You may recall the scene in The Empire Strikes Back (still my favorite Star Wars film), where Luke lost part of his arm in a duel with Darth Vader -- only to have it later replaced with a cool prosthetic. (Left, photo of the movie prop at a Star Wars show in Portland, OR, by The Kozy Shack via Flickr.com) 

Ah, Hollywood.

But you may not know that the federal government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (aka DARPA) has been funding the real-life development of next-generation prosthetics that one day will make the Luke arm a reality.

Ah, DARPA.

What's cool about this project is that part of it is being developed right here in Maryland, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel (of course it is.)

An article today in TechNewsWorld recaps the progress of the project, quoting Stuart Harshbarger, biomedicine team leader at Hopkins's APL and project manager for the DARPA effort.