Author: Kate Torgovnick

Richard Turere, 13, grew up hating lions. In Nairobi National Park, where he lives, lions roam freely and often targeted his family’s livestock at night. And yet Turere also hated the only solution his community had come up with to stop lion attacks on cows — killing the majestic creatures.

Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions“I had to find a way of solving this problem,” says Turere in today’s talk, filmed at TED2013.

First, Turere tried using fire and scarecrows, but both failed to scare off lions for the long-haul. So electronics-tinkerer Turere had another idea.

“I discovered that lions are afraid of a moving light,” he says. “So I got an old car battery and an indicator box, a small device found in a motorcycle that tells motorists when they want to turn right or left. It blinks.”

He combined these items with a light switch, a torch from a broken flashlight and solar powering. Together, they made a blinking device that flashes in unpredictable patterns, emulating a person walking with a flashlight. The device works wonders for keeping lions away.

“I set this up in my home two years ago and since then we have never experienced any problem with the lions,” says Turere, adding that he has now made devices for seven families in his community and taught friends to build them too.

Turere boarded his very first airplane to come to TED2013. And on stage he shared with Chris Anderson the next device he’d like to build to keep lions away — his version of an electric fence. Young Turere may be on to something. In an article in today’s The New York Times, the director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota says that, after 35 years of research, he sees fences as the most promising way to save the dwindling lion population, keeping them away from both livestock and people.

Turere’s device has helped him make peace with lions. Here, watch three more TED Talks that give unexpected looks at these oversized cats.

John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers In this talk from TED2010, conservationist John Kasaona shares a wild idea his community had for conserving their local lion population: pay poachers, who know the bush and animal behavior incredibly well, to look out for the beautiful cats. And this approach is working. In 1995, there were 20 lions in Northwest Namibia. Today, there are more than 130.

Beverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats Beverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats “Our lives have basically been like a super-long episode of ‘CSI,’” says documentary filmmaker Dereck Joubert, who has spent 28 years following leopards and lions along with his partner, Beverly Joubert. And while, yes, these cats are killers — they also have incredible personalities. In this talk from TEDWomen, the pair shares amazing footage that humanizes lions.

Anders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion Anders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion What do lions have to do with medical data visualization? In this talk from TEDxGöteborg, Anders Ynnerman shares how scientists parse the reams of data that medical scans produce for each patient. In it, he reveals how and why they took CAT scans of a lion from a local zoo.  “I think this is a great application for the future of this technology because there’s very little known about the animal anatomy,” he explains.

Richard Turere was just 12 when he came up with his lion-scaring device. Watch 8 more TED Talks from impressive kids, from a preteen app developer to an elementary school class that wrote a scientific research paper in crayon »

Joshua Foer thought he might have set out on a fool’s errand when he started training to compete in the U.S. Memory Championship. Only, he ended up winning it in 2006.

Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can doIn his talk from TED2012, Foer shares the simple trick of memory that helped him become a champion — creating a memory palace that helps you physically and spatially locate memories in a familiar space. But can anyone do this? This week’s TED Weekends on the Huffington Post explores the power of memory. Below, three essays to pique your interest.

Joshua Foer: The Secret to Superpower Memory

Last weekend in New York City, Ram Kolli defeated the reigning USA Memory Championship Nelson Dellis to win the 16th annual USA Memory Championship. Readers of my book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything will remember Kolli as the “mental athlete” I went toe-to-toe with when I won that same contest in 2006.

Here’s the thing: Despite being U.S. memory champions, Kolli, Dellis, and I occasionally misplace our car keys, just like everyone else. We don’t actually have great memories. Rather, we know how to use the memories we’ve got more effectively in certain contexts, thanks to a set of mnemonic techniques invented in antiquity.

One of those techniques, known as the memory palace, was supposedly invented by a Greek poet 2,500 years ago. Read the rest of the essay »

Dr. R. Keith Sawyer: The Creative Power of Memory

Here’s a provocative claim: Great creativity is based in great memory. If we enhance our ability to remember, we will become more creative. You probably think that memory is the exact opposite of creativity. After all, the things you memorize already exist — they’re not new. And creativity is all about a new idea that didn’t exist before… right?

