Monthly Archives: March 2014

Africa and a quantum future at TED 2014′s All Stars session 2: Beauty and the Brain

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This is my last piece for today, March 18, 2014  As I noted earlier , I wish I could cover everyone. For this session I’m covering Neil Turok, physicist and director of the Perimeter Institute, from his TED biography (Note: Links have been removed),

Neil Turok is working on a model of the universe that explains the big bang — while, closer to home, he’s founded a network of math and science academies across Africa.

Neil Turok works on understanding the universe’s very beginnings. With Stephen Hawking, he developed the Hawking-Turok instanton solutions, describing the birth of an inflationary universe — positing that, big bang or no, the universe came from something, not from utter nothingness.

Recently, with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, Turok has been working on a cyclic model for the universe in which the big bang is explained as a collision between two “brane-worlds.” The two physicists cowrote the popular-science book Endless Universe.

In 2003, Turok, who was born in South Africa, founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, a postgraduate center supporting math and science. His TED Prize wish: Help him grow AIMS and promote the study and math and science in Africa, so that the world’s next Einstein may be African.

Turok is the Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada. In 2010, the Canadian government funded a $20million expansion of the AIMS schools, working with the Perimeter Institute to start five new AIMS schools in different African nations.

I featured Turok in an Oct.17, 2012 posting about purpose in nature and in the universe.

Thankfully, Turok was not reading aloud as he did in 2012 when he was in Vancouver with his ‘What banged?’ talk and he immediately engaged the audience with his stories about AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences) in particular about two AIMS students, Marciel (?) and Kitsis (?) who have gone on to postgraduate degrees and work respectively in the fields of tropical medicine and fluid mechanics.

He segued to quantum physics and how important quantum computing will be in the future and will change everything and how we need to help Africa prepare for the quantum future.

I was a little confused by Turok’s plea to help Africa achieve a quantum future as it seemed to me that AIMS and efforts like that would mean that Africa and Africans might lead in the future, quantum or otherwise.

That’s it for me today. This is a very intriguing session although despite its title seems primarily focused on brains over beauty, which has scarcely been mentioned.

Kayaks, communication by bacteria, wind power, and biomimcry at TED 2014′s All Stars session 1: Planet Dearth

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These are short talks (shorter than the 18 min. TED talk).  Wish I could cover everyone but I’m beginning to tire so I’ve started with George Dyson, historian of science, from his TED biography,

In telling stories of technologies and the individuals who created them, George Dyson takes a clear-eyed view of our scientific past — while illuminating what lies ahead.

Dyson described Vancouver of 16,000 years ago under an ice sheet and then 10,000 years ago people showed up. 5000 years ago the rainforest emerged and became the setting for a culture and society unique in the world. Most traces of that culture are gone.  Dyson then segued into a description of his love for kayaks and how he arrived in Vancouver at age 17 (19?). He now lives in Washington state. He wants to suggest that commercial sail will return or as they are saying in this session, become ‘de-extinct’.

Then there was Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist, from her TED biography,

Bonnie Bassler studies how bacteria can communicate with one another, through chemical signals, to act as a unit. Her work could pave the way for new, more potent medicine.

She talked about quorum sensing (chemical communication), the means by which bacteria communicate with each other. They in Bassler’s lab can change the molecule which signals quorum sensing the means by which bacteria communicate to create biofilm, a precursor to toxin secretion and infection. (I forget which disease she mentioned) By changing the molecule they can stop the process in the laboratory. You can find out more about bacteria and quorum sensing here.

Next, there was Amory Lovins, physicist and energy guru, from his TED biography (Note: A link has been removed),

Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front — or even back — page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he’s written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects — cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar — to focus the world’s attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation.

He talked about wind and solar power and mass production of equipment to produce this energy. He debunked the notion that alternatives such as wind and solar power are not dependable sources by citing statistics from France showing that they can predict how energy is needed and can be produced in situations of uncertainty.

