Technologist and futurist Bill Joy shares several big worries for humanity -- and several big hopes in the fields of health, education and future tech. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:02.)
Surgeon and writer Sherwin Nuland meditates on the idea of hope -- the desire to become our better selves and make a better world. In a thoughtful 12 minutes, he explores the connection between "hope" and "change" -- a fitting talk to end this week full of both. (Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, California. Duration: 12:37.)
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About this talk
Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness -- sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces.
About Dan Gilbert
Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research
About this talk
Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world's most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you.
About Benjamin Wallace
Benjamin Wallace is a journalist and author of The Billionaire's Vinegar, the true story of the world's most expensive bottle of (possibly phony?) wine. He's been a contributor to GQ,
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Forums - TED Talks,
Pragmatism
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Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science. His most recent book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004).
Professor Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.
About the Lecture
Envy Shane Frederick’s Consumer Behavior students. They get to assign prices to such real but quirky products as jalapeno- and popcorn-flavored jelly beans, as well as to hypothetical products, like a pill that enables one to speak French instantly. More to the point, Frederick asks his student-confederates whether they would pay more or less than others for these goods. From classroom experiments and his own research in cognitive and social psychology and decision theory, Frederick has discovered a “false consensus” around our “willingness to pay for goods” (WPG). Individuals assume that whatever they would be willing to pay for an item, others would pay more. This applies to imaginary and actual products, as well as to such experiences as “spending time in a discomfort room.” And while Frederick’s research shows how firmly individuals differentiate themselves from others, at least around “WPG,” he remarks on an apparent paradox: people find common preferences when confronted with stimuli as disparate as Chinese ideograms, sachets, and even lines arrayed on a page. Frederick concludes that “a shared evolutionary and cultural history induces some degree of agreement about nearly everything,” so that our own beliefs are often “the best signal (we) have about others’ preferences.” Yet, don’t assume too much, because “humans have a widespread, mistaken belief that they value things less than others.” Frederick sees some relevance in these findings for marketing strategy
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Forums - MIT World,
Human Behavior
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ommonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
Feb 9th, 2007
Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about Death By Black Hole And Other Cosmic Quandaries
Ever wondered what would happen to your body should you accidentally fall into a black hole? The man who first suggested Pluto was not a planet - setting off scientific soul-searching about our solar system - now leads an exciting journey through the extremes of the universe, from the excruciatingly hot, to the unbearably cold, to the ultra-gravitational.
In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Ferguson’s expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world’s first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.
With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?
This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world’s biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that’s why, whether you’re scraping by or rolling in it, there’s never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
YouTube - Night Talk: An Interview With Niall Ferguson
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Societies and Cultures
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Summary
Naomi Tickle, author of You Can Read a Face Like a Book, explains that by studying a person's facial structure, you can achieve an immediate and accurate understanding of their personality.Naomi Tickle - Naomi Tickle is a personology expert and founder of the International Centre for Personology.
Enemy Image (2005) - 1:32:15 - Jul 8, 2007
The invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitised and controlled by the Pentagon. Enemy Image traces the ways U.S. television has covered war, starting with Vietnam in the 1960s and shows how the military has devised ever-improving means of ensuring the American public never again has the real face of combat beamed directly into their living rooms. If copyright becomes an issue on this video upload, it will be deleted immediately.
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Military
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Even from a purely biological perspective, gender is a complex subject. Dr. David Page reviews the biological basis for sex, emphasizing the role of the sex chromosomes—the X and the Y—in mammals. He addresses the age-old question of why sex exists, and shows how sexual reproduction can have advantages over reproduction by cloning.
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Human Behavior
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CNN
Cold War Episode 1: Comrades (1917-1945).
