NASA recently sponsored new research into turning human waste into useful things, like food and plastic. And it might be used on long-term spaceflight someday.

Cybercrime expert Mikko Hypponen talks us through three types of online attack on our privacy and data -- and only two are considered crimes. "Do we blindly trust any future government? Because any right we give away, we give away for...

Because there are so many different types of penises among our evolutionary relatives, we didn’t know until a recent discovery whether they all had the same origin.

We finally have some results from the InSight lander’s measurements on Mars, and the Japanese Space Agency is moving forward with a probe that will explore Mars’s moons.

There is a lot of excitement around the field of Big Data, but today we want to take a moment to look at some of the problems it creates. From questions of bias and transparency to privacy and security concerns, there is still a lot to...

In ancient Rome, Vestal Virgins were tasked with keeping vigil over the flame of Vesta, the virgin goddess of the hearth. The flame represented two things: the continuation of Rome as a power in the world and the continuing virginity of...

You can use your smartphone to find a local ATM, but what if you need a defibrillator? Lucien Engelen shows us online innovations that are changing the way we save lives, including a crowdsourced map of local AEDs.

Fog might make things seem mysterious and spooky, but it's actually a cool natural phenomenon that happens when cold air affects the water in the air!

We need more solutions for our energy needs, and one idea is straight out of science fiction: Solar panels, in space.

In the Pacific Ocean, there lives a fish that's . . . a little different. Hank tells you all about the Pacific barreleye fish!

We need to change how we prescribe drugs, says physician Daniel Kraft: too often, medications are dosed incorrectly, cause toxic side effects or just don't work. In a talk and concept demo, Kraft shares his vision for a future of...

We all know that birds are incredibly smart, but some birds in Australia take things to the next level — they can intentionally start fires!

Paul Andersen shows you how to calculate the ch-squared value to test your null hypothesis. He explains the importance of the critical value and defines the degrees of freedom. He also leaves you with a problem related to the animal...

OSIRIS-REx is launching soon and it will become the first American spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid!

In Brazil, "catadores" collect junk and recyclables. But while they provide a vital service that benefits all, they are nearly invisible as they roam the streets. Enter graffiti artist Mundano, a TED Fellow. In a spirited talk, he...

Author Sam Martin shares photos of a quirky world hobby that's trending with the XY set: "manspaces." (They're custom-built hangouts where a man can claim a bit of his own territory to work, relax, be himself.) Grab a cold one and enjoy.

In the savannahs of Kenya, two female northern white rhinos, Nájin and Fatu, munch contentedly on grass. They are the last two known northern white rhinos left on Earth. Their species is functionally extinct— without a male, they can't...

SciShow Space shares the latest developments from around the universe, including news about the first material ever collected from outside the solar system, and a backyard astronomers’ guide to two upcoming planetary conjunctions.

In this video Paul Andersen explains the importance of standard deviation. He starts with a discussion of normal distribution and how the standard deviation measures the average distance from the mean, or the "spread" of data. He then...

Today, we're going to begin our discussion of Big Data. Everything from which videos we click (and how long we watch them) on YouTube to our likes on Facebook say a lot about us - and increasingly more and more sophisticated algorithms...

Jessi and Squeaks are busy working in their garden, and they'd like to share one trick that keeps their plants happy!

Paul Andersen shows you how to calculate the standard error of a data set. He starts by explaining the purpose of standard error in representing the precision of the data. The standard error is based on the standard deviation and the...

2,300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill a very audacious goal: to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof. In its prime, the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls and attracted...

In this brief talk from TED U 2009, Jonathan Drori encourages us to save biodiversity -- one seed at a time. Reminding us that plants support human life, he shares the vision of the Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion...