Amazon has opened a brick-and-mortar retail store, the Amazon Books Store — offering a web-enhanced shopping experience to customers and a Prime membership acquisition tool for the company.  Check out this Brand Experience Brief to see inside the store and learn about the retail customer experience it offers.

related Brand Experience Briefs:

• b8ta — a new store for discovering new tech products
• Birchbox  — a retail location from the online cosmetics sampling subscription service
• Warby Parker — another e-commerce brand venturing into physical retail

transcript: 

What would a website be like if it became an actual store?  It would be what the new Amazon Books Store is like — exactly like the website.  This Brand Experience Brief takes you inside this website store.

An Amazon Books Store just opened in San Diego’s UTC mall — it’s one of three brick and mortar stores from the company, others are planned for Boston and Chicago, and hundreds of stores are possible according to some reports.  The store is 3500 sq. ft., about a 10th of the size of a Barnes & Noble.  In some ways, it resembles a regular bookstore with an exterior brick wall and inside shelves of books categorized by type and areas to peruse them.

But for the most part, the store is unlike any other. First, all the books are facing out.  A staffer explained that this is to mimic the website experience, where you see the full covers of every book, compared to normal bookstores where you only see the spines of non-featured titles.    Also, prices aren’t displayed — you have to scan a book to find out the price — and prices actually differ, depending on if you are an Amazon Prime member, in which case you pay the price on the Amazon website, and if not, you pay the list price.  And you can’t pay by cash or check — only credit card and the Amazon app– just like on the website or mobile app.

The selection of books is highly curated.  There are only about 3,500 books and almost all of them have received a rating of 4 stars or above on the Amazon website.  This means you’re not going to find more obscure titles, but in my quick scan of the business section, I found most of the books I would expect — and of course, if you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can just order it online through your mobile phone or one of the store’s devices.

The book selection also leverages the website features and functionality by presenting edited collections like this one of highly rated books and this one of bestsellers in the city and this one of books most frequently found on people’s wish lists.  It references the website’s recommendation engine with “If you like X, you’ll love Y” displays.  Also each book has a sign that shows the number of stars it received on the site, a sample review, and a UPC code which you can scan with the Amazon app on your mobile phone to access more information about the book.

A hardware section takes up about a 1/4 of the store, where you can try and buy Kindles, Fires, Echos, Dots, and accessories. The store employees are enthusiastic about the store and eagerly explain all the unique features of it to customers and to each other since they’re all new.

My conclusion is the store serves two purposes.  For the customer, it makes shopping and buying even more convenient than the website.  You can leave the store with a book in your hand instead of waiting for it to be delivered.  And if you’re the kind of person that prefers in-person vs. digital shopping, it provides a nice experience.  For Amazon, it is a Prime membership acquisition tool.  Through the use of special pricing for Prime members and the many prompts about the benefits of Prime throughout the store, it’s clear Amazon wants you to sign up.   And it’s likely that these two purposes will continue to be the driving factor for the company to open up more book stores as well as grocery and convenience stores, as it plans to do.  For now, that seems like a win for customers and for Amazon.

The post brand experience brief: amazon books store appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Dalia Mogahed hosts a powerful, challenging Session 5 of TEDWomen 2016: It’s About Time. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

“TED is about challenging convention and deepening our understanding of the world around us by considering, even for just a few moments, a radically different way to look at things,” says Dalia Mogahed, host of Session 5 of TEDWomen 2016 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

In the conference’s penultimate session, thought leaders, activists and scientists challenge us to reimagine how we learn, work and build. Through explorations of some topics we’d rather not discuss — and discussions of innovative ways to solve old problems — each of the session’s seven speakers leave us with a sense of hope for a better way to engage in our global community.