Well, not exactly. Creative insights always come from combinations of existing mental material. New ideas don’t just appear out of thin air; they build on existing ideas, concepts, and perceptions that you’ve stored in your mind over the years. Researchers have discovered that major creative insights tend to happen only after you work many years in an area — because it takes years to absorb the many small bits of mental material that will feed your creative process. If you don’t remember all of this material, then it won’t be available as raw material to your mind’s insight generating combination machine. Read the rest of the essay »

Gayatri Dev, M.D.: Your Diabolically Lazy Brain

Your brain is pretty darn incredible. It grasps quantum physics and converts cow manure into biofuel with the same alacrity that it overeats, skips out on spin class, and hits the snooze button on the alarm, particularly, especially, when it knows it shouldn’t. Joshua Foer finds himself the winner of a memory contest without any prior claims to an exceptional memory. He found that all he had to do was train the brain.

In other words, what your grandma told you was true: Habits are first cobwebs, then cables. If we keep doing something, the involved brain circuits become very strong. Which is why it is best not to take up midnight ice cream raids in the first place. The night call of the refrigerator siren is irresistible once the neurologic cables that heed her call are laid. Read the rest of the essay »

You know when you start to play a TED Talk in the office, only, you forget to plug in your headphones? The music can certainly be a giveaway.

But no longer! Today, we are rolling out a new preroll — that short clip that precedes each talk — on our newest offerings. Created by Psyop, with the generous support of Autodesk, this new preroll evokes what happens when an idea ripples out into the world.

“TED and Psyop wanted to convey, ‘What happens when you free an idea from its silo and release it into the world?’” explains TED’s Director of Film + Video Michael Glass. “We hope that the sequence after the explosion evokes all sorts of TED-ish themes — neurons, subatomic particles, the internet, developmental systems, outer space and so on. We wanted the video to share the experience of seeing an idea take on a life of its own as it’s shared from one person to another to another to another.”

Here, the credits for the video:

• Director: Psyop
• Creative Directors: Laurent Barthelemy, Jonathan Saunders, Borja Pena
• Executive Producer: Michael Neithardt
• Producer: Ryan Mack
• Design: Jonathan Saunders, Sam Ballardini
• 3D Lead: Christian Bach
• 3D Artists: Fabio Piparo, Todd Akita, Jonah Friedman, Jonathan Lee, Chris Wilson, Bradley Gabe
• 2D Composition: Tobey Lindback, Robert Henry

Eric Whitacre has spent most of his career conducting traditional choirs. Then, in 2009, a fan video posted to YouTube sparked a crazy idea: could he take singers from across the globe, have them sing the same piece on video, and edit it together into a virtual choir? The results of this experiment quickly went viral. And at TED2011, Whitacre spoke about the aha moment behind the choir, and debuted a new piece from the unusual ensemble.

Eric Whitacre: Virtual Choir LiveIn today’s talk, given at TED2013, Whitacre takes this idea to the next level — combining multiple choirs on stage with singers from 32 different countries via Skype, all of them making beautiful choral music together in real time. Watch as Whitacre conducts this group in a performance of “Cloudburst.” »

Making this unusual performance happen was no small feat. In the video above, see how it was done, and hear from singers who took part despite their far-flung locations.

“This will go in the history books,” says Lucas Speck of Brazil.

Adds Whitacre, “To have a live choir there on the stage and then these singers from different countries signing with us in real time through Skype, it’s as if there aren’t borders anymore.”

The choirs who appeared on the TED stage are from:

• California State University, Long Beach Campus
• California State University, Fullerton Campus
• Riverside City College

A list of the remote singers and the countries they represent:

• Gina Alvarado, Argentina
• Wei Jiang, Australia
• Lucas Mateus, Brazil
• Ariana Del Bianco, Canada
• Anita Yañez, Chile
• Meg Ideker, China
• Gan Hui Wan, Malaysia
• Anabela Baric, Croatia
• Annika Kukk, Estonia
• Yohann Hamon, France
• Alexander Utech, Germany
• Kristín Þóra Jökulsdóttir, Iceland
• Saikumar Prabhakaran, India
• Christin N. Waldemar, Indonesia
• Moshe Jonathan Gordon, Israel
• Carol Anne Edington, Japan
• Julia Slepenkova, Kazakhstan
• Andreas Khalid L. Belboe, Norway
• Von DeGuzman, Philippines
• Joanna Trociuk, Poland
• Herson A. Perez Valentin, Puerto Rico
• Sandor Orbok, Romania
• Miloš Trujić, Serbia
• Anastassia Rakitianskaia, South Africa
• Amy Daniels, South Korea
• Miha Jejčič, Slovenia
• Jonathan Souza, South Korea
• Kuan-ming Lin, Taiwan
• Heidi Greimann, Turkey
• Daniel Borszik, UAE
• Patrick Williams, UK
• Jack Rowland, USA
• Maria Petrova, USA
• Jason Ekhabi Sibi-Okumu, USA

As the one-year anniversary of the TED-Ed website nears, the TED-Ed team created a new video to walk users through the features on the site, like the ability to add questions, upload “dig deeper” materials and start discussion chains relating to any video. (This newest feature makes the website even more interactive for any type of learner.) But rather than get a traditional narrator for this video, the group had a crazy idea: what if the voice of TED-Ed were computer-generated?

