Time Dergisi yılın en iyi 50 icadını seçti. Dergiye göre, 2008′in en iyi icadı, bu yıl perakende olarak satışa sunulan pratik DNA testi. 399 dolara satın alınabilen paket sayesinde herkes ev ortamında analiz yaparak, genetik olarak 90 hastalık ve rahatsızlığa yakalanma riskini öğrenebiliyor. Test paketi, 600 bin gen kombinasyonunu tanıyıp yorumlayarak, kişinin Alzheimer’a yakalanma ihtimalinden, kel kalma veya kör olma riskine dek birçok konuda tıbbi olasılık bilgisi veriyor. “23andMe” adlı testi pazarlayan firmanın sahibi, Google’ın kurucularından Sergey Brin’in eşi Anne Wojcicki.

İlginç olan bu listede yer alan buluşlardan tam bir düzinesinin temiz ve yeşil teknolojiler olması. Finansal krizin 2009′a dair beklentileri olumsuza çevirdiği bu günlerde, bu teknolojilerden bazıları devrim yaratacak potansiyeli içlerinde barındırıyor. İyimser olmak için bu bile yeterli bir neden.

Dergiye göre birinci sırada DNA testi yapan özel şirketler, ikinci sırada Tesla’nın “Roadster” adlı elektrikli otomobili, üçüncü sırada ise uzay sondası yer alıyor. Listede yer alan bazı önemli buluşlar şöyle…

Evde DNA Testi

ABD’de bu sene kurulan “23andMe” ve benzeri şirketlerin sattığı kitle 399 dolar karşılığında kendi kendinize DNA testi yapabiliyorsunuz. İnternette ilk DNA analizi sunan web sitesi olan 23andMe’ye parayı ödedikten sonra size gönderilen kaba salyanızı doldurarak geri postalıyorsunuz. 4-8 hafta içinde DNA haritası oluşturuluyor. Böylece genetik sırlarınız hakkında bilgi ediniyorsunuz.

Tesla Roadster Elektrikli Otomobil

Çevreye zarar vermeyen, temiz ve sessiz çalışan elektrikli otomobiller daha önce de yapılmıştı, ancak bugüne dek üretilen elektrikli otomobillerin hiçbiri Tesla Roadster kadar havalı olmamıştı. ABD’de 100 bin dolara satılan otomobil, saatte 200 kilometre hız yapıyor.

Uzay Sondası (Iro)

NASA’nın 2009 Şubat’ında uzaya fırlatmayı tasarladığı insansız uzay sondası (Iro), her zaman incelenen ısı ve yoğunluk gibi değerlerin yanı sıra donmuş su kaynaklarının işaretini arayacak.

Büyük Hadron Çarpıştırıcısı

Fransa-İsviçre sınırında, yerin 100 metre altında 27 kilometrelik dairevi bir tünel olarak inşa edilen, dünyanın en büyük parçacık hızlandırıcısı “Büyük Hadron Çarpıştırıcısı”yla eylülde yapılan deneyin ilk aşaması başarıyla tamamlanmıştı. 13.7 milyar yıl önce meydana geldiği düşünülen Büyük Patlama’dan hemen sonraki kâinatın başlangıç şartlarını oluşturarak, maddenin sır perdesini aralayabilmeyi amaçlayan deneye 10 gün kadar devam etmişti.

Atlas Deneyi

Listede, ünlü filmleri ve dizileri yayınlayan “hulu.com” adlı internet sitesini, Büyük Hadron Çarpıştırıcısı, Kıyamet Ambarı, melez otomobil Chevy Volt, “kurşun vuran kurşun,” gezegenler arası internet bağlantısı ve dünyanın en hızlı bilgisayarı “IBM Roadrunner” izliyor.

İlk 50′deki diğer icatlardan “Memristo,” elektrik barındırmasa da hafızasını koruyan yeni bir elektronik devre türü. Bu devre sayesinde, hiç bekleme süresi olmadan anında çalışmaya hazır hale gelen bilgisayarlar üretilebilecek. Listedeki İngiliz yapımı biyonik el, kazazedelerin yeni umudu. Kendi etrafında 360 derece dönebilen ilk gökdelen olan Moskova’daki Dynamic Tower ise, listenin mimari unsuru. TIME, ayrıca, görünmezlik pelerini, duygularını yüz ifadeleriyle ifade edebilen “sosyal robot” Nexi ve bitkiler için güneş kremi gibi ilginç icatlara da listede yer verdi.

