Injured bald eagle gets new 3-D printed beak

Here's a great story of technological ingenuity (original link here):

Sometime in 2005, Beauty the bald eagle was shot in the face by a poacher, which damaged her beak badly enough that she couldn’t eat on her own. Animal rescue workers found her before she starved to death, and volunteers at the nonprofit group Birds of Prey Northwest nursed her back to health via tube-feeding and, later, hand-feeding with forceps. But it became increasingly clear that her beak was never going to grow back — meaning that Beauty would never be able to feed herself. She was on track to be euthanized.

But raptor specialist Jane Fink Cantwell, who dresses like Indiana Jones, refused to take “dead bald eagle” for an answer. She joined forces with mechanical engineer Nate Calvin of Kinetic Engineering Group, and together with other scientists, engineers, and even a dentist, they designed a nylon polymer beak that would perfectly replace Beauty’s lost upper mandible.

Calvin developed the new beak using a 3-D modeling program, then used a 3-D printer to fabricate it. After an arduous procedure to attach her prosthetic, Beauty was able to eat, drink, and preen herself on her own.

Beauty’s new beak isn’t secure enough for her to return to the wild, so Cantwell is still caring for her. But she’s a lot more self-sufficient than she was — and her case may help pave the way for making better prosthetics for wildlife in the future.

HALLELUJAH! The financial aid has gone through!

I emailed Fiona's college last night, giving a progress report on the multiple steps that Rob and I had been doing to try to get the documentation they required to process her financial aid, and how we have been thwarted, time and time again. I got this reply back:

It sounds like you are ready to throw in the towel on this process! Thanks for hanging in there. You clearly have demonstrated diligence on working toward getting this resolved, so I have taken a leap of faith and I have made changes to Fiona's FASFA with the data I have gotten from your family thus far. For brevity, stop making changes to her FAFSA. Follow up with me in 30 days to make sure we have the amended info from your family and tax return transcript from Fiona.

Since I made the changes to Fiona's FASFA today, you can consider her aid to be finalized. For record keeping (and future audits) I do need the two documents above. But since I have released Fiona's aid with the forms, I need to trust you will help me resolve this by following up with me in a month. The forms we are waiting on will not result in a change in her aid, they will simply be saved as documentation.

She went on to explain that given the documentation we provided for the Special Circumstances form, we will be getting several additional grants and loans. The e-mail brought tears of relief to my eyes. I have been so frustrated and so worried. But Fiona gets to stay in college for another year, yay!