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GAUTIER, Miss. (WLOX) – Claiming a world record is never easy, but one man in Gautier has had a longer road to a record than most.

Guinness World Record holders are often known for accomplishing great or unique feats. Walter Lewis in Gautier holds the Guinness World Record for being the longest living quadriplegic.

A team of Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers and neurosurgeons has received $13.48 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop implantable ultrasound and other devices that could revolutionize care for people suffering from spinal cord injuries. The results could benefit thousands of U.S. service members and civilians who sustain spinal cord injuries every year.

The electronic device will be the size and flexibility of a small Band-Aid and will use high-resolution ultrasound technology, as well as miniaturized electrodes, to help doctors monitor and treat the changes in blood flow and prevent tissue death that occur immediately after a traumatic injury to the spinal cord.

“Salamanders are unique because they are one of the only tetrapods able to regrow spinal cords with full functionality,” says Auke Ijspeert, the head of EPFL’s Biorobotics Laboratory. After an injury, these amphibians are able to “magically” regrow their spinal cords and regain locomotion.

A team of scientists led by Ijspeert along with András Simon, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and Dimitri Ryczko, an assistant professor at the Université de Sherbrooke’s laboratory of motor control in Canada, is looking into exactly how the process works through a project that has just received a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council.

John Morris calls himself an “aviation geek.” He’s a frequent flyer who, in his power wheelchair, has traveled to 46 countries. His goal is to visit every country.

“I love air travel,” he says. From takeoff and to the way the engines cut off right before touchdown, “that joy that I get from that is just so incredible.”

Life didn’t play out the way it was supposed to for Travis Roy. That didn’t stop him from making his time count.

Roy, a standout hockey player who grew up in Yarmouth, was just 11 seconds into a promising college hockey career when he crashed into the boards as a freshman at Boston University in 1995. He injured his spinal cord and was paralyized. His life changed in an instant, but he would spend the next 25 years inspiring and helping others.

Ten years after he suffered a spinal cord injury during a football game at MetLife Stadium that left him paralyzed, Eric LeGrand continues to serve as an inspiration at Rutgers, around the state and beyond.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the difference he has made is his number 52 prominently displayed atop SHI Stadium. Retired jersey numbers are rare in college football due to roster sizes that exceed their availability.

CORD principal investigators Dr. Christopher West and Dr. Brian Kwon and their research teams have published a study that challenges the current standard for managing blood pressure in people with spinal cord injury (SCI).

The findings could lead to a change in the way newly injured patients have their blood pressure managed, potentially improving their chances of retaining more function in the long term.

One of the reasons people rarely recover from spinal cord injury is the scar tissue that develops, preventing nerve cells from reconnecting. But a new study from Zhigang He, PhD, of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, demonstrated a way to minimize scar cell formation in adult mice after a spinal cord injury. The study, published in Nature, offers insights for new approaches to treating spinal cord injuries.