Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In 1995, Kees Moeliker heard a loud bang coming from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam’s new wing. He knew exactly what it was. Kees Moeliker: How a dead duck changed my life A curator at the museum, Moeliker had gotten used to the sound of birds hitting the glass exterior of the new wing, and had even taken to stuffing the dead birds for the museum’s collection. But, as Moeliker explains in this humorous talk from TED2013, the duck that met its death on this particular day “changed his life.”

Just how the duck qualified as a life-changing event sounds like an April Fools’ Day joke. It is not.

Soon after the male mallard duck died, a live male duck from the same species approached it, mounted it, and — to put it in layperson’s terms — humped it for over an hour. Amazed, Moeliker did what any curious biologist would do: he grabbed his camera and his notebook, and recorded what happened. Moeliker described his bizarre observations six years later in a paper aptly titled “The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae).”

In 2003, this work earned Moeliker the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology. A parody of the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobels honor research and work that “first make[s] people laugh and then make[s] them think.” In other words, just because research sounds ridiculous doesn’t mean it has no merit. As Ig Nobel founder Marc Abrahams tells the TED Blog over email: “Science is the continuing quest to discover — and to not overlook — things beyond or outside what we expect. The truly unexpected is surprising, sometimes funny, and, who knows, might even turn out to be important.”

Even Moeliker’s dead duck research has a practical side. Each year on June 5^th Moeliker and the victimized duck, which he naturally had stuffed, co-lead a public discussion on how to prevent birds from hitting windows — a major cause of bird death worldwide. As Moeliker shares in his talk, it could be that the mixed-up sexual behavior of animals points to something larger — that our continuous morphing of landscapes may have an affect animal behavior and species’ ability to thrive.

For a full list of past Ig Nobel winners, head to their website. Or read on for a few of our favorites…

Category: Entomology
Year: 1994
Winner: Robert A. Lopez “for his series of experiments in obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear, and carefully observing and analyzing the results.”
Why he did it: Sounds uncomfortable, and it was by all accounts. Still, as Marc Abrahams reports in The Guardian, Lopez’s itchy experiment helped him prove that Otodectes cynotis mites could infect humans, which he suspected was the cause of at least one rash in a young girl who liked cuddling her mite-ridden cats.

Category: Public Health
Year: 2009
Winners: Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee, and Sandra Marijan “for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.”
Why they did it: The concept for this invention may seem silly, and the drawings in the team’s patent don’t help, but during a biological or chemical terror attack you probably wouldn’t care.

Category: Safety Engineering
Year: 1998
Winner: Troy Hurtubise “for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears.”
Why he did it: Well, to see if he could survive a grizzly attack. But, according to Wikipedia, the suit may also have applications in riots, explosions and other dangerous situations in which you’d want protection.

Category: Peace
Year: 2000
Winner: The British Royal Navy “for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout “Bang!”
Why they did it: According to the BBC, the Navy decided to forego live ammunition for the childlike verbal “bangs” after the government drastically cut military budgets.

Category: Biology
Year: 2002
Winners: N. Bubier, Charles Paxton, Phil Bowers and D. Charles Deeming “for their report ‘Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain.’”
Why they did it: According to the authors, an increase in ostrich farms and a lack of knowledge on how they breed in captivity spurred the research. Anecdotal evidence showed the birds got frisky whenever people were nearby, so the researchers decided to confirm whether it was true. It was. The authors concluded: “Courtship behaviour towards humans may be important in the reproductive success of ostriches in a farming environment.”

Category: Engineering
Year: 2010
Winners: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin “for perfecting a method to collect whale snot using a remote-control helicopter.”
Why they did it: Being a whale doctor isn’t easy, especially when your patient weighs multiple tons and is swimming in the ocean. One way to monitor health is to check the microbes living in and on the whale to see if they may be causing disease. As these winners have shown, it’s possible to collect at least some of those whale microbes with the marvels of modern technology.

