One of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s most famous quotes instructs us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We might amend Mead’s observation to honor a group of thoughtful, committed teenagers across the world who are standing up for their lives […]
Documentary filmmakers Beverly and Dereck Joubert have worked to conserve wildlife in Africa for more than 30 years. Last year, I visited the Jouberts in one of the Great Plains safari camps and preserves they founded: Great Plains Conservation, launched a few years ago in Botswana and Kenya. You can read about my 2016 visit and […]
Why did Albert Einstein have such a unique scientific mind? Because he came from a disadvantaged background, says TED Prize winner Neil Turok. “When new cultures enter science, especially disadvantaged cultures, transformation can happen,” he said today in his opening remarks at the Next Einstein Forum Global Gathering 2016. “I believe that the entrance of […]
We may, as Joan Didion once wrote, tell ourselves stories in order to live—but Uri Hasson is looking for a few more reasons. The neuroscientist based at Princeton University researches the neurological basis of human communication and storytelling, and in session 11 at TED2016, he shows off some surprising findings. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) […]
In 1995, Kees Moeliker heard a loud bang coming from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam’s new wing. He knew exactly what it was. 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 […]
Amy Robinson maxed out her bank account to attend TEDGlobal 2010. While there, she heard Sebastian Seung of MIT give the talk “I am my connectome” and knew she had to talk to him. Two years later, Robinson—the organizer of TEDxHuntsville—saw on Twitter that Seung was launching something new: EyeWire, a game allowing citizen scientists around the […]
Ed Boyden is the head of the Synthetic Neurobiology group at the MIT Media Lab, where he works on tools to map, control, record — and maybe even someday build — the brain. Boyden has worked on optogenetics, a technique which deploys light-sensitive molecules to the brain and then applies light to them to “turn […]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_lk4Q-2x8I&w=560&h=315%5D This video features the work of TED Fellow Nina Tandon and Sarindr Bhumiratana, her colleague at Columbia University’s Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering and partner-in-new-business-crime. Together with a group of fellow bio-engineers, the pair recently founded the company, Epibone, which they describe as “a revolutionary bone reconstruction company that allows patients […]
Last year, MIT neuroscientists Xu Liu and Steve Ramirez manipulated the memory of a mouse. In a fascinating and mildly troubling breakthrough caused by a laser and the protein channelrhodopsin, they “activated” fear memories in a mouse. The impetus, says Ramirez, was the awful feeling of a break-up, the desire, Eternal Sunshine-style, to erase the […]
Biomaterials are substances — synthetic or natural — that can be used to improve health, minimize suffering and improve or correct the way the body works. A suture? That’s a biomaterial. The pacemaker? Indeed. Contact lenses? Yeah, you get the idea. As technology and science have advanced, so too have the sophistication of such biomaterials […]
DNA. It’s what encodes the genetic material of every living thing. And it also makes a yummy cocktail. This video, which stars TED Fellow synthetic biologist Oliver Medvedik, shows you how to make a delicious adult beverage out of frozen strawberries, pineapple juice and Bacardi 151. Follow the adorably animated instructions, and you’ll be able […]
Earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years, and modern humans have inhabited it for the past 200,000. Yet in all that time, we’ve learned surprisingly little about the planet’s landscape and the animals that live on it. This is especially true of remote areas such as the Amazon’s dense jungles, the ocean’s vast […]
Grégoire Courtine and the scientists in his lab helped a paralyzed rat learn to walk again, voluntarily, through a treatment that combined drugs, electrical stimulation of the lower spinal cord, the support of a robotic arm and a little bit of chocolate. When their study appeared in the June 2012 issue of Science, it sparked […]
One thing can strike fear into the heart of the fiercest warrior, the most powerful CEO and the smartest person in any given room: having to speak in public. The thought of it makes the palms sweat, the heart beat faster and the limbs start to shake. An estimated 75% of people have a fear […]
A stark contrast on last night’s episode of 60 Minutes: veteran journalist Morley Safer, age 81, interviewing Jack Andraka, age 16, who has developed a promising new test for pancreatic cancer. In the segment, Andraka tells the story he told on the TED2013 stage, of how a family friend succumbing to this deadly disease triggered […]
American synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy is working on constructing artificial cells that mimic — and “talk” to — biological cells. In this fascinating conversation, Mansy weaves through the question of what does and does not constitute “life,” the possible practical applications for his work, and how conversations with artists have opened up concepts that feed […]