“The act of making is a social activity,” says architect Jeanne Gang. She spoke at TEDWomen 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

Architecture 101: think about humans before construction. “People think architects design buildings — and cities — but what we really design are relationships,” says Jeanne Gang, a renowned architect and MacArthur fellow. When relationships are at the core of structural design, the lighting and the distribution of space can help instill trust, communication and harmony in communities. Gang describes design choices for projects she led to reinvigorate a student population, bring together a racially segregated city and foster community in a high-rise apartment in the heart of Chicago. She’s adamant about the role of architecture in solving social problems, like climate change, and the responsibility of designers to create timeless and impactful spaces. “The act of making,” she says “is a social activity.”

“None of us are just what you can see — we’re all dealing with things you can’t see,” says Michele L. Sullivan. She spoke at TEDWomen 2016 in San Francisco. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

Asking for help is a strength, not a weakness. Caterpillar Foundation president Michele L. Sullivan started learning difficult, eye-opening lessons on her very first day of kindergarten, when her classmates asked her: “Why do you look different?” Her confidence shattered, Sullivan hated being in public for years after, feeling every stare and pointed finger. “As a child, you can’t understand another child’s curiosity — or adult’s ignorance,” she says. Sullivan excelled in the classroom, and she made school a priority, eventually going on to earn an MBA. There were difficulties along the way. At her first job interview, Sullivan says, the biggest challenge of the day wasn’t the interview — it was finding a way to get into the building, which wasn’t handicap accessible. (She got the job anyway.) In her life, she chooses to focus on her experiences with gracious strangers who help her with small acts of kindness each day. “The only shoes you truly can walk in are your own,” she says. “But with compassion, courage and understanding, we can walk together, side by side.”

Pediatric psychologist Kathy Hull shared moving stories of pediatric palliative care patients at TEDWomen 2016 in San Francisco. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

A peaceful place to say goodbye. Death is common and inevitable — but for the youngest among us, untimely death is tragedy like no other. Terminally ill children deserve to enjoy the time they have left, says pediatric psychologist Kathy Hull, rather than waste it surrounded by the morose beeps and harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital’s pallid walls. To honor and celebrate these young lives cut short, Hull founded a palliative care home for children where they can be gently and warmly guided toward peaceful rest. “Ultimately, life is too short, whether you live 85 years or just 8,” she says. “How long any of us lives is out of our control. What we can control is what we do with our days, the spaces we create, the joy and meaning we make. We cannot change the outcome, but we can change the journey.”

Suzanne Barakat spoke — powerfully, personally, movingly — about standing up for those who face hate and discrimination, onstage at TEDWomen 2016. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

The cost of silence. On February 10, 2015, Suzanne Barakat‘s brother Deah, her sister-in-law Yusor and her sister Razan were murdered by their neighbor — who then claimed he killed them because of a parking dispute. The perpetrator’s story went unquestioned by the media and local police, until Barakat spoke out to call the crime what it really was: a hate crime. The help of their neighbor Neal, a journalist, allowed the Barakat family to regain control of the narrative around their family members’ deaths and raise awareness of the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim hatred. “We can all agree that bigotry is unacceptable, but when we see it we’re silent, because it makes us uncomfortable,” she says, but that silence comes with devastating consequences. She asks us all to consider what resources and expertise we can use to speak up and actively express our allyship with those who face hate and discrimination. “When we raise our collective voices, that is when we stop the hate,” she says.

Ian McCallum shares a poetic take on our relationship with nature at TEDWomen 2016. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

Unlocking the poet in all of us. When astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission traveled to the moon in December 1968, they reflected on the perspective created by the distance between themselves and the planet they had just departed, documenting their journey in an iconic photograph of the Earth rising above the moon’s horizon. But in the almost 50 years since the date of that original photograph, many of the forests, wetlands, peat beds and arctic sea-ice has vanished from the Earth’s landscape, a statistic that Ian McCallum identifies as an alarming consequence of our “ecological amnesia.” “Simply put,” he says, “we have forgotten where we come from,” as many of the Earth’s natural habitats and wild animals continue to disappear in the wake of human population growth and development. McCallum argues that scientists, and indeed all people, must adopt the power of poetry in order to change the way we interact with our environments, harnessing those “voices that speak of anger, outrage, beauty and care in the same breath.” Indeed, we must all strive to be keystone individuals, creatures that play an essential role in maintaining the integrity of ecosystems and who promise of a consciousness capable of redefining our sense of history, our sense of nature and our sense of stewardship.