Category: Physics
Year: 2003
Winners: Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams “for their irresistible report ‘An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces.’”
Why they did it: As this Abrahams Q&A with Wired explains, the research took place in Australia, where sheep shearing is a major industry. Dragging the sheep to the equipment is difficult and dangerous and the scientists researched various floor configurations and materials to see what which surfaces made the job easiest.

Kees Moeliker proudly displays a dead mallard at TED. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Kees Moeliker: How a dead duck changed my lifeIn the days leading up to TED2013, we at the TED Blog revealed the best props at TEDs past and showed you the speakers who’d brought animals on stage with them. Little did we know that, on the day two of the conference, we’d meet a speaker who’d combine both.

In today’s talk, given at TED2013, Kees Moeliker illuminates how finding a dead duck one summer day changed the course of his professional life. It’s an incredible, hilarious and unexpected story. And to highlight the importance of said duck, Moeliker physically brought it on stage with him. Dead for nearly eighteen years (Moeliker found this duck outside of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, where he works, in 1995 and had him stuffed for posterity), Moeliker took the taxidermied duck out of a plastic bag and passed it to a brave audience member.

Below, see the hilarity that ensued as this odd artifact made the rounds.

An audience member cradles the dead duck. While some in the audience appear disturbed, others glow. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Richard Turere, who gave the talk “My invention that made peace with lions,” cracks up at this surprising talk.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

“I developed an ear for identifying birds just by the sound of the bang they made on the glass,” says Kees Moeliker in Session 9 of TED2013. “It was on June 5, 1995, that I heard a loud bang that changed my life and ended that of a duck.”

When Moeliker rounded the building, he saw two male ducks, one living and one dead. He watched confused as the live one mounted the dead one and started to copulate with it. As far as he knew, this was the first observed case of homosexual necrophilia in ducks. But Moeliker, a researcher who didn’t want to kill his career, was worried about sharing this finding. ”It was a nice thing to discuss at birthday parties,” he says, “but not a nice thing to discuss with your peers.”

It took him 6 years to decide to publish, but eventually he submitted the paper. At first, nothing much happened. But then he got a call from a prestigious committee: The Ig Nobel Prize committee. He’d won. Soon, his email was flooded with duck paraphernalia and images of other animals’ strange sexual habits — a moose trying to copulate with a statue, a frog trying to copulate with a goldfish, and necrophiliac pigeons.

“If there’s an animal misbehaving on this planet, I know about it,” says Moeliker. He notes one pattern about these images: ”Missionary position is very uncommon in the animal kingdom.”

Moeliker wonders if we might be somehow to blame for this strange animal behavior. He gives the example of a bird called Mad Max that continually flew into a glass windowpane over and over again, from 2004 to 2008, because it sees its own reflection and tries to fight it. Could it be that our morphing of their environments is changing animal behavior?

Every year on June 5, Moeliker now holds Dead Duck day, a holiday dedicated to finding new ways to keep birds from colliding with windows. He invites us to celebrate with him, and walks offstage.

.@TEDChris on @KeesMoeliker: No one has ever before ended their TED Talk by saying "May I have my dead duck back please?"—
TED Live (@TEDLiveHQ) February 28, 2013

Artist Julie Freeman uses data as a source material to make biologically inspired artworks — giving musicality to the movement of fish and expressing city lights in the quiver of moths’ wings. Now she’s finding ways to translate data so that we may gain new perspectives on what it’s trying to tell us.

What do you do?

I make artwork that allows me to be curious about nature in different ways, and to share that curiosity. The driving force behind my work is, generally, What is it about natural systems that are so compelling? How can we understand more about them to get a fresh perspective? And how can we understand phenomena that exist beyond our own sensory perception? That’s where the technology comes in. It allows us to get to grips with hidden elements of biological systems, and can allow us to see or experience things in new ways. In my practice, I use technology as a kind of communication bridge between the natural world and ourselves.

Technology is often seen as something that is at odds with nature, something that tries to control, change, or supercede. My view is that we can use technology to try and understand the natural world better, getting a deeper knowledge of biological systems will allow us to acknowledge and empathise with nature, to garner peace with our environment.