TED-Ed director Logan Smalley explains, “Practically speaking, it is way easier to re-record and edit. But more than that, we wanted to establish a character. This voice is naturally egoless, and future proofed — in future videos, the voice could become female or speak in another language. And our animators could potentially develop the character down the line.”

See the 10 most-watched TED-Ed videos so far »

Find out five ways you can help build TED-ED, from nominating an educator to volunteering to be a BETA tester »

And find out how to track learning progress through the TED-Ed site »

Today’s talk, “Francis Collins: We need better drugs—now,” comes from TEDMEDFrancis Collins: We need better drugs — now—our partner conference which gives doctors, surgeons, healthcare experts, medical researchers and people with a passion for health a place to share ideas worth spreading. Both TED and TEDMED were started by Richard Saul Wurman, and while TEDMED is now independently organized by Jay Walker (see his talk “Library of the imagination”) and his team, our content partnership lets us share great TEDMED talks with the worldwide TED.com audience.

TEDMED 2013 will take place April 16 through 19 in Washington, D.C. Learn more about about attending here »

Can’t be there in person? Host a free simulcast of the event at your university, teaching hospital, non-profit or government institution. Learn more about watching live »

To get you in the spirit for this amazing event, here some powerful TEDMED talks from years past.

1. David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 minutes
2. Ben Goldacre: What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe
3. E.O Wilson: Advice to your scientists
4. Ivan Oransky: Are we over-medicalized?
5. Ed Gavagan: A story about knots and surgeons
6. Eric Topol: The wireless future of medicine
7. A.J. Jacobs: How healthy living nearly killed me
8. Charles Limb: Building the musical muscle
9. Bill Doyle: Treating cancer with electric fields
10. Charity Tillemann-Dick: Singing after a double lung transplant

And see more talks from past TEDMEDs »

On Sunday, Oprah Winfrey revealed that she and TED speaker Brené Brown are “soul mates.”

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerabilityAs the pair sat down for an in-depth discussion on Super Soul Sunday — part one of which aired last Sunday, with part two to air next Sunday — they excitedly talked about many of the concepts which Brown raised in her classic TED Talk, “The power of vulnerability.” One interesting moment came when Brown shared a counterintuitive thought on what scares us the most.

“As someone who studies shame and scarcity and fear, if you asked me, ‘What is the most terrifying, difficult emotion we experience as humans?,’ I would say joy,” says Brown. “When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding. Brené Brown: Listening to shameSo what we do in moments of joyfulness is we try to beat vulnerability to the punch … We try to dress-rehearse tragedy.”

In fact, says Brown during the first part of this intervie,  fear seems to be an ever-present part of our experience.

“I think there’s a thin film of terror wrapped around us,” says Brown. “If it’s not, ‘I’m not safe enough’ or ‘I’m not secure enough,’ it’s ‘I’m not liked enough,’ ‘I’m not promoted enough,’ ‘I’m not loved enough’ … at the very bottom, ‘I’m not good enough.’”

Watch part one of Brown’s “Super Soul Sunday” appearance here »

And stay tuned to the Oprah Winfrey Network this Sunday, March 24, at 11am (EST) to see part two.

TEDGlobal has been held in Oxford, England; Arusha, Tanzania; Mysore, India; and Edinburgh, Scotland — with speakers from a wide range of other countries. In other words, it’s a global affair. As we prepare for TEDGlobal 2013: “Think Again,” kicking off on June 10, we thought we’d take a closer look.

Here, go around the world in less than 180 minutes with TEDGlobal talks.

George Ayittey on Cheetahs vs. Hippos Continent: Africa George Ayittey on Cheetahs vs. Hippos It’s an often-told story: corruption is rampant in Africa. But there’s another story happening too.  In this talk from TEDGlobal 2007, economist George Ayittey introduces us to the “cheetah generation,” the movers and shakers who are effecting change. He predicts that they will soon overtake the “hippo generation,” those in power now.

