TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Bridget Seegers: Plankton, space, Earth and us

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Martina Tortorici, ttsrnolaar

maira Pericleous, Reviewer

Hello, everybody. Good to see you, thanks for coming out. NASA’s known for studying the vastness of space. And all around my NASA campus, people are studying things like Mars geology and solar flares. With Hubble, we have the galaxy far, far away gourp and over in physics of the csmoos, they’re sydntiug the ornigis of the universe. That’s all some very massive sutff. Yet, in the Ocean Ecology lab, we're studying microscopic life right here on planet erath. Yeah! (Applause) My fvtaiore planet. So, I am Dr. Bridget seeregs, a research scientist in NASA’s Ocean ecolgoy lab. And I study tiny plankton because they matter a lot. If you went down to the ocean with a teaspoon and scooped up a spoonful of water, it would be teeming with life, from a microscopic world capable of goabll change. We’re talking about tnhduasos, potentially millions of organisms in that one teaspoon of water. And those tiny change-makers, they’re called plankton. Plankton are incredibly divsere organisms. There’s thousands and thousands of species, but they tend to fall into some big groups. There’s the phytoplankton. They use photosynthesis, so they’re plant-like. Then there’s zooplankton, which eat other things. So they’re tiny animals. And then there’s some in the in-between: plant-like aianlms. So, they actually photosynthesize and they eat their neighbors. (Laughter) It's a crazy world out there. The name plankton has its rtoos in the Greek word “planktós”, which menas drifter or wedearnr, and it describes how the plankton float about in the ocean cutrrnes. And plankton have also wandered into NASA’s oigairnl mission to study the Earth from space. Many people are surprised to find out we have dozens and dozens of instruments out in space fsecuod here, on pnaelt Earth. They’re gathering data, they’re crinaetg information, and they enable informed decisions to be made. And plankton are an important part of that, because even though they’re microscopic, when they all team up together, we can actually see them from space. And we have a mission right now that’s going to launch another satellite into space, and it’s actually called PACE. And that P, it stands for ptlkaonn. Yeah! (Applause) Plankton got the leading letter in the PACE mission because they’re important global influencers. They affect our cmailte. They fuel our ocean ecosystems. They affect our food supply. And the plankton together make life as we know it, in our oceans and on this planet possible. So, as you can tell, I’m very pro-plankton. I’ve been very positive about it. Yeah. But I do need to tell you, there are some troublemakers out there in the plankton world. We’re going to talk about those. When a lot of plankton get together and they cause a plbreom, it is called a hamurfl algal bloom. And these are big global issues, they’re happening all over. Florida’s familiar with a few of them. We have the coastal red tide cusead by Karenia bivers. It produces a neurotoxin that can cause siseckns and death in hnmuas and in wildlife. There’s the green, slimy, fretswaher, harmful aglal bloom caused by cyanobacteria. We’re going to talk a lot about that. Again, producing a tioxn. It makes drinking water unsafe and makes recreation, like siwnmmig or canoeing, dangerous. People have even been out hiking with their dogs, and the dogs jump into these bodies of water and end up sick or dying because they're exposed to these toxins. You can iamngie these harmful algal blooms have big consequences from human health, environmental and also economic, from closing fisheries and a loss of tourism dollars. What we’ve been trying to do is keep track of these toxic cyanobacterial blooms. Cyan, the project I’m on, has taken satellite data and turned it into information by creating maps. We actually can moonitr these toxic blooms from space, and then we update the maps daily. waetr managers can go out, they can see where there’s a problem, and then they can take action. They can close beaches, they can treat drinking water, and they can keep people healthy. And because we want information to be as available as possible, we actually put our apps