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BOSTON (AP) Some of the most advanced medical tools that exist are now being deployed to help America's new veterans and wounded troops.

An Associated Press review of progress from a government-funded effort found surprising feats of surgery and bioengineering.

In Boston, scientists grew human ears in the lab and hope to test them on disfigured troops in about a year. In Pittsburgh, doctors used pig tissue to help regrow part of a thigh muscle that a Marine lost to a bomb. In San Antonio and other cities, doctors are testing sprayed-on skin cells and lab-made sheets of skin to heal burns and other wounds.

Taxpayers funded much of this work, through the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a coalition of top universities and medical centers.

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This story is the latest installment in a joint initiative by The Associated Press and Associated Press Media Editors taking a closer look at this latest generation of war veterans as they return to civilian life, and the effect this is having on them, their families and American society.