Lee Hotz: Inside an Antarctic time machine Continent: Antarctica Lee Hotz: Inside an Antarctic time machine How can we get data on how the global climate has changed over the centuries? In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, Lee Hotz describes a project to drill into 10,000-year-old Antarctic ice to find out more.

Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers Continent: Asia Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China’s workers Over the past 30 years, a large portion of China’s population lifted out of poverty — in part thanks to jobs in booming factory towns serving new global markets. But journalist Leslie T. Chang finds one voice oddly missing from the debate about globalization. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, she shares words from factory workers themselves.

Elizabeth Murchison: Fighting a contagious cancer Continent: Australia Elizabeth Murchison: Fighting a contagious cancer The Tasmanian devil is an animal only found on the Australian island of Tasmania, and a virulent cancer is killing thousands of them. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, Elizabeth Murchison shares with his her fight to save the Taz from this unusual, contagious cancer.

Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity Continent: Europe Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity Mark Pagel is a biologist, and he has a fascinating theory about language — that it’s a technology that evolved to allow for cooperation. As he shares at TEDGlobal 2011, he looks at the example of the European Union—whose 27 members speak 23 languages, requiring translation costs in the excess of $1.45 billion a year.

Sheena Iyengar: The art of choosing Continent: North America Sheena Iyengar: The art of choosing Coke versus Pepsi. It’s a classic choice consumers in the United States and the rest of North America make on a daily basis. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, Sheena Iyengar shares her research on the assumptions Americans make about choices and how they are shaped by background.

Phil Borges on endangered cultures Continent: South America Phil Borges on endangered cultures Photographer Phil Borges documents cultures in the world that are in danger of disappearing. In this talk, he shares stunning images of the people living in the jungles of the Ecuadorean Amazon — a part of South America changing quickly following oil discovery in the 1970s.

Want to attend TEDGlobal 2013? Find out more here »

North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world. So it’s exceptionally rare to hear a first-hand account of life there — in English, no less.

Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North KoreaIn today’s brave talk, given at TED2013, Hyenseo Lee gives a riveting account of what it was like to grow up in North Korea. “I thought my country was the best on the planet,” she says. “I was very proud … I often wondered about the outside world, but I thought I would spend my life in North Korea — until everything changed.”

Lee tells of seeing her first public execution at age 7, and witnessing the death and desperation around her during the terrible famine of the 1990s. She doesn’t actually remember much about her escape — only that, at age 14, she was sent to stay with distant relatives in China. She ended up living there on her own and wouldn’t see her parents again for another 14 years.

It’s easy to think that, once the border is crossed, the worst is behind a North Korean refugee. But Lee tells her story to stress the point that the struggle continues long after. In China, Lee lived under the constant threat of discovery — which would end with her being deported to face execution, torture or imprisonment. Even after seeking asylum in South Korea in 2008, Lee says life was still hard as she faced a deep depression adjusting to a new life all over again. And then she discovered that her family was being targeted after money she sent home was intercepted.

To hear this powerful story, watch the talk. And here, see more stories of escapes from incredible circumstances.

Sophal Ear: Escaping the Khmer Rouge
TED Fellow Sophal Ear’s family is Cambodian, but he grew up in Vietnam. At TED2009, he tells the story of how the Khmer Rouge forced his parents to leave their home in the city of Phnom Phen and work in a labor camp. And how his mom had the foresight to get them out, using her crude knowledge of Vietnamese.

Jacqueline Novogratz on escaping poverty
The Mathare Valley slum outside Nairobi is known for poverty, drug use and poor sanitation. In this talk from TED2009, Jacqueline Novogratz tells the story of Jane, a mom who had to work as a prostitute there but dreamed of being a doctor. She reveals how a sewing machine helped Jane out of poverty and enabled her to fulfill her dream of helping others.

Leslie Morgan Steiner: Why domestic violence victims don’t leave
Leslie Morgan Steiner thought she’d found true love in her early 20s. Instead, she found herself married to a man who regularly pointed a gun at her head and routinely abused her. In this talk from TEDxRainier, Steiner tells the story of how she escaped — by breaking the silence that surrounded her situation and telling everyone she could.

Kevin Bales: How to combat modern slavery
Modern slavery exists because it underpins industries in Asia, Africa, South America and, well, everywhere but Iceland and Greenland. In this talk from TED2010, Bale shares personal stories from his research that shows that people tend to voluntarily step into slavery because their families are hungry — and then aren’t able to escape. The key to ending this? Breaking the idea of people as disposable.

