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

In an emotionally charged talk, MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx -- and shows how minority neighborhood suffer most from flawed urban policy.

Majora Carter is a visionary voice in city planning who views urban renewal through an environmental lens. The South Bronx native draws a direct connection between ecological, economic and social degradation. Hence her motto: "Green the ghetto!"

With her inspired ideas and fierce persistence, Carter managed to bring the South Bronx its first open-waterfront park in 60 years, Hunts Point Riverside Park. Then she scored $1.25 million in federal funds for a greenway along the South Bronx waterfront, bringing the neighborhood open space, pedestrian and bike paths, and space for mixed-use economic development.

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

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.

In 2002, bearing her microscope on a microbe that lives in the gut of fish, Bonnie Bassler isolated an elusive molecule called AI-2, and uncovered the mechanism behind mysterious behavior called quorum sensing -- or bacterial communication. She showed that bacterial chatter is hardly exceptional or anomolous behavior, as was once thought -- and in fact, most bacteria do it, and most do it all the time. (She calls the signaling molecules "bacterial Esperanto.")

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

In this moving talk, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa.

Kristen Ashburn's poignant photographs bring us into close contact with individuals in the midst of enormous hardship -- giving a human face to struggles that much of the world knows only as statistics and blurbs on the news.

She has photographed the people of Iraq a year after the U.S. invasion, Jewish settlers in Gaza, suicide bombers, the penal system in Russia, victims of tuberculosis and the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. One of her more recent works, BLOODLINE: AIDS and Family, looked at the human impact of AIDS in Africa.

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

Paola Antonelli, design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, wants to spread her appreciation of design -- in all shapes and forms -- around the world.

Since she stepped back from practicing architecture in order to focus on writing about design, teaching and curating gallery exhibitions, Italian native Paola Antonelli has become a force to be reckoned with in the design world.

Working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1994, she now heads up the gallery's Architecture and Design department and has worked on shows such as "Humble Masterpieces," which celebrated traditionally unheralded design icons such as the paperclip; "Safe," considering issues of protection, and "Workspheres," a look at contemporary workplace design.

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

Storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy spins a funny, wise and luminous tale of parents and kids, starring her Cuban mother. Settle in and enjoy the ride -- Mama's driving!

Carmen is a storyteller and children's-book author. Born in Cuba, she moved to the United States as a child, and her childhood and family provide a rich vein of material for her vividly told stories.

She's a contributor to National Public Radio and has won numerous awards for her writing.