“Learning Science with TED” book series debuts at the Beijing International Book Fair

The first Chinese-language TED science video book series, Learning Science with TED, was officially launched last month at the 31st Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF), held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, China. The series is a joint initiative by Science Press, New Channel International Education Group and TED. It features more than 100 high-impact topics curated from TED’s education initiative, TED-Ed. The complete collection will comprise 12 volumes sourced from TED-Ed’s widely viewed science animation library, covering 10 cutting-edge fields including artificial intelligence, mathematics, physics and astronomy.

The series introduces a three-dimensional learning model that integrates reading, video, and practice, with content rigorously reviewed by Chinese scientists and primary- and secondary-school educators to ensure accuracy and authority. The series adopts the APPB learning approach (Activity-, Project- and Problem-Based Inquiry Learning), with each volume including guiding questions, core science text, thinking exercises and animated extensions, all designed to spark curiosity and encourage active exploration.

Bilingual support includes an English-Chinese glossary of scientific terms and QR codes linking to related animations, promoting cross-cultural scientific literacy. Each volume also features special sections such as “knowledge boost,” “scientific milestones” and “scientists who changed the world,” connecting science with historical and humanistic context. Complementary online courses and challenge-based activities are also in development, extending the series’ impact into both classrooms and homes.

The launch event was attended by Hu Huaqiang, chairman and general manager of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. (Science Press); Professor Hu Min, chairman of New Channel International Education Group and editor-in-chief of the series; Tricia Maia, head of product at TED; and Dr. Zhang Wensheng, researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The event was hosted by Zhang Fan, deputy general manager of China Science Press, and brought together young readers as well as professionals from the publishing and education sectors.

Chairman Hu Huaqiang stated that the joint launch of the Learning Science with TED series by Science Press, in collaboration with TED and New Channel International Education Group, represents a valuable cross-sector partnership between science and education. This initiative is another step in fulfilling the publisher’s mission to “spread science and create the future.” Moving forward, Science Press will build on its interactive science education platform, leveraging its brand, expertise and content to integrate leading research resources, provide comprehensive solutions and advance regional science education and related industries.

Professor Hu Min, editor-in-chief of the series, introduced New Channel’s pioneering “Global Competence Model,” rooted in Chinese culture and oriented toward a global perspective. Built on six core pillars, the model integrates the STREAM framework — science, technology, reading, engineering, arts and mathematics — to cultivate innovative talent that blends scientific thinking with humanistic values. He also presented the APPB learning method, which underpins the series. By engaging students in activities, projects and problem-solving, APPB promotes real-world application and a deeper understanding of the material.

Tricia Maia, head of product at TED, highlighted how TED-Ed’s animated videos combine storytelling, scientific rigor and visual appeal to help audiences grasp complex concepts. Transforming these widely popular videos into a structured book series aligned with the APPB learning method offers a powerful way to inspire Chinese youth to enhance their scientific literacy and global competence. The initiative represents an extension of TED’s mission to share ideas that spark conversation, deepen understanding and drive meaningful change.

Dr. Wensheng Zhang, researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, delivered a presentation titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Era of Big Data,” highlighting how big data is transforming human life, reshaping the way we understand the world and becoming a driving force behind technological innovation.

The first six volumes of Learning Science with TED are officially released across mainland China, available now through major distribution channels and e-commerce platforms. TED, New Channel and Science Press will continue to strengthen their collaboration, ensuring that cutting-edge global scientific thinking resonates with Chinese youth and fuels the development of innovative, globally competitive talent.

Want a better night’s sleep? A TED original series explores the science of slumber

Is that afternoon coffee having a major impact on your sleep hours later? Does sleeping longer mean living longer?

In TED’s newest original video series, Sleeping with Science, sleep scientist Matt Walker dives into the latest research on sleep — and explains what you need to know to get a better night’s rest.

While you’re dreaming, your body works overtime to repair your immune system, file your memories and literally clean your brain, so you can wake up ready for the day. But not all sleep is created equal. Walker sheds light on the mysterious mechanics of slumber in eight brief, information-packed episodes featuring colorful illustrations of the wondrous inner workings of your brain on sleep — and what happens when you don’t get enough of it.