Theresa Flores: Find a voice with soap
As a teenage girl in the Michigan suburbs, Theresa Flores found herself manipulated into a human trafficking ring. Now, she tries to help girls in this situation. At TEDxColumbus she shares an idea — how wrappers on bars of soap in motels could give women the resources they need to find help.

“You ain’t gangsta unless you have a garden,” says Ron Finley of LAGreenGrounds.org. In this special video for CNN, Finley shares more about the idea he posited at TED2013 for improving health in his neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles — planting edible gardens wherever a strip of land is available.

“What we do is literally put vegetable gardens in homes in South Central, free of charge,” says Finley.Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA “We like front yards better than back yards because of the visibility front yards have. We want people to see the food.”

Last weekend, Finley held a full-out gardening party to plant a vegetable garden at The R Cloud House, an artist-in-residence house conspicuously located across from the L.A. Watts Towers. 20 TEDActive attendees attended the party, with friends in tow, working alongside Finley and volunteers from Heavy T’s Grow Show. Mud Baron from Muir Ranch donated soil, while Ray Cirino and Large Marge Sustainables provided food for volunteers. Together, the group planted corn, tomatos, strawberries, dill, thyme, basil, mint and swiss chard.

See tons of incredible photos shot during this planting party »

And read an essay Finley wrote for CNN »

 

On March 1 — just two days after Elon Musk appeared on the TED2013 stage — a SpaceX CRS-2 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on a resupply mission for the International Space Station. Two days later, after the righting of a glitch, its Dragon capsule delivered a half-ton of supplies for the astronauts on board. And four days after that, the SpaceX Grasshopper had its most successful test to date. This reusable rocket launched 80 feet in the air, hovered for about 34 seconds and returned once again to the center of its launch pad.

Elon Musk: The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity …So how did Musk, the cofounder of PayPal, get involved in space travel?

“It was from the standpoint of: What are the things that need to happen in order for the future to be exciting and inspiring? There’s a fundamental difference between a humanity that’s a space-faring civilization — that is out there exploring the stars and on multiple planets — compared to one where we are forever confined to Earth,” Musk says in today’s TED Talk, a conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson. “The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology, and in particular to crack a problem that I think is vital for humanity to become a space-faring civilization: to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket.”

Musk’s company has slashed the cost of rockets by, they say, up to 75 percent, nudging us toward the idea of human life being multiplanetary. But this isn’t his only endeavor that could change our relationship to travel. Musk is also the mind behind Tesla Motors, which builds electric cars, and SolarCity, a solar-power firm.

“I think it’s extremely important that we have sustainable transport and sustainable energy production. The overall sustainable energy problem is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century,” Musk says in today’s talk. “You have to come up with a really energy-efficient car, which means you have to make it incredibly light … We actually applied rocket design techniques to make the car light, despite the large battery pack.”

To hear more about Musk’s vision for the electric car, solar energy and commercial space travel, as well as his thoughts on how his divergent companies actually make sense together, watch this intriguing conversation. And here, more talks from visionaries in the field of transportation on what we might see in the not-too-distant future.

• Chris Gerdes: The future race car — 150 mph, and no driver
• Anna Mracek Dietrich: A plane you can drive
• Bertrand Piccard: A solar-powered aircraft
• Yves Behar’s supercharged motorcycle design
• Sebastian Thrun: Google’s driverless car
• Dennis Hong: Making a car for blind drivers
• Bill Ford: A future beyond traffic gridlock
• Robin Chase: Excuse me, may I rent your car?
• Kent Larson: Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city
• Burt Rutan sees the future of space
• Bill Stone: I’m going to Mars. You coming?

Watch the TED playlist “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” »

And see 5 fascinating cars of the future »

“We may not yet have the flying car that science fiction promised us,” says Catarina Mota in today’s talk, given at TEDGlobal 2012. “But we can have walls that change color depending on temperature, keyboards that roll up, and windows that become opaque at the flick of a switch.”

Catarina Mota: Play with smart materialsAs Mota demonstrates, smart materials will allow us to make some very cool things. But not a lot of information is currently out there about how these materials are made, how they work, and how they can be used. This is why Mota co-created OpenMaterials.org, a website for the sharing of experiments, information, tutorials and DIY projects involving smart materials.

“Innovation has always been fueled by tinkerers,” says Mota. “So many times, amateurs — not experts — have been the inventors and improvers of things like mountain bikes, personal computers, airplanes.”

To hear some examples of how makers volleying ideas can lead to innovation, watch this talk. And below, Mota shares some of the smart materials gaining momentum on her site.

