Medical scans can produce thousands of images for a single patient in seconds, but how do doctors know what's useful? Scientific visualization expert Anders Ynnerman shows us sophisticated new tools -- like virtual autopsies -- for analyzing our data, and hints at the sci-fi-sounding medical technologies coming up next. This talk contains some g...

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. (Some graphic images.)

How does knowledge grow? Sometimes it begins with one insight and grows into many branches; other times it grows as a complex and interconnected network. Infographics expert Manuel Lima explores the thousand-year history of mapping data -- from languages to dynasties -- using trees and networks of information. It's a fascinating history of visua...

At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" -- for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up.

The climate crisis could destroy our entire cultural and ecological heritage in a matter of decades – how can we document everything before it disappears? Archaeologist Chris Fisher explains how we could scan the surface of the Earth, not just as a record for future generations, but as a tool to fight climate change.

We have archives of films, newspapers, even seeds -- what if we could make one for the entire surface of the earth? Drawing on his experience mapping an ancient city in the Honduran jungle, archaeologist Chris Fisher makes the case for scanning the whole planet with LiDAR -- a technology that uses lasers shot from an airplane to map the ground -...

MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli previews the groundbreaking show Design and the Elastic Mind -- full of products and designs that reflect the way we think now.