Finally, Robert Full, biologist, from his TED biography,

Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build the perfect “distributed foot” for tomorrow’s robots, based on evolution’s ancient engineering.

Difference between human and nature’s design is robustness, i.e., able to adapt to changing terrain and use same structures for different tasks. He also mentions fault tolerance, i.e., change in a structure does not have to unduly affect the animal/insect, e.g., a  cockroach has an alternative means of achieving the same ends, e.g. walking without feet. Full’s conclusion is that you never know where curiosity-driven research will take you as he mentions the possibility of cockroach-inspired robots while showing scenes of disaster (building rubble) where a suit based on an insect exoskeleton which survives compression could be very handy.

New energy (nuclear) with fusion at TED 2014′s Session 3: Reshape

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Michel Laberge, plasma physicist and founder and Chief Scientist of company General Fusion, describes how his company is working to change our energy sources from fossil fuels to nuclear power (I wrote about General Fusion in a Dec. 2, 2011 posting).

He and his company are currently involved in a large international collaboration, ITER (China. European Union, India, Korea, Russia, and USA as per the website tagline) in the south of France. From the ITER project page (images not included),

ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion.

The Q in the formula on the right symbolizes the ratio of fusion power to input power. Q ≥ 10 represents the scientific goal of the ITER project: to deliver ten times the power it consumes. From 50 MW of input power, the ITER machine is designed to produce 500 MW of fusion power—the first of all fusion experiments to produce net energy.

During its operational lifetime, ITER will test key technologies necessary for the next step: the demonstration fusion power plant that will prove that it is possible to capture fusion energy for commercial use.

The science going on at ITER—and all around the world in support of ITER—will benefit all of mankind.

We firmly believe that to harness fusion energy is the only way to reconcile huge conflicting demands which will confront humanity sooner or later.

The issue at stake is how to reconcile the imperative, constantly growing demand of the majority of the world’s population to raise their standard of living … with the enormous environmental hazards resulting from the present energy supply …

… In our opinion, the use of fusion energy is a “must” if we want to be serious about embarking on sustainable development for future generations.

Laberge is speaking very quickly and since I’m not at all familiar with his area of expertise all I can say is he’s clearly very excited about his work and its potential to shift how we produce energy. He provides more than one technical explanation and I look forward to viewing his presentation again when it’s made public.

As for other speakers in this session. they were very interesting but as I noted yesterday I am am trying to focus on speakers whose topics have been covered here in one fashion or another.

New director for TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics starts

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Here’s the announcement, straight from the March 18, 2014 TRIUMF news release,

After a seven month, highly competitive, international search for TRIUMF’s next director, the laboratory’s Board of Management announced today that Dr. Jonathan Bagger, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor, Vice Provost, and former Interim Provost at the Johns Hopkins University, will join TRIUMF this summer as the laboratory’s next director.

TRIUMF is Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, focusing on probing the structure and origins of matter and advancing isotopes for science and medicine.  Located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, TRIUMF is owned and operated by a consortium of 18 leading Canadian universities and supported by the federal and provincial governments.

Bagger was attracted to TRIUMF because, “Its collaborative, interdisciplinary model represents the future for much of science.  TRIUMF helps Canada connect fundamental research to important societal goals, ranging from health and safety to education and innovation.”  Noting TRIUMF’s new strategic plan that recently secured five years of core funding from the Government of Canada, he added, “It is an exciting time to lead the
laboratory.”

Bagger brings extensive experience to the job.  Professor Paul Young, Chair of TRIUMF’s Board of Management and Vice-President of Research and Innovation at the University of Toronto, said, “Jon is an outstanding, internationally renowned physicist with a wealth of leadership experience and a track record of excellence.  He is a welcome addition to Canada and I am confident that under his tenure, TRIUMF will continue to flourish.”