What’s the value of art that translates data?

In addition to exploring how natural systems can be translated, I’m also preoccupied by how much our lives rely on data in the form of data-driven decisions — from the ones that we make personally (think social networks) to those made by our employers, suppliers and governments. It feels important that artists should be working with data not only to reflect what’s happening in the world, but also to help create a level of understanding that in some way reduces fear. The more information is generated, the more our need to understand it grows. We need to be literate to comprehend the interpretations of data that we are being exposed to. And we need to find a way of talking to each other about data that is clear and understandable.

The Lake (2005): A site-specific installation in which 16 freshwater fish were tagged in their natural environment. The tracking data was used to create music and animation display by the lake side in a 80ft tall cylindrical structure — an experience composed by the fish.

For example, there’s a dynamic light sculpture by Fabio Lattanzi Antorini that flickers in response to the number of crimes against humanity being perpetrated. It pulls information from a series of different real-time news feeds, parses them into a sequence and then displays that as a rhythm of light. So although you don’t know any specifics, you do know is that crimes are happening and that it is being monitored. That’s possibly enough to have an awareness without being overwhelmed with detail. Of course it is important that the awareness then leads to change in some way.

It’s no news that there is exponential growth of information. People are trying to tell us their side of the story all the time. It’s overwhelming. We need to find some way of managing that process of absorbing information, and learning from it, without it becoming a pressure. A lot of data-driven artworks do that by condensing information and then giving you a simplified idea.

Digital Wave (1998): Participant faces are manipulated and streamed down a giant wave-shaped interactive digital sculpture measuring 45 x 6 x 10 ft.

What made you want to do The Lake project — one of your early works (shown above), where data gathered from the movement of fish in water was translated into animation and sound?

Again, I was curious: I wanted to understand more about the underwater environment and why is it that we’re so fascinated with fish. How does a fish behave in its natural environment? Can the movement and behaviors that fascinate us be translated into art? More personally, part of the reason I wanted to pursue this idea was because I come from a fishing family, and I have fish-like tendencies — I’m an active swimmer, a total water baby. And, being a geek, my artistic tools were technology. It started off as a prototype and then around eight years later became a full-fledged, fully supported project. I let my curiosity out by using technology to get to grips with how fish swim and what their relationship to each other is. I learned a lot from the project, and the data I collected is very unique — I’m still working on further analysis now.

Would you say that your primary interest growing up was biology and the natural world, and then technology just became your tool?

Yeah, I think so. Biology, always. When I was very small, I used to be petrified of animals, anything apparently — cats, rabbits, dogs. My parents got so fed up with my fear that they ended up buying a dog. I remember coming home one day and the dog was in the backyard. I freaked out, screeching “I can’t live here. I can’t live here anymore” — a total drama queen. I was only about six or seven. About an hour later, I was rolling around with the dog. From that point onwards, my whole view of animals shifted completely.

Thinking back on it, I just assumed that these critters were going to bite me or attack me. It was the unpredictability of animals that made me nervous. I guess that was the beginning of wanting to understand more. I’m still interested in critters of any shape and size, but also things at the nanoscale, and more increasingly, this idea of how biological systems get represented by data, and what if data *was* a biological system? How would we see it if it wasn’t digital? What would it be like if it was akin to something like a slime mold, or nematodes — a living entity?

Why didn’t your curiosity about biology translate into a biology career?

I studied biology through school. I had some issues when I was leaving school age where I ended up being told I couldn’t continue studying at the school, and I had go and do something else. I stumbled into graphic design at the local college, and I took art at the same time. That steered me into the design world, and then I studied design technology at university. Based in the mechanical engineering department it was then that I first started putting together computers and was introduced to the product design world.

