by atmara | Jun 30, 2016 | Astronomy, Science, TED Talks, Video
According to TED.com: “If we hope to one day leave Earth and explore the universe, our bodies are going to have to get a lot better at surviving the harsh conditions of space. Using synthetic biology, Lisa Nip hopes to harness special powers from microbes on Earth — such as the ability to withstand radiation — to make humans more fit for exploring space. ‘We’re approaching a time during which we’ll have the capacity to decide our own genetic destiny,’ Nip says. ‘Augmenting the human body with new abilities is no longer a question of how, but of when.’ ”
“Lisa Nip’s work focuses on how we can use synthetic biology to allow humanity to explore space.”
“Lisa Nip is a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab’s Molecular Machines group. She uses her training in biochemistry and biotechnology to translate synthetic biology into real-world applications. She spends much of her time concocting biological solutions to long-duration space travel and works to make them a reality. ”
“Nip was trained as a biochemist at Boston University, and previously did research in the Douglas Lab at UCSF and the Church Lab in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School.”
Enjoy this thought provoking talk.
For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”
——————————————————————————————————–
I look forward to your thoughts and comments!
Like this:
Like Loading...
by atmara | Jun 23, 2016 | Inspiration, Science, TED Talks, Video
According to TED.com: “Bill Stone, a maverick cave explorer who has plumbed Earth’s deepest abysses, discusses his efforts to mine lunar ice for space fuel and to build an autonomous robot for studying Jupiter’s moon Europa.”
“Engineer and daredevil explorer Bill Stone is obsessed with discovery. After years of crawling through the deepest unexplored caves on the planet, he’s building robots to go where he can’t. His company Stone Aerospace built DepthX, an autonomous robot, which descended 1,099 feet down Mexico’s deepest watery sinkhole. In 2009, Stone and his team completed a successful mission to Antarctica. ENDURANCE, an expedition sponsored by NASA, was developed to explore and map under the ice of Lake Bonney in Antarctica. But this was just a test for the real mission (which is explained in a National Geographic documentary, Journey to an Alien Moon): building a probe with NASA to bore through miles of ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa, then swim through the buried Europan sea in search of alien life.”
“He’s also hoping to singlehandedly jump-start commercial human space exploration by offering spacefarers affordable fuels and consumables extracted from the moon. His new Shackleton Energy Company, or SEC, intends to raise $15 billion (as he points out, this is about the cost of a North Sea oil production platform complex) to mine ice thought to be trapped on the moon’s southern pole at Shackleton Crater, and to sell derived products (including propellants and other consumables) on the moon and in low earth orbit (LEO) to international consumers.”
Enjoy.
For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”
——————————————————————————————————–
I look forward to your thoughts and comments!
Like this:
Like Loading...
by atmara | Jun 16, 2016 | Ecology, Sustainability, TED Talks, Video
According to TED.com: “What are our forests really made of? From the air, ecologist Greg Asner uses a spectrometer and high-powered lasers to map nature in meticulous kaleidoscopic 3D detail — what he calls “a very high-tech accounting system” of carbon. In this fascinating talk, Asner gives a clear message: To save our ecosystems, we need more data, gathered in new ways.”
“The remote sensing techniques developed by Greg Asner and his team are viewed as among the most advanced in the world for exploring Earth’s changing ecosystems in unprecedented detail and richness. Using airborne and satellite technologies such as laser scanning and hyperspectral imaging, combined with field work and computer modeling, Asner measures and qualifies humans’ impact on regions from the American Southwest to the Brazilian Amazon.”
“We’re able to see, if you will, the forest and the trees at the same time,” Asner says. “We’re able to now understand an image, map and measure huge expanses of the environment while maintaining the detail. Not just the spatial resolution, but the biological resolution—the actual organisms that live in these places.” For Asner, who is on the faculty at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford and leads the Carnegie Airborne Observatory project, this is science with a mission: to influence climate change treaties and save the forests he studies.”
Enjoy.
For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”
——————————————————————————————————–
I look forward to your thoughts and comments!
Like this:
Like Loading...
