2016年1月30日 星期六

Glow-in-the-dark sharks and other surprising sea creatures

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TED
This week on TED.com
January 30, 2016

David Gruber: Glow-in-the-dark sharks and other surprising sea creatures

13:54 minutes · Filmed Oct 2015 · Posted Jan 2016 · Mission Blue II

Just a few meters below the waves, marine biologist and explorer-photographer David Gruber discovered something amazing -- a surprising new range of sea creatures that glow in many colors in the ocean's dim blue light. Join his journey in search of biofluorescent sharks, seahorses, sea turtles and more, and learn how these light-up creatures could illuminate a new understanding of our own brains.

Playlist of the week

New tech, new morals

Along with every tech advance comes new ethical questions. In these eye-opening talks, learn about life-altering feats of science ... and ask: How could we mess this up? Watch »

8 TED Talks • Total run time 2:14:22

More TED Talks

Have you wondered why politicians aren't what they used to be, why governments seem unable to solve real problems? Economist Yanis Varoufakis, the former Minister of Finance for Greece, says that it's because you can be in politics today but not be in power -- because real power now belongs to those who control the economy. He believes that the mega-rich and corporations are cannibalizing the political sphere, causing financial crisis. Hear his dream for a world in which capital and labor no longer struggle against each other, "one that is simultaneously libertarian, Marxist and Keynesian." Watch »

A decade ago, US law said human genes were patentable -- which meant patent holders had the right to stop anyone from sequencing, testing or even looking at a patented gene. Troubled by the way this law both harmed patients and created a barrier to biomedical innovation, Tania Simoncelli and her colleagues at the ACLU challenged it. In this riveting talk, hear the story of how they took a case everybody told them they would lose all the way to the Supreme Court. Watch »

Roboticist Auke Ijspeert designs biorobots, machines modeled after real animals -- like salamanders and cats -- that would appear at home in the pages of a sci-fi novel. His team is studying how animals move to create better robots that walk, jump and even swim. And these robots don't just mimic the natural world -- they help us understand our own biology better, unlocking previously unknown secrets of the spinal cord. Watch »

Plastic bags are essentially indestructible, yet they're used and thrown away with reckless abandon. Most end up in the ocean, where they pollute the water and harm marine life; the rest are burned in garbage piles, where they release harmful dioxins into the atmosphere. Melati and Isabel Wijsen are on a mission to stop plastic bags from suffocating their beautiful island home of Bali. "Don't ever let anyone tell you that you're too young or you won't understand," Isabel says to other aspiring activists. "We're not telling you it's going to be easy. We're telling you it's going to be worth it." Watch »

Read more on ideas.ted.com

Food: Want to eat smarter? Forget about willpower »
We know surprisingly little about what we want to eat, and why

Art: When the Sistine Chapel was almost painted over »
Michelangelo's masterpiece was a public relations nightmare

Book list: Big ideas from TED2016 speakers »
We're about to hold TED's annual conference -- which means more free TED Talks coming to you throughout the year. Get a sneak peek via this reading list from speakers you'll soon get to know.

TED2016 reading list

Quote of the Week

We've gone beyond the capacity of the single human mind to an extraordinary degree. IQ ... is completely irrelevant. What's relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas, and how well they're cooperating."

Matt Ridley
When ideas have sex

TED conference opening night in cinemas

Gather a group of friends and watch the dramatic opening night of the TED2016 conference in your local movie theater! It's two hours of never-before-seen TED Talks, performance and ideas, in an evening-long program sure to spark great discussions.

Click through for dates and locations of theaters near you, and experience TED on the big screen.

TED Talks in Cinemas

 

2016年1月23日 星期六

How I turned a deadly plant into a thriving business

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TED
This week on TED.com
January 23, 2016

Achenyo Idachaba: How I turned a deadly plant into a thriving business

07:17 minutes · Filmed May 2015 · Posted Jan 2016 · TEDWomen 2015

The water hyacinth may look like a harmless, even beautiful flowering plant -- but it's actually an invasive aquatic weed that clogs waterways, stopping trade, interrupting schooling and disrupting everyday life. In this scourge, green entrepreneur Achenyo Idachaba saw opportunity. Follow her journey as she turns weeds into woven wonders.