Time’ın Listesinde Yer Alan Diğer Teknolojiler

Chevy Volt

Elektrikli arabaların benzinlilerin yerini alması için gerekli olan kritik adım, bu araçların şarj olduktan sonra gidebilecekleri mesafenin yani menzillerinin arttırılması. General Motors’un geliştirdiği elektrikli Chevy Volt’da bu boşluğu doldurmak için düşünülmüş.

Yeşil Petrol Alternatifi

Biyokütleden karbon-nötr petrol alternatifi yaratabilme amacıyla ortaya çıkan Sapphire Energy, Aquaflow Bionomic, Live Fuels, Solix Biofuels gibi birçok girişim var. Bunların yanında Dow Chemical ve Boeing gibi devler de bu konuya eğilmeye başladılar.

Sentetik Organizma

Girişimci Craig Venter’ın fikri, siparişe göre sentetik olarak üretilecek canlılarla ilaç ve enerji sektörlerinde devrim yaratmak. Şirketi Synthetic Genomics, şu an üzerinde çalıştıkları mikroorganizmanın gelecek yıl hazır olacağını ve karbon dioksitten yakıt üreteceğini söylüyor.

İnce-film Güneş Panelleri

Nanosolar firması baskı tekniğiyle üretecekleri ucuz güneş panelleri ile medyada büyük bir ilgi topladı. Xunlight, HelioVolt, OptiSolar, Innovalight gibi yeni girişimler ve Sharp, LG, Intel gibi sektörün eski oyuncuları da aynı hedefe doğru ilerliyor.

Einstein’ın Buzdolabı

Oxford Üniversitesi’nden bilim adamları Einstein’ın patentini 1930 yılında aldığı az enerji tüketen bir buzdolabı tasarımını ortaya çıkardılar. Çevreye zararlı freon gazı yerine amonyak, bütan ve su kullanan, ayrıca daha az enerji harcayan bu buzdolabı, araştırmacılara göre güncellenirse kullanılabilir.

Biyomekanik Enerji Toplayıcı

Günlük yaşamımızda yaptığımız her haraket aslında enerji açığa çıkarıyor. M2E firması bu kinetik enerjiyi elektrik enerjisine dönüştürüp askeri aletleri ve hatta cep telefonlarını şarj edecek bir teknoloji üzerinde çalışıyor.

Uçan Rüzgar Türbini

Rüzgarın taşıdığı enerji hızının kübü ile doğru orantılıdır. Bu da demek oluyor ki, hızlı rüzgarlar çok çok daha fazla enerji potansiyeline sahip. Bu tür rüzgarların çoğu dikey türbinlerin erişim yüksekliğinden de yukarıda olduğu için Makani Power ve WindLift gibi firmalar enerji elde etmek için uçan türbinler geliştiriyorlar.

Duman Yiyen Çimento

Italcementi firmasının geliştirdiği TX Active adlı çimento duman içindeki parçacıkları tutup havayı temizleme özelliğine sahip. Hycrete ve Arxx gibi daha temiz ve çevreci çimento geliştirlen yeni firmalar da endüstrinin büyük oyuncularını arkalarına almayı başarmış durumda.

Peraves MonoTracer

BMW motoru ve Azınlık Raporu filminden fırlamış tasarımı ile Peraves MonoTracer bir otomobil-motorsiklet kırması. Onu özel yapan şey ise yakıt ekonomisi; bir litre yakıt ile 28 kilometre gidebiliyor.

Aptera Elektrikli Otomobil

Uzay-çağı tasarımı kimilerine itici gelse de bütünüyle elektrikle çalışan üç tekerlekli Aptera Google’ın desteğini arkasına almış durumda.

Google’ın Yüzen Veri Merkezi

Bir buluş olmasa da Google’dan harika bir fikir. Google’ın yakın zamanda patentini aldığı “su temelli veri merkezi” bir platform üzerinde yüzecek, elektriğini denizden elde edecek ve soğutma için deniz suyunu kullanacak.