2. Iron Curtain -
3. Marshall Plan -
4. Berlin -
5. Korea -
6. Reds -
7. After Stalin -
8. Sputnik -
9. The Wall -
10. Cuba -
11. Vietnam -
12. MAD -
13. Make Love, Not War -
14. Red Spring -
15. China -
16. Détente -
17. Good Guys, Bad Guys -
18. Backyard -
19. Freeze -
20. Soldiers of God -
21. Spies -
22. Star Wars -
23. The Wall Comes Down -
24. Conclusions -
Go behind the famous equation with Hitoshi Murayama. This famous equation, part of the theory of relativity set forth by Einstein, changed our understanding of nature at the most fundamental level. The fascinating story of energy (E) and mass (m) is still evolving a century since Einstein as we understand more of where they come from, how they shape the universe, and the missing pieces of the universe: Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Labora
YouTube - E=mc2
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Einstein,
Physics and Quantum
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An overview of the SINGS and GLIMPSE programs of the Spitzer Space Telescope that revealed our own and nearby galaxies as never seen before.
YouTube - Revealing a Hidden Universe: Our Galactic Neighborhood
The evidence is that the universe is close to uniform; it has no observable center or edges; and that it is expanding. Cosmologist James Peebles, professor emeritus at Princeton University explores the histories of these ideas and the present state of the evidence for their reliability.
YouTube - Exploring the Large-Scale Nature of the Universe
Douglas Adams was the best-selling British author and satirist who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In this talk at UCSB recorded shortly before his death, Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world's creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity.
YouTube - Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything
Comparative Sise of Planets and Stars
Orders of Magnitude - Wikipedia
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Astronomy and the Universe
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From the NOVA PBS series "THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE', host Brian Greene guides us through Newton's discovery of gravity to the explanation of it, through Einsteins Theory of Relativity.
Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist and one of the best-known string theorists. Since 1996 he has been a professor at Columbia University.
The Elegant Universe was adapted for a three hour program in three parts for television broadcast in late 2003 on the PBS series NOVA.
YouTube - Gravity - From Newton to Einstein - The Elegant Universe
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Astronomy and the Universe,
Einstein
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CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off - 43:59 -
Apr 21, 2007
A documentary about the causes of global warming. More controversy.
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Climate Change,
Our Problems
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The Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
Oct 8th, 2008
Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs describes the moment the world came closer than ever before (or, possibly, since) to nuclear destruction.
He will draw modern-day lessons from those perilous 13 days, including the importance of character in the Oval Office and the myth of crisis management.
How much did John F. Kennedy know in the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis? What were his motivations, and what were those of his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev?
Dobbs will discuss his research on the untold facets of the October crisis - The Commonwealth Club of California
FORA.tv - Michael Dobbs: The Cuban Missile Crisis
A Documentary from the BBC: Human Instinct
2002© As Seen On Television (UK)
Host/Narrator: Professor Robert Winston
SUMMARY: Human Instinct is the story of how instincts have made us humans into the uniquely successful species that we are, despite us not always being aware of them. Professor Robert Winston provides a unique insight into what it is that makes us human. And it is the story of our extraordinary instincts and why we behave the way we do and what other animals reveal about our most basic drives.
The instinct to have sex is one of the most potent we possess. Its vital if we are to produce the next generation. In this episode we find out what it is about the way we look, the way we smell and what we possess, that can attract the ideal mate.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
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Human Behavior
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1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse - 1:14:18 - Jan 5, 2008
An extremely powerful programme, this documentary focuses on 8 November 1983, a date now recognised as one of the most dangerous moments in ...all » An extremely powerful programme, this documentary focuses on 8 November 1983, a date now recognised as one of the most dangerous moments in the entire history of the Cold War. On this near-fateful day, a series of accidents nearly unleashed the Third World War. Senior figures in the Soviet Union had convinced themselves that they were about to come under nuclear attack from the West, and the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal of missiles, bombers and submarines were put on maximum alert, ready to launch a full nuclear retaliatory attack on Western Europe and the US. Armageddon beckoned. This documentary tells the dramatic story behind this sequence of events when Soviet fingers hovered perilously over the nuclear button. The intelligence communities in the US, Europe and the former USSR have never before admitted to the scale of this crisis.«
1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse
About this talk
Samantha Power tells a story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to help their people survive crisis. It's a compelling story told with a fiery passion.