It was only when I studied for my Masters in Digital Art, all the concepts I was coming up with linked back to something from the natural world. The idea of tracking fish (later The Lake), my animations about plankton — all my work had a biological element. I got really interested in artificial life systems and how we can mimic life through cellular automata. All the software art that I was developing then was all based on this idea of unpredictability and life systems within the machine. From there I started thinking, well if I’m building them in the machine, how can we start making the software and the hardware connect with the real life systems? It became a fusion of technology and biology in a very literal way.

Lepidopteral (2012): A multi-object kinetic artwork that responds to environmental data fluctuations from remote sensors.

Is data then the bridge for that?

Data is a byproduct of our curiosity. Nearly every scientist I know and many artists that work in technology all have this relationship with data where data is the substance that sits between initial curiosity and knowledge and understanding. It plays such an important role. How can data been seen as something that has an ephemeral behavior which changes depending on how you treat or perceive it?

I’ve read and heard people say, “Data is information.” Actually, I don’t think it always is. Data is much more akin to an artwork in some ways, because as a mass it has this potential ambiguity and subjectivity that exists before an analysis happens or before it gets processed in some way. And I think that bit is really quite intriguing.

Do you mean information isn’t information until we interpret the data that’s there?

It’s tricky. I was thinking about this: If all data is information, say, does that mean that everything we see is information? Does it mean that everything has got some kind of message behind it that it is trying to impart which we can then gain knowledge from? And I was trying to think, well if that is true, does it mean that art is information as well? And as soon as art becomes information then suddenly it seems less interesting to me, because I don’t know if it should be information. I think it should be experience. But then could you deconstruct experience into being a process of information gathering? I don’t know. I tied myself up in knots with that one.

Tea Flock (2011): Migrating rituals and emergent behavior of grouped objects are displayed in this kinetic work, using data from imaginary migratory tea-birds that fly to and from tea-growing countries and the UK.

What types of data you work with?

I’ve worked with all different types. I’ve worked with data that’s been generated by sensors — tracking data. I’ve worked with data that has been collected as sound files and spoken word — sonic data. I’ve worked with data that’s been processed by other people and then delivered either as streams of values or as video feeds. I’ve worked with light levels from different parts of the world. I’ve worked with geographic data about trajectories of bird migration from India and other countries. And I’ve worked with data collected from people. There isn’t any piece of my artwork that hasn’t used data in some way, in some format.

In terms of making art with different types of data, using data as a material, it’s really important to define it so that we know how it manifests within the work. The definitions range from how the data is delivered, where it’s coming from, the temporality of it and also things like: Does it relate to the living world? Is it natural data? Does it relate to the social and political world? Does it relate to a personal individual? Is it economic data? Is it geographic data? Is it generated, real-time or processed data? These are simple descriptions, but they’re important to understand that for data-driven art, the type of data within it can give you a different experience of the work.

How do you go from a sense of curiosity about something to coming up with designing an artwork and making it happen?

To give you one example, a few years back I started making moth capture devices to film moths in action. Sometimes, I’d string up a big white sheet in a woodland and put lights behind it, to attract moths. Every time, nearly every other kind of insect joined the party, and only just one or two moths if any! That made me wonder, if I was a moth, why would I be attracted to light? I wanted to capture, on video, the flickering moth movement.

I went swimming in a lake in Italy and saw what looked like flowers all over the lakeside. But when I looked closer, they were clumps of little lilac butterflies. And they were almost static, they were moving really gently. It was fascinating to watch. Every now and then they’d flit about from clump to clump. I thought, it’s interesting that when you think of a butterfly or a moth, you think of a very flickery, very high-speed flying movement, but actually spend a lot of their time still, just being quite peaceful. These experiences inspired me to make a piece of work, Lepidopteral — these small plastic moth-like creatures that flap in a very organic way in response to light levels in Berlin.

Why Berlin?

