Popular Science Names Top Tech Innovations of 2005

12 Grand Award Winners Take Top Honors in the 18th Annual Best of What's New Awards

NEW YORK, Nov. 7 -- Every year, the editors of Popular Science magazine review thousands of new products and technologies in pursuit of 100 breakthroughs that merit the magazine's highest honor, the Best of What's New award. Appearing in the much-anticipated December issue of Popular Science -- the most widely read issue of the year -- Best of What's New celebrates the 100 most impressive advancements in 12 categories: Automotive Tech, Aviation & Space, Cars, Computing, Engineering, Gadgets, General Innovation, Home Entertainment, Home Tech, Personal Health, Photography and Recreation.

Leading off each category is one Grand Award winner -- a product or technology that represents a significant leap over existing technologies. "The Best of What's New awards honor innovations that affect the way we live today and change the way we think about the future," says Mark Jannot, editor of Popular Science. "This year's Grand Award winners range from kid-pleasing colored bubbles to a mind-controlled prosthetic arm and a Jeep that can scoot diagonally like a beach crab."

The 2005 Grand Award winners of the Popular Science Best of What's New Awards are:

AUTOMOTIVE TECH: Hurricane (Jeep)

Each of the Jeep Hurricane concept truck's four independently sprung wheels can deflect up to 45 degrees off-center, enabling the Hurricane to move diagonally or, when coupled with the gearbox's ability to turn the wheels in opposite directions, spin in place like a hurricane.

AVIATION & SPACE: A380 (Airbus)

This enormous jet's roomy two-story cabin can pamper the 118 business- and first-class travelers while packing as many as 437 passengers in coach to hold down fares. The A380 is half as loud as the smaller Boeing 747. Bigger fans on its engine slow down noisy exhaust air without diminishing power. Another advance is reliability -- the A380 has so many backup systems that Airbus claims it will almost never have to divert for mechanical failures.

CARS: 2007 S-Class (Mercedes-Benz)

It sees at night, prevents accidents, and leaves most sports cars in the dust: The ninth-generation Mercedes-Benz S-Class 550 is more then a simple luxury upgrade. Its Brake Assist Plus system uses long- and short-range radar to anticipate and avoid collisions -- or, at the very least, lessen the severity of a crash -- by automatically braking with full force if you don't step on the brake hard enough to stop in time. The car's Night View Assist shines infrared beams down the road to illuminate hazards that are beyond the reach of the headlight. A special camera on the rearview mirror reads the infrared and shows you a clear image of what's coming on an eight-inch LCD screen in the instrument panel.

COMPUTING: Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (Toshiba)

Imagine having a 10-gigabyte hard drive in your cell phone or a terabyte of space on your laptop. Perpendicular recording, a new way of storing data on a hard disk, creates the possibility for these kinds of capacities. Expect the entire hard-drive industry to go perpendicular within a few years.

ENGINEERING: One Bryant Park (Cook + Fox Architects)

Set to rise 54 stories above Manhattan, the crystalline Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park will incorporate an unrivaled number of environment-friendly technologies. The building will supply 70 percent of its own energy with an on-site natural-gas-burning power plant. For climate control, One Bryant Park will rely on excess thermal energy from the power plant, a groundwater heat exchanger that is the first of its type, and an air-conditioning system cooled by ice made with excess power during off-peak hours. The building will even have waterless urinals and use water collected from the roof to flush toilets.

GADGETS: PlayStation Portable (Sony)

The introduction of Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) was the moment portable game consoles stopped being toys. It's smaller than a paperback, with a wide-screen display and the best-looking and most sophisticated games ever made for a portable. But it's what you can do on the PSP besides play games that really separates it from what came before. Listen to music or watch video from its Memory Stick Duo slot, surf the Web with its integrated Wi-Fi and browser, or pop in a Universal Media Disc of the latest movie.

GENERAL INNOVATION: Zubbles (Ascadia)

Zubbles are the first colored bubbles. They are nearly opaque, with a single vibrant hue. The challenge, which toy inventor Tim Kehoe worked on for more than 10 years, was to create a dye that could tint the thin wall of soap bubble but wouldn't leave a stain when the bubble broke. His solution: an entirely new dye that simply disappears.

HOME ENTERTAINMENT: Xbox 360 (Microsoft)

The first of the next-generation gaming consoles, the new Xbox 360 is not just about games -- the 360 is poised to take over the living room as well. The 360 is the first Media Center extender that receives and plays back HDTV from Media Center PCs, and it comes with a free lifetime subscription to the Xbox Live online service.

HOME TECH: TimberSIL (Timber Treatment Technologies)

Noncorrosive, fire-retardant and resistant to mold, mildew, termites and rot, TimberSIL pressure-treated lumber employs sodium silicate, a mixture of sand and soda ash, rather than green chromated copper arsenate (which leaches toxic arsenic into the ground). Bugs can look, but they can't touch.

PERSONAL HEALTH: Neuro-Controlled Bionic Arm (Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago)

For the first time ever, an amputee need only think about a movement -- picking up a glass, for instance -- and the 12-pound Neuro-Controlled Bionic Arm dutifully coordinates the task. Electrodes intercept the limb's residual nerve firings and feed them to a computer embedded in the forearm, which then commands six motors to move the device's shoulder, elbow and hand in unison. Thanks to hand sensors, the wearer can even gauge pressure and fine-tune his grip.

PHOTOGRAPHY: EasyShare-One (Kodak)

Kodak's EasyShare-One allows for wireless photo sharing -- straight from the camera. You can add settings for any hotspot or connect setup-free to T-Mobile hotspots around the world. The camera also employs a user interface that makes it easy to e-mail photos, create albums and slide shows, and upload shots to the Kodak EasyShare Gallery site. And it can wirelessly transfer photos to your PC and printer.

RECREATION: Volvo Penta Inboard Performance System (Volvo Penta)

It's faster, cleaner, quieter, more fuel-efficient and more responsive. The Volvo Penta IPS contains a pair of forward-facing, counter-rotating propellers (like those in certain prop-driven airplanes) that are placed side by side directly underneath the engine. Rather than churning through water that's been chopped up by the exposed shaft, the way most inboard motors do, the propellers pull on undisturbed water, which increases efficiency and speed by up to 20 percent.

The full list, descriptions and images of all 100 Best of What's New Winners is in the December issue of Popular Science, on newsstands November 15, 2005, and can be viewed at http://www.popsci.com/.

Popular Science(R) is published by Time4 Media(R), the world's leading publisher of enthusiast magazines. Founded in 1872, PopSci is the world's largest science and technology magazine, with a circulation of 1.45 million subscribers and a readership of more than six million people. Time4 Media(R) is a subsidiary of Time Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. .