Our seventh annual awards honor innovative technologies, and people, in eight categories: Automotive & Transportation; Aviation & Aerospace; Computer Hardware & Electronics; Computer Software; 6; Sight; Sound; and, new this year, the Editors' Choice Award for Emerging 4. Also new is a $100,000 prize to foster innovation.

Big stars explode and little stars last forever, but medium stars like our sun just fade away ... or do they?

Why are human females hobbled in their prime by menopause?

How does a muddled mass of cells in a pale, witless maggot transform itself into the glittering, well-ordered crystal of an adult fly's eye? With the aid of mutants an monsters, biologists are learning the answer.

Why do we walk? For decades anthropologists said that we became bipedal to survive on the African savanna.