Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory announced this week the program’s top inventions of 2005. A breathalyzer mask device that can detect disease before it spreads can rapidly assist medical personnel determine if a patient’s symptons are caused by biological or chemical attack, or simply the common flu. The device was developed by JHUAPL senior scientist Joany Jackman and researcher Nathan Boggs.

Other winning inventions include a device that may enable amputees to communicate reflexive movements simply by thinking about them, and a Dust Storm Forecaster, an automated system that makes 72-hour forecasts of dust conditions and predicts the time, location and magnitude of dust storms, which regularly disrupt military and commercial operations in the Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia.

[via JHUAPL]