Time Magazine did a poll for top invention of 2008 and the i-limb hand, created by Scottish company Touch Bionics, came in at number 14. You can read about it here at It's i-LIMB Versus Fluidhand For The Prosthetic Hand World Title if you missed it the first time.
Why is it so great? It can grasp thin objects but is also modular, so the whole hand doesn't need to go into the shop when things go awry.
What came in first? 23andMe's retail DNA test - not a bad idea should Time need a cash infusion, owing to Anne Wojcicki's close relationship to husband and Google rich guy Sergey Brin.
Beyond that somewhat questionable choice, though maybe Time people have watched a lot of Gattaca, the list is pretty good.
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.
