TEDBlog April, 2011 Archive
15 April 2011
Transplanting cells, not organs: Susan Lim on TED.com
Pioneering surgeon Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Asia. But a moral concern with transplants (where do donor livers really come from …) led her to look further, and to ask: Could we be transplanting cells, not whole organs? At the INK Conference, she talks through her new research, discovering healing cells in some surprising places. (Recorded at the INK Conference, December 2010, in Lavasa, India. Duration: 16>26)
Watch Susan Lim’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.
15 April 2011
Fellows Friday with Jennifer Indovina
Interactive Fellows Friday Feature!
Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via Facebook. This week, Jen asks:
“Most people think energy efficiency is boring. Besides an iPhone or Facebook app, how else can we show the playful side of energy efficiency?”
Click here to respond!
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A plumber. What can I say? I like to fix problems. I have a picture of me at the beach in a polka dot swimsuit holding a PEZ dispenser. Below it my teacher wrote, “My name is Jennifer. My favorite color is blue. I want to be a plumber when I grow up.”
I’ve unclogged a few sinks in my time.
What a metaphor — now you’re fixing the clogged drains of the energy system.
[Laughs] That’s right.
Tell us about your company, Tenrehte.
Tenrehte (pronounced TEN-rate) is “Ethernet” spelled backwards. We decided to call it that because the whole crux of the company is to rethink new applications for wireless technology and Internet connectivity.
When I graduated from college, I was working for a Chinese semiconductor company. It required me to travel to China and train salespeople in mobile Internet television. To make a long story short, they eventually outsourced my job to China, so I decided to start Tenrehte.
I began brainstorming with some people I had been working with at that semiconductor company. We came up with three ideas for what we could be doing. One was patient-medical technology, where doctors could monitor patients from the Internet, from their cell phones. The other idea was Internet in everything. That was kind of my crazy, abstract idea. Let’s put Internet in your TV, your refrigerator, everything. Maybe your TV is watching Food Network, and your TV tells your fridge, “Jen just watched Food Network, she’s going to want salmon tonight, so fridge, make sure the salmon’s thoroughly thawed and ready for Jen to cook it.
And the third idea was green technology: energy management, energy efficiency. So our team started making prototypes, and one of the prototypes was an outlet adapter that could communicate with the Internet. From your smartphone, you could tell the outlet to shut on and off devices from anywhere in the world. So if you’re traveling, and you can’t remember if you turned off your light, you could turn it off.
We called the product the PICOwattTM. It’s an outlet-based device, which means it’s retrofit, so you don’t have to rip open your whole house or whole office just to make your appliances smart. We thought it was a very fundamental, simple solution.
We need some simple solutions. I don’t know about you, but I am over stimulated.
Why do you call it “PICOwatt”?
PICO stands for Portable Intelligent Communicator – portraying a sense of a vision for the future of sensors. The “watt” part of the name reminds us that solutions need to be practical, with applications for affecting change now.
14 April 2011
Open-sourcing the blueprints of civilization: Marcin Jakubowski on TED.com
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000). (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 4:11)
Watch Marcin Jakubowski’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.
13 April 2011
Coincidentally, it’s Oral, Head & Neck Cancer Awareness month
We didn’t know this when we scheduled Roger Ebert’s TEDTalk to run today, but it turns out that April is a good month to become aware of oral, head and neck cancers. Around the US, many free screenings have been scheduled this week, and you may still be able to catch one on this calendar. In the UK, a similar awareness event happens every November. You can find more info on screenings throughout the year at the Oral Cancer Foundation website.
13 April 2011
Remaking my voice: Roger Ebert on TED.com
When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer, he lost the ability to eat and speak. But he did not lose his voice. In a moving talk from TED2011, Ebert and his wife, Chaz, with friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, come together to tell his remarkable story. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 19:30)
Watch Roger Ebert’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.
12 April 2011
50 years of human spaceflight: A TEDTalks playlist
Fifty years ago, April 12, 1961, was one of the most extraordinary moments in human history: a spacecraft carried a passenger, Yuri Gagarin, into space, and back again safely. It’s probably impossible to overstate the magnitude of that achievement, or the repercussions it would have.
To give some context, here are three TEDTalks on the space race and spaceflight, past and future.
The launch of Gagarin, aboard Vostok 1, was very much a part of the arms race of the cold war. Filmmaker David Hoffman describes how the launch of Sputnik, and later Gagarin, led not just to weapons development, but also to huge gains in basic science and support for education.
Jane Poynter spent two years and twenty minutes inside Biosphere 2, in an attempt to re-create the conditions that will face deep-space explorers, and colonizers of other planets. The lessons they learned apply not just to life in space, but to life on Earth as well.
Although Sputnik and Vostok sparked a race that ended with the Apollo missions setting down on the moon, no human has set foot there since 1792. At TED2007, Bill Stone planted a stake in the sand, announcing his intention to lead the first private mission to the moon.
12 April 2011
TED is nominated for 5 Webbies. You can vote!
We’re happy to announce that TED has been nominated for five Webby Awards this year, four for TED.com and one for TEDTalks. (And we’re thrilled to be in such excellent company too.)
Between today and April 28, you can vote for TED in the People’s Voice voting campaign. Sign in here using your Facebook profile, Twitter or email, and then hit the following links below to vote for the Webby categories where TED is nominated.
TED.com
Radio/Podcasts
Best Visual Design – Function
Education
Best Use of Video or Moving Image
TEDTalks
Variety
The 2011 Webby Awards will be webcast live on June 12 >>
12 April 2011
Redefining apathy: Dave Meslin on TED.com
Local politics — schools, zoning, council elections — hit us where we live. So why don’t more of us actually get involved? Is it apathy? Dave Meslin says no. He identifies 7 barriers that keep us from taking part in our communities, even when we truly care. (Recorded at TEDxToronto, October 2010, in Toronto, Ontario. Duration: 7:05)
Watch Dave Meslin’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.
11 April 2011
Big history: David Christian on TED.com
Backed by stunning illustrations, David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is “Big History”: an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 17:40)
Watch David Christian’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.
09 April 2011
“More hope and humanity than I could ever have imagined”: Read Morgan Spurlock’s Q&A with TEDsters
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock answered questions from the TED community this morning — about his work, about what inspires him and about the future of documentary film. It’s a lively and thoughtful conversation. Thanks to everyone who joined in!
Read TED’s crowdsourced Q&A with Morgan Spurlock >>
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