Results from clinical trials released yesterday show that a new malaria vaccine has been able to reduce malaria by 58 percent in 6,000 infected sub-Saharan African children aged five to 17 months. These results are the newest development in the effort toward the world's first effective vaccine against malaria. The trials are the result of a ...

There's a question that's been troubling journalist Sonia Shah since she was a child: What is malaria, and why is it killing so many people? This morning during the session "Listening to Nature," journalist Shah looks at the complexities making it so hard for humanity to rid itself of this killer disease, which kills hundreds of thousands of...

Hundreds of thousands of people die from malaria every year. So why is it still around? In today's talk, journalist Sonia Shah takes a look at the history of malaria and outlines some of the major challenges facing the end of one of the world's deadliest diseases. It's not simply that we need to improve our science, says Shah; we also face e...

A round-up of what's interesting on the interwebs this week: Gary Shteyngart tries Google Glass. Hilarity ensues. [The New Yorker] To everyone's surprise, a malaria vaccine has been 100 percent effective in clinical trials. [Nature] For writers, adopting a second language is more than gaining a new skill set. It's a rebirth. [The Stone Blog, ...

The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights. Malaria vaccine begins wide-scale testing in Malawi. RTS,S -- the only malaria vaccine to successfully pass clinical trials -- will be made available to 360,000 children in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana in the first round of implementation testing. Immunologis...

The world’s most dangerous animal isn’t the lion, tiger or bear. It’s actually the mosquito. “Mosquitos have killed more humans than any other creature in human history,” says Haydn Parry in today’s talk. “The mosquito has killed more humans than wars and plague.” Every year, about a million and a half people succumb to malaria -- even with ...

Something huge is coming, and it sounds like an ad for a bag of potato chips. CRISPR, which makes gene editing so cheap and easy a talented high schooler could do it, is the latest technology that promises to radically change the world. But what exactly can it do, and what are the potential dangers? Journalist Jennifer Kahn is here to exp...

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 demonst...

As a physician and epidemiologist, Gary Slutkin didn't think he had much to contribute to the conversation about gun violence in America. But then he began to realize something -- that outbreaks of violence follow the same patterns as outbreaks of tuberculosis, cholera and AIDS, all of which he'd worked on reversing during a decade in Somali...

Bioengineering professor Manu Prakash brought the world a 50-cent microscope. Now he's created more cheap public health tools, including a paper centrifuge and a mosquito identifier. And he’s just getting started. While many of us may look at a sheet of paper and see something to write on, Stanford University bioengineering professor Manu Praka...

Horses, parrots and mosquitos: oh my! TED2013 will commence in just nine days, and the TED Blog is gearing up for our live, minute-by-minute, coverage. One thing we can’t wait to see: which speaker will bring an animal onstage with them? (Our money is on ornithologist Kees Moeliker.) Sometimes, speakers arrive with a live animal, other times ...

This session asks us to pay closer attention to what nature has to tell us -- both about itself and about the world around us. We'll investigate a variety of sources -- from the soundscapes of ecosystems to the neurons of cockroaches to the extraordinary sex lives of animals. Here are the speakers who appeared in this session of TEDGlobal 201...

Human potential is a double-edged sword; it can be turned to great good or great evil. This session is about the discovery, liberation and channeling of human potential in ways that make the world around us a better place. But first, Alsarah & the Nubatones introduce us to East African retro-pop. As Alsarah says from stage mid-set: "T...

When it comes to setting grand worldwide goals for development, it’s easy to imagine global leaders in suits, wheeling and dealing in the backrooms of a UN summit, without actually accomplishing much. But Jamie Drummond -- the executive director of ONE, which fights poverty and disease by supporting smart policies -- says that when world lea...

This Monday, Sept. 20, TED and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bring us TEDxChange: a chance to evaluate the UN Millennium Development Goals, the progress that has been made, and the long, yet optimistic road ahead. The Millennium Development Goals include: Eradicating poverty and hunger Achieving universal primary education P...

On September 20, live in New York and webcast around the world, TEDxChange will examine the UN's Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs. (Watch TEDxDubai's video, above, for a preview.) Established 10 years ago in September 2000, the eight MDGs are an audacious set of goals for changing the world -- with an equally audacious target of 2015...

