Ladies and gentlemen, the history of music and television on the Internet in three minutes.
A TED medley -- a TEDley.
♫ It's nine o' clock on a Saturday ♫ ♫ The record store's closed for the night ♫ ♫ So I fire up the old iTunes music store ♫ ♫ And soon I am feelin' all right ♫ ♫ I know Steve Jobs can find me a melody ♫ ♫ With one dollar pricing that rocks ♫ ♫ I can type in the track and get album names back ♫ ♫ While still in my PJs and socks ♫ ♫ Sell us a song, you're the music man ♫ ♫ My iPod's still got 10 gigs to go ♫ ♫ Yes, we might prefer more compatibility ♫ ♫ But Steve likes to run the whole show ♫ ♫ I heard "Desperate Housewives" was great last night ♫ ♫ But I had a bad piece of cod ♫ ♫ As I threw up my meal, I thought, "It's no big deal" ♫ ♫ I'll watch it tonight on my 'Pod ♫ ♫ And now all of the networks are joining in ♫ ♫ Two bucks a show without ads ♫ ♫ It's a business those guys always wanted to try ♫ ♫ But only Steve Jobs had the 'nads ♫ ♫ They say we're young, don't watch TV ♫ ♫ They say the Internet is all we see ♫ ♫ But that's not true; they've got it wrong ♫ ♫ See, all our shows are just two minutes long ♫ ♫ Hey ♫ ♫ I got YouTube ♫ ♫ I got YouTube ♫ And now, ladies and gentlemen, a tribute to the Recording Industry Association of America -- the RIAA!
♫ Young man, you were surfin' along ♫ ♫ And then, young man, you downloaded a song ♫ ♫ And then, dumb man, copied it to your 'Pod ♫ ♫ Then a phone call came to tell you ... ♫ ♫ You've just been sued by the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ You've just been screwed by the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ Their attorneys say you committed a crime ♫ ♫ And there'd better not be a next time ♫ ♫ They've lost their minds at the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ Justice is blind at the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ You're depriving the bands ♫ ♫ You are learning to steal ♫ ♫ You can't do whatever you feel ♫ ♫ CD sales have dropped every year ♫ ♫ They're not greedy, they're just quaking with fear ♫ ♫ Yes indeedy, what if their end is near ♫ ♫ And we download all our music ♫ ♫ Yeah, that would piss off the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ No plastic discs from the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ What a way to make friends ♫ ♫ It's a plan that can't fail ♫ ♫ All your customers off to jail ♫ ♫ Who'll be next for the R-I-A-A? ♫ ♫ What else is vexing the R-I-A-A? ♫ ♫ Maybe whistling a tune ♫ ♫ Maybe humming along ♫ ♫ Maybe mocking 'em in a song ♫
We have some good reasons to completely switch over to solar power.
It's cheaper in many cases, and definitely more sustainable than our dependance on traditional power plants that use resources like coal, which will eventually run out.
So why don't we replace these traditional plants with solar energy?
Because there's one factor that makes solar power very unpredictable: cloud cover.
As the sun's rays move towards Earth, some get absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, some are reflected back into outer space, but the rest make it to the Earth's surface.
The ones that aren't deviated are called direct irradiance.
The ones that are deflected by clouds are called diffuse irradiance.
And those rays that first get reflected by a surface, like a nearby building, before reaching the solar energy system are called reflected irradiance.
But before we can examine how clouds affect the sun's rays and electricity production, let's see how these solar energy systems work.
First up, we have solar towers.
These are made up of a central tower surrounded by a huge field of mirrors that track the sun's path and focus only the direct rays onto a single point on the tower, kind of like an eager beachgoer.
The heat generated by these rays is so immense that it can be used to boil water producing steam that drives a traditional turbine, which makes electricity.
But when we say solar energy systems, we're usually talking about photovoltaics, or solar panels, which are the systems most commonly used to generate solar power.
In solar panels, photons from the sun's rays hit the surface of a panel, and electrons are released to get an electric current going.