Berlin was just a reliable light feed that I found on the Pachube website. It appealed to me to have a remote light level driving the system, a data feed that’s nothing to do with where the work is — and is outside of my control. A lot of my works have this element where I set up a framework using different hardware and software, and then it takes a feed from something — from the environment, or from animals — which directly affects how the artwork performs, whether it’s a sculpture or animation or sound work. It’s not random, but uncontrollable. The work acts as a conduit between something in the environment and something in the gallery or in the studio. When everything gets switched on, I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I don’t know how the final artwork is going to be until it actually comes to life. I’ll spend months, often years, working on these projects, and that’s the moment that really gets me, because I can’t predict it. I also feel like I’ve built something that is communicating in a new way, that it’s not just out of my head, but it’s coming from somewhere else. That’s a great thing to be able to share with people.

Specious Dialogue (2007): A pair of concrete forms spew an emotional dialogue, they bicker, coo fragments of love, they shout, scream and whisper, they are lonely lovers or clinging siblings. Randomised data produces a conversation that is plausible but false.

What are you working on now?

At the moment, for my PhD I’m working on how we can experience different types of data sets from natural systems through physical objects. I’ll be looking at how those objects relay the essence of data and whether you can determine whether that data is biological, technological or economic, simply through a sense of movement. So it’s kind of like the body language of an artwork in a way. There’ll also be viewer-response feedback mechanisms. So for instance, if you saw a data-driven sculpture that was kind of slumped and it made you feel a bit unsure about why and so you sort of slumped a little bit, then that could be detected and then the object could kind of chirp up a bit, which you’d probably try and mirror, perhaps subconsciously. It’s all very early days.

Will you be making objects for that?

I’ll try! I’m excited because it’s a computer science PhD at Queen Mary, and they’re happy for me to make artworks that explore psychological response to data-driven artwork in a scientific arena, but also in an artistic space as well. We’ll make the artworks and then use them as a stimuli in an experiment and have them as an artwork in a gallery, and see if there’s any link between the two in the way that people perceive the work depending on what context it’s in. It’ll be interesting. It’s quite a challenge to establish whether, if you’re designing an artwork as part of a science experiment, is it still an artwork in itself. Where is the line between rigid design and artistic flow? I think a lot of artworks act the same way as a stimuli in a psychological experiment, even if the artist doesn’t realize that’s what they do.

Tell me about the Open Data Institute show you recently curated.

The Open Data Institute was set up by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Prof Nigel Shadbolt, and their idea is to create a culture of open data. A key premise behind the institute is to teach people what they can do with open data, and how they can make their data open — all the way from political leadership level to schools and universities and small businesses.

Ellie Harrison’s piece Vending Machine, chosen by Julie Freeman for exhibition at the Open Data Institute, dispenses free crisps in response to recession data. Photo: Ellie Harrison

When I visited their new space in London, I said, “What you need is data-driven artworks.” I was worried that data is seen as dry information, that it’s seen as a very academic or commercial thing. I wanted to make data very tangible for their visitors. We curated and commissioned nine works, nearly all of them are physical pieces. There are a couple of dynamic sculptures. There’s a kinetic wall-based piece, and a painting. There’s a newspaper and an archival book. There is only one piece that is screen-based. It is important to have physical objects in the space, displaying data in a energetic and abstract way. I think the collection we put together surprised them.

What was the response?

The idea of data as a material in an artwork was quite new to those working in the space, so there was some apprehension. As they saw the artists setting work up and building it, they formed a bond with the works because they got to know the people behind them and to understand them quite deeply. Now, the artwork is what everyone talks about. There’s one in particular — by artist Ellie Harrison — an old 1970s vending machine that feeds off of economic data. If there is talk of economic crisis or if there’s a big budget announcement in the news, it dispenses crisps for people to take for free. Staff come in the morning to see if any “recession crisps” have been dispensed, getting a very rapid grasp of the night’s fiscal activity — 10 bags of crisps in the drawer generally means trouble brewing. It’s really interesting to watch that piece in action because it’s a perfect venue for it in a weird way — not many artworks work in a kitchen!

How has the TED fellowship had an effect on you?

Being a Fellow has broadened my ideas about how far I can push things and how important and serious my work is. In practical terms, any question you could have about nearly any subject, you can just email one of the Fellows and they generally know exactly what you need. In terms of resources and opportunities, that is invaluable.