Deepika Kurup describes her new method of water treatment at TEDWomen 2016. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

Clean water for all. Deepika Kurup determined to solve the global water crisis at the age of 13, after she witnessed children outside of her grandparents’ home in India drinking water she felt was too dirty to even touch. Her research began in her family’s kitchen without any high-tech equipment and then expanded … into the garage. In 2015 she won the National Geographic Explorer Award in the Google Science Fair. Kurup’s water purification system combines cement and photocatalysts, materials that speed up chemical reactions, to harness both UV and visible light to kill bacteria and make water safe to drink. Best of all, the young scientist’s design is fast, safe, sustainable and cost-effective.

Peggy Orenstein shares stunning, sobering facts about the way young girls are being taught to understand their sexuality at TEDWomen 2016. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

We need to talk to girls about pleasure. In America, the conversation with young girls about sex ends at consent. Journalist and author Peggy Orenstein challenges us to extend this conversation and talk to young people about women’s capacity and entitlement for sexual pleasure. For three years, Orenstein talked to girls ages 15-20 about their attitudes towards and experiences of sex. She found that girls measured their own pleasure by their partner’s pleasure and expressed shame around their genitals, which underscores the popularity of pubic hair removal and growing prevalence of labiaplasty surgery. Girls are taught of the risks and dangers of sex without learning the pleasure and joy of sex. Borrowing from Sara McClelland, Orenstein uses the phrase “intimate justice” to explain this situation — the idea that sex has political and personal implications. She encourages us to recontextualize sex by normalizing the discussion of sex. “We have raised a generation of girls to have a voice,” she says. “Now it’s time to demand ‘intimate justice’ in their personal lives as well.”

Ian McCallum speaks onstage at TEDWomen 2016. Behind him is an image of the historic photo “Earthrise,” a view of our home planet from space. As astronaut Jim Lovell said: “Everything that you’ve ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself … is all behind your thumb.” Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

In December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 space mission captured a historic photo: “Earthrise,” an image of our home planet as seen from lunar orbit. Astronaut Jim Lovell was on that mission, and here’s what he said: “Everything that you’ve ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself … is all behind your thumb.” It was a poetic reflection on the frailty of life contained within that planet, and it echoed the observations of poets past and present that nature exists as an interconnected web of experiences between people and their environments.

Ian McCallum, a poet and psychiatrist, counts himself as just one of many voices who highlight this relationship, suggesting that so much of what makes up the natural world is also shared by living mammals like us.

His message is, in part, one of warning, of human development that’s created devastating effects on elephants, rhinoceroses, forests, and other keystone species vital to the Earth’s ecosystem. In the nearly 50 years since James Lovell and the other members of Apollo 8 gazed at our planet from the shelter of space, Earth has seen its ecological balance become more and more precarious through the actions of poachers and other human agents.

Ironically, while humans create so much environmental change, we are ourselves not a keystone species, McCallum says, not essential to any larger ecosystem. “Were we to disappear tomorrow,” he says, “nothing would miss us.”

But despite the best efforts of scientists to call us humans to account, people still exhibit apathy toward “the ecological warning calls of science.” In the absence of such reactions, he says, “the only voice left that can awaken us belongs to the poets.” Poetry is as much “a language of protest” as it is “a language of hope,” and it pushes us to be bold in how we address problems and ideas. It challenges us to be “keystone individuals” even if we aren’t a keystone species: to be “someone who can make a difference to the lives of others, to the animals, and to the Earth; someone who is willing to be disturbed” and willing “to stand firm in the knowledge that there are some things that are simply not for sale.”