Ayrıca Apple firmasının satışa çıkarılan her ülkede izdiham yaratan cep telefonu iPhone Time okuyucuları tarafından da yılın en iyisi seçildi. Amerikan Time dergisi son sayısında yılın en büyük icadı olarak son birkaç gündür satışa sunulduğu her ülkede adeta izdiham yaratan Apple firmasının yeni cep telefonu iPhone’u seçti. Dergi iPhone’u seçme gerekçesini güzel görünümü dokunmatik ekranının hassaslığı bilgi çağı için bir elektronik platform oluşturmasını gösterdi. Time okuyucularının oylarıyla oluşturduğu listede ilk sırada yer alan ve 499 dolar fiyatla satışa sunulan iPhone’u Samsung firmasının ürettiği P2 mp3 çalar ve video oynatıcı Nikon’un CoolPix S51C fotoğraf makinesi Wow Wees firmasının ürettiği oyuncak sinek ve Sony’nin HDR-CX7 el kamerası izliyor.

Ve Orijinal Diliyle Time’daki İlk 25…

1. The Retail DNA Test

Before meeting with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of a consumer gene-testing service called 23andMe, I know just three things about her: she’s pregnant, she’s married to Google’s Sergey Brin, and she went to Yale. But after an hour chatting with her in the small office she shares with co-founder Linda Avey at 23andMe’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., I know some things no Internet search could reveal: coffee makes her giddy, she has a fondness for sequined shoes and fresh-baked bread, and her unborn son has a 50% chance of inheriting a high risk for Parkinson’s disease.

Learning and sharing your genetic secrets are at the heart of 23andMe’s controversial new service — a $399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness. Although 23andMe isn’t the only company selling DNA tests to the public, it does the best job of making them accessible and affordable. The 600,000 genetic markers that 23andMe identifies and interprets for each customer are “the digital manifestation of you,” says Wojcicki (pronounced Wo-jis-key), 35, who majored in biology and was previously a health-care investor. “It’s all this information beyond what you can see in the mirror.”

We are at the beginning of a personal-genomics revolution that will transform not only how we take care of ourselves but also what we mean by personal information. In the past, only élite researchers had access to their genetic fingerprints, but now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample. Not everything about how this information will be used is clear yet — 23andMe has stirred up debate about issues ranging from how meaningful the results are to how to prevent genetic discrimination — but the curtain has been pulled back, and it can never be closed again. And so for pioneering retail genomics, 23andMe’s DNA-testing service is Time’s 2008 Invention of the Year.

The 1997 film Gattaca depicted it as a futuristic nightmare, but human-genotyping has emerged instead as both a real business and a status symbol. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein says he is backing 23andMe not for its cinematic possibilities but because “I think it is a good investment. This is strictly medical and business-like.” Google has chipped in almost half the $8.9 million in funding raised by the firm, which counts Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch and Ivanka Trump among its clients.

Weinstein isn’t saying what his test told him, but Wojcicki and her famous husband are perfectly willing to discuss their own genetic flaws. Most worrisome is a rare mutation that gives Brin an estimated 20% to 80% chance of getting Parkinson’s disease. There’s a 50% chance that the couple’s child, due later this year, will inherit that same gene. “I don’t find this embarrassing in any way,” says Brin, who blogged about it in September. “I felt it was a lot of work and impractical to keep it secret, and I think in 10 years it will be commonplace to learn about your genome.”

And yet while Wojcicki and Brin aren’t worried about genetic privacy, others are. In May, President George W. Bush signed a bill that makes it illegal for employers and insurers to discriminate on the basis of genetic information. California and New York tried to block the tests on the grounds that they were not properly licensed, but have so far been unsuccessful. Others worry about how sharing one’s genetic data might affect close relatives who would prefer not to let a family history of schizophrenia or Lou Gehrig’s disease become public. And what if a potential mate demands to see your genome before getting serious? Such hypotheticals are endless. And some researchers argue that the tests are flawed. “The uncertainty is too great,” says Dr. Muin Khoury, director of the National Office of Public Health Genomics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who argues that it is wrong to charge people for access to such preliminary and incomplete data. Many diseases stem from several different genes and are triggered by environmental factors. Since less than a tenth of our 20,000 genes have been correlated with any condition, it’s impossible to nail down exactly what component is genetic. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” says Dr. Alan Guttmacher of the National Institutes of Health.