Before I met a lot of the other TED Fellows, I didn’t quite understand where I fitted in — I’m such a kind of mix of things. Being with the TED Fellows, it’s just like: good grief, yeah. It’s completely fine and normal to be doing what I’m doing. Just having that shared knowledge of people all over the world doing the same kind of thing, and being part of that gang, is reassuring. It’s definitely something I carry with me in terms of facing any fears.

What is DNA barcoding, you ask? It’s a far more precise way of identifying plant species. In this video, Ellen Jorgensen — who gave today’s TED Talk “Biohacking, you can do it too”  – heads to a remote region of Alaska to collect the fragile plants found there and bring them back to her DIY biotech lab for a crowd-sourced science project.

This video was created by TED’s own Kari Mulholland. Stay tuned to the TED Blog for more videos of cool projects happening at Genspace.

The realm of biotechnology is growing fast, she says, and advances are coming down the pipeline at a rapid clip. And yet, scientists aren’t so good at communicating to the public what is going on in biotech labs. Jorgensen wondered: could people find out for themselves?

“In 2009, I first heard about DIYbio. It’s a movement that advocates making biotechnology accessible to anyone—not just scientists and people in government labs,” explains Jorgensen. “The idea is if you open up science and allow diverse groups to participate, it can really stimulate innovation.”

Taken with the idea, Jorgensen and several friends founded Genspace, a community biotech lab in Brooklyn, New York. At Genspace, you can take classes like “Visualizing the Brain” and “Biohacker Boot Camp.” For a monthly membership fee, you can access their labs and create your own biotech projects, ranging from explorations of ancestry to art/science pieces. All around her, Jorgensen sees people discovering the wonder of science. Meanwhile, similar DIY biotech labs are popping up all across the globe.

And yet, as the press began to cover Genspace, they focused on the potential for someone to create “the next Frankenstein.” It’s a natural question upon hearing about DIY biotech labs: is there risk for biohazards at these labs?

As Jorgensen explains, of course. But she stresses that DIYbio labs work with safe organisms—not pathogens (“If you’re working with pathogens, you’re not part of the biohacker community, you’re part of bioterrorist community”)—and follow a strict code of ethics as well as local laws and regulations.

“Now you might be asking yourself, ‘What would I do in a bio lab?’” says Jorgensen. “It wasn’t that long ago we were asking, ‘What would anyone do with a personal computer?’ This is just the beginning. We’re only seeing the tip of the DNA iceberg … If everyone in this room got involved, who knows what we could do.”

To hear about some of the interesting—and hilarious—experiments being run at DIYbio labs, watch this talk. And stay tuned to the TED Blog for a stunning video of Jorgensen in Alaska, on a mission to barcode plants.

When biologist E.O. Wilson won the TED Prize in 2007, he wished that we all “work together to help create the key tool that we need to inspire preservation of Earth’s biodiversity.” With that, the Encyclopedia of Life began the outrageous task of cataloguing all of the Earth’s known species.

Cynthia Parr spoke at TED2012 to give updates on the Encyclopedia, which now has well over a million entries — 1,112,395 to be exact. And the Encyclopedia has found a new way for the average Joe or Josephine to get to know new species — with beautifully curated Pinterest pages. Because we love their color-coded albums, below find just a few of the amazing creatures that be found in the collections “Ruby Red,” “Mellow Yellow” and “Life is Blue.”

Scarlet Hood, or Hygrocybe coccinea, are mushrooms that grow to just two inches and can be found at the base of redwood trees. These little guys are edible, but they may not be the yummiest.

From the Scarlet Hood to the Scarlet Ibis, this bird, Eudocimus ruber, is a nomadic South American species. The Scarlet Ibis can live to be 20-years-old.

The Cardinal Beetle, or Pyrochroa coccinea, uses its red wings as a warning to show predators its toxicity. Look for it on flowers at the edge of the woods.