It is, at its core, a process of self-examination, as poetry reminds us to consider what McCallum stresses we seem to have forgotten:

“that wilderness is not a place,
but a pattern of soul
where every tree, every bird and beast
is a soul maker[.]”                               — Wilderness, Ian McCallum, 1998

Big Data has become a term that we hear a lot these days. We are all trying to tap into available data and find ways to turn it into useful information. That’s where Data Scientists and Data Journalists come in. They are the ones that interpret the information and then turn that information into insightful information that we can all understand.

There are some great tools out there available to the general public. With some great companies helping make sense of it all, a few of which are focused on the music industry. They help turn relevant data into gold mines of information that can help advance your career and build your brand.

I have been a big fan of Next Big Sound and personally reaped the benefits of their product, as have my clients. In combination with other tools, it has given us creative marketing ideas, a new perspective on how and where to release music, the types of venues to focus on, concepts for custom merch designs that appeal to a specific demographic, and even the type of outside the box partnerships we have developed.

Liv Buli has been successfully turning the raw data into insightful articles that make even the least tech savvy person find an interest in big data. As she puts it, she uses data to decipher the business of music.

Liv has traveled all over the world talking about what she does – from Brisbane, to Chile, to NYU classrooms. She has been invited to speak and participate in panels at SXSW, CMJ, Music Biz, Future of Music Policy Summit, SF Music Tech, BigSound, ByLarm and more. Lately, she has been giving thought as to how to visualize data in simple, elegant ways to build better stories. As she says “…the best data journalism strikes a balance between finding (data science), showing (data visualization), and telling (journalism) a story.”

I enjoyed this conversation and as always learned something from it. I hope you do too!

Aaron Bethune
Music Specialist. Author. Manager. Creative Collaborator. Speaker.

www.playitloudmusic.com

Check out the interview here.

Do you have a TED Talk you’ve always wanted to try out in front of an audience? We’re thrilled to announce that applications are open for our TEDNYC Idea Search 2017 in New York City.

Anyone with an idea worth spreading is invited to apply; 10 finalists will share their risky, quirky, fascinating ideas in under 6 minutes, in late January, onstage at the TED theater in Manhattan. The TEDNYC Idea Search is a chance for us to find fresh voices to ring out on the TED stage.

Some of these talks will be posted on the online TED platform; other speakers will be invited to expand on their talks on the TED2017 main stage in Vancouver in the spring of 2017. Joshua Prager, Hannah Brencher, Richard Turere and Hyeonseo Lee — all these speakers are fantastic finds from previous TED talent searches.

The deadline to apply is November 28 at 6pm Eastern time. To apply, you’ll need to fill out this form and make a 1-minute video describing your talk idea. One note: We can’t cover travel to New York City for finalists from out of town; we encourage applicants from the tri-state area surrounding New York.

Apply to speak at the TEDNYC Idea Search 2017 >>

Sing along with Clay Matthews and remember, even when he’s not around Muscle Milk always has your back. The Mekanism created ad features Matthews not only singing “Lean On Me” but we see him giving athletes a helping hand by assisting a marathon runner, rock climber and several other individuals, he proceeds to drink his own bottle of Muscle Milk and push his new friends through a brick wall on a football sled.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Ad Agency: Mekanism
Music: “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); –ADVERTISEMENT–

Tania Luna auditions for the TED stage. (Spoiler: She got there.) Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Here are 8 insider tips to creating a great audition video for the TEDNYC Idea Search 2017. (Remember, the deadline to apply is Monday, Nov. 28, at 6pm Eastern.)

1. Distill your idea. In a 1-minute video, you have about 150 words to describe your proposed TED Talk. So you can’t — and you don’t have to — give every single detail of your idea. Instead, focus on the basics of what you will want to say. As a tip, try writing your script around a big question that your talk will answer, such as: “How can teachers learn to connect with Generation Z?” Think about what you’d want the audience to take away from your talk — the main insight — and be sure to communicate that in your video.

2. Watch our TED Talk about … well … giving a TED Talk. Our curator, Chris Anderson, distills 4 points you’ll want to think about as you write your script.