Solar panels can use all types of irradiance, while solar towers can only use direct irradiance, and this is where clouds become important because depending on their type and location relative to the sun, they can either increase or decrease the amount of electricity produced.
For instance, even a few cumulus clouds in front of the sun can reduce the electricity production in solar towers to almost zero because of this dependence on direct rays.
In solar panels, those clouds would decrease energy output as well, though not as much because solar panels can use all types of irradiance.
However, all this depends on the clouds exact positioning.
Due to reflection, or a particular phenomeon called Mie scattering, the sun's rays can actually be focused forward by clouds to create a more than 50% increase in the solar irradiance reaching a solar panel.
If this potential increase isn't accounted for, it could damage the solar panel.
Why does this matter?
Well, you wouldn't want this lesson to stop just because a cloud passed over the panel on your roof.
In solar towers, huge tanks of molten salt or oil can be used to store any excess heat and use it when needed, so that's how they manage the problem of fluctuating solar irradiance to smooth out electricity production.
But in the case of solar panels, there currently isn't any way to affordably store extra energy.
That's where traditional power plants come in because to correct for any fluctuations in these solar powered plants, extra electricity from traditional sources always needs to be available.
But then why aren't these tradtional power plants just used as a backup, instead of us humans depending on them as our main sources of energy?
Because it's impossible for an employee at a coal fired or a nuclear plant to turn a knob to produce more or less electricity depending on how many clouds there are in the sky.
The response time would simply be too slow.
Instead, to accommodate these fluctuations, some extra electricity from traditional power plants is always being produced.
On clear sky days, that extra electricity might be wasted, but when cloudy skies prevail, it's what fills the gap.
This is what we currently depend on for a constant supply of energy.
For this reason, a lot of researchers are interested in forcasting the motion and formation of clouds through satellite images or cameras that look up at the sky to maximize the energy from solar power plants and minimize energy waste.
If we could accomplish that, you'd be able to enjoy this video powered solely by the sun's rays, no matter what the weather, although if the sun is shining, you may be tempted to venture outside to go and do a different kind of cloud gazing.
Just to put everything in context, and to kind of give you a background to where I'm coming from, so that a lot of the things I'm going to say, and the things I'm going to do -- or things I'm going to tell you I've done -- you will understand exactly why and how I got motivated to be where I am.
I graduated high school in Cleveland, Ohio, 1975.
And just like my parents did when they finished studying abroad, we went back home.
Finished university education, got a medical degree, 1986.
And by the time I was an intern house officer, I could barely afford to maintain my mother's 13-year-old car -- and I was a paid doctor.
This brings us to why a lot of us, who are professionals, are now, as they say, in diaspora.
Now, are we going to make that a permanent thing, where we all get trained, and we leave, and we don't go back?
Perhaps not, I should certainly hope not -- because that is not my vision.
All right, for good measure, that's where Nigeria is on the African map, and just there is the Delta region that I'm sure everybody's heard of.
People getting kidnapped, where the oil comes from, the oil that sometimes I think has driven us all crazy in Nigeria.
But, critical poverty: this slide is from a presentation I gave not that long ago.
Gapminder.org tells the story of the gap between Africa and the rest of the world in terms of health care.
Very interesting.
How many people do you think are on that taxi?
And believe it or not, that is a taxi in Nigeria.
And the capital -- well, what used to be the capital of Nigeria -- Lagos, that's a taxi, and you have police on them.
So, tell me, how many policemen do you think are on this taxi?
And now?
Three.
So, when these kind of people -- and, believe me, it's not just the police that use these taxis in Lagos.
We all do.
I've been on one of these, and I didn't have a helmet, either.
And it just reminds me of the thought of what happens when one of us on a taxi like this falls off, has an accident and needs a hospital.
Believe it or not, some of us do survive.
Some of us do survive malaria; we do survive AIDS.
And like I tell my family, and my wife reminds me every time, "You're risking your life, you know, every time you go to that country."
And she's right.