Catch this flowering cactus, the Claret-cup Cactus (Echinocereus coccineus) when it blooms for two to three days during the Spring.

Panamanian golden frogs, Atelopus zeteki, have green eyes, yellow-orange backs, and black spots. This colorful amphibian is critically endangered, with over 80% of its population disappearing in the past 10 years.

The Polymita picta, also known as the Cuban Land Snail, attracts mates using love darts, a kind of small arrow produced by the snail itself in the seduction process.

Look for this sunflower in Illinois, where it was introduced by American Indians prior to European settlement. Helianthus annuus, meaning annual sunflower from the Latin, is a popular pollinating site for honeybees.

Holacanthus clarionensis, better known as the angelfish, is endemic to the Eastern Pacific with populations originating from near the Baja California Peninsula. Measuring on average 20 centimeters in length, angelfish stretch about the same distance as a fork.

The Common Lobster is a scavenger who uses its claws to eat. The Homarus gammarus finds its home in mud burrows and can live up to 15 years.

This sea ascidian grows in Bali, Indonesia, and goes by the formal name Rhopalaea morph translucent blue.

Find this Fairy Bluebird, also known as the Irena puella, in the Himalayan foothills. Its diet consists of fruit, nectar and a few bugs.

This native freshwater Amazonian fish is known as the Discus fish (Symphysodon aequifasciata). Both parents of the Discus larvae care for their young.

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This blog post was a tag-team effort between Shirin Samimi-Moore, who curated the red and blue collections, and Liz Jacobs, who created the yellow collection.

Photo credits for red species:

• Hygrocybe coccinea: JC Schou
• Eudocimus ruber: Frank Kramer
• Pyrochroa coccinea: Stanislav Krejcik
• Echinocereus coccineus: Robert Sivinski

Photo credits for yellow species:

• Atelopus zeteki: Brian Gratwicke
• Polymita picta: Michael Kesl
• Helianths annus: 3266zauber
• Holacanthus clarionensis: Ross Robertson

Photo credits for blue species:

• Homarus gammarus: N Sloth
• Rhopalaea morph translucent blue: Arjan Gittenberger
• Irena puella: Public Domain
• Symphysodon aequifasciata: Patrick Farrelly

The mad rush of the holidays can stress out the sunniest soul, and yet somehow, beneath it all, we remain cheerfully optimistic.  We look ahead, make New Year’s resolutions and generally believe next year will be better than this one and the year before. Why? Tali Sharot, who spoke at TED2012, says we homo sapiens are genetically predisposed to look on the bright side. In her new TED ebook, The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope, Sharot explains why we’re biologically tuned to be positive.

In your book you note that people are genetically predisposed to be optimistic. What advantage does that provide?

Overall, optimism is a good thing. We now know that underestimating the obstacles life has in store lowers stress and anxiety, leading to better health and well being — this is one reason why optimists recover faster from illnesses and live longer. For example, a study of cancer patients revealed that pessimistic patients under the age of 60 were more likely to die within eight months than non-pessimistic patients of the same initial health, status, and age. Optimists are also more likely to take actions that promote health. Researchers studying heart attack patients have found that optimists were more likely than non-optimistic patients to take vitamins, eat low fat diets and exercise, thereby reducing their overall coronary risk. Also, believing that a goal is attainable motivates us to execute actions that will help us get closer to our dreams. Optimism increases explorative behavior and innovation, which is why so many entrepreneurs are on the optimistic side.

Why do people maintain this rosy bias even when information challenging our upbeat forecasts is so readily available?

Our brain tends to engage more in positive thoughts of the future than negative. This is the result of an interaction between deep structures in our brain that process emotion and motivation (such as the amygdala and striatum) and parts of our frontal lobes that modulate them (frontal lobes). Most importantly, when people learn what the future may hold, our neurons efficiently encode unexpectedly good information, but fail to incorporate information that is unexpectedly bad — rendering us more optimistic.

Are there disadvantages to being optimistic?

