Frank Ursetta holds a portion of a bionic limb being developed by the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. (WTTW News)
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For years, researchers say there was very little advancement in the field. But in recent decades, prosthetic limbs have come a long way. And at the multidisciplinary Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in downtown Chicago, the next generation of bionic prosthetics are being developed.

A rendering of a planned inclusive playground to be built at the east end of Midway Plaisance in Hyde Park. (Chicago Park District)
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Though lauded as “groundbreaking” by the Park District, the playground has met with significant opposition from neighbors, who have faulted the choice of the Plaisance's east end as too dangerous for a play space.

(Adler Planetarium / Facebook)

On Wednesday, the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners approved an admission fee increase that will take effect April 1.

Hordes of female periodical cicadas will be laying their eggs in small tree branches. (Armed Forces Pest Management Board / Flickr Creative Commons)

Young trees could be vulnerable to damage from the emergence of millions of periodical cicadas in Illinois this spring. Here are tips on how to protect your trees.

(WTTW News)
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The parks advocacy group said it isn’t chasing the Bears out of Chicago, but wants an “open, clear and free discourse driven by the public instead of private interests.”

(National Park Service / Flickr Creative Commons)

If you've been sleeping on the North American total solar eclipse of 2024, it's time to start paying attention. The big event — on April 8 — is fast approaching and folks who haven't prepared could find themselves left out in the dark.

(WTTW News)

The construction is part of the second phase of a three-year, $150 million project to rehab the I-90/I-94 Kennedy Expressway from the I-94 Edens Expressway junction to Ohio Street.

(Miriam Alonso / Pexels)

Daylight saving time officially arrives at 2 a.m. Sunday.

Milkweed stems stand tall in the Field Museum's Rice Native Gardens. In the past, gardeners have been threatened with fines when native plants were mistaken for weeds. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

More than two years after Chicago's City Council passed an ordinance creating a Native and Pollinator Garden Registry, an advisory board has finally been appointed to oversee the operation.

The tag on a Chicago resident’s new parkway tree clearly shows the species as “Aristocrat” pear, one of some two dozen cultivars of the invasive callery pear tree. (Courtesy of Eliza Rohr)

Just because a species is known to be invasive doesn’t mean it’s officially regulated as such. One Chicagoan learned that lesson the hard way.

Rae-Ann Eifert, a lake monitor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, braved sub-freezing temperatures to gather buckets of water for testing off a Lake Michigan breakwater in Racine, Wis., on Feb. 28, 2024, as part of an effort across the Great Lakes to understand the effects of an iceless winter. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford)

As climate change accelerates, scientists are scrambling to understand how iceless winters could affect the world's largest freshwater system.

Four active eagle nests being monitored this winter in the Forest Preserve District of Will County. (Forest Preserve District of Will County / Chad Merda)

It's the first time four active nests have all been located on Will County forest preserve property.

Lurie Children's Hospital logo is seen at the hospital, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, in Skokie, Ill. Doctors and nurses at the premier Chicago children's hospital can again access patients' electronic medical records, more than a month after a cyberattack forced Lurie Children's Hospital to take its networks offline. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

Officials had previously blamed the attack on a “known criminal threat actor” and said the hospital shut down its own systems for phone, email and medical records once the breach was discovered on Jan. 31.

Demolition began Monday, March 4, 2024, on an illegal building in Humboldt Park that has been at the center of controversy since 2022, when it began rising on park grounds with no prior notice to the community. (WTTW News)

The illegal building, intended as an archive for the neighboring landmarked National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, has been at the center of controversy since 2022.

Graphic that says “Chicago's Skyscrapers.” (WTTW News)

Chicago is a city of firsts — everything from the first Ferris wheel to the first brownie and the world’s very first skyscraper. WTTW News explains.

A non-native subspecies of common reed is an invasive bully (l), crowding out its native counterpart in wetlands. (Credits: Caleb Slemmons, National Ecological Observatory Network, Bugwood.org (l); Rob Rutledge, Sault College, Bugwood.org)

For the last in our series on invasive species that can be mistaken for natives, here’s one of the trickiest: phragmites, also known as common reed.