Foreign Policy magazine has picked its annual list of the 100 Top Global Thinkers and, nestled among their ranks, are many a TED Speaker. Below, watch the talks from those who appear on the 2012 list, as well as what number on the list they occupy. 3. Bill Clinton talks “rebuilding Rwanda” and Hillary Clinton makes a surprise appearance a...

On September 20, TEDxChange will take a focused look at the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Established 10 years ago, the eight goals are: 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. 2: Achieve universal primary education. 3: Promote gender equality and empower women. 4: Reduce child mortality. 5: Improve maternal health. 6: Combat ...

The TED Fellows program is turning ten years old next year, and we are looking for our most ambitious class yet. We select people from every discipline and every country to be Fellows, and we give them support to scale their dreams and scale their impact. Apply to be a TED Fellow by August 26. Who are TED Fellows? Fellows are individua...

Mark Kendall has a new medical invention that will make anyone with a fear of needles very happy: the Nanopatch, a tiny square (smaller than a postage stamp) that can deliver a dose of vaccine. But beyond solving needle-phobia, the Nanopatch could solve many other problems that now keep vaccines from being completely effective. Kendall, a...

What is the effect of violence on a life's narrative? TED Fellow and photojournalist Jon Lowenstein has lived in the South Side of Chicago for about a decade -- first working as a teacher, photographer and community liaison at an elementary school and subsequently engaging with his African American neighbors to document life in this rapidly ch...

To commence TED Fellows Session 2, multi-hyphenate Paul Rucker takes the stage with his cello. (Spoiler alert: you will see him later in this writeup showcasing another artform.) Inspired by his mother, who learned to play the organ through a mail-order course, Rucker taught himself how to play this instrument. But right here on the TED Fell...

From an unexpected reason why malaria has not been eradicated to a bold argument for why businesses can be a powerful force in solving the world's problems, TEDGlobal 2013 brought so many opportunities for us to "Think Again," as citizens of a global world. Here, some incredible images taken on site during days 4 and 5 of the conference in Edinb...

Dan Pallotta has an unconventional view of nonprofits: To innovate and really make an impact, he thinks they should function with business-minded acumen. Says Pallotta (TED Talk: The way we think about charity is dead wrong), "You want to make $50 million selling violent video games to kids, go for it. We'll put you on the cover of Wired magazin...

Every day, most of us do something morally indefensible -- we go about our lives without sending help to the 6.9 million children under the age of 5 who will die this year from poverty-related disease. In today’s talk, philosopher Peter Singer makes the case that ignoring these kids is as inhumane as ignoring a child who's been hit by a car on...

Founder of Acumen Fund Jacqueline Novogratz recently visited Pakistan (along with TED Curator Chris Anderson) to offer what help she could and work with local friends on their relief efforts. On returning to New York, she gave a short talk at TED HQ and shared the stories of the Pakistani people she met along with a profoundly touching video cre...

The first TED was held in 1984, the year George Orwell imagined in his classic novel. The second was held in 1990. In 2006, TED Talks were offered online for the first time, free to anyone across the world who wanted to watch. In 2009, TED moved to its current home in Long Beach, California. As we prepare for TED2013 -- the anticipation of th...

Research has found that having a backup plan might actually sabotage your efforts toward Plan A. Before you set up your safety net, read these lessons from women scientists. Having a fallback plan is generally considered a good thing. When it comes to applying for colleges, jobs or mortgages, we’ve probably all heard the advice, “Don’t put all ...

Here's how to encourage new medical innovation, says genetic researcher Geoffrey Siwo: Join forces with the people who need innovation the most, all over the world. When he was a young biology student in Njoro, Kenya, with a big idea but zero resources, the genetic scientist Geoffrey Siwo once tested and confirmed a radical idea on HIV drug res...

Social violence in Guatemala, Mexican and Central American migrant communities in the United States, the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, children with cerebral malaria in Uganda -- for the past decade, photographer Jon Lowenstein has been documenting the often violent and traumatic daily lives of individuals and communities living at the ...