Yes, making assumptions that are too positive can lead to disastrous miscalculations.

If we underestimate our risks we might be less likely to take precautionary actions; less likely to get health checkups, apply sunscreen or open a saving account. Optimism can also results in bad planning — we tend to think projects will take less time to complete and cost less than they end up. Think house renovation or planning a wedding.

Can this form of inherent optimism help breed success?

Optimism pushes us to take chances — attempt a new job, a new relationship. It also acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as believing a goal is attainable makes it more likely to be. This is why optimism has been related to success in many domains including sports, academia, business, politics. However, there are pitfalls — for example, the optimism bias is thought to be a leading cause for the 2008 global economic collapse.

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built specially for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, two new playlists are available: Animals that amaze and The end of oil?

Animals that amaze
At TED there’s a certain species of speaker who is absolutely devoted to all kinds of weird beasts and bugs. We call these creatures “obsessive speciologists.” Watch this playlist to see them in action, talking about everything from apes that write to octopi that disappear. See animals that amaze »

The end of oil?
Everybody wants to know: Can we find a renewable energy source and wean ourselves off of oil? Visionaries try to answer the question by offering up solutions like kite turbines and new takes on nuclear fusion. Hear from Bill Gates, Justin Hall-Tipping, 14-year-old nuclear reactor builder Taylor Wilson, and many more. Watch talks from The end of oil? »

“I have a brain cancer.”

Data artist and TED Fellow Salvatore Iaconesi posted these words this morning, along with a video of himself speaking. With his long ponytail reduced to a scruffy mohawk, he shares this story:

Yesterday I went to get my digital medical records: I have to show them to many doctors.

Sadly they were in a closed, proprietary format and, thus, I could not open them using my computer, or send them in this format to all the people who could have saved my life.

I cracked them.

I opened them and converted the contents into open formats, so that I could share them with everyone.

Read the full manifesto after the jump.

See Salvatore’s website to download everything in his medical files — his CT scans (labeled in Italian “TAC”), MRIs (labeled “R.M. 1″ and “R.M. 2″), lab notes and his medical records and diagnosis of his glioma — and take a look. The images above are two TAC or CT scans.

In cracking his medical files and opening them to the world, what’s he hoping for? An open-source cure. And he means a cure of any kind:

There are cures for the body, for spirit, for communication.

Grab the information about my disease, if you want, and give me a CURE: create a video, an artwork, a map, a text, a poem, a game, or try to find a solution for my health problem.

Artists, designers, hackers, scientists, doctors, photographers, videomakers, musicians, writers. Anyone can give me a CURE.

See the website to download his CT scans, MRIs and notes — and do what you will.

Salvatore Iaconesi’s manifesto from http://artisopensource.net/cure/

Rome, September 10th 2012

I have a brain cancer.

Yesterday I went to get my digital medical records: I have to show them to many doctors.

Sadly they were in a closed, proprietary format and, thus, I could not open them using my computer, or send them in this format to all the people who could have saved my life.

I cracked them.

I opened them and converted the contents into open formats, so that I could share them with everyone.

Just today I have been able to share the data about my health condition (about my brain cancer) with 3 doctors.

2 of them already replied.

I have been able to do it because the data used open, accessible formats: they have been able to open the files using their computers, their tablets. They have been able to reply from home, on sunday.

I will progressively publish all the replies I will receive, using open formats, so that anyone with my same disease will be able to benefit from the solutions I will find.

This is a CURE. This is my OPEN SOURCE CURE.

This is an open invitation to take part in the CURE.

CURE, in different cultures, means different things.

There are cures for the body, for spirit, for communication.

Grab the information about my disease, if you want, and give me a CURE: create a video, an artwork, a map, a text, a poem, a game, or try to find a solution for my health problem.

Artists, designers, hackers, scientists, doctors, photographers, videomakers, musicians, writers. Anyone can give me a CURE.

Create your CURE using the content which you find in theDATI/DATA section here on this site, and send it to info@artisopensource.net.

All CURES will be displayed here.