More than a billion people in the world lack access to basic health care. It’s a hard truth that Raj Panjabi pointed to as he accepted the TED Prize in 2017 — globally, there’s a shortage of accredited health workers, and many people living in remote areas are all but cut off from care. There’s a […]
Today, GlobalXplorer, the citizen science platform created by satellite archaeologist Sarah Parcak with the 2016 TED Prize — which allows users live out their Indiana Jones fantasies and search for archaeological sites from home — announced the location of its second expedition. The location will be: India! GlobalXplorer’s first expedition took users to Peru, where they […]
When it comes to archaeological features, the Nasca Lines are celebrities. A giant monkey with a curled tail, an owl waving hello, a wavy geometric spider — these geoglyphs, carved into the soil of the high desert, were made between 200 to 700 AD and are still visible from overhead. First studied in the 1920s, […]
Social entrepreneurs often walk a tough road. Their ideas seek to improve life for communities that can’t afford to pay a lot, if anything, and without the support of funding options like venture capital, bank loans and stock markets, their best option to fund their ideas is generally the philanthropic sector. This requires an endless […]
When Maestro José Antonio Abreu lifted his baton, magic sparked to life. Young people from diverse backgrounds played classical music that could take your breath away, yes, but something deeper transpired too — they demonstrated the skills for both personal and cultural thriving. Abreu founded “El Sistema,” the network of youth orchestras, choirs and music […]
. At the School in the Cloud learning lab in the village of Korakati, India, students sit on colorful stools in front of computer screens, talking over Skype to educators in England and Germany. So it might be surprising to discover that this high-tech education center was built in a place that can only be […]
What’s the best way to find something lost on the ground, like a historical site from a civilization lost to time? For archaeologist Sarah Parcak, the answer’s obvious — from way up above, using satellites, of course. As a space archaeologist, she’s mapped the lost city of Tanis (of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark […]
A year ago, Sarah Parcak revealed her TED Prize wish: a citizen science platform for archaeology to let people around the world help find and protect ancient sites. Yesterday night, she returned to the TED stage to share what’s happened since. After a year of work with partners National Geographic and DigitalGlobe, GlobalXplorer launched in late January […]
Raj Panjabi was your typical science- and soccer-loving 4th grader in Monrovia, Liberia. But when a brutal civil war erupted in the country, normal life was upended. On the TED2017 stage, Panjabi recalls his mother knocking on his door, telling him to pack his things. They had to flee. One image from that day has stayed […]
GlobalXplorer, the citizen science platform for archaeology, launched two weeks ago. It’s the culmination of Sarah Parcak’s TED Prize wish and, already, more than 32,000 curious minds from around the world have started their training, learning to spot signs of ancient sites threatened by looters. Working together, the GlobalXplorer community has just finished searching the […]
The power of the crowd has helped digitize the world’s books; it maintains the online encyclopedia many of us check by default. The crowd has fueled our understanding of the connections between neurons in the brain and contributed voice samples that will become a simple phone test for Parkinson’s. Incredible things happen when people around the world team up to […]
It sounds simple enough: If you’re sick, you make an appointment with a doctor, and if it’s an emergency, you head to the nearest hospital. But for more than a billion people around the world, it’s a real challenge — because they live too far from a medical facility. Where Raj Panjabi’s nonprofit, Last Mile […]
If you head to Google.com today, you might notice something interesting underneath the search bar: an invitation to watch a series of animations called #WhoWeAre. A collaboration between StoryCorps and Upworthy, with support from Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and Delta Airlines, #WhoWeAre is designed to encourage people across the United States to reach out to others who’ve […]
Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant remembers the day in 1974 when, while working for the United Nations in India, a mother handed him her young son, who had died only moments earlier from smallpox. Brilliant also remembers the day, about a year later, when he traveled by speedboat to an island in Bangladesh and met a 3-year-old […]
The United States has long been known for its national parks. But last month, Barack Obama created a single marine reserve that covers significantly more area than all of them, combined. On August 26, 2016, Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to 582,578 square miles around the northwestern islands of Hawaii. The monument was […]
A Sudanese high jumper towers over Rio de Janeiro, arching over a 25-story building in the Flamengo district. A triathlete plows through the waters of Botafogo Bay, mid-stroke, her wingspan as wide as a city bus, while a giant diver shows us the soles of his feet as he leaps from the stone jetty in Barra da Tijuca. […]