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Iowa college students help boy without most of arm ride bike

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May 1st, 2017 by Ric Hanson

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – University of Iowa biomedical engineering students have helped an 8-year-old boy who was born without most of his right arm to ride a bike. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that Jonny Cole was having difficulty learning to ride because neither he nor his father, Douglas Cole, could figure out how to keep him balanced long enough to move a bike forward.

Douglas, a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University of Iowa, asked the university’s machine shop last summer to help him design and 3-D print an adaptive device that would help Jonny ride. They referred him to the biomedical engineering program, where four students decided to help.

Alicia Truka says the group developed a “one-jointed arm for his bike.” The handlebar attachment helps him balance and steer.