23andMe is unfazed by its detractors. “It’s somewhat paternalistic to say people shouldn’t get these tests because ‘we don’t want people to misunderstand or get upset,’” says board member Esther Dyson. There can be a psychological upside too: some people decide to lead healthier lifestyles. Brin is currently funding Parkinson’s research. And not all customers’ results are as troubling as his. Nate Guy, 19, of Warrenton, Va., was relieved that though his uncle had died of prostate cancer, his own risk for the disease was about average. He even posted a video about it on YouTube. And unflattering findings can have a silver lining. “Now I have an excuse for not remembering things, because my memory is probably genetically flawed,” Guy says.

Wojcicki and Avey see themselves not just as businesswomen but also as social entrepreneurs. With their customers’ consent, they plan to amass everyone’s genetic footprint in a giant database that can be mined for clues to which mutations make us susceptible to specific diseases and which drugs people are more likely to respond to. “You’re donating your genetic information,” says Wojcicki. “We could make great discoveries if we just had more information. We all carry this information, and if we bring it together and democratize it, we could really change health care.”

2. The Tesla Roadster

Electric cars were always environmentally friendly, quiet, clean — but definitely not sexy. The Tesla Roadster has changed all that. A battery-powered sports car that sells for $100,000 and has a top speed of 125 m.p.h. (200 km/h), the Roadster has excited the clean-tech crowd since it was announced in 2003. Celebrities like George Clooney joined a long waiting list for the Roadster; magazines like Wired drooled over it. After years of setbacks and shake-ups, the first Tesla Roadsters were delivered to customers this year. Reviews have been ecstatic, but Tesla Motors has been hit hard by the financial crisis. Plans to develop an affordable electric sedan have been put on hold, and Tesla is laying off employees. But even if the Roadster turns out to be a one-hit wonder, it’s been a hell of an (electric) ride.

3. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

It may have been a long time since the U.S. built the world’s best cars, but nobody can touch us when it comes to spacecraft. nasa is about to prove that again with the planned launch in February 2009 of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (lro). Our first unmanned moonship in 11 years, the lro will study the things lunar orbiters always study — gravity, temperature — but it will also look for signs of water ice, a vital resource for any future lunar base, and compile detailed 3-D lunar maps, including all six Apollo landing sites. Wingnuts, be warned: yes, we really went there.

4. Hulu.com

When cable eventually dies, websites like Hulu will be held responsible. Unlike YouTube and other amateur-video-upload sites, Hulu is a hub for network TV shows and movies: Hulu offers shows from nbc, Fox, pbs and other channels, including free full episodes of SNL, The Daily Show, The Office and other hits the TiVo-less masses often miss, plus films like Ghostbusters, The Fifth Element and Lost in Translation. Created as a network-approved alternative to YouTube’s grab bag, Hulu was at first roundly mocked as a ham-fisted corporate knockoff of the grass-roots glory that is YouTube. (It was also mocked for its weird name.) Instead it proved that suits can play in the Internet video space too and that studio content can coexist online with the user-generated kind. In doing so, it delivered the final blow that untethered TV from that box in your living room.

5. The Large Hadron Collider

If someone invented a practical 200-m.p.g. automobile and that automobile got a flat tire, nobody would claim that the car itself was a failure. The same applies to the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest particle accelerator, which went online in September, ran for 10 days and then had to shut down at least until next spring because of an overheated wire. The mammoth machine will send protons wheeling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, then smash them together at 6,000 times a second to try to answer such deep questions as why mass exists and whether the universe has extra dimensions. If it takes a few extra months to find out, so what?

6. The Global Seed Vault

Superman had it right: if you want to keep something safe, build a mountain fortress above the Arctic Circle. That’s the thinking — more or less — behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost every nation keeps collections of native seeds so local crops can be replanted in case of an agricultural disaster. The Global Seed Vault, opened this year on the far-northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is a backup for the backups. It’s badly needed — as many as half the seed banks in developing countries are at risk from natural disasters or general instability. The vault can hold up to 4.5 million samples, which will be kept dry at about 0°F (-18°C). Even if the facility loses power, the Arctic climate should keep the seeds viable for thousands of years. Let’s just hope we still like corn then.

7. The Chevy Volt

No-emission electric motors — which began the automobile revolution — are the technology of tomorrow for cars. But today’s batteries can’t support the typical driving experience. Chevy’s Volt is a nice compromise. The sedan has an electric motor with a battery that can provide up to 40 miles (about 65 km) of range on a single charge. A gas engine kicks in to recharge the battery while you’re driving. Since nearly 80% of us drive less than 40 miles a day, that means that unlike the Prius, the Volt could get drivers off gas altogether. The best of both worlds lands by the end of 2010.