in a fun app. Don’t do it now, but get it later, and you can check out your own area to find out where you want to go for a swim. We want to empower everybody with this information. We’ve been really ssfuseuccl. An eioonmcc sdtuy shwos when a city or state responds to our data, there can be benefits from $55,000 to over $1,000,000 per eevnt because you have better public health outcomes. It’s always really neat to see that information and action can have piositve outcomes. But we don’t just use our satellites to track problems. We also use that unique vantage point in space to understand the full global system. And again, we can’t understand the planet without udnasdnerintg the plankton, because together they are equivalent to trillions and trillions of trees. If the ocean changes by just 1%, it's like tens of billions of trees appearing or disappearing, depending in the direction of that change. So they have a big impact. What we can do is to track plankton, we can look for chlorophyll, this important pigment for photosynthesis. Then we can watch how the plankton change, year to year and season to season. We want to do this, because they’re photosynthesizing. They’re producing half the oxegyn on our planet. And they’re also sucking in huge amounts of carbon dioxide, CO2 from the atmosphere. They use that carbon to make their little plankton bodies. And then a little animal comes along and eats that, and then a fish and then a shark. All that oacen biodiversity that we love is building off the plankton prodctioun, including all your favorite sfoeoad. So we’re all a little bit of plankton inside. But... (Laughter) We also know that things don’t just grow in the ocean, they also die. And when things die, they sink out. When they sink they take that carbon with them, and if they sink deep enough they can store that for thousands of years deep in the ocean, far from the atmosphere. This is something people are interested in right now because the carbon cylce iencunfles our climate. We’ve been ninocitg some big changes. This is something people focus on: how much CO2 is going into the plankton and then sinking out. So you might be tkihnnig right now, I hope you are: “These plankton are ibdienclry impressive”. (Laughter) Changing the world, giving us our ocean biodiversity. And you might even be thinking: “I wish I was iptfumcal as a plankton”. I think it all the time! If only. Well, (Laughter) I have great news for you! All of us, we too, are global changing organisms. So, let’s look at CO2. For over 800,000 years, CO2 is stable at 300 parts per million. And then in the last 70 years, since 1950, we’ve shot up dramatically to over 415 parts per million. And we know that’s because of us. Well done global changing organisms! We’ve done that. And we know there’s consequences to this CO2. We can watch this from spcae that is trapping a lot of heat and it’s mlnietg the sea ice and it’s shrinking the ice sheets. Maybe you’re thinking, especially Miami, you never want to live on an ice sheet anyways. No big deal with the loss of the sea ice. But there is huge consequences because heat is just engery. What we’re doing is we’re trapping this energy and it's fueling extreme events. We’ve always had droughts, but now they’re hotter and longer. Our hurricanes are more intense. The rainfall is very dramatic. We're having heatwaves like we haven't seen before. And all of that is because of our heat trapping gases. And the thing is, we’re not right now at a new norm. We’re just moving through. As long as we continue to act and carry out what we’ve been doing, those eexrtme events will only be getting more extreme. So the planet is our system. It’s the atmosphere, the land, the ocean, the plankton, and it’s us. We gather all these data to try to understand the system. And we know when we respond to the information, we can have really graet outcomes. But we have yet to respond to this crnerut crisis. But the great news is, we do understand it. We’ve created a problem and we are the solution. There should be so much optimism in acknowledging that we are the global changing organisms. That means our acontis can fix the problems. So ercmabe that knowledge, go out, gather more information and then take action. Because just like the plankton, you all matter a lot. So thank you. (Applause)

