Reflecting on Toni Morrison’s Life, From Her Point of View The first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer prize winner for penning Beloved and a mentor to millions, among many other things, Toni Morrison lived unapologetically but with unmatched empathy, intelligence and insightfulness. She famously told Terry Gross (of NPR’s Fresh Air) that she “regret[s] everything” about her life. She explained in …
24-year-old inventor Arnav Kapur’s wearable device AlterEgo, which we previewed during this year’s Ted Fellows announcement, aims to assist people with communication problems by reading the voices in their head. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the technology does so through “a system of sensors that detects the minuscule neuromuscular signals sent by the brain to the vocal cords and muscles of the throat and tongue.” These …
On Sony’s crowdfunding platform in Japan, the slender, personal thermoelectric cooling unit known as the Reon Pocket can purportedly reduce a user’s body temperature by 13 degrees Celsius (or 23 degrees Fahrenheit). About the size of a card wallet, the Bluetooth-equipped device slips into a dedicated sleeve on the back of an accompanying undershirt. Its temperature can then be controlled through an iOS or Android …