3. Think about how your idea will be relevant right now. Some of our finalists will win spots onstage at TED2017, our major conference of the year, happening in April 2017. So think on this question: why does your idea have special meaning right now, as 2017 kicks off? The theme of TED2017 is “The Future You,” and we’ll be thinking about the big picture of how our world is evolving, as well as how we humans are changing.

4. Use incisive, clear language — not jargon. Consider that the audience, for the most part, will not be as familiar with your idea, or your industry, as you are. So try to describe your concepts in a way that most people would understand, without compromising the quality of your thoughts and ideas.

5. When you practice your script, record your practice. And then watch your practice recordings — you’ll likely see some ways you can get to the point faster. Listen for places where you lose your own interest, and cut cut cut.

6. Consider asking someone else to film you. This way, you can focus on delivering your talk, not on your tech. If you’re filming yourself on your laptop or phone, remember to look directly at the camera, not at your own face on the screen.

7. Keep your video simple. You don’t need to edit or produce your video in any way — no need for onscreen graphics or fancy cuts. We’re looking for your raw talent here.

8. Be your own fabulous self. Don’t feel you need to play-act the “TED speaker” — here at TED HQ, we’re as sick of this stereotype as you are. We’re looking for people who are authentic, who have something to say and their own honest way to say it. Use your real accent, your real gestures, your everyday words — be you!

Looking for a couple of examples of great audition videos?

Watch Zak Ebrahim’s short audition video, which turned into a blockbuster TED Talk and a TED Book, and helped share his message of peace to millions of people.

Watch Sally Kohn’s short audition video, which turned into a TED Talk … after which she was invited back to give another TED Talk.

And finally, 2 pro tips:

1. Try to turn in your video and application a few hours before the deadline. Here at TED HQ, we’re going to be watching hundreds of videos the day after the deadline closes … but you can get our attention by submitting earlier in the day.

2. If the audition format just doesn’t work for you, but you still want to speak, use our form to apply to speak at a TED event, or look for a nearby TEDx event and apply to speak there! The TED Idea Search is only one of many, many ways we are looking for great ideas.

Here’s how to enter the TEDNYC Idea Search: Complete the entry form and make a 1-minute video. Your 1-minute video can be very simple: Just explain your idea in a few sentences, and give us a flavor of how you’d present it. We’ll select a dozen finalists to present a short version of their talk in our New York City theater in late January.

We can’t wait to hear your idea!

This industry vertical will explore the ways that brands are using data and personalization to enrich the customer experience and distinguish themselves from the other brands in the entertainment and sports category.

As a competitive Asian Type-A perfectionist, admitting I’m wrong can be painful.  But discovering I was wrong about some developments in the business world has actually led me to learn some valuable lessons.  I thought you might benefit from my new insights, so here are six calls I got wrong starting with McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast:

#1 McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast.  Last year, Stuart Varney, of FOX Business TV’s Varney & Co., asked me if I thought McDonald’s decision to serve breakfast all day would boost its brand.  I told him McDonald’s would see a short spike in sales because of the novelty, but then its business would go back to struggling.  Given that other brands had been serving all-day breakfast for years and given that McDonald’s had made only certain breakfast items available at certain locations, I didn’t think it would make a substantive difference.

What I didn’t factor in was that breakfast items would serve as alternatives for people who don’t like any of McDonald’s other products.  By making some of its most popular products available throughout the day, the company ended up boosting its overall sales 5% in Q4 of 2015 and they continued to rise 6.2% in the first quarter of 2016.

–> Lesson learned:  Don’t judge a solution by its face value.  If I had thought more broadly about how all-day breakfast might address McDonald’s other problems, I wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss it as a solution.

#2 Starbucks VIA.  Back in 2009, Starbucks started selling VIA, its instant coffee products, and I cried “foul!”  Actually a colleague of mine wanted to write a guest post on my blog deriding the decision and I happily supported him because I agreed with him completely.  Our POV was grounded in the insight that the Starbucks brand was about more than just the coffee — it was (and still is) about the experience — and so, we believed packaged instant was an inadequate representation of the brand.  Our case was supported because this development arose when Starbucks was suffering from overexpansion and lots of other brand dilution problems.