About Samantha Power
Samantha Power studies US foreign policy, especially as it relates to war and human rights. Her books take on the world's worst problems: genocide, civil war and brutal dictatorships.
Samantha Power on a complicated hero | Video on TED.com
Book Passage
Corte Madera, CA
Aug 11th, 2008
Richard Muller talks about his book Physics for Future Presidents.
Learn the science behind the headlines. How do we know — not just by relying on TV’s talking heads — if Iran’s nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, and if nuclear power should be encouraged? Muller offers some surprising information - Book Passage
About this talk
Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it.
About Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond is an award-winning scholar of ecology, biology and history, and best-selling author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
Jared Diamond on why societies collapse | Video on TED.com
ABOUT THE LECTURE:
Neither philosophers nor economists can satisfactorily explain some quirky aspects of decision-making, such as why most people elect to receive a 30-minute massage in the next two weeks, as opposed to a 45-minute massage a few months down the road. Shane Frederick teases apart preferences like these, coming at them from different perspectives, and raises questions about the degree to which rational thinking drives human choices.
Frederick’s talk looks at how people weigh the future when making choices. Some studies have shown that “people give less weight to the future – they discount future utility the way bankers discount future streams of income,” says Frederick. But other research Frederick cites demonstrates that people like to save the best for last. In ordering a sequence, study participants chose to eat strawberries, then liquorice, and then jelly beans -- holding out for “the better thing later,” in this case, the sweetest treat. In another example of people preferring “improving sequences,” subjects chose to dine at a quotidian Greek grill first, followed by a fancy French restaurant. But in a “weird preference reversal,” people chose to pay more for a “declining sequence,” where they would eat first at the expensive French restaurant, and then at the Greek grill. There is incoherence in people’s preferences, which has long puzzled thinkers from different disciplines.
According to Frederick, economists say there’s no arguing with tastes, while philosophers prefer to think that rationality requires some concern for the future. We all have a stake in such debates, points out Frederick. In the real world, individuals make decisions about current behaviors that have future impacts, such as drinking, exercising, and tanning. Societies make decisions about vaccinations and tapping energy resources that impact the climate. Do humans value or discount future life? Frederick notes a study that asked people to choose between Program A, which saves 300 lives in your generation, but no lives in your children’s and grandchildren’s time; or Program B, which saves 100 lives in your generation, and in each of the succeeding generations. 80% of participants preferred Program B, because it seemed fairer. But Frederick cautioned that whether people clearly place a value on their future selves, or the future of others remains a continuing controversy, with much depending on how researchers frame their studies and questions.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Shane Frederick's primary research interests are judgment and choice heuristics, intertemporal choice, preference elicitation procedures, the relation between IQ and decision making strategies, consumer regret, and biases in predicting the preferences of others. He has been at Sloan since 2001. Prior to that, he was a research associate and lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University. He received a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999, an M.S. in Resource Management from Simon Fraser University in 1993 and a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin in 1990.
NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 0:44:31.
MIT World » : When I’m 64: Discounting, Time Preference, and Personal Identity
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Human Behavior
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Author Robert Frank discusses his book "The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas" as a part of the Authors@Google series. This event took place on July 23, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
YouTube - Authors@Google: Robert Frank: ""
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Forums - Google Talks,
Pragmatism
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"James Randi is an internationally known magician (as The Amazing Randi), psychic debunker, and winner of a MacArthur Foundation 'Genius Grant.' He was a founding fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He is perhaps best known for offering $1,000,000 (via the James Randi Educational Foundation) to anyone who can successfully demonstrate psychic powers under conditions mutually agreed on by the challenger and himself. Starting with a $10,000 prize over 25 years ago, no claimant to psychic powers has ever won the money.
Randi has pursued 'psychic' spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water 'with a memory,' and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural.
This event took place August 6, 2007 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA."
