Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.

Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge craze this summer? Meet the mom who started it all. When Nancy Frates's son Pete hurt his wrist in a baseball game, he got an unexpected diagnosis: it wasn’t a broken bone, it was ALS, and there is no...

Since the widespread use of antibiotics began in the 1940s, we've tried to develop new drugs faster than bacteria can evolve -- but this strategy isn't working. Drug-resistant bacteria known as superbugs killed nearly 700,000 people last...

Humans should urinate at least four to six times a day, but occasionally, the pressures of modern life force us to clench and hold it in. How bad is this habit, and how long can our bodies withstand it? Heba Shaheed takes us inside the...

In a lyrical, unexpectedly funny talk about heavy topics such as frayed relationships and the death of a loved one, elizabeth Lesser describes the healing process of putting aside pride and defensiveness to make way for soul-baring and...

From MMR boosters to tetanus, you'll probably get a lot of shots in your life. And one thing you might notice is that some of them don't feel like much, but some of them can make your arm reallllly sore! Why is that?

Nearly 450 million people are affected by mental illness worldwide. In wealthy nations, just half receive appropriate care, but in developing countries, close to 90 percent go untreated because psychiatrists are in such short supply....

There's a vaccine being developed now that would protect you against every strain of the flu— even ones that don't exist yet. But influenza is constantly mutating, so is a universal vaccine even possible? And how do you design a vaccine...

Mosquitos have been dangerous for, well... forever. So what's new about Zika?

Author Steven Johnson takes us on a 10-minute tour of The Ghost Map, his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society.

It's 2013, yet 2.5 billion people in the world have no access to a basic sanitary toilet. And when there's no loo, where do you poo? In the street, probably near your water and food sources -- causing untold death and disease from...

In 1984, Dr. Barry Marshall had a theory about ulcers that he couldn't convince the science community of. So, he took matters into his own hands... or stomach, and infected himself with a potentially deadly bacterium.

You've just been injured, and you're on the way home from an hour of physical therapy. The last thing you want to do on your own is confusing exercises that take too long to show results. TED Fellow Cosmin Mihaiu demos a fun, cheap...

How do vaccines prevent disease -- even among people too young to get vaccinated? It's a concept called "herd immunity," and it relies on a critical mass of people getting their shots to break the chain of infection. Health researcher...

In the 16th century, physician Andreas Vesalius described how a suffocating animal could be kept alive by inserting a tube into its trachea and blowing air to inflate its lungs. Today, Vesalius’s treatise is recognized as the first...

What does it actually mean when a label says something ‘causes cancer’? Those labels can be misleading, but knowing the legal and scientific reasoning behind them can help.

Marcel Dicke makes an appetizing case for adding insects to everyone's diet. His message to squeamish chefs and foodies: delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavor, nutrition and eco-friendliness.

Investor and prankster Yossi Vardi delivers a ballsy lecture on the dangers of blogging. Specifically, for men.

For those with a fear of needles, edible vaccines seem like some distant utopian dream, but that dream may soon be a reality... for chickens.

Our bodies get Vitamin D from the sun, but as dermatologist Richard Weller suggests, sunlight may confer another surprising benefit too. New research by his team shows that nitric oxide, a chemical transmitter stored in huge reserves in...

In 1995, the British Medical Journal published a report about a builder who accidentally jumped onto a nail, which pierced straight through his steel-toed boot. He was in such agonizing pain that any movement was unbearable. But when the...

Along with a crew of technologists and scientists, Jorge Soto is developing a simple, noninvasive, open-source test that looks for early signs of multiple forms of cancer. Onstage at TEDGlobal 2014, he demonstrates a working prototype of...

In a dark cave, bats can't see much. But even with their eyes shut, they can navigate rocky topography at incredible speeds. This is because bats aren't just guided by their eyes, but rather, by their ears. It may seem impossible to see...

The cells in your body are like computer software: they're "programmed" to carry out specific functions at specific times. If we can better understand this process, we could unlock the ability to reprogram cells ourselves, says...