TED News in Brief: Chip Kidd writes a design book for kids, Young-ha Kim on spirituality in South Korea

News Chip Kidd, who spoke about book cover design at TED2012, has written a children’s design manual. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights:

Chip Kidd (watch his TED Talk) has just released a new book: a how-to guide to graphic design for kids. Read The New York Times’ Q&A with him in which he says, “I was utterly floored [when an editor wrote me about the book idea]. I said: ‘I don’t know anything about kids. I don’t know how to talk to them effectively. I don’t have them. I don’t even like them. This puts me out of my comfort zone. And so I’ll give it a shot.’”

Meanwhile, Young-ha Kim (watch his talk) has written a great op-ed in The International New York Times about the practice of South Korean businessmen consulting spiritual advisers on their decisions.

This week, The Economist takes a look at a troubling phenomenon in science — that the results of many studies fail to be replicated — and asks a scary question: is science self-correcting? Psychologist Daniel Kahneman (watch his TED Talk) is quoted in the opening sentence saying, “I see a train wreck looming.”

Conrad Wolfram (watch his talk) is hosting a Computer-Based Maths Education Summit in New York next month, and it’s being hosted in collaboration with UNICEF. The event will address the question: “How do we improve life opportunities worldwide by rethinking the math curriculum?”

Alissa Walker of Gizmodo took inspiration from Jeff Speck’s recent TED Talk on making cities more walkable, and gathered websites, apps and initiatives designed to make walking more viable as a form of transportation. Why? Because, as she puts it, “I live in L.A., a land of 20-lane interchanges, parking lots the size of football stadiums, and mind-bending, soul-crushing, life-altering traffic … because, a half-century ago, my city decided to redesign itself for cars, not humans.”

Over at Forbes.com, contributor Erika Andersen uses Dan Gilbert’s TED Talk “The Surprising Science of Happiness” as a leaping off point for the piece “5 Ways To Get Happier — Starting Right Now.”

Julie Taymor (watch her TED Talk) is bouncing back from Spider-man with her new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring 17 fairy children and a simple flying machine. The show premieres at the new Brooklyn Theatre for a New Audience this week.

Andras Forgacs (watch his TED Talk) and his bioprinted meat got a mention in a great article via Phys.org called “The ultimate iron chef: When 3-D printers invade the kitchen.” Part of the discussion focused on whether printed meat would be considered halal, kosher or vegetarian. (See our TED Blog piece asking vegetarians if they’d eat this meat.)

Jeff Bezos (watch his TED Talk) is the subject of a new book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

And finally, the website DC.StreetsBlog.org gives a shout-out to Janette Sadik-Khan’s talk, “New York’s streets? Not so mean anymore.”

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TEDWeekends talks innovation for the Global South

Global Issues

Malaria kills about 2,000 people every day. The mosquito-borne disease has ravaged the equatorial areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, where a combination of poverty and climate make a dangerous breeding ground for disease. There is currently no vaccine.

But Nathan Myhrvold has a solution. In his talk and demonstration from TED2010,  Myhrvold offers a silver bullet to prevent malaria in Africa — a mosquito laser zapper. His lab has developed a laser beam that can detect whether a mosquito might be malarial, and then zap it mid-air. This exciting innovation shows much promise in the fight to prevent malaria.

This week’s edition of TED Weekends on The Huffington Post explores the risks and rewards of innovating high-tech solutions for the Global South. In addition to an article from Myhrvold providing updates on his work, HuffPo features two other essays discussing tech innovations in the Global South. Below, some highlights from these pieces to pique your interest.

Nathan Myhrvold: Striking Down Malaria … With A Laser?

So, to the critics who say we’ll fail, I offer this: You’re absolutely right. But that’s part of being an inventor. What’s more important is that we learn, keep trying and make sure our successful inventions have a meaningful impact. At worst, we’ll get people thinking about important problems in new ways. At best, we’ll invent technology that transforms life for the people who need it most and, in the process, inspire more technology companies to work their magic for the developing world. Either way, I’d consider that a success. Read the full essay »

Larry Hollon Rev. Larry Hollon: The Astounding Impact of Innovative Technology in the Developing World

Even technology that’s far more accessible than what Myhrvold describes is changing the game in Africa — not only aiding in the fight against malaria, but opening a whole new world. Mobile technologies make it possible to have access to information that is transformative, whether it’s tracking disease outbreaks or educating children. Read the full essay »