YouTube - Authors@Google: James Randi:
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Forums - Google Talks,
Pragmatism
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Author Michael Dobbs visits Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to discuss his book "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War". This event took place on October 8, 2008, as part of the Authors@google series.
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. In One Minute to Midnight, Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.
Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Ireland, and educated at the University of York, with fellowships at Princeton and Harvard. He is a reporter for The Washington Post, where he spent much of his career as a foreign correspondent covering the collapse of communism. His Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire was a finalist for a 1997 PEN award. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
YouTube - Authors@Google: Michael Dobbs
World Affairs Council of Northern California
San Francisco, CA
Jun 11th, 2008
Fluent in Arabic, he has had unrivaled access to U.S. military commanders, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iraqi families, and even President George W. Bush.
Engel, who reported as a freelance journalist for ABC News during the initial US invasion of Iraq, was NBC News' lead Iraq correspondent from 2003 until his appointment to Beirut Bureau Chief in May 2006.
He joins the Council to discuss his experiences as a reporter in Iraq and his new book War Journal - My Five Years in Iraq - The World Affairs Council of Northern California
FORA.tv - Richard Engel's War Journal: Five Years in Iraq
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Military
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Cody's Books
San Francisco, CA
Mar 8th, 2007
Judith Levine talks about Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping.
Shocked by the commerce in everything from pet cloning to patriotism, frightened by the downward spiral of her finances and that of the trash-strewn earth, Judith Levine enlists her partner, Paul, in a radical experiment: to forgo all but the most necessary purchases for an entire year.
Without consumer goods and experiences, Judith and Paul pursue their careers, nurture relationships, and try to keep their sanity, their identities, and their sense of humor intact. Tracking their progress - and inevitable lapses - Levine contemplates need and desire, scarcity and security, consumerism and citizenship. She asks the Big Questions: Can the economy survive without shopping? Are Q-tips necessary? NOT BUYING IT is the confession of a woman any reader can identify with: someone who can't live without French roast coffee or SmartWool socks but who has had it up to here with over-consumption and its effects on the earth and everyone who dwells there. For the humor and intelligence of its insights, the refreshment of its skepticism, and the surprises of its conclusions, NOT BUYING IT is sure to be on anyone's list of necessities. Levine is also the author of "Harmful to Minors," "My Enemy, My Love" and "Do You Remember Me?" - Codys
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Societies and Cultures
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Harvard's Berkman Center, Google, and the Family Online Safety Institute hosted this discussion featuring Professor Jonathan Zittrain previewing his forthcoming book "The Future of the Internet - And How To Stop It" with a response by Professor Larry Lessig and an introduction by Google's own Vint Cerf. This event took place at Google's Washington, D.C. office on March 20, 2008
YouTube - Google DC Talks: The Future of the Internet
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Featured - Others,
Forums - Google Talks,
Web
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Jeffrey Kluger visits Google's Cambridge, MA office to discuss his book "SIMPLEXITY: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and how Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)." This event took place on June 4, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series. In Simplexity, Time senior writer Jeffrey Kluger shows how a drinking straw can save thousands of lives; how a million cars can be on the streets but just a few hundred of them can lead to gridlock; how investors behave like atoms; how arithmetic governs abstract art and physics drives jazz; why swatting a TV indeed makes it work better. As simplexity moves from the research lab into popular consciousness it will challenge our models for modern living. Jeffrey Kluger adeptly translates newly evolving theory into a delightful theory of everything that will have you rethinking the rules of business, family, art—your world. Jeffrey's other work includes Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, on which the 1995 movie Apollo 13 was based, and the critically acclaimed Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio.
YouTube - Authors@Google: Jeffrey Kluger
Peter Sagal visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them)." This event took place on July 23, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series. Somewhere, somebody is having more fun than you are. Or so everyone believes. Peter Sagal, a mild-mannered, Harvard-educated NPR host—the man who put the second "L" in "vanilla"—decided to find out if it's true. From strip clubs to gambling halls to swingers clubs to porn sets—and then back to the strip clubs, but only because he left his glasses there—Sagal explores exactly what the sinful folk do, how much they pay for the privilege, and exactly how they got those funny red marks. He hosts a dinner for three of the smartest porn stars in the world, asks the floor manager at the oldest casino in Vegas how to beat the house, and indulges in molecular cuisine at the finest restaurant in the country. Meet liars and rich people who don't think consumption is a disease, encounter the most spectacular view ever seen from a urinal, and say hello to Nina Hartley, the only porn star who can discuss Nietzsche while strangers smack her butt. With a sharp wit, a remarkable eye for detail, and the carefree insouciance that can only come from not having any idea what he's getting into, Sagal proves to be the perfect guide to sinful behavior. What happens in Vegas—and in less glamorous places—is all laid out in these pages, a modern version of Dante's Inferno, except with more jokes. Peter Sagal (www.petersagal.com) is the host of Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!,™ the NPR ™ news quiz. He is also an award-winning playwright, occasional screenwriter, onetime extra in a Michael Jackson music video, former staff writer for a motorcycle magazine, and a regular contributor to "The Funny Pages" in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Sagal lives near Chicago with his wife and three daughters. This is his first book.
YouTube - Authors@Google: Peter Sagal
The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life Your every significant choice -- every important decision you make -- is determined by a force operating deep inside your mind: your perspective on time -- your internal, personal time zone. This is the most influential force in your life, yet you are virtually unaware of it. Once you become aware of your personal time zone, you can begin to see and manage your life in exciting new ways. In The Time Paradox, Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd draw on thirty years of pioneering research to reveal, for the first time, how your individual time perspective shapes your life and is shaped by the world around you. Further, they demonstrate that your and every other individual's time zones interact to create national cultures, economics, and personal destinies. Philip Zimbardo is professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and has also taught at Yale University, New York University, and Columbia University. His informative website, www.prisonexperiment.org, is visited by millions every year. Visit the author's personal website at www.zimbardo.com. This event took place on October 3, 2008
YouTube - Authors@Google: Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd
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Forums - Google Talks,
Psychology
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About this talk
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about what we can learn from American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson. Then she shares a moving memory of her own father, and of their shared love of baseball.
About Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin writes insightful books on the US Presidency (JFK, LBJ, FDR and Lincoln, so far), telling each president's personal story against the backdrop of history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin on learning from past presidents | Video on TED.com
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Forums - TED Talks,
History
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About this talk
Outside.in's Steven Johnson says the Web is like a city: built by many people, completely controlled by no one, intricately interconnected and yet functioning as many independent parts. While disaster strikes in one place, elsewhere, life goes on.
About Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson is the best-selling author of five thoughtful and surprising books linking science, technology and society. He's also a longtime innovator in the web world,
Steven Johnson on the Web as a city | Video on TED.com
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Web
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"About this talk
Photojournalist James Nachtwey sees his TED Prize wish come true, as we share his powerful photographs of XDR-TB, a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that's touching off a global medical crisis. Learn how to help at http://www.xdrtb.org
About James Nachtwey
Photojournalist James Nachtwey is considered by many to be the greatest war photographer of recent decades. He has covered conflicts and major social issues in more than 30 countries."
James Nachtwey fights XDR-TB | Video on TED.com:
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Forums - TED Talks,
Our Problems
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Cell (biology)
Drawing of the structure of cork as it appeared under the microscope to Robert Hooke from Micrographia which is the origin of the word "cell" being used to describe the smallest unit of a living organism
Cells in culture, stained for keratin (red) and DNA (green)The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building block of life.[1] Some organisms, such as most bacteria, are unicellular (consist of a single cell). Other organisms, such as humans, are multicellular. (Humans have an estimated 100 trillion or 1014 cells; a typical cell size is 10 µm; a typical cell mass is 1 nanogram.) The largest known cell is an unfertilized ostrich egg cell.[citation needed]
In 1837 before the final cell theory was developed, a Czech Jan Evangelista Purkyně observed small "granules" while looking at the plant tissue through a microscope. The cell theory, first developed in 1839 by Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells. All cells come from preexisting cells. Vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and all cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.[2]
The word cell comes from the Latin cellula, meaning, a small room. The descriptive name for the smallest living biological structure was chosen by Robert Hooke in a book he published in 1665 when he compared the cork cells he saw through his microscope to the small rooms monks lived in.
