We think there's a future to this.

These are years that we could get.

He expanded his research.

He expanded his research.

Nye That's fantastic.

A few years back a group of researchers at University College London brought a bunch of memory champions into the lab.

A pause there

These are commonly prescribed antidepressants.

So let me share some final thoughts.

The unconditional cash transfer was accompanied by a systematic study using random control trial methodology.

By measuring the students' smiles, researchers were able to predict how fulfilling and long lasting a subject's marriage would be, (Laughter) how well she would score on standardized tests of well being, and how inspiring she would be to others.

So I started interviewing men and asking questions.

A recent study by the World Bank

This is not the research we're interested in. This is sick.

(Laughter)

The lab's the other way.

18.Rare diseases

Let's take an issue that the last two speakers have both talked about mental illness.

Years of research, hundreds of patients to experiment on.

That's great.

Or you can go to NPR.org and listen to a live interview.

This is called colony collapse disorder, and it's bizarre.

There's a second big project, recently funded by the Wellcome Trust in this country, involving very large studies thousands of individuals, with each of eight different diseases, common diseases like type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease, bipolar disease and so on to try and understand the genetics.

Weak.

300 to 500 million cases are reported.

Now when we talk about suicide, there is also a medical contribution here.

We've been actually using adult stem cells now in clinical trials for about 15 years to approach a whole range of topics, particularly in cardiovascular disease.

And the current state of the art in predicting an epidemic if you're the CDC or some other national body is to sit in the middle where you are and collect data from physicians and laboratories in the field that report the prevalence or the incidence of certain conditions.

There's also a fascinating connection to cancer here, because people with neurologic diseases have a very low incidence of most cancers.

Terminal ballistics is the study of a projectile as it hits a target and the destruction that it causes.

No heart disease, nocturnal asthma or sleep apnea.

And it is for this reason that I said, somewhat provocatively, at the beginning of this talk with you, that the study of disease is flawed.

The second strategy of research is to study a subject broadly searching for unknown phenomena or patterns of known phenomena

It's made a mistake.

What kind of shit research are you doing?

I'm an ecologist, and I study complexity. I love complexity.

At the Biology and the Built Environment Center, we carried out a study in a hospital where we sampled air and pulled the DNA out of microbes in the air.

I want to tell you about another disorder.

She graduated NYU, she has a heart condition.

Some of you may remember that.

So a study that I did with Shlomo Benartzi and Alessandro Previtero, we did a study with people at ING employees that are all working at ING and now these people were all in a session where they're doing enrollment for their 401(k) plan.

Unlike most other sciences, cosmology has only one object to study.

And remember, paths crossed in 1984, and more and more women were dying of cardiovascular disease.

So one of the best parts of my job is working with really great patients who are also our research collaborators.

Three years later, he's ripping through boot camp. Attending physician calls the improvement in his bloodcell count miraculous.