Jim Hanlon, Interim CEO/Chief Administrator Officer of TRIUMF and President and CEO of Advanced Applied Physics Solutions Inc., welcomed the news.  He said, “The laboratory has been shaped and served greatly by its past directors.  Today the need continues for an extraordinary combination of vision, leadership, and excellence.  Jon will bring all of this and more to TRIUMF.  On behalf of the staff, we’re excited about moving forward with Jon
at the helm.”

Bagger expressed his enthusiasm in moving across the border to join TRIUMF as the next director. “TRIUMF is known internationally for its impressive capabilities in science and engineering, ranging from rare-isotope studies on its Vancouver campus to its essential contributions to the Higgs boson discovery at CERN.  All rest on the legendary dedication and commitment of TRIUMF’s researchers and staff.  I look forward to working with this
terrific team to advance innovation and discovery in Vancouver, in Canada, and on the international stage.”

Bagger will lead the laboratory for a six-year term beginning July 1 [2014].  He reports he is ready to go:  “I have installed a metric speedometer in my car, downloaded the Air Canada app, and cleansed my home of all Washington Capitals gear.”

Nice of Bagger to start his new job on Canada Day. From a symbolic perspective, it’s an interesting start date. As for his metric speedometer and Air Canada app, bravo! Perhaps though he might have wanted the last clause to feature the Vancouver Canucks, e.g., ‘and set aside money/have set aside space for Vancouver Canucks gear’. You can find out more about TRIUMF here.

The Pantheon and technology, history of the world from Big Bang to the end, and architecture evolving into a dynamic, interactive process at TED 2014′s Session 2: Retrospect

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Now to Retrospect, session two of the TED 2014. As the first scheduled speaker, Bran Ferren kicked off the session. From Ferren’s TED biography,

…

After dropping out of MIT in 1970, Bran Ferren became a designer and engineer for theater, touring rock bands, and dozens of movies, including Altered States and Little Shop of Horrors, before joining Disney as a lead Imagineer, then becoming president of R&D for the Walt Disney Company.

In 2000, Ferren and partner Danny Hillis left Disney to found Applied Minds, a playful design and invention firm dedicated to distilling game-changing inventions from an eclectic stew of the brightest creative minds culled from every imaginable discipline.

Ferren used a standard storytelling technique as do many of the TED speakers. (Note: Techniques become standard because they work.) He started with personal stories of his childhood which apparently included exposure to art and engineering. His family of origin was heavily involved in the visual arts while other family members were engineers. His moment of truth was during childhood when he was taken to view the Pantheon and its occulus (from its Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

The Pantheon (/ˈpænθiən/ or US /ˈpænθiɒn/;[1] Latin: Pantheon,[nb 1] [pantʰewn] from Greek: Πάνθεον [ἱερόν], an adjective understood as “[temple consecrated] to all gods”) is a building in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD) as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome, and rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian about 126 AD.[2]

The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon’s dome is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.[3] The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).[4]

It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to “St. Mary and the Martyrs” but informally known as “Santa Maria Rotonda.”[5] The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda.

I cannot adequately convey Ferren’s appreciation and moment of inspiration where all in a moment he understood how engineering and art could be one and he also understood something new about light; it can have ‘weight’. He then describes the engineering feat in more detail and notes that we are barely able to achieve a structure like the Pantheon with today’s battery of technological innovations and understanding. He talked about what the ‘miracles’ need to achieve similar feats today and then he segued into autonomous cars and that’s where he lost me. Call me a peasant and an ignoramus (perhaps once these talks are made public it will be obvious I misunderstood his point)  but I am never going to view an autonomous car as being an engineering feat similar to the Pantheon. As I see it, Ferren left out the emotional/spiritual (not religious) aspect that great work can inspire in someone. While the light bulb was an extraordinary achievement in its own right, as is electricity for that matter, neither will are likely to take your breath away in an inspirational fashion.

