生命的伟大，可视化记录从受孕到出生-Conceptionto birth-visualized

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    本期TED演讲，亚历山大·齐亚拉斯从一个数学家的角度，和耶鲁大学医疗界的朋友们，采用微成像磁共振技术（艺术结合技术），详细记录了从受孕到出生的详细影像，使得人体变得可视化，然我们不由的感慨胚胎发育的鬼斧神工，女性孕育生命的伟大。

    西方人讲究“分”，中国人讲究“合”，专业精细化促进了近代科学的发展，然而，也造成了当前纯粹为了研究而研究，脱离实际生活的脑残成果的出现。本演讲充分说明，不同专业相互协作，才能更好的为我们的生活服务。

讲者简介

Alexander Tsiaras 亚历山大·齐亚拉斯，一名数学家，Using art and technology, Alexander Tsiaras visualizes the unseen human body.作者感叹，从受孕到出生是最为复杂的数学过程。

Why you should listen

Alexander Tsiaras is an artist and technologist whose work explores the unseen human body, developing scientific visualization software to enable himto 'paint' the human anatomy using volume data. He's the author of Body Voyage and co-author of Information Architects. Most recently, he is the author of FromConception to Birth: A Life Unfolds and The Architecture and Design of Manand Woman: The Marvel of the Human Body, Revealed.

His latest project is The Visual MD,an online compendium of health visualizations.

演讲视频Video

演讲原文Text script

（不同专业的人协作，造就了不平凡之事）I was offered a position as associate professor of medicine and chief ofscientific visualization at Yale University in the department of medicine. And my job was to write many of the algorithms and code for NASA to do virtual surgery in preparation for the astronauts going into deep-space flight, so they could be kept in robotic pods. One of the fascinating things about what we were working on is that we were seeing, using new scanning technologies, things that had never been seen before. Not only in disease management, but also things that allowed us to see things about the body that just made you marvel.

（人体设计的是如此的完美，以至于我们不得不惊叹这是神灵的杰作） I remember one of the first times we were looking at collagen. And your entirebody, everything -- your hair, skin, bone, nails -- everything is made of collagen. And it's a kind of rope-like structure that twirls and swirls like this. And the only place that collagen changes its structure is in the cornea of your eye. In your eye, it becomes a grid formation, and therefore, it becomes transparent, as opposed to opaque. So perfectly organized a structure, it was hard not to attribute divinity to it.

（磁共振成像获得诺贝尔奖当之无愧）Because we kept on seeing this in different parts of the body. One of the opportunities I had was one person was working on a really interesting micromagnetic resonance imaging machine with the NIH. And what we were going to do was scan a new project on the development of the fetus from conception to birth using these new technologies. So I wrote the algorithms and code, and he built the hardware -- Paul Lauterbur -- then went onto win the Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI. I got the data. And I'm going to show you a sample of the piece,'From Conception to Birth.'

(Music)

（从受孕到出生）[From Conception to Birth]

（卵细胞）[Oocyte]

（精子）[Sperm]

（卵细胞受精）[Egg Inseminated]

（第一个24小时，“婴儿”的第一次分裂）[24 Hours: Baby's first division]

（受精卵融合后开始分裂）[The fertilized ovum divides a few hours after fusion...]

（之后每12-15小时分裂一次）[And divides a new every 12 to 15 hours.]

（胚胎早期）[Early Embryo]

 （卵黄囊滋养胚胎）[Yolk sack still feeding baby.]

 （第25天，心室发育中）[25 Days: Heart chamber developing.]

（第32天，手和胳膊成型中）[32 Days: Arms & hands are developing]

（第36天，原始脊椎开始形成）[36 Days: Beginning of the primitive vertebrae]

 （这些是胎儿发育的最快速阶段）[These weeks are the period of the most rapid development of the fetus.]