Every time you go there, you know that if you actually need critical care -- critical care of any sort -- if you have an accident -- of which there are many, there are accidents everywhere -- where do they go?
Where do they go when they need help for this kind of stuff?
I'm not saying instead of, I'm saying as well as, AIDS, TB, malaria, typhoid -- the list goes on.
I'm saying, where do they go when they're like me?
When I go back home -- and I do all kinds of things, I teach, I train -- but I catch one of these things, or I'm chronically ill with one of those, where do they go?
What's the economic impact when one of them dies or becomes disabled?
I think it's quite significant.
This is where they go.
These are not old pictures and these are not from some downtrodden -- this is a major hospital.
In fact, it's from a major teaching hospital in Nigeria.
Now that is less than a year old, in an operating room.
That's sterilizing equipment in Nigeria.
You remember all that oil?
Yes, I'm sorry if it upsets some of you, but I think you need to see this.
That's the floor, OK?
You can say some of this is education.
You can say it's hygiene.
I'm not pleading poverty.
I'm saying we need more than just, you know, vaccination, malaria, AIDS, because I want to be treated in a proper hospital if something happens to me out there.
In fact, when I start running around saying, "Hey, boys and girls, you're cardiologists in the U.S., can you come home with me and do a mission?"
I want them to think, "Well there's some hope."
Now, have a gwhite@example.com.
That's the anesthesiology machine.
And that's my specialty, right?
Anesthesiology and critical care -- look at that bag.
It's been taped with tape that we even stopped using in the U.K.
And believe me, these are current pictures.
Now, if something like this, which has happened in the U.K., that's where they go.
This is the intensive care unit in which I work.
All right, this is a slide from a talk I gave about intensive care units in Nigeria, and jokingly we refer to it as "Expensive Scare."
Because it's scary and it's expensive, but we need to have it, OK?
So, these are the problems.
There are no prizes for telling us what the problems are, are there?
I think we all know.
And several speakers before and speakers after me are going to tell us even more problems.
These are a few of them.
So, what did I do?
There we go -- we're going on a mission.
We're going to do some open-heart surgery.
I was the only Brit, on a team of about nine American cardiac surgeons, cardiac nurse, intensive care nurse.
We all went out and did a mission and we've done three of them so far.
Just so you know, I do believe in missions, I do believe in aid and I do believe in charity.
They have their place, but where do they go for those things we talked about earlier?
Because it's not everyone that's going to benefit from a mission.
Health is wealth, in the words of Hans Rosling.
You get wealthier faster if you are healthy first.
So, here we are, mission.
Big trouble.
Open-heart surgery in Nigeria -- big trouble.
That's Mike, Mike comes out from Mississippi.
Does he look like he's happy?
It took us two days just to organize the place, but hey, you know, we worked on it.
Does he look happy?
Yes, that's the medical advice the committee chairman says, "Yes, I told you, you weren't going to be able to, you can't do this, I just know it."
Look, that's the technician we had.
So yes, you go on, all right?
(Laughter) I got him to come with me -- anesthesia tech -- come with me from the U.K.
Yes, let's just go work this thing out.
See, that's one of the problems we have in Nigeria and in Africa generally.
We get a lot of donated equipment.
Equipment that's obsolete, equipment that doesn't quite work, or it works and you can't fix it.
And there's nothing wrong with that, so long as we use it and we move on.
But we had problems with it.
We had severe problems there.
He had to get on the phone.
This guy was always on the phone.
So what we going to do now?
It looks like all these Americans are here and yes, one Brit, and he's not going to do anything -- he thinks he's British actually, and he's actually Nigerian, I just thought about that.
We eventually got it working, is the truth, but it was one of these.
Even older than the one you saw.
The reason I have this picture here, this X-ray, it's just to tell you where and how we were viewing X-rays.
Do you figure where that is?
It was on a window.
I mean, what's an X-ray viewing box?
Please.
Well, nowadays everything's on PAX anyway.
You look at your X-rays on a screen and you do stuff with them, you email them.
