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vented by University of Pennsylvania engineering students can help its wearer carry an additional 40 pounds.
• Titan Arm looks and sounds like part of a superhero's costume. But its creators say it's designed for ordinary people -- those who need either physical rehabilitation or a little extra muscle for their job.
• In technical terms, the apparatus is an untethered, upper-body exoskeleton; to the layman, it's essentially a battery-powered arm brace attached to a backpack. Either way, Titan Arm's cost-efficient design has won the team accolades and at least $75,000 in prize money.
• "They built something that people can relate to," said Robert Carpick, chairman of Penn's mechanical engineering department. "And of course it appeals clearly to what we've all seen in so many science-fiction movies of superhuman strength being endowed by an exoskeleton."
• The project builds on existing studies of such body equipment, sometimes called "wearable robots." Research companies have built lower-body exoskeletons that help paralyzed people walk, though current models aren't approved for retail and can cost $50,000 to $100,000.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- When it comes to climate change, local officials have a message for Washington: Lead or get out of the way.
• Local governments have long acted as first responders in emergencies and now are working to plan for sea level rise, floods, hurricanes and other extreme events associated with climate change.
• As a presidential task force prepares for its first meeting Tuesday, local officials say they want and need federal support, but they worry that congressional gridlock and balky bureaucratic rules too often get in the way. Some say Washington needs to reconsider national policies that encourage people to build in beautiful but vulnerable areas.
• "The first thing the feds should do is stop making things worse," said Boulder, Colo., Mayor Matthew Appelbaum. Specifically, by subsidizing flood insurance in low-lying areas and paying billions to fight wildfires that destroy property near national forests, the federal government is encouraging development "in all the wrong places," Appelbaum said at a recent forum on the impacts of climate change.

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