Brian Greene (not listed on the programme) was introduced next. Greene’s Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Brian Randolph Greene [1] (born February 9, 1963) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. He has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Hidden Reality, and related PBS television specials. Greene also appeared on The Big Bang Theory episode “The Herb Garden Germination”, as well as the films Frequency and The Last Mimzy.

He also recently launched World Science U (free science classes online) as per a Feb. 26, 2014 post by David Bruggeman on his Pasco Phronesis blog.

The presentation was a history of the world from Big Bang to the end of the world. It’s the fastest 18 minutes I’ve experienced so far and it provided a cosmic view of history. Briefly, everything disintegrates, the sun, the galaxy and, eventually, photons.

The last speaker I’m mentioning is Marc Kushner, architect. from his TED biography (Note: Links have been removed),

Marc Kushner is a practicing architect who splits his time between designing buildings at HWKN, the architecture firm he cofounded, and amassing the world’s architecture on the website he runs, Architizer.com. Both have the same mission: to reconnect the public with architecture.

Kushner’s core belief is that architecture touches everyone — and everyone is a fan of architecture, even if they don’t know it yet. New forms of media empower people to shape the built environment, and that means better buildings, which make better cities, which make a better world.

Kushner, too, started with a childhood story where he confessed he didn’t like the architecture of the home where he and his family lived. This loathing inspired him to pursue architecture and he then segued into a history of architecture from the 1970’s to present day. Apparently the 1970s spawned something called ‘brutalism’ which is very much about concrete. (Arthur Erickson a local, Vancouver (Canada) architect who was internationally lauded for his work loved concrete; I do not.) According to Kushner, I’m not the only one who doesn’t like ‘brutalism’ and so by the 1980s architects fell back on tried and true structures and symbols. Kushner noted a back and forth movement between architects attempting to push the limits of technology and alienating the populace and then attempting to please the populace and going overboard in their efforts with exaggerated and ornate forms which eventually become offputting. Kushner then pointed to Guggenheim Bilbao as an architecture game-changer (from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

…

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a “signal moment in the architectural culture”, because it represents “one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something.”[3] The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.[3]

Kushner’s own work has clearly been influenced by Gehry and others who changed architecture in the 1990s but his approach is focused on attempting to integrate the community into the process and he described how he and his team have released architectural illustrations onto the internet years before a building is constructed to make the process more accessible.

Surprise: telepresent Ed Snowden at TED 2014′s Session 2: Retrospect

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The first session (Retrospect) this morning held a few surprises, i.e, unexpected speakers, Brian Greene and Ed Snowden (whistleblower re: extensive and [illegal or nonlegal?] surveillance by the US National Security Agency [NSA]). I’m not sure how Snowden fits into the session theme of Retrospect but I think that’s less the point than the sheer breathtaking surprise and his topic’s importance to current public discourse around much of the globe.

Snowden is mostly focused on PRISM (from its Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

PRISM is a clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining program launched in 2007 by the National Security Agency (NSA), with participation from an unknown date by the British equivalent agency, GCHQ.[1][2][3] PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN.[4][5] The Prism program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.[6] The NSA can use these Prism requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the Internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier,[7][8] and to get data that is easier to handle, among other things.[9]

He also described Boundless Informant in response to a question from the session co-moderator, Chris Anderson (from its Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

Boundless Informant or BOUNDLESSINFORMANT is a big data analysis and data visualization tool used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). It gives NSA managers summaries of the NSA’s world wide data collection activities by counting metadata.[1] The existence of this tool was disclosed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.[2]

Anderson asks Snowden, “Why should we care [about increased surveillance]? After all we’re not doing anything wrong.” Snowden response notes that we have a right to privacy and that our actions can be misinterpreted or used against us at any time, present or future.

Anderson mentions Dick Cheney and Snowden notes that Cheney has in the past made some overblown comments about Assange which he (Cheney) now dismisses in the face of what he now considers to be Snowden’s greater trespass.

