Biologist Dan Gibson edits and programs DNA, just like coders program a computer. But his "code" creates life, giving scientists the power to convert digital information into biological material like proteins and vaccines. Now he's on to...

When the Museum of Modern Art's senior curator of architecture and design announced the acquisition of 14 video games in 2012, "all hell broke loose." In this far-ranging, entertaining, and deeply insightful talk, Paola Antonelli...

TED collaborates with animator Andrew Park to illustrate Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty -- that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply "in the eye of the beholder," are a core part of human nature with...

Computers can beat us in board games, transcribe speech, and instantly identify almost any object. But will future robots go further by learning to figure out what we're feeling? Kostas Karpouzis imagines a future where machines and the...

Quantum physics is weird. But quantum computing could be awesome! Learn how scientists took a big leap this week toward making quantum computers a reality.

Michael Aranda substitutes for Hank again in this week's News to tell you about the winners of the 2012 Visualization Challenge, an annual competition run by the journal Science that selects the most elegant and educational graphics,...

For architect Ole Scheeren, the people who live and work inside a building are as much a part of that building as concrete, steel and glass. He asks: Can architecture be about collaboration and storytelling instead of the isolation and...

Stretching over roughly nine million square kilometers and with sands reaching temperatures of up to 80° Celsius, the Sahara Desert receives about 22 million terawatt hours of energy from the Sun every year. That's well over 100 times...

What we think of as 3D printing, says Joseph DeSimone, is really just 2D printing over and over ... slowly. Onstage at TED2015, he unveils a bold new technique -- inspired, yes, by Terminator 2 -- that's 25 to 100 times faster, and...

Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer on a mission -- to reduce pollution in the fashion industry while creating amazing new things to wear. In her lab, she noticed that the bacteria Streptomyces coelicolor makes a striking red-purple...

The deadliest severe weather phenomenon is something you might not realize: extreme heat. Eleni Myrivili, chief heat officer of the city of Athens, Greece, explains that extreme heat and heat waves are often overlooked because they're...

Can we create new life out of our digital universe? Craig Venter asks. His answer is "yes" -- and pretty soon. He walks through his latest research and promises that we'll soon be able to build and boot up a synthetic chromosome. NOTE:...

In sub-Saharan Africa, power outages, low technology penetration, slow internet and understaffed hospitals plague health care systems. To make progress on these problems in Malawi, TED Fellow Soyapi Mumba and his team created a new...

Solar power is cheaper and more sustainable than our current coal-fueled power plants, so why haven't we made the switch? The real culprits here are the clouds, which make solar power difficult to control. Alexandros George Charalambides...

How is it that a breathalyzer can measure the alcohol content in someone’s blood, hours after they had their last drink, based on their breath alone? And could we use this same technology to detect disease by analyzing a person’s...

For intersex people -- those born with sex characteristics outside the traditional definitions of female and male -- the stakes to appear "normal" are high. Drawing on her personal experience, Susannah Temko reveals the shame, prejudice...

Using video mapping and projection, artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo captures and shares his memories and friendships. At TED Fellow Talks, he shows his charming, thoughtful work -- which appears to preserve the people in his life in jars,...

Earthquakes have always been a terrifying phenomenon, and they've become more deadly as our cities have grown - with collapsing buildings posing one of the largest risks. But why do buildings collapse in an earthquake? And how can it be...

This week we’re exploring aerospace engineering and its two main fields: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. We’ll explore life & buoyancy, propulsion systems, and the challenges of managing the human body in space.

What if you could take a smell selfie, a smelfie? What if you had a lipstick that caused plants to grow where you kiss? Ani Liu explores the intersection of technology and sensory perception, and her work is wedged somewhere between...

As the year 1905 began, Albert Einstein faced life as a "failed" academic. Yet within the next twelve months, he would publish four extraordinary papers, each on a different topic, that were destined to radically transform our...

Ursus Wehrli shares his vision for a cleaner, more organized, tidier form of art -- by deconstructing the paintings of modern masters into their component pieces, sorted by color and size.

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Paola Antonelli, design curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, wants to spread her appreciation of design --...

Christian Benimana wants to build a network of architects who can help Africa's booming cities flourish in sustainable, equitable ways -- balancing growth with values that are uniquely African. From Nigeria to Burkina Faso and beyond, he...