TED Community » David Evans

Comments

• TEDCred score: +3.70 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?

  Mar 16 2013: Bringing back species that went extinct because of humans, there is a sense of feel, of mankind doing some good accomplishment. But should that be the primary reason to revive extinct species, or any reason at all? The passenger pigeon habitat no longer exist, opportunistic species have filled their role, or are currently doing so.
  
  My point, the issue of de-extinction is important because the genetic engineering advancements that would occur if de-extinction techniques became viable. The cross use of genetic sequencing and DNA manipulating has in Medicine, Bio-Industry, Farming, Animal husbandry and a host of other industries would be consequential, all would stand to benefit from such technological advancements.
  
  Bring back some extinct species, not because the world misses them. But to allow mankind to live more harmoniously, greener with our planet, so that humans don't go extinct. I would not want to rank the importance of bringing back the passenger pigeon; I would think that it is low, when you consider the potential of such research, grander things are sure to be accomplished by Brand’s collaboration with Ben Novak, Beth Shapiro, Bob Lanza and Mike McGrew
  
  The important item to remember is that its not the actual act of performing de-extinction, but the technological ability, wherewithal to do it.

• A comment on Talk: Ellen Jorgensen: Biohacking -- you can do it, too

  Jan 21 2013: Interesting talk , surprised that Ellen Jorgensen did not emphasis the most obvious advantage of distributing, enabling this technology to the masses.
  
  What would we find out if we had an army of geneticists foot soldiers sequencing fauna and flora from all parts of the world. A simple smart phone with a 5 mega pixel camera and GPS tag information embedded in a photo, used in conjunction with a genetic sequencer would give us a new prospective of this world like one we never knew of.
  
  Just as an example, perhaps a blade of grass in some remote portion of Nigeria might hold the DNA genotype for enhance resistance to drought.
  
  More DNA data, more crowed research with professional follow up is going to allow us to find some very unusual and specific genomes. The methodology of photo cataloging and mass sequencing numerous species will allow for greater advances Genetic Engineering, scientists of the world would become very good at GE.

• A comment on Talk: Jonas Eliasson: How to solve traffic jams

  Dec 2 2012: Subtle economic incentives, have and always will play a role in social cooperative interactions: Personally, I use to get to work a half hour early, to take advantage of the "early-bird" parking savings, thus avoiding the 7:00am automobile parking work rush.
  
  The real challenge is trying to build a predictive model of such systems, in order to be able to conduct mathematical experimental tests, to manipulate the variables. Like Eliasson mentioned being a non-linear system, I suspect constructing such a mathematical model would be extremely difficult. "And personally, I would like to do this every once a year or so, but they won't let me do that. But it was fun anyway." -Eliasson
  
  If such a model could be constructed then perhaps Eliasson could in some way get his wish.

• A comment on Talk: Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

  Sep 5 2012: Just wondering how much change could really occur in under development countries, based primary on a system D concept. Countries with no infrastructure on to What strikes me the most about Robert Neuwirth presentation is the emphases on the on the potential positives of a system D economy, without any considerations of the possible negatives. Some black market items are notorious for dangerous and defective items of inferior quality, some of these products injure or kill people every year. And lets not mention the damage that counterfeiter drugs do year after year.
  
  Neuwirth said-"And so I just want to leave you there, and say that this economy is a tremendous force for global development and we need to think about it that way. " Just wondering how powerful would a system D economy really be, with no establish conventional infrastructure to coexist with.

• A comment on Talk: Chris Gerdes: The future race car -- 150mph, and no driver

  Jul 12 2012: What was one day a Google April Fools joke, is tomorrows technology.
  
  The process of Artificial learning/programming is a bijective phenomena.
  What amazes me the most is when expert systems, AI programs profoundly changes the expected norms in the field of gaming and intellectual competitive events.
  For example the opening play of the TD-Gammon program.

• A comment on Talk: Damian Palin: Mining minerals from seawater

  Jun 18 2012: I wish that the talk was a bit longer, just for the sake of some more detailed information. With conceptual projects like these, the Devil is always in the details. What type of bacterium are being used, were they genetically engineered? How will extraction efficiently change with scale is it inverse proportional with extraction qualities?
  
  From a business prospective it makes sense, you've have mass quantities of waste produce, namely a concentrated mineral brine solution after desalinization and drinkable water extraction, any positive use of this brine solution is just "gravy", however perhaps Palin statement "The beginning of an industry in a test tube", is overely optimistic?
  