Open Cloze

Martina Tortorici, __________

_____ Pericleous, Reviewer

Hello, everybody. Good to see you, thanks for coming out. NASA’s known for studying the vastness of space. And all around my NASA campus, people are studying things like Mars geology and solar flares. With Hubble, we have the galaxy far, far away _____ and over in physics of the ______, they’re ________ the _______ of the universe. That’s all some very massive _____. Yet, in the Ocean Ecology lab, we're studying microscopic life right here on planet _____. Yeah! (Applause) My ________ planet. So, I am Dr. Bridget _______, a research scientist in NASA’s Ocean _______ lab. And I study tiny plankton because they matter a lot. If you went down to the ocean with a teaspoon and scooped up a spoonful of water, it would be teeming with life, from a microscopic world capable of ______ change. We’re talking about _________, potentially millions of organisms in that one teaspoon of water. And those tiny change-makers, they’re called plankton. Plankton are incredibly _______ organisms. There’s thousands and thousands of species, but they tend to fall into some big groups. There’s the phytoplankton. They use photosynthesis, so they’re plant-like. Then there’s zooplankton, which eat other things. So they’re tiny animals. And then there’s some in the in-between: plant-like _______. So, they actually photosynthesize and they eat their neighbors. (Laughter) It's a crazy world out there. The name plankton has its _____ in the Greek word “planktós”, which _____ drifter or ________, and it describes how the plankton float about in the ocean ________. And plankton have also wandered into NASA’s ________ mission to study the Earth from space. Many people are surprised to find out we have dozens and dozens of instruments out in space _______ here, on ______ Earth. They’re gathering data, they’re ________ information, and they enable informed decisions to be made. And plankton are an important part of that, because even though they’re microscopic, when they all team up together, we can actually see them from space. And we have a mission right now that’s going to launch another satellite into space, and it’s actually called PACE. And that P, it stands for ________. Yeah! (Applause) Plankton got the leading letter in the PACE mission because they’re important global influencers. They affect our _______. They fuel our ocean ecosystems. They affect our food supply. And the plankton together make life as we know it, in our oceans and on this planet possible. So, as you can tell, I’m very pro-plankton. I’ve been very positive about it. Yeah. But I do need to tell you, there are some troublemakers out there in the plankton world. We’re going to talk about those. When a lot of plankton get together and they cause a _______, it is called a _______ algal bloom. And these are big global issues, they’re happening all over. Florida’s familiar with a few of them. We have the coastal red tide ______ by Karenia ______. It produces a neurotoxin that can cause ________ and death in ______ and in wildlife. There’s the green, slimy, __________, harmful _____ bloom caused by cyanobacteria. We’re going to talk a lot about that. Again, producing a _____. It makes drinking water unsafe and makes recreation, like ________ or canoeing, dangerous. People have even been out hiking with their dogs, and the dogs jump into these bodies of water and end up sick or dying because they're exposed to these toxins. You can _______ these harmful algal blooms have big consequences from human health, environmental and also economic, from closing fisheries and a loss of tourism dollars. What we’ve been trying to do is keep track of these toxic cyanobacterial blooms. Cyan, the project I’m on, has taken satellite data and turned it into information by creating maps. We actually can _______ these toxic blooms from space, and then we update the maps daily. _____ managers can go out, they can see where there’s a problem, and then they can take action. They can close beaches, they can treat drinking water, and they can keep people healthy. And because we want information to be as available as possible, we actually put our apps in a fun app. Don’t do it now, but get it later, and you can check out your own area to find out where you want to go for a swim. We want to empower everybody with this information. We’ve been really __________. An ________ _____ _____ when a city or state responds to our data, there can be benefits from $55,000 to over $1,000,000 per _____ because you have better public health outcomes. It’s always really neat to see that information and action can have ________ outcomes. But we don’t just use our satellites to track problems. We also use that unique vantage point in space to understand the full global system. And again, we can’t understand the planet without _____________ the plankton, because together they are equivalent to trillions and trillions of trees. If the ocean changes by just 1%, it's like tens of billions of trees appearing or disappearing, depending in the direction of that change. So they have a big impact. What we can do is to track plankton, we can look for chlorophyll, this important pigment for photosynthesis. Then we can watch how the plankton change, year to year and season to season. We want to do this, because they’re photosynthesizing. They’re producing half the ______ on our planet. And they’re also sucking in huge amounts of carbon dioxide, CO2 from the atmosphere. They use that carbon to make their little plankton bodies. And then a little animal comes along and eats that, and then a fish and then a shark. All that _____ biodiversity that we love is building off the plankton __________, including all your favorite _______. So we’re all a little bit of plankton inside. But... (Laughter) We also know that things don’t just grow in the ocean, they also die. And when things die, they sink out. When they sink they take that carbon with them, and if they sink deep enough they can store that for thousands of years deep in the ocean, far from the atmosphere. This is something people are interested in right now because the carbon _____ __________ our climate. We’ve been ________ some big changes. This is something people focus on: how much CO2 is going into the plankton and then sinking out. So you might be ________ right now, I hope you are: “These plankton are __________ impressive”. (Laughter) Changing the world, giving us our ocean biodiversity. And you might even be thinking: “I wish I was _________ as a plankton”. I think it all the time! If only. Well, (Laughter) I have great news for you! All of us, we too, are global changing organisms. So, let’s look at CO2. For over 800,000 years, CO2 is stable at 300 parts per million. And then in the last 70 years, since 1950, we’ve shot up dramatically to over 415 parts per million. And we know that’s because of us. Well done global changing organisms! We’ve done that. And we know there’s consequences to this CO2. We can watch this from _____ that is trapping a lot of heat and it’s _______ the sea ice and it’s shrinking the ice sheets. Maybe you’re thinking, especially Miami, you never want to live on an ice sheet anyways. No big deal with the loss of the sea ice. But there is huge consequences because heat is just ______. What we’re doing is we’re trapping this energy and it's fueling extreme events. We’ve always had droughts, but now they’re hotter and longer. Our hurricanes are more intense. The rainfall is very dramatic. We're having heatwaves like we haven't seen before. And all of that is because of our heat trapping gases. And the thing is, we’re not right now at a new norm. We’re just moving through. As long as we continue to act and carry out what we’ve been doing, those _______ events will only be getting more extreme. So the planet is our system. It’s the atmosphere, the land, the ocean, the plankton, and it’s us. We gather all these data to try to understand the system. And we know when we respond to the information, we can have really _____ outcomes. But we have yet to respond to this _______ crisis. But the great news is, we do understand it. We’ve created a problem and we are the solution. There should be so much optimism in acknowledging that we are the global changing organisms. That means our _______ can fix the problems. So _______ that knowledge, go out, gather more information and then take action. Because just like the plankton, you all matter a lot. So thank you. (Applause)