Conductive Inks are paints infused with conductive particles like silver and carbon. They are used to create both hand-painted and printed electrical traces on paper, and are at the base of one of the most promising branches of material science: printed electronics. Printed electronics allow us to create cheap, flexible and recyclable circuits using standard paper, a slightly modified document printer and conductive ink. The types of conductive ink currently available outside university laboratories are still too resistive to replace copper and other conductors we use for traces. However, conductive ink is a good material for creating sensors in any shape we want — by simply painting them. In the video above, see some experiments I’ve been working on to create variable resistance sensors using only conductive ink, paper and basic electronic components like resistors and transistors.

Muscle Wire is a shape memory alloy that contracts between 3 and 7% when an electrical current runs through it. While this material is not strong enough for heavier applications — like rolling up heavy blinds or pulling any significant weight — it allows us to create motion in a noiseless and smooth way for a number of other applications in which the use of motors is not perfect. On the video above, I used muscle wire to make two small paper wings flap when a handmade paper switch is pushed.

Thermochromic Pigments change color at a given temperature. The two most common types of thermochromic materials are based on either leuco dies or liquid crystals. At specific temperatures the liquid crystals re-orientate to produce an apparent change of color. Thermochromic materials can be triggered by body heat or used in conjunction with heating elements such as nichrome, steel thread or even simply conductive thread. Think: a baby’s bottle that changes color when the milk is cool enough to drink.

Electrotextiles include thread, fabrics and yarn with electrical properties. They are made by blending or coating textiles with metallic fibers and are available in many different weaves and textures. We’re only just discovering uses for these materials — but some of the most interesting, in my opinion, are for making a large array of sensors like the ones developed by Kobakant and pictured above: a zipper slider, a crochet squeeze sensor, a piezoresistive touch pad, an embroidered potentiometer, a knit accelerometer, and a tilt sensor. Conductive fabrics have also been used both by hobbyists and product designers to make objects like roll-up keyboards, jackets with controls for smart phones and electronics-enhanced garments.

Light Diffusing Acrylic is infused with colorless light diffusing particles. While regular acrylic only diffuses light around the edges, this material illuminates across its entire surface. On the example pictured above, we wrapped a strip of RGB LEDs around a piece of this material and made it cycle through several colors to demonstrate its light diffusing properties. Light diffusing acrylics are currently used for interior design and multi-touch applications.

Also, check out the Lotus Dome — an incredible installation built out of hundreds of “smart metals.” It comes highly recommended by TED’s Director of Design Services, Mike Femia.

Today, TED Radio Hour asks two questions many of us are scared to pose: will human beings have a purpose as robots become more adept at performing tasks and projecting emotions? And as technology gets more advanced, how does interaction between human beings change?

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?In this episode — the third in season two — Sherry Turkle explores whether the fact that technology allows us more points of communication actually makes us all feel more alone. Cynthia Breazeal predicts the rise of personal robots. Andrew McAfee imagines the future of work as droids take our jobs. And Abraham Verghese wonders if human touch may not be the best medical tool.

Check out your local NPR schedule to find out when the show airs today, or listen to it via NPR’s website »

Or head to iTunes, where the podcast is available now »

Today is March 14, otherwise known as 3/14. For any math enthusiast, these numbers will certainly set off a bell — they are the first three digits of Pi. To help you celebrate Pi Day, here are two TED Talks, starting with Daniel Tammet’s “Different ways of knowing.” Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia — meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors all blends together, giving him a unique experience of the world. Scoot to 4:46 to see his painting of Pi, rendered as an emotional landscape.

And while you’re at it, watch 9-year-old Chirag Singh’s adorable talk from TEDxYouth@BommerCanyon, “My passion for Pi.”

The Digiday Publishing Awards are kind of like the Oscars for online publishers, content providers and advertisers. And last night, at the event, we got to hear the words, “And the award goes to … TED Conferences.”

TED was honored with the award “Best Use of a iPad/Tablet by a Publisher,” thanks to our amazing app. TED was also a finalist in the category “Best Use of Video by a Publisher.”

Our own Lilian Chen, pictured above, accepted the award — and says that it is deceptively heavy. It now sits proudly in our New York office.

See all the winners and finalists »

Stewart Brand begins today’s TED Talk with an elegy for Martha of Cincinnati, who died in 1914. No, Martha is not a person. She was the very last passenger pigeon.

Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? “Extinction is a different kind of death — it’s bigger,” says Brand in this talk, given at TED2013. “This had been the most abundant bird in the world. They lived in North America for 6 million years — suddenly it wasn’t here at all.”