Playlist of the week

Art made of unusual stuff

Shake up your own creative juices with these talks about art made from unconventional materials. Watch »

7 TED Talks • Total run time 1:00:41

More TED Talks

If you read a poem and love it, but then find out it was actually written by a computer, how would you feel about that? Test yourself in this fascinating talk from writer Oscar Schwartz, who shares examples of poems written by humans and by computer programs. Can you tell the difference? Watch »

Jill Farrant studies a rare phenomenon: "resurrection plants," seemingly dead and shriveled-up plants that come back to blooming life when they're watered. What are the tricks these super-resilient plants use to survive -- and could they hold promise for growing food in our hotter, drier world? Watch »

Cave diver Jill Heinerth explores the hidden underground waterways coursing through our planet. Working with biologists, climatologists and archaeologists, Heinerth unravels the mysteries of the life-forms that inhabit some of the earth's most remote places. In this short talk, take a dive below the waves and explore the wonders of inner space. Watch »

The Sistine Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings on earth -- but there's a lot you probably don't know about it. In this tour-de-force talk, art historian Elizabeth Lev guides us across the famous building's ceiling and through Michelangelo's vital depiction of traditional stories. Watch »

Read more on ideas.ted.com

Leadership: Lessons in courage from a Tokyo firefighter »
The astonishing story of a team that confronted nuclear disaster

Adventure: The quirky perspective of an extreme walker »
“Walking is the perfect speed for us”

Video: Guessing what you might look like ... from a strand of your DNA »
This artistic project raises fascinating questions 

DNA portrait
 

Quote of the Week

We think of love as a binary thing. You're either in love, or you're not in love. You love, or you don't love. And I think the reality is that love is a process."

Rufus Griscom + Alisa Volkman
Let's talk parenting taboos

TED Talks in Cinemas

For the first time ever, watch the opening night of the TED2016 Conference in your local movie theater. Click through for dates and locations of theaters near you, and experience TED on the big screen!

TED Talks in your local cinema

 

2016年1月16日 星期六

Great architecture should tell a story

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TED
This week on TED.com
January 16, 2016

Ole Scheeren: Why great architecture should tell a story

16:26 minutes · Filmed Sep 2015 · Posted Jan 2016 · TEDGlobal>London

For architect Ole Scheeren, the people who live and work inside a building are as much a part of that building as concrete, steel and glass. He asks: Can architecture be about collaboration and storytelling instead of the isolation and hierarchy of a typical skyscraper? Visit five of Scheeren's buildings -- from a twisted tower in China to a floating cinema in the ocean in Thailand -- and learn the stories behind them.

Playlist of the week

The hidden influence of algorithms

From search engines to architecture, explore the fascinating effects of algorithms and formulas on the world around us. Watch »

6 TED Talks • Total run time 1:28:59

This week's new TED Talks

"I love being a police officer," says Baltimore Police officer Lt. Colonel Melvin Russell -- "but we must reform." As district commander in one of Baltimore's toughest neighborhoods, Russell worked to win back the trust of the community and lower the violent crime rate. "Law enforcement is in a crisis," he says. "But it's not too late for all of us to build our cities and nation to make it great again." Watch »

Wael Ghonim helped touch off the Arab Spring in his home of Egypt ... by setting up a simple Facebook page. As he reveals, once the revolution spilled onto the streets, it turned from hopeful to messy, then ugly and heartbreaking. And social media followed suit. What was once a place for crowdsourcing, engaging and sharing became a polarized battleground. Ghonim asks: What can we do about online behavior now? How can we use the Internet and social media to create civility? Watch »

Challenges and problems can derail your creative process ... or they can make you more creative than ever. In the surprising story behind the best-selling solo piano album of all time, Tim Harford may just convince you of the advantages of having to work with a little mess. Watch »

Cave diver Jill Heinerth explores the hidden underground waterways coursing through our planet. Working with biologists, climatologists and archaeologists, Heinerth unravels the mysteries of the life-forms that inhabit some of the earth's most remote places and helps researchers unlock the history of climate change. In this short talk, take a dive below the waves and explore the wonders of inner space. Watch »

Read more on ideas.ted.com

Architecture: See more of Ole Scheeren's groundbreaking buildings »
Inside the CCTV's twisted tower ...