Stroll through the stages of sleep with Walker as he finally puts to rest tired misconceptions about sleep and uncovers some surprising findings, including how coffee and alcohol really affect your sleep, how to boost your immune system with sleep, new research into the link between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease and how to hack your memory with sleep. This series was made possible with the support of Beautyrest.

Take a walk through the stages of sleep:

A look at how you might be paying for that nightcap with your sleep:

Studying for a big test? Learn how sleep boosts your memory:

Could better sleep hold the key to lowering your risk of Alzheimer’s disease:

Feeling cranky? Understand how sleep — or the lack of it — changes your feelings during the day:

Explore the connection between rest and your health:

Find out if you’re getting enough sleep:

And finally, try these tips for a better snooze:

Check out the full series on TED.com.

A first glimpse at the TEDSummit 2019 speaker lineup

With TEDSummit 2019 just two months away, it’s time to unveil the first group of speakers that will take to the stage in Edinburgh, Scotland, from July 21-25.

Three years ago, more than 1,000 members of the TED global community convened in Banff, Canada, for the first-ever TEDSummit. We talked about the fracturing state of the world, the impact of technology and the accelerating urgency of climate change. And we drew wisdom and inspiration from the speakers — and from each other.

These themes are equally pressing today, and we’ll bring them to the stage in novel, more developed ways in Edinburgh. We’ll also address a wide range of additional topics that demand attention — looking not only for analysis but also antidotes and solutions. To catalyze this process, half of the TEDSummit conference program will take place outside the theatre, as experts host an array of Discovery Sessions in the form of hands-on workshops, activities, debates and conversations.

Check out a glimpse of the lineup of speakers who will share their future-focused ideas below. Some are past TED speakers returning to give new talks; others will step onto the red circle for the first time. All will help us understand the world we currently live in.

Here we go! (More will be added in the coming weeks):

Anna Piperal, digital country expert

Bob Langert, corporate changemaker

Carl Honoré, author

Carole Cadwalladr, investigative journalist

Diego Prilusky, immersive media technologist

Eli Pariser, organizer and author

Fay Bound Alberti, historian

George Monbiot, thinker and author

Hajer Sharief, youth inclusion activist

Howard Taylor, children safety advocate

Jochen Wegner, editor and dialogue creator

Kelly Wanser, geoengineering expert

Ma Yansong, architect

Marco Tempest, technology magician

Margaret Heffernan, business thinker

María Neira, global public health official

Mariana Lin, AI personalities writer

Mariana Mazzucato, economist

Marwa Al-Sabouni, architect

Nick Hanauer, capitalism redesigner

Nicola Jones, science writer

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland

Omid Djalili, comedian

Patrick Chappatte, editorial cartoonist

Pico Iyer, global author

Poet Ali, Philosopher, poet

Rachel Kleinfeld, violence scholar

Raghuram Rajan, former central banker

Rose Mutiso, energy for Africa activist

Sandeep Jauhar, cardiologist

Sara-Jane Dunn, computational biologist

Sheperd Doeleman, black hole scientist

Sonia Livingstone, social psychologist

Susan Cain, quiet revolutionary

Tim Flannery, carbon-negative tech scholar

Tshering Tobgay, former Prime Minister of Bhutan

 

With them, a number of artists will also join us at TEDSummit, including:

Djazia Satour, singer

ELEW, pianist and DJ

KT Tunstall, singer and songwriter

Min Kym, virtuoso violinist

Radio Science Orchestra, space-music orchestra

Yilian Cañizares, singer and songwriter

 

Registration for TEDSummit is open for active members of our various communities: TED conference members, Fellows, past TED speakers, TEDx organizers, Educators, Partners, Translators and more. If you’re part of one of these communities and would like to attend, please visit the TEDSummit website.

These young women might just save the planet

One of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s most famous quotes instructs us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We might amend Mead’s observation to honor a group of thoughtful, committed teenagers across the world who are standing up for their lives (and their future lives) in extraordinarily powerful and moving ways.

Valentine’s Day marked the one-year anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida. In the aftermath of that tragic shooting that claimed 17 lives, surviving students rejected their representatives’ “thoughts and prayers” and organized a nationwide school walkout on March 14, 2018. Ten days later, the March for Our Lives drew over a million people from around the country to Washington to rally for safe schools and gun control. And the Parkland students have continued throughout the year to travel this country and the world, advocating for stricter gun regulations.