We might have been the only two people on the planet that thought this — everyone else was buying VIA.  In its first 10 months alone, VIA sales were over $100 million — and it has only grown in popularity, with dozens of product varieties available and retail distribution expanding.  My personal confession is that I am sipping a VIA Instant Caramel Latte as I write this post.

–> Lesson learned:  Don’t underestimate a great brand — and a great leader.  Starbucks was able to pull off the VIA feat because CEO Howard Schultz and his team were committed to ensuring the product would be up to the standards of the brand.  They also knew their customers well enough to know VIA would make the brand more convenient, accessible, and affordable without cannibalizing store sales.

#3 REI Black Friday.  When the outdoor retailer REI announced last fall it was closing all its stores on Black Friday and paying employees to “head outside,” I praised the decision but predicted in a FierceRetail op-ed it “may be costly in the short-term due to the loss of sales, but it will almost certainly build great value for the brand in the long run.”  I’m so glad I was wrong about the first part of my prediction.  REI ended up experiencing a 10% bump in online traffic on Thanksgiving, a 26% rise on Black Friday, and 9.3% increase in revenues for 2015 as a whole.  And they just announced they are repeating and expanding the effort this year.

–> Lesson learned:  Expect customers to do the right thing.  While I’m sure some of REI’s success was due simply to the increased brand awareness generated by the extensive press coverage of its decision, the results also reveal how people are changing their purchasing behavior to align with their values.  I should have given shoppers more credit and expected them to reward REI for courageously living by its values.

#4 Domino’s Pizza Turnaround.  Remember when Domino’s ran those ads announcing their new pizza recipe?  The videos included footage from focus groups showing customers ragging on the chain’s pizza and Domino’s employees recounting all the negative feedback they’d gotten about their products through the years.  I railed on the company in a blog post saying, “By declaring how bad their pizza has been, Domino’s is essentially saying to its customers ‘you suck’…we’re made to feel like idiots for having bought the stuff…This violates one of the primary rules of brand communications I learned early on in my career.  That is, always make your customers feel like heroes.”

I don’t think I was wrong about that last point, but the company did manage to turn itself around.  It’s enjoyed significant improvements in customer satisfaction, company revenue, and business growth in the last few years in large part due to the Pizza Turnaround campaign.

–> Lesson learned:  Honesty and humility really stand out in a world where puffery and promotion are the norm.  I didn’t realize the company’s self-assessment and sincere apology would offset any potential backlash.

#5 Target CEO Brian Cornell.  I wasn’t optimistic when former Pepsico executive Brian Cornell was named as the CEO to revive Target.  I didn’t think a packaged-goods guy known for relying on analytics and data-driven decision-making would get the finesse of the Target brand.  I thought he’d emphasize improving the chain’s e-commerce capabilities and ignore the brand’s primary asset, its stores.   But he’s managed to do both — and to make a whole host of other changes that have turned the company’s fortune around.

–> Lesson learned:  As with Starbucks, I had underestimated Target and Cornell.  Hope I’ve learned my lesson.

And #6, the hardest to swallow — Donald Trump.  In my predictions for Brands to Watch in 2016, I wrote, ” Donald Trump most certainly won’t be the Republican Party nominee but what happens between now and when it comes time for him to disappear will be entertaining and educational about politics and culture today.”  It’s clear how wrong I was.

–> Lesson learned:  I’ve stayed away from political commentary since I got some backlash from what I thought was an innocuous article I had written last fall about Trump, so I hesitate to get into it too much now.  But since I really do want to share helpful insights for brand-builders, here are the brand-building conclusions I think can be learned from Trump’s ascendancy and Clinton’s loss:

• A polarizing brand is OK — and in fact, may be an asset — as long as those who love you out-number those who hate you.
• People have short and/or selective memories — and with the speed at which the news cycle spins these days, it’s easy to change the prevailing narrative.
• Don’t take your core customers (or supporters as the case may be) for granted.  If you don’t continue to cultivate rich and valuable relationships with them, they can be lured away.
• If people want something badly enough (like they wanted change in the case of the election). they will pursue it despite consequences.
• Marketers have been taught to avoid appeals based on F.U.D. — fear, uncertainty, and doubt– but if it’s veiled beneath a spirit of pride, power, and potential, it just might work.