Health: This archeologist is searching for the history of cancer »
The modern disease has ancient roots

Gallery: Striking images from classic Russian fairy tales »
Exploring the soul of modern Russia through myth and legend

Quote of the Week

A few years ago, the psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer asked some high school teachers to reformat the handouts they were giving to some of their classes. The regular handout would be formatted in something straightforward, such as Helvetica. But half these classes were getting handouts that were formatted in something sort of intense, like Haettenschweiler, or something with a zesty bounce, like Comic Sans italicized. Now, these are really ugly fonts, and they're difficult fonts to read. But at the end of the semester, students were given exams, and the students who'd been asked to read the more difficult fonts had actually done better on their exams, in a variety of subjects. And the reason is, the difficult font had slowed them down, forced them to work a bit harder, to think a bit more about what they were reading, to interpret it ... and so they learned more. "

Tim Harford
How messy problems can inspire creativity
TED2016 lineup

More than a year in the making, we're proud to unveil the TED2016 Speaker Program. Names the world knows. And names the world will come to know very soon. Dreamers all. (And yes, we still have a few surprises up our sleeve.)
New: Watch the opening session of TED2016 in a cinema near you.
 

2016年1月9日 星期六

This is what happens when you reply to spam email

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TED
This week on TED.com
January 9, 2016

James Veitch: This is what happens when you reply to spam email

09:48 minutes · Filmed Dec 2015 · Posted Jan 2016 · TEDGlobal>Geneva

Suspicious emails: unclaimed insurance bonds, diamond-encrusted safe deposit boxes, close friends marooned in a foreign country. They pop up in our inboxes, and standard procedure is to delete on sight. But what happens when you reply? Follow along as writer and comedian James Veitch narrates a hilarious, weeks-long exchange with a spammer who offered to cut him in on a hot deal.

Playlist of the week

Talks to form better habits

There's never a bad time to start a good habit. Let these talks set the framework for a healthier, happier life. Watch »

7 TED Talks • Total run time 1:28:17

More TED Talks

Does more data lead to better decisions? Not always. In this fascinating talk about how Netflix chooses new shows, data scientist Sebastian Wernicke breaks down what goes wrong when we make decisions based purely on data -- and suggests a brainier way to use it. Watch »

Astronomer Aomawa Shields searches for clues that life might exist elsewhere in the universe, by examining the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. As she says: "Trying to measure the atmospheric composition of an exoplanet ... is like trying to see a fruit fly passing in front of a car's headlight. OK, now imagine that car is 100 trillion miles away." Watch »

At TEDxMarin in California, engineer David Sedlak shares four practical (and surprising) ideas for solving the water crisis in his drought-plagued home state. It's time, he says, to shift our water supply towards new, local sources of water -- to withstand the challenges climate change may throw at us soon. A fascinating talk about a resource many of us take for granted. Watch »

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does so much interesting stuff exist in the universe? Particle physicist Harry Cliff works on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and he has some potentially bad news for people who seek answers to these questions. Despite the best efforts of scientists (and the help of the biggest machine on the planet), we may never be able to explain all the weird features of nature. Is this the end of physics? Watch »

Read more on ideas.ted.com

Snow: Giant art made out of snowflakes »
How to draw a fractal the size of a soccer field? With a little math and a lot of legwork

Recovery: Revisiting Liberia, a year after Ebola »
In these peaceful streets, a hard battle was fought -- and won -- against a killer disease.

Work: The business case against overtime »
One way to improve productivity? Give workers a break

Brain: How to understand our brains? Grow them »
How one scientist is growing "mini-brains" in her lab

Ocean: This jellyfish is saying: "Help!" »
Amazing ways undersea creatures use light to communicate

This jellyfish is saying "Help!"

Quote of the Week

A wise person knows when and how to make the exception to every rule. A wise person knows how to improvise. Real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined and the context is always changing. A wise person is like a jazz musician -- using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand."

Barry Schwarz
Our loss of wisdom

TED Talks in Cinemas

For the first time ever, watch the opening night of the upcoming TED Conference in your local cinema. Click through for dates and locations of theaters near you, and experience TED on the big screen!


TED Talks in Cinemas