Snowden is now commenting on the NSA’s attempt to undermine internet security by misleading their partners. He again makes a plea for privacy. He also notes that US security has largely been defensive, i.e., protection against other countries’ attempts to get US secrets. These latest programmes change US security from a defensive strategy to an offensive strategy (football metaphor). These changes have been made without public scrutiny.

Anderson asks Snowden about his personal safety.  His response (more or less), “I go to sleep every morning thinking about what I can do to help the American people. … I’m happy to do what I can.”

Anderson asks the audience members whether they think Snowden’s was a reckless act or an heroic act. Some hands go up for reckless, more hands go up for heroic, and many hands remain still.

Snowden, “We need to keep the internet safe for us and if we don’t act we will lose our freedom.”

Anderson asks Tim Berners-Lee to come up to the stage and the discussion turns to his (Berners-Lee) proposal for a Magna Carta for the internet.

Tim Berners-Lee biography from his Wikipedia entry,

Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS (born 8 June 1955), also known as “TimBL”, is a British computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989,[4] and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid November.[5][6][7][8][9]

Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[10] He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI),[11] and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.[12][13]

The Magna Carta (from its Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

Magna Carta (Latin for Great Charter),[1] also called Magna Carta Libertatum or The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, is an Angevin charter originally issued in Latin in June 1215. It was sealed under oath by King John at Runnymede, on the bank of the River Thames near Windsor, England at June 15, 1215.[2]

Magna Carta was the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their rights.

The charter is widely known throughout the English speaking world as an important part of the protracted historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law in England and beyond.

When asked by Anderson if he would return to the US if given amnesty, Snowden says yes as long as he can continue his work. He’s not willing to trade his work of bringing these issues to the public forefront in order to go home again.

Nicholas Negroponte and Chris Hadfield at TED 2014’s Session 1: Liftoff

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Nicholas Negroponte opened the first TED conference in 1984 and has come back for the 30th anniversary. Here’s his TED biography,

The founder of the MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. He’s the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world.

media.mit.edu

Negroponte discusses what has changed over the years. When he first started in the 1970s no one thought you’d ever use a touchscreen and putting your fingers on the screen was considered silly. This sort of thinking (touchscreens) is what went into the development of MIT’s Media Lab. He seems to be highlighting some of the high points of his thinking. He finds some of today’s internet of Things thinking to be pathetic (he references some of the sessions earlier today). He (?) started Wired magazine. Negroponte has gotten more interested in computers and learning over the years. He compares iteration to learning and mentions One Laptop Per Child. There was virtually no international aid for that project, the money came from the countries that used the program. After that project, he worked on an initiative where they dropped off computers to children (in Ethiopia and ?) with no instruction. Within days, the children had figured it out and within six months they hacked Android. He now wants to connect 100M people (on the African continent?). He predicts that in 30 years, we will ingest information (swallow a pill where the information travels through the bloodstream and on into the brain).

For some reason, they thought it would be amusing to play the Joe Canadian commercial. Chris Hadfield is then introduced. Here’s his TED biography,

Tweeting (and covering Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space.

Hadfield (who has a guitar on stage with him) talks about danger (asks the audience what’s the most dangerous thing theyu’ve done) and notes that space travel is dangerous. He then  describes in detail what it’s like to get into a space shuttle and head for the space. He says that a space shuttle is the most complicated machine (?) ever built. He next shows a shuttle launch and  describes being on the International Space Station. You see a sunrise every 25 minutes due to the speed at which you are travelling. He describes his first space walk when his left eye went blind. His left eye teared up while he continued work outside the station.

In space your tears don’t fall, they build up until there’s enough force to push them across the bridge of your nose and land like a small waterfall in your right eye. When the tears wooshed over to his right eye, he became completely blind.

Hadfield asks the audience again about danger and talks about overcoming fear and dealing with real danger as opposed to perceived danger. One of the ways astronauts deal with their fear and danger is to practice until they’ve changed their primal fear.

