Ric Elias: 3 things I learned while my plane crashed

Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time.

Ric Elias is the CEO of Red Ventures, a marketing services company that grew out of Elias' long experience in business.

Refference: TED Talk

Keith Barry: Brain Magic

                                                   

First, Keith Barry shows us how our brains can fool our bodies -- in a trick that works via podcast too. Then he involves the audience in some jaw-dropping (and even a bit dangerous) feats of brain magic.

       Think of Keith Barry as a hacker of the human brain -- writing routines that exploit its bugs and loopholes, and offering a revealing look at the software between our ears.

Refference: TED Talk

Cockroaches controlled by remote control: A search-and-rescue

Researchers say they've figured out a way to create cyborg, remote-controlled cockroaches, hoping one day the resilient creatures could be steered into disaster zones to gather information and look for survivors.

Video footage from the experiments at North Carolina State University shows the part-robot roaches being directed along a curving path via remote control. The researchers say they attached a lightweight chip with a wireless receiver and transmitter onto Madagascar hissing cockroaches and wired a microcontroller to the insects' antennae and cerci — the sensory organs on the bug's abdomen that cause it to run away from danger.

            

With electrical signals, the researchers stimulated the cerci to trick the roaches into thinking they needed to scamper away from a predator. Once moving, charges sent to the antennae controlled the insects' direction. A signal sent to one antenna could make a roach think its feeler was touching a wall, sending it in the opposite direction, a statement from NC State explained.

"Building small-scale robots that can perform in such uncertain, dynamic conditions is enormously difficult. We decided to use biobotic cockroaches in place of robots, as designing robots at that scale is very challenging, and cockroaches are experts at performing in such a hostile environment," NC State researcher Alper Bozkurt said in the statement.

"Ultimately, we think this will allow us to create a mobile web of smart sensors that uses cockroaches to collect and transmit information, such as finding survivors in a building that's been destroyed by an earthquake," Bozkurt added.

The researchers reported the results of their experiments late last month at the annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society in San Diego, Calif.

Other researchers have floated the possibility of technologically enhanced roaches. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University demonstrated how the insects could be outfitted with an implantable biofuel cell powered by a sugar the bugs make from their food. Electricity from such a cell then could be used to power sensors on the insect or to manipulate it by remote control.

VeRY IntEReStINg UNKnOWn FactS

Here are some interesting, but true facts, that you may or may not have known.

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.

2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.

4. Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight. The Wright brother's invented the airplane.

5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.

6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.

7. The word "set" has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.

8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.

9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

10. Kangaroos can't walk backwards.

11. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday.

12. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.

13. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.

14. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.

15. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.

16. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.

17. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.

18. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002.

19. Octopus have three hearts.

20. If you ate too many carrots, you would turn orange.

21. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.

22. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old.

23. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands.

24. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs.

25. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.

26. Most cats are left pawed.

27. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

28. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant.

29. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!

30. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours.

31. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce.