Monday, November 21, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
V.S. Ramachandran - Beyond Belief 2006
This is from the Beyond Belief Conference of 2006. I have uploaded them in this format so that it may appeal to broad audience looking for both individual lectures and the entire series. Please, if you enjoy these, donate to The Science Network.
How does the brain generate consciousness? Baroness Susan Greenfield: ANU
Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE Hon FRCP, Member, House of Lords, United Kingdom, Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology, Lincoln College, Oxford University presents this lecture: How does the brain generate consciousness? This video was recorded at The Australian National University on 30 August
Anna Mracek Dietrich: A plane you can drive
A flying car -- it's an iconic image of the future. But after 100 years of flight and automotive engineering, no one has really cracked the problem. Pilot Anna Mracek Dietrich and her team flipped the question, asking: Why not build a plane that you can drive?
Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion.
Martin Hanczyc: The line between life and not-life
Martin Hanczyc makes "protocells," experimental blobs of chemicals that behave like living cells. His work demonstrates how life might have first occurred on Earth ... and perhaps elsewhere too.
Allan Jones: A map of the brain
How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region...
Yves Rossy: Fly with the Jetman
Yves Rossy is the Jetman -- flying free, his body as the rudder, above the Swiss Alps and the Grand Canyon. After a powerful short film shows how it works,
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure
Why do we like an original painting better than a forgery? Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that human beings are essentialists -- that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, not simply as an illusion, but as a deep feature of what pleasure (and pain) is.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Simon Lewis: Don't take consciousness for granted
After a catastrophic car accident that left him in a coma, Simon Lewis found ways to recover -- physically and mentally -- beyond all expectations. At the INK Conference he tells how this remarkable story led him to concern over all threats to consciousness, and how to overcome them.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
LED sculpture
This was constructed at the workshop of 2D3D Ltd in Park Royal, for Roca's stand at the 100% Design show in 2008.
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Augmented Sculpture Project
Created by Pablo Valbuena, it mixes, according to him, a "volumetric base that serves as support for a second level, a virtual projected layer that allows controlling the transformation and sequentiality of space-time."
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
David Merrill: Siftables, the toy blocks that think
MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?
Johnny Lee: Wii Remote hacks
Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Matthieu Ricard: Habits of happiness
What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Buddhist monk, photographer and author Matthieu Ricard has devoted his life to these questions, and his answer is influenced by his faith as well as by his scientific turn of mind: We can train our minds in habits of happiness. Interwoven with his talk are stunning photographs of the Himalayas and of his spiritual community.
Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind
Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between celebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples.
How it feels to have a stroke
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
Handspring Puppet Company: The genius puppetry behind War Horse
Puppets always have to try to be alive," says Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, a gloriously ambitious troupe of human and wooden actors. Beginning with the tale of a hyena's subtle paw, puppeteers Kohler and Basil Jones build to the story of their latest astonishment: the wonderfully life-like Joey, the War Horse, who trots (and gallops) convincingly onto the TED stage.
Susan Lim: Transplant cells, not organs
Pioneering surgeon Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Asia. But a moral concern with transplants (where do donor livers come from ...) led her to look further, and to ask: Could we be transplanting cells, not whole organs?
Carlo Ratti: Architecture that senses and responds
he and his team create dazzling interactive environments from moving water and flying light, powered by simple gestures caught through sensors.
Suzanne Lee: Grow your own clothes
Designer Suzanne Lee shares her experiments in growing a kombucha-based material that can be used like fabric or vegetable leather to make clothing.