Hadfield plays a guitar and covers David Bowie’s Space Oddity and ends his talk with these words “Fear Not.”

I am done for today and I hope there aren’t too many mistakes in this post.

Nano-enabled conference ID badge for TED 2014

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Apparently Nanotech Security Corp. (I last wrote about the company in a Jan. 31, 2014 posting) was selected to produce a high tech security component for the TED 2014 conference. From a Mar. 17, 2014 news item in the Wall Street Journal,

Nanotech Security Corp. (TSX-V: NTS) (OTCQX: NTSFF) is pleased to announce that it has been selected to design and produce an exclusive event access ID and branding solution for the TED2014 and TEDActive 2014 conferences. Nanotech’s next-generation KolourOptik(R) nanotechnology will be integrated as a security feature on each participant’s ID badge for both events.

The March 17, 2014 news item can also be found on TechVibes,

The public company’s KolourOptik nanotechnology will be integrated as a security feature on each participant’s ID badge for both events; the feature is a combination of TED’s iconic logo and ultra-high resolution lettering recognizing TED’s 30-year milestone delivering “Ideas Worth Spreading.”

KolourOptik technology produces intense optically variable images that can be applied to virtually any surface for anti-counterfeit and branding purposes. These fully customizable images result from billions of nano-scale surface holes per square centimeter which capture and reformulate light waves into brilliant colours without use of any pigment or dye. The commercial terms of the contract were not announced.

I think that in addition to the obvious branding aspect of this badge, there is the high tech nature of a nanotechnology-enabled security feature enhancing TED’s brand as a place where you’ll find new ideas and things. More than one fellow introduced a new piece of software or hardware today.

ETA March 24, 2014: There’s a bit more information about KolourOptik’s technology in a March 18, 2014 news article on securing.com,

The approach using an electron beam to drill holes smaller than the wavelength of light into a material so – when light catches the holes at the right angle – a bright, flickering image is revealed. The KolourOptik technology requires no pigment or dye, said the British Columbia-based company.

For TED, the security feature (pictured [on the securing.com site]) shows the organisation’s logo and high resolution (50,000 dpi) lettering “recognising TED’s 30-year milestone delivering ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’,” it added.

The article also notes the TED is the company’s first commercial client.

TED 2014 ‘pre’ opening with prosthetics made better by 3D printing, interdisciplinary network, an app for vision testing and the Internet of Things made open

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Here’s today’s (March 17, 2014) second session and a list of the fellows along with a link to their TED 2014 biography (list and links from the TED 2014 schedule),

Somi Kakoma Vocalist + Composer + Culturist
Steve Boyes conservation biologist
David Sengeh biomechatronics engineer
Eric Berlow Ecologist
Uldus Bakhtiozina photographer + visual artist
Laurel Braitman science historian + writer
Eman Mohammed Photojournalist
Andrew Bastawrous eye surgeon + innovator
Kathryn Hunt Paleopathologist
Ayah Bdeir Engineer and artist
Will Potter Investigative journalist
Kitra Cahana Vagabond photojournalist + conceptual artist
Shih Chieh Huang Artist

David Moinina Sengeh, from the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab, focuses on biomechatronics and, more specifically, prosthetics. He was born and raised (till age 12?) in Sierra Leone where a civil war raged from 1991 to January 2002 when the war was declared finished. One of the legacies from the war has been war amputees resulting in a need for prosthetics and Sengher’s commitment to creating better prosthetics.

Even in wealthy parts of the world, an amputee may experience great discomfort from wearing a prosthetic that despite a number of fittings and adjustments never feels right and causes blisters and sores. In countries with fewer resources, getting a prosthetic that fits well is even more unlikely.