（如果胎儿持续以此速度发育，在9个月后，体重可达到1.5吨）[If the fetus continues to grow at this speed for the entire 9 months, it would be 1.5 tons at birth.]

 [45 Days]

（第45天，胎儿的心跳是母亲的两倍）[Embryo's heart is beating twice as fast as the mother's.]

 [51 Days]

（第51天，视网膜，鼻子，手指发育）[Developing retina, nose and fingers]

（胎儿持续在母体活动，胎动，使得肌肉和骨骼成长）[The fetus' continual movement in the womb is necessary for muscular and skeletal growth.]

 [12 Weeks:Indifferent penis]

（第12周，决定性别）[Girl or boy yet to be determined]

 [8 Months]

（开始分娩）[Delivery: The expulsion stage]

 （婴儿诞生）[The moment of birth]

 (Applause)

（两个细胞发育成为令人叹为观止的新生命）AlexanderTsiaras: Thank you. But as you can see, when you actually start working on this data, it's pretty spectacular. And as we kept on scanning more and more, working on this project, looking at these two simple cells that have this unbelievable machinery that will become the magic of you. And as we kept on working on this data, looking at small clusters of the body, these little pieces of tissue that were the trophoblasts coming off of the blastocyst, all of a sudden burrowing itself into the side of the uterus,saying, 'I'm here to stay.' Having conversation and communications with the estrogens, the progesterones, saying, 'I'm here to stay, plant me,'building this incredible trilinear fetus that becomes, within 44 days, something that you can recognize, and then at nine weeks is really kind of a little human being. The marvel of this information: How do we actually have this biological mechanism inside our body to actually see this information?

I'm going to show you something pretty unique. Here's a human heart at 25 days. It's just basically two strands. （25周时，心脏仅为两条血管）And like this magnificent origami, cells are developing at one million cells per second at four weeks, as it's just folding on itself. Within five weeks, you start to see the early atrium and the early ventricles. （30周，原始心房和心室形成）Six weeks, these folds are now beginning with the papilla on the inside of the heart actually being able to pull down each one of those valves in your heart until you get a mature heart -- and then basically the development of the entire human body. （之后，心脏逐渐发育成熟）The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go -- the complexity of these, the mathematical models of how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension.

（数学家感慨人体发育的鬼斧神工，堪称最复杂的数学）Eventhough I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel of how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us? It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity. Then you start to take a look at adult life. Take a look at this little tuft of capillaries. It's just a tiny sub-substructure, microscopic. But basically by the time you're nine months and you're given birth, you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels inside your body. And only one mile is visible. 59,999 miles that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away. The complexity of building that within a single system is, again, beyond any comprehension or any existing mathematics today.

（正在进行中的研究）And then instructions set, from the brain to every other part of the body -- look at the complexity of the folding. Where does this intelligence of knowing that a fold can actually hold more information, so as you actually watch the baby's brain grow. And this is one of the things we're doing. We're launching two new studies of scanning babies' brains from the moment they're born. Every six months until they're six years old, we're going to be doing about 250 children, watching exactly how the gyri and the sulci of the brains fold to see how this magnificent development actually turns into memories and the marvel that is us.

（女性的伟大，孕育生命）And it's not just our own existence, but how does the woman's body understand to have genetic structure that not only builds her own, but then has the understanding that allows her to become a walking immunological, cardiovascular system that basically is a mobile system that can actually nurture, treat this child with a kind of marvel that is beyond, again, our comprehension -- the magic that is existence, that is us?

Thank you.

 (Applause)

后记：科研是为了更好的生活。勿忘初心，方得始终。

什么才是追求知识的本质？站在前人的肩膀上，不断寻求突破，继续为下一代累积新知，以创新动能造福人类社会，才是知识的本质。好吃的蛋糕是本质，而好成绩，只是装饰的美丽奶油花朵罢了。

“去犯错与创新吧！借着课本教你的基础，然后去有计划地犯错、尝试创新，这才是有价值的！”