Ykblog

 Can we, as adults, grow new nerve cells? There's still some confusionabout that question, as this is a fairly new field of research. For example, I was talkingto one of my colleagues, Robert, who is an oncologist, and he was telling me, "Sandrine, this is puzzling. Some of my patients that have been toldthey are cured of their cancer still develop symptoms of depression." And I responded to him, "Well, from my point of viewthat makes sense. The drug you give to your patientsthat stops the cancer cells multiplying also stops the newborn neuronsbeing generated in their brain."  And then Robert looked at melike I was crazy and said, "But Sandrine, these are adult patients -- adults do not grow new nerve cells." And much to his surprise, I said,"Well actually, we do." And this is a phenomenonthat we call neurogenesis. [Neurogenesis] Now Robert is not a neuroscientist, and when he went to medical schoolhe was not taught what we know now -- that t...

Christopher PhillipsReviewer: Denise RQ Pivotal moments really can create who we are today and very much shapewho we become tomorrow. When I was a student, I was part of a group that wentto the DC metro area to try to figure out what business could do to tryto improve education for every child. What I remember mostabout my first classroom visit in DC was the sound of dripping waterfrom a dilapidated building. There was this classroomfull of maybe 20, 25 students, and there was one studentsitting at a desk, captivated by the waterdripping from the ceiling.  I won't forget that scene because there wasn'tmuch learning going on, but I also won't forget his eyes. He saw me when I looked at him,and he knew he deserved better. That was a pivotal moment for me. At that time, I decided not to takea traditional path from business school and to devote my career,really my life's work, to try and figure out a way to make quality educationavailable to every child, regardless of what ...

 Imagine NASA announced todaythat they found aliens. Bacteria on Mars, weird alien fishin the oceans of Europa, and also ancient alien ruins on Titan. Wouldn't that be great? Well, no. It would be horrible news, devastating even. It could mean that the end of humanityis almost certain and that it might be coming soon. Why? Why would the most excitingdiscovery of our lifetime be bad? Let us imagine the development of life, from its inception to us today, as a flight of stairs.  The first step is dead chemistrythat needs to assemble itself into self-replicating patterns,stable and resilient, but also able to change and evolve. The second step is for our early life tobecome more complex, able to build more complicated structures, and use the available energymuch more efficiently. On the next step, these cells combineto become multicellular beings, enabling unbelievable varietyand further complexity. The step above sees the speciesevolve big brains, enabling the use of tools, cult...

 Being able to navigateis an extraordinary gift, and there is nothing like it in the world. I get no more sense of satisfactiongreater than leaving a port and knowing that I can getmy team and my boat safely from that port to another port, maybe three, four, five,six thousand miles away. Being at sea, for me, is ... it's total freedom, and it is the ultimateopportunity to be you, because you can't be anything else.  You are naked in frontof your peers on a boat. It is a small area. Maiden is 58 feet long. There's 12 women in a 58-foot boat. I mean, you are literallyup against each other, and so you have to be you. The greatest momentfor me when I'm sailing is the moment that the land disappears. It's an indescribable moment of -- (Gasps) adventure and no turning back, and just you and the boatand the elements. I wish everyone could experiencethis at least once in their lives.  The further you get away from land, the more you kind of fit into yourself. It is you, how...

 There's something about caves -- a shadowy opening in a limestonecliff that draws you in. As you pass through the portalbetween light and dark, you enter a subterranean world -- a place of perpetual gloom,of earthy smells, of hushed silence. Long ago in Europe, ancient people also enteredthese underground worlds. As witness to their passage, they left behind mysteriousengravings and paintings, like this panel of humans, trianglesand zigzags from Ojo Guareña in Spain.  You now walk the same pathas these early artists. And in this surreal, otherworldly place, it's almost possible to imagine that you hear the muffled footfallof skin boots on soft earth, or that you see the flickering of a torcharound the next bend. When I'm in a cave, I often find myself wonderingwhat drove these people to go so deep to brave dangerous and narrowpassageways to leave . In Spain, we found a seriesof red paintings on a ceiling in a previously unexploredsection of the cave. As we crawled forward,...

Rik DelaetReviewer: Diba Szamosi Thank you. Thank you very much. What I love about events like these is that it is not just people coming together to hear ideas. It's that we all came here for the same reason. Every single one of us came here because we share something, we have similar values and similar beliefs and that's the reason we showed up. We don't know each other and yet we know something about each other.  Now this is important, you see, because the very survival of the human race depends on our ability to surround ourselves with people who believe what we believe. When we're surrounded by people who believe what we believe something remarkable happens: Trust emerges. Make no mistake of it, trust is a feeling, a distinctly human experience. Simply doing everything that you promise you're going to do does not mean people will trust you. It just means you're reliable.  And we all have friends who are total screw ups and yet we still trust them. Trust com...