Cell (biology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Atom
An illustration of the helium atom, depicting the nucleus (pink) and the electron cloud distribution (black). The nucleus (upper right) is in reality spherically symmetric, although for more complicated nuclei this is not always the case. The black bar is one ångström, equal to 10−10 m or 100,000 fm.
Classification
Smallest recognized division of a chemical element
Properties
Mass range: 1.67 × 10−27 to 4.52 × 10−25 kg
Electric charge: zero (neutral), or ion charge
Diameter range: 62 pm (He) to 520 pm (Cs) (data page)
Components: Electrons and a compact nucleus of protons and neutrons
The atom is the smallest unit of an element that retains the chemical properties of that element. An atom has an electron cloud consisting of negatively charged electrons surrounding a dense nucleus. The nucleus contains positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. When the number of protons in the nucleus equals the number of electrons, the atom is electrically neutral; otherwise it is an ion and has a net positive or negative charge. An atom is classified according to its number of protons and neutrons: the number of protons determines the chemical element and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of that element.
The name atom comes from the Greek ἄτομος/átomos, α-τεμνω, which means uncuttable, something that cannot be divided further. The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was not indivisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.[1][2]
Relative to everyday experience, atoms are minuscule objects with proportionately tiny masses that can only be observed individually using special instruments such as the scanning tunneling microscope. Over 99.9% of an atom's mass is concentrated in the nucleus,[3] with protons and neutrons having roughly equal mass. Each element has at least one isotope with unstable nuclei that can undergo radioactive decay. This can result in a transmutation that changes the number of protons or neutrons in a nucleus.[4] Electrons occupy a set of stable energy levels, or orbitals, and can transition between these states by absorbing or emitting photons that match the energy differences between the levels. The electrons determine the chemical properties of an element, and strongly influence an atom's magnetic properties.
Atom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Physics and Quantum
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Edward O. Wilson is Pellegrino University Professor emeritus at Harvard. His awards include the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes. For more info go to www.meaningoflife.tv.
Edward O. Wilson
University Professor Lecture "Evolution, Culture and Truth," Daniel C. Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, gives his inaugural lecture celebrating his appointment as University Professor. A member of the Tufts faculty since 1971, he is also Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies.
Evolution, Culture and Truth, a Lecture by Daniel Dennett
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Evolution
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Visions of the Future: The Quantum Revolution. 3rd part of 3 part miniseries on the BBC hosted by Michio Kaku. In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities
Visions Of The Future (3 of 3) The Quantum Revolution
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Our Future...?,
Physics and Quantum
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Visions of the Future (2 of 3) The Biotech Revolution. 2nd part of 3 part miniseries on the BBC hosted by Michio Kaku. In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities. Genetics and biotechnology promise a future of unprecedented health and longevity: DNA screening could prevent many diseases, gene therapy could cure them and, thanks to lab-grown organs, the human body could be repaired as easily as a car, with spare parts readily available. Ultimately, the ageing process itself could be slowed down or even halted. But what impact will this have on who we are and how we will live? And, with our mastery of the genome, will the human race end up in a world divided by genetic apartheid?"
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Our Future...?,
Physics and Quantum
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Visions of the Future: The Intelligence Revolution. 1st part of 3 part miniseries on the BBC hosted by Michio Kaku. In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities
Visions Of The Future (1 of 3) The Intelligence Revolution
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Our Future...?,
Physics and Quantum
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Dr. Michio Kaku taalsk about hsi book "Visions" published in Nov. 1997
YouTube - Dr, Mihcio Kaku talks about his book" "Visions"
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Physics and Quantum
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The Aspen Institute
Aspen, CO
Jul 26th, 2008
The Aspen Institute and co-chairs Margot Pritzker and Richard Blum, in collaboration with the Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture, are proud to present a substantive symposium that embraces Tibetan and Himalayan art, culture, science, medicine, spiritual practice, and history.
