra James as she investigates a shady banana shipment and a clandestine nuclear plot. The tale is fiction, but it draws on Kelly's own experiences reporting on the spy beat, including things she couldn't say when she was a journalist.
Libyan presenters work at the studio of Radio Zone in Tripoli, Libya, in 2012. The radio station's owners hope to teach a new generation about democracy.
Credit Mahmud Turkia / AFP/Getty Images
Libyan technicians work at the studio of Radio Zone in 2012, in Tripoli. The station's presenters are not afraid to speak out against militias formed in the uprising against Gadhafi, and continue to challenge the post-revolutionary government.
Many of the militia fighters who rose up and ousted former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 have refused to lay down their arms and are still challenging the post-revolutionary government.
Yet the militias are facing a challenge of their own. They now come under verbal attack on one of Libya's newest radio stations, Radio Zone.
A copy of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order requiring Verizon to give the National Security Agency information about calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.
The furor over recently exposed government surveillance programs has posed an abundance of political challenges for both President Obama and Congress. Relatively unmentioned in all of this, however, is the role of the courts — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, and how its role has changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