In Sweden, a teenage girl named Greta Thunberg observed the actions of the Parkland students and took an action of her own: deciding to skip school every Friday in order to lobby the Swedish government into action on climate change.

Since Greta began her solo protest, it’s estimated that more than 70,000 students around Europe and the world have joined her protest each week, in over 270 towns and cities. Pictures of Greta and other young activists have made their way around on social media (Greta has nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram), inspiring other teens to join her in protest.

Strikes have been organized all over Europe, the United States, India and Australia over the past five months. The movement is notable in that it is being led by teenage girls. Katrien Van der Heyden of Brussels, whose 17-year-old daughter, Anuna de Wever, organizes marches there, observed to BuzzFeed: “’It’s the very first time in Belgium that a [mass movement was] started by two women and not about feminist rights.’ When the protests drew tens of thousands, Van der Heyden said, she was stunned to see as many boys as girls in the crowds, “and yet no one ever challenged the leadership of the female organizers.”

Seventeen-year-old Jamie Margolin, the founder and executive director of Zero Hour, a group organizing the US protests for the International Day of Action planned for March 15, told BuzzFeed that climate activism has given young women a chance to be heard.

“’There aren’t very many spaces that I can be in charge of, and what I’m going to say is going to be heard,’ Margolin said. Her group is led largely by young women of color, which she said should come as no surprise, because people who are already vulnerable are going to be disproportionately hit by climate change.”

Recently, TED posted Greta’s TEDxStockholm talk which she gave in November. Her talk has been up three weeks and has already been viewed over 1.2 million times. In it, she explained why she decided to skip school and protest, saying:

“I school striked for the climate. Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis.’ But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”

At the end of her talk, Greta says she’s not going to end on a positive, hopeful note, like most TED talks.

“Yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.”
                                                                                                                — Greta Thunberg

As I observe Greta and Jamie and all the other girls taking up leadership and the young boys who are marching and protesting with them,  no longer waiting for some adult with a plan or for corporations or governments to take actions, but creating their own actions, I feel more hope than I have felt in a long time that we — all of us at every age — will also take up actions to address the climate crisis before it’s too late.

My daughter in law, Laura Turner Seydel, signs off every email with the Native American proverb: We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. The world’s children are reminding us that we have a big debt to repay and an earth to repair and restore. Time’s up on our loan of the earth.

Inspired,

— Pat

Calling all GlobalXplorers: Get ready to go to India

Today, GlobalXplorer, the citizen science platform created by satellite archaeologist Sarah Parcak with the 2016 TED Prize — which allows users live out their Indiana Jones fantasies and search for archaeological sites from home — announced the location of its second expedition. The location will be: India!

GlobalXplorer’s first expedition took users to Peru, where they searched 150,000 kilometers of land and identified thousands of features of archaeological interest, including more than 50 new Nazca Lines and 324 sites determined by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture to be of high interest. The exploration of India will be even more sweeping in scope.

India is a large country with 29 states, spread out over 3.287 million square kilometers. Working with the Archaeological Survey of India (a branch of India’s Ministry of Culture) and alongside Tata Trusts and the National Geographic Society, GlobalXplorer’s new expedition will cover the entire country, state by state. This vast work will be accomplished with the help of machine learning. Over the past year, GlobalXplorer has been working with technology partners to train AI to weed out tiles that either contain no archaeological features or that are not able to be properly searched because of dense cloud cover or an impenetrable landscape. Platform users will take on the next step: looking at tiles with potential signs of archaeological features. Searching this most promising fraction of tiles will be no small task. Parcak estimates that, with the help of the crowd, this mapping will be done in less than three years.

“Folks we are about to announce country #2 for @Global_Xplorer I am SO excited. What’s your guess?” she tweeted at 6:30am this morning. Then later she revealed: “So thrilled to be able to share: Globalxplorer will be heading to India next!”

More information on when the expedition begins will be coming soon. In the meantime, read lots more — including how GlobalXplorer is using a blockchain-enabled app to keep antiquities safe — on Medium. And watch the video below to get excited about what you might find.