Inventors from all over the world rack their brains and come up with inventions which are interesting or silly or both every year. The inventions of 2007 were no different. New Scientist Tech, a magazine which has been there since 1956, has created a list which they think represent the top 10 inventions of 2007.
They have determined this by analyzing the number of clicks from readers. Not a fool-proof method, but it is still interesting to look at. Let us look at them one by one:

Top 10 inventions of 2007

10. Sony Skateboard

Sony people have created a motor-powered skateboard which can be controlled by the user, like Segway.

9. Blood capillary based biometrics

It is again the people from Sony who invented this. It is a biometric system which will photograph the patterns of blood capillaries just under the skin using an infrared camera. If the finger is cut off, the cold capillaries are no longer visible.

8. Wearable fabric displays from Philips

This one is from Philips. They are going to make wearable displays by imprinting a cell-like structure onto an ordinary fabric using a stretchy elastomeric material. That should produce a display with the same material properties as the fabric onto which it is attached.

7. Aircraft tyres with aerofoils

The invention involves fitting aircraft with tyres that have built-in aerofoils that exploit the surrounding airflow to make them rotate before a landing. This will saving tyres excessive wear and tear.
The patent application for this has been filed in the name of Gecheng Zha, an aerospace engineer at the University of Miami, Florida, US.

6. Blood staunching bandages

This invention is from Thomas Fischer and colleagues at the Francis Owen Blood Research Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They have discovered that bandages made from about 65% glass fibre and 35% bamboo fibre not only absorb blood, but also stimulate the body’s ability to staunch the flow.

5. The hibernation diet

This invention has been made by Cheng Chi Lee, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas Houston Medical School, US, and his colleague.
The idea is that by changing our metabolism from glucose-burning to fat-burning, obesity can be tackled. The idea was triggered by a researcher’s discovery that he could trigger a state of fat-burning hibernation in mice, which don’t usually hibernate.

4. Vibrating Razor from Philips

This invention is from Philips again.
Apparently, the advantage of vibrating razors is that they give you a smoother shave. The disadvantage is that they can also increase the risk of minor cuts and skin irritation.
So Philips came up with the idea of arranging the vibrations so that they make the razor head move back and forth over the skin rather than up and down.

3. Brain radiator

So Takashi Saito and colleagues at Yamaguchi University in Japan have invented this. The invention consists of a heat pipe that is surgically implanted into the affected region of the brain and then connected to a heat sink on the outside of the skull. This device carries heat away from the affected area, keeping it cool and reducing the chances of severe epileptic fits in future.

2. Wide-angled gigapixel satellite surveillance

This invention is from a group of researchers at Sony and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The invention is a wide-angle camera that can photograph a 10-kilometre-square area from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. Such a camera would be able to survey an entire city in one sweep.

1. Microsoft mind reader

This invention is from Microsoft. And just to clarify – no this is not a joke!
The patent application refers to a way of using EEG to monitor people’s responses to new user interfaces. The problem, says Microsoft, is that asking them what they think of it interrupts the experience and waiting till later allows them to forget. So Microsoft claims to have invented a way for filtering EEG data in such a way that it separates useful cognitive information from the not-so-useful non-cognitive stuff. Microsoft hopes that the data will better enable to them to design user interfaces that people find easy to use.