What about you?  Care to share a call you got wrong and what you learned?  Don’t let me be the only one with egg on my face.  Please use the Comments section below.

The post mcdonald’s all-day breakfast and other calls i got wrong appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week:

Advances in treating spinal cord damage. In Nature, Grégoire Courtine and a team of scientists announced that they had successfully used a wireless brain-spine interface to help monkeys with spinal cord damage paralyzing one leg regain the ability to walk. Compared to other similar systems, the wireless component is unique, allowing the monkeys to move around freely without being tethered to electronics. Speaking with The New York Times, Courtine emphasized that the goal of the system is not to fix paralysis, but rather to have better rehabilitation for patients. (Watch Grégoire’s TED Talk)

A new instrument to shed light on distant planets. A team of scientists and engineers, including TEDster Jeremy Kasdin, have used a new instrument to isolate and analyze the light emitted by planets orbiting nearby stars. The instrument, CHARIS, was designed and built by Kasdin’s team. By analyzing the light emitted by the planets, researchers are able to determine more details about their age, size and atmospheric composition. This operation was a test run, and is part of a larger scientific effort to find and analyze exoplanets. (Watch Jeremy’s TED Talk)

Bendable, morphing wings for aircraft. In Soft Robotics, Neil Gershenfeld and a team of researchers describe a new bendable, morphing wing that could create more agile, fuel-efficient aircraft — as well as simplify the manufacturing process. A long time goal of researchers, previous attempts used mechanical control structures within the wing to deform it, but these structures were heavy, canceling out any fuel-efficiency gains, and they added complexity. The new method makes the entire wing the mechanism and its shape can be changed along its entire length by activating two small motors that apply a twisting pressure to each wingtip. (Watch Neil’s TED Talk)

A deadly Ebola mutation. New research suggests that a mutation in the Ebola virus may be responsible for the scale of the epidemic that began in 2013 in West Africa. The research, conducted by a team of researchers that included TEDster Pardis Sabeti, showed that roughly 3 months after the initial outbreak, and about the time the epidemic was detected, the virus had mutated. The mutation made the virus better suited for humans than its natural host, the fruit bat, which may have allowed the virus to spread more aggressively. Working independently, another team of researchers came to a similar conclusion, but the role of the mutation in Ebola’s virulence and transmissibility still needs to be clarified. (Watch Pardis’ TED Talk)

The future of transportation. Bjarke Ingels’ firm (BIG) released its design plans for a hyperloop system that would connect Dubai and Abu Dhabi in just a 12 minutes, a journey that now takes more than two hours by car. With a system of autonomous pods, the group hopes to eliminate waiting time; their design reveal includes conceptual images and video showing from start to finish what the passenger experience would be like. BIG made the designs for Hyperloop  One, one of the companies racing to make Elon Musk’s concept a reality. (Watch Bjarke’s TED Talk)

The world’s tallest tropical trees. Greg Asner has identified the world’s tallest tropical tree using laser scanning, along with 50 other record-breakers. The tree, located in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, stands at 94.1 meters tall or, as Asner said for comparison, about the height of five sperm whales stacked snout-to-fluke. He measured the tree using a laser scanning technology called LIDAR (for Light Detection and Ranging), and since the measurement was taken remotely, they are unsure of the exact species of the tree, but think it is likely in the genus Shorea. Discoveries aside, Asner is still analyzing this new data about the forests, which he hopes to make publicly available so that policymakers can make more informed conservation plans. (Watch Greg’s TED Talk)

Have a news item to share? Write us at [email protected] and you may see it included in this weekly round-up.