Sengeh has worked out a new way to create prosthetics that fit better and feel better, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the residual limb more accurately, followed by a finite-element analysis, then utilizing computer-aided design to create a  multilayer 3-D printed variable-resistance socket. One of Sengeh’s test subjects described his prosthetic socket as feeling like ‘pillows’. (You can read more about Sengeh and his work at MIT in a Dec. 18, 2012 MIT article by David L. Chandler.)  Sengeh has also founded a program in Sierra Leone to encourage and foster home-grown innovation and solutions in situations where resources are limited.

Andrew Bastawrous, Research Fellow in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, talked about his work in Kenya where he has developed an app for vision testing and diagnosis with an inexpensive device which can be clipped onto a smartphone. He demonstrated the app, Peek Vision, during his presentation.

The whole thing reminded me of Aravind, another project designed to save sight, but this one was created in India, from the Aravind Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Aravind Eye Care Hospital is an ophthalmological hospital with several locations in India. It was founded by Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy in 1976. Since then it has grown into a network of eye hospitals that have seen a total of nearly 32 million patients in 36 years and performed nearly 4 million eye surgeries, the majority of them being very cheap or free. The model of Aravind Eye Care hospitals has been applauded all over the world and has become a subject for numerous case studies.[1] [2][3]

My last fellow description for this session features Ayah Bdeir and the Internet of Things.  Bdeir has developed a modular approach to creating your own electronics and, today (March 17, 2014) she was introducing a new module, the Cloud Module which would allow you to create your own internet of things. (Last week I covered a webinar with Tim O’Reilly and Jim Stogdil in a March 13, 2014 posting where they discussed big data, the Internet of Things, maker culture and other components of an upcoming Solid Conference. OReilly & Stogdil discussed two options for the Internet of Things, a proprietary approach or an open  approach.) Bdeir’s modules facilitate an open approach. Bdeir will be speaking at the Solid Conference,

Ayah Bdeir is the founder and CEO of littleBits, an award-winning library of electronics dubbed “LEGOs for the iPad generation.” Bdeir is an engineer, interactive artist, and one of the leaders of the open source hardware movement. Bdeir’s career and education have centered on advancing open source hardware to make education and innovation more accessible to people around the world.

You can find out more about littleBits and the Cloud Module here.

TED 2014 ‘pre’ opening with reclaimed river, reforesting the world, open source molecular animation software, and a quantum butterfly

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Today, March 17, 2014 TED opened with the first of two sessions devoted to the 2014 TED fellows. The ones I’m choosing to describe in brief detail are those who most closely fall within this blog’s purview. My choices are not a reflection of my opinion about the speaker or the speaker’s topic or the importance of the topic.

First, here’s a list of the fellows* along with a link to their TED 2014 biography (list and links from the TED 2014 schedule),

Usman Riaz Percussive guitarist
Ziyah Gafić photographer + storyteller
Alexander McLean african prison activist
Dan Visconti composer + concert presenter
Aziza Chaouni architect + ecotourism specialist
Shubhendu Sharma reforestation expert
Bora Yoon Experimental musician
Aziz Abu Sarah entrepreneur + educator
Gabriella Gomez-Mont Creativity Officer, Guest Host
Jorge Mañes Rubio conceptual artist
Bora Yoon Experimental musician
Janet Iwasa molecular animator
Robert Simpson astronomer + web developer
Shohini Ghose quantum physicist + educator
Sergei Lupashin aerial robotics researcher + entrepreneur
Lars Jan director + media artist
Sarah Parcak Space archaeologist, TED Fellow [part of group presentation]
Tom Rielly Satirist [received a 5th anniversary gift, a muppet of himself from group]
Susie Ibarra composer + improviser + percussionist educator
Usman Riaz

Aziza Chaouni is an architect based in Morocco. From Fez (and I think she was born there), she is currently working to reclaim the Fez River, which she described as the ‘soul of the city’. As urbanization has taken over Fez, the river has been paved over as it has become more polluted with raw sewage being dumped into it along with industrial byproducts from tanning and other industries. As part of the project to reclaim the river, i.e., clean it and uncover it, Chaouni and her collaborators have created public spaces such as a playground which both cleanses the river and gives children a place to play which uncovering part of the city’s ‘soul’.