The three-day program - featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama as the keynote speaker - will bring together an extraordinary number of eminent scholars, teachers, practitioners and tradition-bearers from around the globe to shed light on the rich historical and philosophical significance of Tibet and its impact on global issues today - The Aspen Institute
FORA.tv - His Holiness the Dalai Lama at The Aspen Institute
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ReligionS
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The Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
Sep 12th, 2008
One of the principal researchers on language and cognition, Steven Pinker turns his focus to what our language says about us. He explores the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic ways our mind works, using language as a clue.
Why do we impose taboos on certain topics, like sex? Why do we go to great lengths to bribe or convince?
What do our swear words (and their syntax) say about us? How do our minds handle the large amount of information targeted at us each day? - The Commonwealth Club of California
FORA.tv - Steven Pinker - The Stuff of Thought
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Human Behavior,
Psychology
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World Affairs Council of Northern California
San Francisco, CA
Sep 23rd, 2008
War correspondents often provide us with greater insight into the complex experiences behind the headlines of the daily news.
Reporting from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and New York during 9/11, Dexter Filkins works on the ground to interview soldiers, insurgents, suicide bombers and civilian victims of conflict and gives us unique access to situations such as street-to-street combat and wartorn homes and villages.
In The Forever War, he offers a personal glimpse into the experiences of the people involved in war - combatants and victims alike - World Affairs Council of Northern California
FORA.tv - Dexter Filkins: Reporting from the Front Lines
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Military
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James Randi is an internationally known magician (as The Amazing Randi), psychic debunker, and winner of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant." He was a founding fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He is perhaps best known for offering $1,000,000 (via the James Randi Educational Foundation) to anyone who can successfully demonstrate psychic powers under conditions mutually agreed on by the challenger and himself. Starting with a $10,000 prize over 25 years ago, no claimant to psychic powers has ever won the money.
Randi has pursued "psychic" spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water "with a memory," and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural.
This event took place August 6, 2007 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
YouTube - Authors@Google: James Randi
Author Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" as a part of the Authors@Google series. The author of Why Orwell Matters and Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens is a Vanity Fair contributing editor, a Slate columnist, and a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly. He has also written for The Nation, Granta, Harper's, The Washington Post, and is a frequent television and radio guest. Born in England, Hitchens was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He now lives in Washington, D.C., and he became a U.S. citizen in 2007. This event took place on August 16, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
Authors@Google:
YouTube - Authors@Google: Christopher Hitchens
- 47 min - Aug 27, 2007
At 38 years old, Susan Polgar has reached heights that few women have ever equalled in the chess world. Despite the common assumption that men’s brains are better at understanding spatial relationships, giving them an advantage in games such as chess, Susan went on to become the world’s first grandmaster. Susan’s remarkable abilities have earned her the label of ‘genius’, but her psychologist father, László Polgar, believed that genius was “not born, but made”. Noting that even Mozart received tutelage from his father at a very early age, Polgar set about teaching chess to the five-year-old Susan after she happened upon a chess set in their home. “My father believed that the potential of children was not used optimally,” says Susan.
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Our Mind
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About this talk
Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate argues that all humans are born with some innate traits. Here, Pinker talks about his thesis, and why some people found it incredibly upsetting.
About Steven Pinker
Linguist Steven Pinker questions the very nature of our thoughts -- the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others.
Steven Pinker chalks it up to the blank slate | Video on TED.com
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Forums - TED Talks
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Climate Change
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Penn and Teller consider the popularity of the "green movement", a largely bogus and hypocritical philosophy that links sanctimonious politics to an "ethical" lifestyle while doing little or nothing to actually create a healthier ecosystem.