8. Bullets That Shoot Bullets

Think of the Army’s new Active Protection System (APS) as Star Wars for soldiers, designed to protect them from rocket-propelled grenades and other short-range threats. Raytheon’s APS will automatically detect an incoming round and then launch a missile to destroy it, all within a split second. If it works, future Army vehicles will be able to head into combat with less armor.

9. The Orbital Internet

In space, no one can hear you scream. But you will be able to send e-mail, thanks to a new protocol being developed for use there. It’s hard to maintain a stable connection in orbit, so the interplanetary Internet will have to be especially tolerant of delays and disruptions. In September, a satellite used the new protocol to relay an image of the Cape of Good Hope back to Earth.

10. The World’s Fastest Computer

On May 26, at 3:30 in the morning, a $133 million supercomputer nicknamed Roadrunner broke the long-sought-after petaflop barrier: 1 quadrillion calculations per second. Built by IBM for Los Alamos National Laboratory, Roadrunner will be used primarily to simulate the effects of aging on nuclear weapons. Next up: the exaflop barrier.

11. Green Crude

If it weren’t for that pesky climate-change problem, petroleum would remain a great source of power. It’s energy-dense, portable and (relatively) cheap. Remove the carbon and it would be perfect — which is essentially what researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) have been trying to do. Milton Sommerfeld and Qiang Hu have been working on raising algae to turn into a biofuel that would be virtually identical to gasoline. The fuel would actually be carbon-neutral, because algae consume carbon dioxide as they grow. Unlike traditional corn or sugarcane — two plants used for most ethanol biofuels today — algae can’t be eaten, so using it for fuel doesn’t cut into food supplies. ASU isn’t alone. Start-ups like Sapphire Energy in San Diego are vying to bring the fuel to market — and give oil back its good name.

12. Housing Funds

Want to bet against your house? It’s been possible ever since the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched house-price futures and options in 2006. But futures and options aren’t investment products for the masses. So MacroMarkets, co-founded by economist Robert Shiller, plans this month to offer the first exchange-traded funds — bought and sold like stocks — that will allow buyers to bet on whether house prices will rise or fall.

13. The Memristor

Scientists have known it was possible for 37 years, but it took them that long to actually make a memristor, a new kind of circuit that remembers its history even when turned off. One possible application: a computer that flicks on instantly, like a lightbulb, with no boot-up required.

14. The Bionic Hand

The world’s first commercially available bionic hand took many hands many years to develop. Created by Touch Bionics, it’s multi-articulating, meaning each finger has its own motor. Artificial hands are often hooklike, limited to simple open and close gestures, but the iLimb has more subtle capabilities, like a credit-card grip for grasping narrow objects. It also has a power hold for larger things like coffee mugs. Research on the device began in the United Kingdom’s national health system back in the 1960s. Now hundreds of people around the world are using it. Next up for Touch Bionics? A prosthetic wrist unit, prosthetic fingers and a full bionic arm.

15. The Direct-to-Web Supervillain Musical

Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) is just your average lovelorn bad guy trying to make it big — he’s got some dubious weapons, a secret hideout, a square-jawed nemesis (Nathan Fillion) and a video blog. Oh, and he sings. Think The Diaries of Lex Luthor as told by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon conceived and produced the online video Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog during the writers’ strike. It’s hard to imagine a studio green-lighting an idea as weird and ostensibly uncommercial as a 43-min., three-part online supervillain musical. But in a medium that rewards the unconventional — the Web — Dr. Horrible was a hit. After its July debut, the series reached No. 1 on iTunes’ video chart, with 2.2 million downloads a week. Now there’s a sound track, Web comics and a dvd on the way. Cue the maniacal laughter.

16. The Dynamic Tower

Each of the 80 floors in the world’s first moving skyscraper — with offices and a hotel, topped by apartments — will rotate 360 degrees, all at different speeds. Designed by Italian architect David Fisher and located in Dubai (another is planned for Moscow), the prefab, wind-powered tower will cost an estimated $700 million. The residences will sell for $3.7 million to $36 million. The building should be completed in 2010.

