ted.com: Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering deadly new viruses where they first emerge — passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa — before they claim millions of lives.

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ted.com: Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria “talk” to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry — and our understanding of ourselves.

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ted.com: By Juan Enriques

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wired.com: Dylan Tweney

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cnn.com: by Spencer Washburn

Two engineers built a prototype of a very fuel-efficient car in their spare time.

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Ocean explorer Robert Ballard takes us on a mindbending trip to hidden worlds underwater, where he and other researchers are finding unexpected life, resources, even new mountains.

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TED.com: “Rock star physicist” Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

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TED: Christopher deCharms

Neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demos an amazing new way to use fMRI to show brain activity while it is happening — emotion, body movement, pain. (In other words, you can literally see how you feel.) [ Read more ]

TED.com: Bill Stone, the maverick cave explorer who invented robots and dive equipment that have allowed him to plumb Earth’s deepest abysses, explains his efforts to build a robot to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa. The plan is to send the machine to bore through miles of ice and swim through a liquid underworld that may harbor alien life. And if that’s not enough, he’s also planning to mine lunar ice by 2015.

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huffingtonpost.com: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. [ read more ]