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Climate Change,
Pragmatism
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Author Michael Gurian visits Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to discuss his book "Leadership and the Sexes". This event took place September 10, 2008, as a part of the Authors@google series. For more info, please visit http://www.michaelgurian.com/
Leadership and the Sexes presents brain science tools with which readers can look into the brains of men and women to understand themselves and one another. The book also provides five Gender Tools, which can be used immediately in executive, management, design, and marketing teams. The gender science presented in this book has been used successfully by such diverse corporations as IBM, Nissan, Proctor & Gamble, Deloitte & Touche, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Brooks Sports, and many others. This gender science helps leaders increase their organization's competitive edge, profits, and bottom line.
Michael Gurian is a thought-leader, corporate consultant, family therapist, and the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Leading Partners, The Wonder of Girls, Boys and Girls Learn Differently!, The Wonder of Boys, and The Minds of Boys. The co-founder of the Gurian Institute, he has spearheaded a national effort to provide communities and corporations with training in brain-based gender issues.
Link to the Gurian Institute: http://www.gurianinstitute.com/
YouTube - Authors@Google: Michael Gurian
About this talk
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
About Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt studies how -- and why -- we evolved to be moral. By understanding more about our moral roots, his hope is that we can learn to be civil and understanding of those whose morals don't.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
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Forums - TED Talks,
Psychology
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The legendary chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall talks about TACARE and her other community projects, which help people in booming African towns live side-by-side with threatened animals.
About Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall, dubbed by her biographer "the woman who redefined man," has changed our perceptions of primates, people, and the connection between the two.
Jane Goodall helps humans and animals live together | Video on TED.com
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Forums - TED Talks,
Nature things
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About this talk
The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history's farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack.
About Irwin Redlener
Dr. Irwin Redlener spends his days imagining the worst: He studies how humanity might survive natural or human-made disasters of unthinkable severity.
Irwin Redlener on surviving a nuclear attack | Video on TED.com
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Forums - TED Talks,
Military,
Our Problems
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Louann Brizendine visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss her book "The Female Brain." This event took place on August 7, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
YouTube - Authors@Google: Louann Brizendine
About this talk
All humans share some common bits of DNA, passed down to us from our African ancestors. Geneticist Spencer Wells talks about how his Genographic Project will use this shared DNA to figure out how we are -- in all our diversity -- truly connected.
About Spencer Wells
Spencer Wells studies human diversity -- the process by which humanity, which springs from a single common source, has become so astonishingly diverse and widespread.
Spencer Wells builds a family tree for humanity | Video on TED.com
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Forums - TED Talks,
History
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About this talk
Physicist Patricia Burchat sheds light on two basic ingredients of our universe: dark matter and dark energy. Comprising 96% of the universe between them, they can't be directly measured, but their influence is immense.
About Patricia Burchat
Patricia Burchat studies the structure and distribution of dark matter and dark energy. These mysterious ingredients can't be measured in conventional ways, yet form a quarter of the mass
Patricia Burchat sheds light on dark matter | Video on TED.com
The 2005 Skeptics Society Annual Conference was held in Pasadena, California and was themed: "Brain, Mind, and Consciousness".
Brain, Mind and Consciousness - Session 1
Operation Auca
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States to make contact with the Huaorani people of the rainforest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known as the Aucas (the Quechua word for "naked savages"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Protestants to evangelize the previously unreached Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 2, 1956 the missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the Curaray River, a few miles from Huaorani settlements. Their efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors. The news of their deaths was broadcast around the world, and Life magazine covered the event with a photo essay.
The deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world. Their work is still frequently remembered in evangelical publications, and in 2006 was the subject of the film production End of the Spear. Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While largely eliminating tribal violence, their efforts exposed the tribe to exploitation and increased influence from the outside. This has caused Huaorani culture to begin to disappear, but anthropologists argue over the ultimate effect—some negatively view the missionary work as cultural imperialism, while others contend that the influence has been beneficial for the tribe.
Operation Auca - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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