  Well hopefully, time will prove him correct, but lets wait and see. The are technological and economic competitive factors that will have to be considered that will dictate the overall success of this project.

• A comment on Talk: Tal Golesworthy: How I repaired my own heart

  Apr 14 2012: An astonishing account of using cross discipline methods in order to come up with a personally acceptable medical solution for a particle medical problem. But, what is most intriguing; besides the methodology of the actual valve repair. Is the explanations of the human and institutional barriers that hindered progress of the new method used for Tal Golesworthy aorta valve repair.
  
  Focusing on the cross-disciplinary cooperation. Just imagine if we could remove some of those detrimental human aspects, different disciplinary terminology/jargon and disciplinary conventions. A team of nine individuals working in conjunction, from different fields with different skill sets, all were needed in order to conceptualize a different surgical procedure to combat the effects of marfan syndrome. What if an *individual* had all of these skills sets... and more. By now most know that the Artificial Intelligence Software/Hardware system named Watson has moved on from being a Jeopardy contestant and is now being used for clinical diagnosis. As Watson and programs like Watson advance in complexity, then one would expect to see more innovating cross-discipline solutions being applied to a plethora of different problem sets.
  
  Surely most of these solutions will seem alien like in nature, totally out of the box in nature, but when Golesworthy first showed the external aortic root support to some cardiologist, pretty sure that their reactions was that this technique seemed completely alien in nature.

• A comment on Talk: Jonathan Foley: The other inconvenient truth

  Apr 9 2012: Noooo! lets not think along these lines. Use more outdoor land, use more water, water loss due to evaporation. All in order to grow more food in some what the same fashion that we are currently producing food. Does not make logical senses for solving an intractable problem of providing increasing food for an increasing population. But yet, continue using basically the same methods that we are currently using(admittedly enhance methods, but still, more of the same).
  
  In his presentation Jonathan Foley mentioned that there was no silver bullet for the problems of increasing agriculture productivity- without seriously compromising the planet ecosystem(I beg to differ). Rarely is there a catch all solution to the problems of the worlds increasing population growth. If one does exists in as far as increasing agricultural production, then it surely has to be "Vertical Farming".
  
  Growing food all season long? How much will this go into increasing our food production, the answer substantially. Why try to double the land, when you could easy double/triple the growing seasons! Forget the goal of freezing agriculture farming foot print, lets REDUCE IT!
  
  Terraculture methods would enviably bring on the additional problems of combating pests that were taking advantage of a new plant food source introduced and grown in their environment. Envisioning Vertical Farming as a contrast, how many tons of pesticide do you need to kill the corn root worm, when the corn is grown in door, in a hydroponic solution?
  
  I know this is sort of superficial, but here is a Wikipedia link to the vertical farming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming a less superficial link http://www.presspubs.com/quad/news/article_3c31f9f2-7d9f-11e1-86ae-0019bb2963f4.html
  
  In the future if more land is required for farming, I imagine it would be used to construct large "daisy" like structures made of fiber optics tracking the sun across the sky and sending its light to Vertical Farm factories.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Jack Choi: On the virtual dissection table

  Apr 7 2012: Oh, you must want to upgrade to the vivisection software pro package. ;-)
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Jack Choi: On the virtual dissection table

  Apr 6 2012: Knowing little about the science behind dissection, always thought that one of the learning lessons of dissection was the tactile feedback of the act of actually making the incisions. Properties such as connective tissue strength and organization, tissue and organ textures, density and organ contours provided valuable clues on how to locate and identify organs in the cadaver and gives clues to how they actual function. Form follows function.
  
  That said, surely this technology can only augment the actual dissection experience and not totally replace it. It seems that some of the great advantages of the virtual dissection table is that the display table hardware looks like two touch screen displays couple together, now a days not to terrible expensive(*relatively that is*) but I guess the software package is pretty complex, would this software be available as an open source project?
  
  There was no mentioning of this technology being data patient specific, couldn't MRI data of a patient be inputted into the software and the virtual dissection table be used for pre-surgery practice? Or MRI and/or X-ray data of a cadaver be saved for forensic evidence(bullet entry and exit points,etc) to be used at a later date so that a body would not possible have to be exhume or used if the body was irretrievable. I would think that law enforcement organizations and/or the US military would be very much interested this technology, hence help sponsor its development.
  
  All in all the virtual dissection table is a great improvement over the clear overlay pages display of the human and frog anatomy in the pages of the encyclopedia, which in my days of youth I would endlessly flip through. ;-)