inventors

Chinese locals have already demonstrated a knack for knocking together homemade flying contraptions and robots. Now one amateur inventor has created a full-fledged submarine built primarily from discarded oil barrels and tools bought at a second-hand market.

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The New York Times just reported the death of a man who saved -- and contines to save -- many lives: Dr. Earl Wood, one of the inventors of the G-suit. The G-suit, created in the 1940s, is a pressurized outfit that keeps pilots from losing consciousness during fast turns and dives. Military pilots started using it during World War II to remain alert and prevent crashes, and they (and astronauts) still use similar suits today.

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Think that college lab work is dull and uninspiring? Student inventors claimed a $25,000 grand prize and other awards Wednesday night for creating antibacterial agents, "plastic steel," and a spherical robot that can climb stairs.

The winners were contestants in the 2008 Collegiate Inventors Competition, operated by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation since 1990.

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K3 Promoter
Cost to Develop: $100,000
Time: 8 years
Prototype | | | | | Product
Gordon Link, a diabetic and foot amputee, is not looking to climb Mount Everest, run a marathon, or snowboard off a cliff. I just want to walk without stumbling like Im a drunk, he says. It may not sound like a tall order, but until he was fitted with a prototype prosthetic foot that simulates the bodys natural movements, walking on uneven ground was like navigating an obstacle course. Hitting a low spot of even one inch with my old foot was like a non-amputee stepping into a four-inch hole, he adds. Not good.

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The Kanzius RF Field Generator
Cost to Develop: $1 million+Time: 5 yearsPrototype | | | | | Product

When a man with no medical degree and a diagnosis of fatal leukemia builds a cancer-curing machine in his garage, you might think it merely the desperate attempt of a dying man to escape his fate. And youd be right. The weird thing is, it just might work.

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Uno
Cost to Develop: $45,000
Time: 2 years
Prototype | | | | | Product
Just before his plane dipped into the clouds above Beijing International Airport two years ago, Ben Gulak caught the last clear view of the sun that he would see for two weeks. On the ground, the 17-year-old, who was on a family trip to China, quickly spotted a source for much of the thick haze hanging over the city: smog-spewing motorbikes. Thousands of them, everywhere. “Right then,” he says, “I decided that I wanted to create an alternative mode of transportation, something clean and compact.”

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Viper
Cost to Develop: $250,000Time: 2 yearsPrototype | | | | | Product
If were ever going to see a true era of commercial space travel—a day when Virgin Galactic is just another spaceline—Tim Bendel believes we need a better rocket engine. Specifically, something that is to the space industry what the internal combustion engine was to the nascent car industry a century ago: a standard, off-the-shelf option that can power any manner of vehicle, from tourist ship to lunar lander. And it has to be affordable to companies not owned by billionaire Richard Branson.

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InSeT System
Cost to Develop: $475,000
Time: 2 years
Prototype | | | | | Product
In January 2006, an explosion rocked West Virginias Sago coal mine, trapping 13 miners. Rescuers searched an area 500 feet wide by two miles long and didnt reach the miners until 41 hours after the blast, eventually pulling out 12 bodies and one survivor. Jim Ponceroff, who led a rescue team, says that the biggest challenge in recovering miners is locating them quickly so that engineers can drill a borehole for fresh air and, ultimately, rescue. Sago, like most of the countrys nearly 900 active mines, relied on radios that transmit signals over a thin wire thats easily damaged in a cave-in.

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Bel-Air
Cost to Develop: $236,000
Time: 1 year
Prototype | | | | | Product
Your home could be emitting toxic gases. Just ask the victims of Hurricane Katrina, whose emergency trailers, made with glue-laden particleboard, let off so much formaldehyde that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that residents should spend time outdoors and make relocating to permanent housing a priority. Even in more expensive new homes, the concentration of emissions from things like furniture, carpet and paint can be two to five times as high as it is outdoors. But most air filters only catch particulates such as dust and pollen rather than organic compounds like formaldehyde and benzene, and the filters that do trap those gases need frequent replacement. So Mathieu LeHanneur and David Edwards built an ultra-efficient filtration system that eliminates toxins using natures own hazmat squad: plants.

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