17. The Mobile, Dexterous, Social Robot

Nexi is the first of a new class of robot being developed at MIT’s Media Lab and referred to as MDS, which stands for mobile, dexterous, social. Nexi can, or eventually will be able to, move around on wheels (hence mobile), and it can pick up objects (dexterous). But its most striking feature is its humanlike, albeit creepy, face, which can express a startling range of emotions (social).

18. The New Mars Rover

The last two rovers the U.S. sent to Mars are still running more than four years later. The next one, the Mars Science Laboratory (most boring rover name ever!), is even tougher. Launching in 2009, it is 9 ft. (2.7 m) long, runs on a chunk of plutonium and carries 176 lb. (80 kg) of scientific instruments, including a neutron gun — for firing at the ground to detect permafrost, not at hostile Martians.

19. Montreal’s Public Bike System

When lots of people use a communal resource — like, say, a cheap public bicycle-rental program — they tend to abuse it. So when the city of Montreal built its Public Bike System, nicknamed Bixi, the designers packed in all the technology they could find, in a desperate attempt to out-engineer human iniquity. The modular bike-rack stations are Web-enabled and solar-powered. The bicycles are designed with tons of sealed components to resist the savage beatings they will undoubtedly receive, and they’re equipped with RFID tags so they’re easily trackable. Too bad they can’t redesign the riders too.

20. The Everything Game

It’s blasphemy, brilliance or both to take the entire evolution of a species — from a single-celled animalcule in a drop of water to a space-faring, galaxy-exploring sentient being — and turn it into a video game. But that’s exactly what Will Wright has done. Wright is the man who created The Sims, a game about everyday life in suburbia, but apparently he found the vast panorama of human experience too confining, because he then spent seven years creating Spore, in which players design their own life-form and then manage every aspect of its progress through the centuries, from savagery to civilization.

21. The Synthetic Organism

Man makes life! Or almost. J. Craig Venter, co-cartographer of the human genome, managed another genetic first when he pieced together de novo the genome of a living organism from a batch of man-made compounds. Granted, he chose the organism with one of the smallest genomes on the planet, but splicing together its more than 582,000 base pairs was no easy feat. Venter has yet to boot up his product in a cell to prove that it truly is alive, but that should come, he predicts, within the year. Once that happens, he believes it will be possible to mix and match genomes to generate an endless list of organisms that can perform all sorts of molecular magic, from turning sugar into fuel or digesting oil spills in oceans to even churning out cures for disease. Who needs evolution?

22. The Shadowless Skyscraper

Very tall buildings are a tough sell in Paris. The Parisians don’t want their lovely low-rise city looking too much like Houston. So Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron knew they’d have to win over skeptical neighbors to get their 50-story tower built. Le Project Triangle, a combination office/hotel, is the first skyscraper to be approved since Paris lifted a 31-year-old ban on high-rise construction in the city center. Using computer modeling, the designers of Beijing’s “bird’s nest” Olympic stadium came up with a building almost as startling: a slender glass-and-steel triangle, like a shark fin, that they say won’t cast shadows on surrounding streets. The pyramid is one of history’s oldest building shapes, but a slim triangle? That’s new. Is it the shape of things to come?

23. The Branded Candidate

Barack Obama hat: $15. Barack Obama special-edition Beyoncé T shirt: $60. Devising a system to make and sell your own swag and garner millions in profits, not to mention the phone numbers and addresses of hundreds of thousands of potential volunteers? Priceless.

24. Bionic Contacts

The University of Washington’s Babak Parviz has created a prototype “bionic” contact lens that creates a display over the wearer’s visual field, so images, maps, data, etc., appear to float in midair. The lens works using tiny LEDs, which are powered by solar cells, and a radio-frequency receiver.

25. Thin-Film Solar Panels

There are countless ways to manufacture solar panels, but there’s only one metric that counts: how the cost of solar power compares with that of electricity from fossil fuels. Until energy from the sun can beat energy from coal at the marketplace, solar will remain a niche player, adorning the rooftops of those who care more for their green reputation than for their bottom lines. Enter Nanosolar, a San Jose-based start-up that manufactures thin-film solar panels. Unlike the bulky silicon panels that dominate the solar market, Nanosolar thin-film technology is light and extremely cheap to make. The key is the manufacturing process: while silicon panels need to be baked in batches, Nanosolar’s thin-film panels roll off the assembly line, as if from a printing press.

[Kaynak: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1852747_1854195_1854153,00.html]