African Institute of Mathematical Sciences

TED talk by Neil Turok.

Neil Turok is a mathematician/physicist at Cambridge University.

He has founded an institute in Africa from which students have graduated to go on to great places, including for instance a student who is now pursuing a PhD at Cambridge under Stephen Hawking. They now want to start (a few) similar institutions in other sciences, and hope to replicate these successes.

Other notable highlights from the talk:

Maps from World Mapper. Maps in which countries’ areas correspond to a certain characteristic. Along with Gapminder, wonderfully illustrative visualisation tools.

“All known physics” equation:

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TED talk: Dangerous things you should let your children do

Here.

The talk itself isn’t very compelling, but since I wholeheartedly agree with the idea already…
(Although I haven’t thrown a spear)

watch it.

Murray Gell-mann

Talks. See TED video.

Notice him pronouncing Coulomb, Yang, and even Einstein.

Update: Some context: A NYT article.

Even Murray Gell-Mann’s credentials — a director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, adviser to the Pentagon on arms control, collector of prehistoric Southwest American pottery, amateur ornithologist, to name a few — can’t prepare a visitor for the full extent of his erudition. He pronounces “Chagas” as it is heard in Brazil. He has been known to correct the Ukrainian pronunciation of native Ukrainians and disparage the Swahili of Kenyans.

Biovisions at Harvard: The Inner Life of a Cell

Old news, but I was just digging up old files (specifically, I was going through my music collection, and found this mp3 file I had ripped from):
This stunning, breathtaking, enchanting animation (or here). The music is great too, but I have not been able to find out what it is see below.

The animation was created by a company called XVIVO, commissioned by Harvard University’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. (Look here.) Also look at XVIVO’s site, for stuff like this.

An article here. An interview here:

We had to figure out how to take a cell that is so packed with molecules and to edit out visually about 90 to 95 percent of those molecules.

The entire video depicts what goes on inside one white blood cell

a cellular-motility theme and what happens to a white blood cell patrolling the capillary when there’s an inflammation outside the capillary

The full 8-minute video, with explanation, is here. Scroll down on the main page and look at some other (less polished) animations too.

Oh, and David Bolinsky, one of the founders of XVIVO, gave a talk at TED.

Update: I finally know what the music is, thanks to (of all places) a YouTube comment. It was composed by the company Massive Productions, specifically Matt Berkey. This music won an award (no surprise), a 2006 Telly award for Best Music Composition for a Non-Broadcast Film or Video. (Click here and scroll down, or look here.) Further Google-searching after knowing this led to this guy, who has been similarly interested. There’s a link on that post to here, which has a ripped-from-Youtube version of it. He contacted the composer and got a response (the music was available for $25), and an ad-filled mp3 of the song, and, in one of the comments, a higher-quality rip.