After years of robust financial health, artificial knee- and hip-joint maker Stryker ( SYK) has suffered aches and pains the last couple years.

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Some 20 million Americans now walk around embedded with high-tech gear: artificial hips and knee joints, pacemakers, heart defibrillators and more.

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Its properties are so useful and unusual that it is used not only to create the base layer of skis, but also to make bulletproof jackets and artificial hip and knee joints.

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His family's insurance would pay only for a "stubby, " a wooden artificial leg without a bendable knee.

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Bionic prostheses such as its "Rheo Knee" use artificial intelligence which adapts to the wearer's gait speed and their walking environment.

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The last time Tom Huddlestone played on artificial turf he was out for six weeks as his knee blew up like a balloon.

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