TED’s June Cohen reports via Twitter on the World Science Festival session “Greengenuity“, where she’s hearing from the screen designer for One Laptop per Child (the “$100 laptop”): The OLPC gal is asked about the new … … touchscreen-driven design (from the wonderful Yves Behar) An “oohhh” goes thru the crowd when she explains how […]
TED’s Matthew Trost reports from this Saturday session of the World Science Festival: Nobel Prize winner and cell biologist Paul Nurse moderates a discussion between the leader of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, physician and geneticist James Evans, and sociologist Nikolas Rose after an introductory piece of context by Misha Angrist, who recently had […]
From Not Exactly Rocket Science, here’s a thoughtful report on a new fMRI technique that — 70 percent of the time, anyway — can tell what noun a person is thinking of: Tom Mitchell and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University [used] a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visualise the brain activity of […]
TED’s own June Cohen is Twittering from the World Science Festival‘s session “Illuminating Genius: Unlocking Creativity.” From her feed: Bill Jones makes this lovely statement that he believed creative breakthroughs happen between people, when people work collaboratively … There’s something invisible that happens between people, he says. Side note: I believe, but cannot prove, that […]
Pessimists, mark your calendars: July 17-20 comes the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference at the University of Oxford. The conference aims to open dialogue about the greatest threats to human survival now and into the future. It is curated by the Future of Humanity Institute, whose director is TEDster Nick Bostrom. Among the discussion topics: + […]
Physicist Brian Greene will talk today with Leonard Lopate on WNYC about how the US can regain its leadership in science and technology. It’s an interesting time to be having this conversation — funding of basic physics research is much in the news lately. Yesterday, an anonymous donor gave $5 million to Fermilab, outside Chicago, […]
Erik Hersman, at right, above, with David Kobia, reports: Wow, we’re absolutely stunned, but we just won first place at the NetSquared Challenge! That means we have a check for $25,000 that we can spend on further development of the Ushahidi Engine (version 2). Check out this post for a list of ways you can […]
The Huffington Post reports that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth will be made into an opera for the 2011 season at La Scala in Milan. Composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to set the famous Keynote slide deck to music.
Tomorrow, Thursday, May 29, 2008, begins the World Science Festival: a four-day celebration of scientific exploration and discovery in New York City created by TEDster Brian Greene. Members of the TED team will be liveblogging the event right here on the TED Blog, keeping you updated on the latest from many TEDTalks favorites who will […]
From Agence France-Presse: A team of geneticists from Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) in Holland announced today that they’ve sequenced a woman’s DNA. It’s the first time female DNA has been completely sequenced — first the duck-billed platypus, and now this. The formal announcement, made today at the Bessensap press event, is in Dutch. From […]
Fans of Vik Muniz may be interested to learn the results of a recent study which shows that, when we look at a painting, our brains process its content before registering its style. In the study, paintings were presented in pairs for different time lengths and the participants were asked to judge the similarity within […]
One Laptop per Child designer Yves Behar (watch his TEDTalk) shares exciting news about the top-to-bottom redesign of the XO laptop — sometimes called the “$100 laptop.” He writes: With the XO (1.0), we pushed the boundaries of what a laptop could be by lowering the cost dramatically, being green (no heavy metals, lowest energy […]
Several TEDsters have written in to share this astonishing, close-up look at the processes behind common chemical reactions: David Bolinsky, eat your heart out. (The spot was directed by Roderick Fenske of Hungry Man and commissioned by agency Media Consulta and producer Till Drier to promote the Marie Curie Actions, a European group that provides […]
Above: Professor Stephen Hawking met South Africa’s former president, Nelson Mandela, in Houghton, Johannesburg, today. From left to right are Stephen Hawking, Neil Turok, Nelson Mandela, Pik Botha and David Block. Photograph by Dr Robert Groess. Professor Stephen Hawking today met with South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela to discuss the NextEinstein initiative — part […]
Amy Novogratz reports from the AIMS celebrating weekend in Muizeberg, Cape Town: During a luncheon to celebrate the opening of the new Research Center at AIMS — the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences — Barclays announces their support by starting with 20 AIMS scholarships a year, renewable. Stephen Hawking (right) is in South Africa for […]
Panthea Lee and Dan Shemie write from Shanghai: So after weeks of plotting, scheming and ceaseless fretting, our Friends of Pangea Day event in Shanghai has gone off without a hitch. For those unfamiliar with the situation, a brief explanation: the Chinese government has launched a serious crackdown on cultural events in the lead-up to […]