Cross the Wii hacking of Johnny Lee with the creativity tools of Tod Machover, and you get Digital Wheel Art — a wheelchair that uses a hacked Wii Remote to help disabled people make paintings. As Gizmodo reports, inventor YoungHyun Chung showed off the device at the Maker Faire in NYC last night. Watch the […]
The TED.com staff’s favorite psychology research blog, the BPS Research Digest, reports on a study on forgiveness from the University of Sussex and the New School for Social Research. The study examines how groups which have committed atrocious acts against one another come to break the cycle of resentment and forgive. [The researchers] surveyed 180 […]
Casson at the TEDPrize.org blog (get the RSS feed) points us toward this cover story in the May/June Boston Review: “Is It Africa’s Turn?” Reacting to recent economic data from Africa — showing some growth and progress across the continent — economist Edward Miguel writes: “Economic growth rates are at historic highs and democratization appears […]
TED’s Matthew Trost reports from the World Science Festival‘s Sunday-evening session “90 Is the New 50: The Science of Longevity“: Faith Salie moderated this panel of four scientists (and one singer) on the science of longevity and the nature of aging. Gerontology pioneer Robert Butler, embryologist Renee Reijo Pera, Harvard associate professor of biology David […]
TED’s Matthew Trost reports from the World Science Festival‘s Sunday-afternoon session “Looking for the Laws of Life“: John Hockenberry moderated this discussion on how life works, what its prerequisites are and where else we might find it in the universe. Featuring synthetic biology expert Steven Benner, researcher and astrobiologist Maggie Turnbull and cosmologist-astrobiologist-physicist-author Paul Davies. […]
Photo of Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, acknowledging Jim Gates and Stephon Alexander at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, as part of the World Science Festival, NYC. From entropybound‘s flickr set (and check out his blog). TED’s Marla Mitchnick reports from the Saturday night blockbuster “Music and the Brain,” held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and […]
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 […]