But, Brand shares, the passenger pigeon could now be brought back to life. He calls it: de-extinction.

Stewart Brand, one of the founders of the environmental movement in the 1960s, is known for thinking of history differently. At TED2004, he shared his vision for the Clock of the Long Now, which keeps time for 10,000 years. Stewart Brand on the Long NowAt TED@State, he shared 4 environmental ‘heresies,’ coming out in favor of nuclear power and genetically engineered crops. But in this talk, Stewart lays the groundwork for his boldest idea yet: bringing back species like the Carolina parakeet (extinct 1916), the Heath hen (extinct 1932), the Tasmanian tiger (extinct 1936) … even the Woolly Mammoth (extinct about 4,000 years ago).

Brand says this is an extension of current work being done to save endangered species.

Stewart Brand: 4 environmental 'heresies'“Humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. We have the ability now and, maybe the moral obligation, to repair some of the damage,” says Brand. “We interfered in a big way by making them these animals extinct. Many of them were keystone species and we changed the whole ecosystem they were in.”

To hear how “ancient DNA” from museum specimens and fossils could be used to bring back some of these species, watch this bold talk. It, of course, will bring to mind many visceral questions. For example: Can we really bring extinct species back to life? Should we? Can these animals be reintroduced into the wild? How would we do that ethically? And are we playing God by even thinking about it? (See the video above for thoughts on that one.)

For the past two years, Brand — along with his wife, biotech expert Ryan Phelan, and genetic engineer George Church — has held private workshops to explore whether de-extinction was possible, and whether biologists were interested in the idea. This is just the beginning of a long conversation — one Brand now wants to take public. To further dive into all the myriad questions involved in de-extinction, he is holding TEDxDeExtinction this coming Friday in Washington, DC. A joint effort between Brand’s non-profit Revive & Restore, TED and National Geographic — TEDxDeExtinction will be the first public exploration of this fascinating topic.

Anyone is welcome to watch through a free livestream of the event on March 15, 2013, from 8:30am to 5pm (EST) »

The event will be divided into the sessions “Who,” “How,” “Why and Why Not,” and “Wild Again.” It will feature greetings from TED’s own Chris Anderson and National Geographic Society chairman John Fahey, as well as talks from Michael Archer on “A second chance for Tasmanian Tigers and Fantastic Frogs,” Robert Lanza on “The Use of Cloning and Stem Cells to Resurrect Life” and  Beth Shapiro, who sequenced the genome of passenger pigeon, on “Ancient DNA.” See the full program here »

But perhaps the most exciting part of the TEDxDeExtinction website is the Frequently Asked Questions page. Below, just a sampling:

Why do it? Why revive extinct species?

For the same reasons we protect endangered species. To preserve biodiveristy and genetic diversity. To undo harm that humans have caused in the past. To restore diminished ecosystems. To advance the science of preventing extinctions.

How soon will some extinct creature live again?

Signs are there will be some impressive milestones in this decade. Technically one extinction has already been partially reversed. The last Pyrenean ibex (also called a bucardo) died in 2000. A Spanish team used frozen tissue to clone a living twin in 2003, birthed by a goat. The baby ibex died of respiratory failure after 10 minutes (a common problem in early cloning efforts). Funding dried up, so no further work has been done on this species as yet. As George Church reminds people, the first airplane flight in 1903 lasted 12 seconds.

How many techniques are there, and how do they work?

There are at least three semi-successful techniques for de-extinction so far.  1) Selective back-breeding of existing descendents to recreate a primordial ancestor is being used for the revival of the European Aurochs, among others.  2) Cloning with cells from cryopreserved tissue of a recently extinct animal can generate viable eggs.  If the eggs are implanted in a closely related surrogate mother, some pregnancies produce living offspring of the extinct species.  3) Allele replacement for precisely hybridizing a living species with an extinct species is the new genome-editing technique developed by George Church.  If the technique proves successful (such as with the passenger pigeon), it might be applied to the many other extinct species that have left their “ancient DNA” in museum specimens and fossils up to 200,000 years old.

It all sounds like Jurassic Park. How is this different?

It was a wonderful movie, which introduced the world to the idea of de-extinction back in 1993.  Its science fiction is quite different from current reality, though.  First, no dinosaurs—sorry!  No recoverable DNA has been found in dinosaur fossils (nor in amber-encased mosquitoes).  Robert Lanza observes, “You can’t clone from stone.”

Second, the plot of the movie is driven by protecting the commercial secrecy of an island theme park.  Real-world de-extinction is being conducted with total transparency.  Eventual rewilding of revived species can be no more commercial than the current worldwide protection of endangered species and wildlands.

