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The digestive tract can be inhospitable terrain to examine. Some of its twists and turns are difficult to reach with a scope, and most scope procedures require patients to undergo sedation or anesthesia. One branch of science is seeking to overcome these obstacles with vitamin-size capsules that can be swallowed and sent through the gut to capture images, and perhaps someday perform basic tasks such as biopsies or drug injection. (Whalen, 2/29)

Meet the Tugs — a team of 27 robots now zooming around the hallways of the new University of California-San Francisco hospital at Mission Bay. They look a bit like R2D2, dragging a platform around behind them. Instead of drones, think of them more as little flatbed trucks, ferrying carts of stuff around the vast hospital complex — food, linens, medications, medical waste and garbage. And they do it more efficiently than humans. (Gold, 3/1)