Stuart Rennie: The Less ‘Glamorous’ Side of Invention

For decades, public health professionals have warned against ‘magic bullet’ approaches to disease control. Developing a technological innovation (be it a drug, device or a machine) is generally not enough in itself to make a significant impact on a disease on a population level. This is painfully evident in developing countries, whose citizens often do not have access to medical inventions (like antibiotics or MRIs) that were developed decades ago and currently standard of care in more affluent settings. In order to effect real change, you need more than inventors: You need implementers. Read the full essay »

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A ray of hope: Fellows Friday on Renée Hlozek’s new mentorship program for South African women scientists

Science TED Fellows

TED Fellow Renée Hlozek — currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Astrophysics at Princeton University — recently established a fund and mentoring program to bring young South African female science undergraduates to the US for summer research. The mentorship’s first recipient, Julia Healy, just completed four weeks working alongside Hlozek at Princeton. Here, the two tell us about the experience.

What is the Hope Network, and the Hope-Princeton Exchange?

Renée Hlozek: The Hope Network was started by me and some female friends a few years ago in South Africa as a way to encourage female students in the physical and natural sciences, engineering and medicine. We realized that by making a small contribution each, we could actually start a scholarship! The program assists female students in their fourth (and final) year of undergraduate studies. I realized that while I can help financially, I could also help in the mentoring aspect of the fellowship. So together with the Hope Network, I started the Hope-Princeton exchange, which funded Julia’s trip to the US to work with me for four weeks over the US summer — or South African winter — holiday. It is something I hope to be able to continue in years to come, and to expand to other institutions in the US. I’m lucky to have the support of my department in this, and my hope is that other institutions will also see this as a great opportunity to mentor students from South Africa.

Tell us about the student you brought over. What was the process, and how did you choose Julia?

RH: Once I realized that I could fund one trip, the next stage was putting out a call through my contacts in South African universities for students who wanted to work on astronomy projects over the summer. We put out the call to third and fourth year students, and got applications from such fields as engineering and mathematics. There was a requirement on the grades of the applicants, to make sure that the student could handle the mathematics and discussion required over the summer, but what was important for me was also the personal statement. Julia expressed her enthusiasm for learning and astronomy very well, and her initiative shone through too — she has worked on and led many projects both within and outside her academic environment.

What did you work on together?

RH: We decided to do a stacking analysis in the recent maps from the Planck satellite, to look for the signal from dusty galaxies detected in other wavelength bands. This project is important because it will teach us about the properties of these galaxies which live far away from us, through the light they give off in the microwave regime of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Julia came to work with me during the astrophysics department’s undergraduate summer research program, which I run with Dave Spiegel and Emily Rauscher, two other postdocs here in Princeton. So there was a group of 10 other students who were also doing research projects for the first time. I think this made a natural environment for her to fit into, and also meant that she made her first international colleagues — something I really appreciated when I was starting out my research career. My hope with this exchange is that South African students are reminded that the research world is international, and that they form an integral part of the global network.

Julia Healy, the Hope-Princeton Exchange’s first recipient.

Julia, tell us about your experience.

Julia Healy: The four weeks I spent at Princeton were a great learning experience. I am working on a project with Renée looking for dusty red galaxies in the cosmic microwave background. There were so many different opportunities for me to learn: listening to the discussions about the latest research papers over coffee, I was able to absorb a little bit about the content however it often went over my head. And I was able to pick up how to write a good research paper. The seminars held on Tuesdays at lunch exposed me to ongoing research in the Princeton astrophysics department as well as taught me some invaluable skills, such as how to present a research paper to a group of people.

I learnt a lot about conducting science research and the environment in which it is conducted — lots of the myths surrounding what the typical researcher is like have been broken. I had lots of fun learning new things every day, and am more certain now that I want to continue into postgraduate research. By the end of the four weeks, I did not want to leave — I was quite happy to continue working. I am continuing with the work now that I am back in Cape Town.

And Renée, how did this initial experience inform how you plan to run this exchange in the future?

RH: This pilot was super useful to me, and gave me a lot of insight into how to organize things. I was pleased that Julia had a group to work with, and I will continue to include the students in our summer program. The only challenge is that for Julia it is the South African winter holiday, and so she had to leave after four weeks, rather than experiencing the full nine weeks that the US students get in our program. We are continuing to work together now, though. Personally, I felt enriched by this experience and only hope we can bring more students over next summer!

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