Shubhendu Sharma founded Afforestt with the intention of bringing forests which have been decimated not only in India but around the world. An engineer by training, he has adapted an industrial model used for car production to his forest-making endeavours. Working with his reforestation model, you can develop a forest with 300 trees in the space needed to park six cars and for less money than you need to buy an iPhone. The Afforestt project is about to go open-source meaning that anyone in the world can download the information necessary to create a forest.

Jorge Mañes Rubio spoke about his art project where he creates travel souvenirs, e.g., water from the near a submerged city in China. The city was submerged in the Three Gorges hydro dam project. For anyone not familiar with the project, from the Wikipedia Three Gorges Dam entry (Note: Links removed),

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, China. The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW). In 2012, the amount of electricity the dam generated was similar to the amount generated by the Itaipu Dam. [2][3]

Except for a ship lift, the dam project was completed and fully functional as of July 4, 2012,[4][5] when the last of the main turbines in the underground plant began production. Each main turbine has a capacity of 700 MW.[3][6] The dam body was completed in 2006. Coupling the dam’s 32 main turbines with two smaller generators (50 MW each) to power the plant itself, the total electric generating capacity of the dam is 22,500 MW.[3][7][8]

The one souvenir he showed from that project featured symbols from traditional Chinese art festooned around the edges of white plastic bottle containing water from above a submerged Chinese city.

Janet Iwasa, a PhD in biochemistry, professor at the University of Utah and a molecular animator, talked about the animating molecular movement in and around cells. She showed an animation of a clathrin cage (there’s more about clathrin, a protein in a Wikipedia entry; looks a lot like a buckyball or buckminster fullerene except it’s not carbon) which provides a completely different understanding of how these are formed than is possible from still illustrations. She, along with her team, has created an open source software, Molecular Flipbook, which is available in in beta as of today, March 17, 2014.

The next session is starting. I’ll try and get back here to include more about Robert Simpson and Shohini Ghose.

ETa March 17, 2014 at 1521 PST:

Robert Simpson talked about citizen science, the Zooniverse project, and astronomy.  I have mentioned Zooniverse here (a Jan. 17, 2012 posting titled: Champagne galaxy, drawing bubbles for science and a Sept. 17, 2013 posting titled: Volunteer on the Plankton Portal and help scientists figure out ways to keep the ocean healthy.  Simpson says there are 1 million people participating in various Zooniverse projects and he mentioned that in addition to getting clicks and time from people, they’ve also gotten curiosity. That might seem obvious but he went on to describe a project (the Galaxy Zoo project) where the citizen scientists became curious about certain phenomena they were observing and as a consequence of their curiosity an entirely new type of galaxy was discovered, a pea galaxy. From the Pea Galaxy Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

A Pea galaxy, also referred to as a Pea or Green Pea, might be a type of Luminous Blue Compact Galaxy which is undergoing very high rates of star formation.[1] Pea galaxies are so-named because of their small size and greenish appearance in the images taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

Pea Galaxies were first discovered in 2007 by the volunteer users within the forum section of the online astronomy project Galaxy Zoo (GZ).[2]

My final entry for this first TED fellow session is about Shohini Ghose, as associate professor of physics, at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Canada). She spoke beautifully and you** think you understand while the person’s speaking but aren’t all that sure afterwards. She was talking about chaos at the macro and at the quantum levels. The butterfly effect (a butterfly beats its wings in one part of the world and eventually that disturbance which is repeated is felt as a hurricane in another part of the world) can also occur at the quantum level. In fact, quantum entanglement is generated by chaos at the quantum scale. She was accompanied by a video representing chaos and movement at the quantum scale.

* ‘fellow’ changed to ‘fellows’ March 17, 2013 1606 hours PST
** ‘iyou’ changed to ‘you’ Nov. 19, 2014.