See lots more FAQs and a suggested reading list »

Watch the free livestream of TEDxDeExtinction on March 15 starting at 8:30 am (EST) »

“Raise your hand if you think that basic research on fruit flies has anything to do with understanding mental illness in humans,” David Anderson begins today’s talk, given at TEDxCaltech.

David Anderson: Your brain is more than a bag of chemicalsWhile few hands shoot in the air, Anderson goes on to explain the connection — that research conducted by manipulating brain chemicals in fruit flies is giving us valuable insight into the brain circuitry of emotions and mental illness. And these neural underpinnings are more complex than many think.

“We tend to believe — and the popular press aids and abets this view — that [psychiatric disorders] are a chemical imbalance in the brain,” says Anderson. “As if the brain were some kind of bag of chemical soup full of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine.”

The brain circuitry of mental disorders are complex, and yet the medications we’ve used to treat them for the past two decades work from a simple model — they treat every part of the brain as if it were the same. This is one of the big reasons that current psychiatric medications don’t work well, says Anderson, and why they have many unpleasant side effects that lead many to avoid them.

Explains Anderson, ”Using them to treat a complex psychiatric disorder is like trying to use engine oil by opening up the can and pouring it all over the engine block—some of it will dribble into the right place, but a lot of it will do more harm than good … What we need to do is use our ingenuity and our scientific knowledge to try to design a new generation of treatments that are targeted to specific neurons and specific regions of the brain that are affected in particular psychiatric disorders.”

Anderson’s lab approaches this challenge in an interesting way — by asking questions like, “How long will a fruit fly stay angry if we inhibit its dopamine system?” To hear how this all works, watch this fascinating talk — a must-see for anyone who has or knows someone with a mental disorder.

Fruit flies, otherwise known as Drosophila, are the workhorse of brain research. Here, a playlist of TED Talks about research with these amazing insects.

Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain Instead of mapping the brain by recording the activity of every neuron — a daunting task — Gero Miesenboeck works the other way around. At TEDGlobal 2010, he shares his reverse engineering approach, revealing how manipulating neurons leads to a clear understanding of what they do.

Michael Dickinson: How a fly flies Michael Dickinson: How a fly flies From an engineering standpoint, it is incredible that fruit flies are able to lift off, given the size of their bodies and the delicate structure of their wings. In this talk from TEDxCaltech, Michael Dickinson shares the marvel — and how it is made possible by the fly’s nimble brain.

Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine At age 17, Eva Vertes discovered a compound that stopped the damage in a fruit fly’s nervous system, caused by heavy metals. Many think this could be a first step toward a treatment for Alzheimer’s. In this talk from TED2005, Vertes walks us through that research, and shares an exciting possibility — that cancer could potentially be used as a treatment.

Read Montague: What we're learning from 5,000 brains Read Montague: What we’re learning from 5,000 brains Fruit flies and mice have long been the organisms we use to study the brain. At TEDGlobal 2012, Read Montague shares the tool — fMRI — which is allowing his lab to study thousands of human brains as they interact with each other.

And some TEDx Talks to watch:

• Luke O’Neill at TEDxDublin: From fruit flies to cancer
• Hidehiko Inagaki and Ketaki Panse at TEDxCaltech: “Emotion” in the hungry fly brain

Two years ago today, a massive earthquake rocked Japan and sent a tsunami raging over its shores. Nearly 19,000 people were killed; more than 300,000 were displaced. TED Fellow Serge Mouangue was living in Tokyo at the time. A native of Cameroon, he had been exploring the similarities between West African and Japanese cultures in art, making mash-up pieces such as a kimono made from African cloth.

“As in my native culture, the Japanese people have a religious connection with their environment. Never had the environment or the elements sent a stronger message,” says Mouangue, who found the reaction to the disaster around him deeply affecting. “I related to their bitter silence, their stoic, tearless focus and their feeling of betrayal by the environment.”

To commemorate the rebuilding process, Mouangue has created a new series of sculptures, called “The Blood Brothers.” The colorful characters look somewhat like aliens — they are large-eyed, flat-headed, round-bellied beings based on the folklore of Mouangue’s Bamileke tribe. But while the sculptures have their roots in Cameroon culture, they are also distinctly Japanese, thanks to their material, traditional red lacquer. They’re unbelievably cute, but they also have a serious message. “After March 11, 2011, the Japanese people promised each other in solidarity to rebuild a better country,” says Mouangue. His aliens are designed to represent that effort.