But we were still using X-rays, but we didn't even have a viewing box!
And we were doing open-heart surgery.
OK, I know it's not AIDS, I know it's not malaria, but we still need this stuff.
Oh yeah, echo -- this was just to get the children ready and the adults ready.
People still believe in Voodoo.
Heart disease, VSD, hole in the heart, tetralogies.
You still get people who believe in it and they came.
At 67 percent oxygen saturation, the normal is about 97.
Her condition, open-heart surgery that as she required, would have been treated when she was a child.
We had to do these for adults.
So, we did succeed and we still do.
We've done three.
We're planning another one in July in the north of the country.
So, we certainly still do open-heart, but you can see the contrast between everything that was shipped in -- we ship everything, instruments.
We had explosions because the kit was designed and installed by people who weren't used to it.
The oxygen tanks didn't quite work right.
But how many did we do the first one? 12.
We did 12 open-heart surgical patients successfully.
Here is our very first patient, out of intensive care, and just watch that chair, all right?
This is what I mean about appropriate technology.
That's what he was doing, propping up the bed because the bed simply didn't work.
Have you seen one of those before?
No?
Yes?
Doesn't matter, it worked.
I'm sure you've all seen or heard this before: "We, the willing, have been doing so much with so little for so long -- (Applause) -- we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."
(Applause) Thank you.
Sustainable Solutions -- this was my first company.
This one's sole aim is to provide the very things that I think are missing.
So, we put my hand in my pocket and say, "Guys, let's just buy stuff.
Let's go set up a company that teaches people, educates them, gives them the tools they need to keep going."
And that's a perfect example of one.
Usually when you buy a ventilator in a hospital, you buy a different one for children, you buy a different one for transport.
This one will do everything, and it will do it at half the price and doesn't need compressed air.
If you're in America and you don't know about this one, we do, because we make it our duty to find out what's appropriate technology for Africa -- what's appropriately priced, does the job, and we move on.
Anesthesia machine: multi-parameter monitor, operating lights, suction.
This little unit here -- remember your little 12-volt plug in the car, that charges your, whatever, Game Boy, telephone?
That's exactly how the outlets are designed.
Yes, it will take a solar panel.
Yes a solar panel will charge it.
But if you've got mains as well, it will charge the batteries in there.
And guess what?
We have a little pedal charger too, just in case.
And guess what, if it all fails, if you can find a car that's still got a live battery and you stick it in, it will still work.
Then you can customize it.
Is it dental surgery you want?
General surgery you want?
Decide which instruments, stock it up with consumables.
And currently we're working on oxygen -- oxygen delivery on-site.
The technology for oxygen delivery is not new.
Oxygen concentrators are very old technology.
What is new, and what we will have in a few months, I hope, is that ability to use this same renewable energy system to provide and produce oxygen on site.
Zeolite -- it's not new -- zeolite removes nitrogen from air and nitrogen is 78 percent of air.
If you take nitrogen out, what's left?
Oxygen, pretty much.
So that's not new.
What we're doing is applying this technology to it.
These are the basic features of my device, or our device.
This is what makes it so special.
Apart from the awards it's won, it's portable and it's certified.
It's registered, the MHRA -- and the CE mark, for those who don't know, for Europe, is the equivalent of the FDA in the U.S.
If you compare it with what's on the market, price-wise, size-wise, ease of use, complexity ...
This picture was taken last year.
These are members of my graduating class, 1986.
It was in this gentleman's house in the Potomac, for those of you who are familiar with Maryland.
There are too many of us outside and everybody, just to borrow a bit from Hans -- Hans Rosling, he's my guy -- if the size of the text represents what gets the most attention, it's the problems.
But what we really need are African solutions that are appropriate for Africa -- looking at the culture, looking at the people, looking at how much money they've got.
African people, because they will do it with a passion, I hope.
And lots and lots of that little bit down there, sacrifice.
You have to do it.
Africans have to do it, in conjunction with everyone else.
Thank you.
(Applause)