Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal.

Mechanical engineer Amy Smith's approach to problem-solving in developing nations is refreshingly common-sense: Invent cheap, low-tech devices that use local resources, so communities can reproduce her efforts and ultimately help themselves.

Smith, working with her students at MIT, has come up with several useful tools, including an incubator that stays warm without electricity, a simple grain mill, and a tool that converts farm waste into cleaner-burning charcoal.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Warning: this talk contains images and information that some people might find disturbing.

Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography -- to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.

With An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon goes on the hunt for America's dirty secrets. Gaining entrance to places as diverse as a white tiger breeding facility, the JFK Airport quarantine area, abortion clinics and virus-research labs, Simon shows the things that are integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Paula Scher looks back at a life in design (she's done album covers, books, the Citibank logo ...) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. Look for gorgeous designs and images from her legendary career.

The tag "rock star" is recklessly applied to everyone from bloggers to biochemists, but in Paula Scher's case it couldn't be more appropriate. As a rock star designer, she's cooked up everything from Boston album covers to Elvis Costello posters, pausing somewhere in between to trash the ubiquitous visual authoritarianism of Helvetica. She's also created some of design's most iconic images, like the Citibank logo. She is a partner in the renowned design firm Pentagram, and in 2001 received the distinguished AIGA medal.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Some TED "Talks" aren't talks at all, they're questions, answers, songs, pieces of art, celebrations, and/or performances. This one is all of those rolled into one...

Singer/songwriter Eddi Reader performs "What You Do With What You've Got," a meditation on a very TED theme: how to use your gifts and talents to make a difference. With Thomas Dolby on piano.

Scotland-born Eddi Reader was an '80s pop star in the UK, where her band Fairground Attraction had a #1 hit with the supercatchy "Perfect." Now, as a solo artist, her sounds has matured; quiet acoustic arrangements and gentle harmonies put her lush voice front and center. TED Music Director Thomas Dolby calls her his favorite singer of all time.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Surgeon and inventor Catherine Mohr tours the history of surgery (and its pre-painkiller, pre-antiseptic past), then demos some of the newest tools for surgery through tiny incisions, performed using nimble robot hands. Fascinating -- but not for the squeamish.

Catherine Mohr began her career as an engineer, working for many years with Paul MacCready at AeroVironment to develop alternative-energy vehicles and high-altitude aircraft. Her midcareer break: medical school, where she invented a brilliantly simple device, the LapCap, that makes laproscopic surgeries safer.