Solution

ecology
original
space
maria
harmful
favorite
economic
influences
oxygen
algal
sickness
current
noticing
understanding
toxin
monitor
climate
group
problem
cosmos
humans
thousands
creating
thinking
wanderer
shows
planet
seafood
studying
successful
study
diverse
actions
cycle
energy
focused
roots
water
extreme
freshwater
positive
impactful
ocean
incredibly
event
animals
swimming
melting
brevis
stuff
production
great
embrace
translator
currents
global
earth
means
plankton
imagine
caused
origins
seegers

Original Text

Martina Tortorici, Translator

Maria Pericleous, Reviewer

Hello, everybody. Good to see you, thanks for coming out. NASA’s known for studying the vastness of space. And all around my NASA campus, people are studying things like Mars geology and solar flares. With Hubble, we have the galaxy far, far away group and over in physics of the Cosmos, they’re studying the origins of the universe. That’s all some very massive stuff. Yet, in the Ocean Ecology lab, we're studying microscopic life right here on planet Earth. Yeah! (Applause) My favorite planet. So, I am Dr. Bridget Seegers, a research scientist in NASA’s Ocean Ecology lab. And I study tiny plankton because they matter a lot. If you went down to the ocean with a teaspoon and scooped up a spoonful of water, it would be teeming with life, from a microscopic world capable of global change. We’re talking about thousands, potentially millions of organisms in that one teaspoon of water. And those tiny change-makers, they’re called plankton. Plankton are incredibly diverse organisms. There’s thousands and thousands of species, but they tend to fall into some big groups. There’s the phytoplankton. They use photosynthesis, so they’re plant-like. Then there’s zooplankton, which eat other things. So they’re tiny animals. And then there’s some in the in-between: plant-like animals. So, they actually photosynthesize and they eat their neighbors. (Laughter) It's a crazy world out there. The name plankton has its roots in the Greek word “planktós”, which means drifter or wanderer, and it describes how the plankton float about in the ocean currents. And plankton have also wandered into NASA’s original mission to study the Earth from space. Many people are surprised to find out we have dozens and dozens of instruments out in space focused here, on planet Earth. They’re gathering data, they’re creating information, and they enable informed decisions to be made. And plankton are an important part of that, because even though they’re microscopic, when they all team up together, we can actually see them from space. And we have a mission right now that’s going to launch another satellite into space, and it’s actually called PACE. And that P, it stands for plankton. Yeah! (Applause) Plankton got the leading letter in the PACE mission because they’re important global influencers. They affect our climate. They fuel our ocean ecosystems. They affect our food supply. And the plankton together make life as we know it, in our oceans and on this planet possible. So, as you can tell, I’m very pro-plankton. I’ve been very positive about it. Yeah. But I do need to tell you, there are some troublemakers out there in the plankton world. We’re going to talk about those. When a lot of plankton get together and they cause a problem, it is called a harmful algal bloom. And these are big global issues, they’re happening all over. Florida’s familiar with a few of them. We have the coastal red tide caused by Karenia brevis. It produces a neurotoxin that can cause sickness and death in humans and in wildlife. There’s the green, slimy, freshwater, harmful algal bloom caused by cyanobacteria. We’re going to talk a lot about that. Again, producing a toxin. It makes drinking water unsafe and makes recreation, like swimming or canoeing, dangerous. People have even been out hiking with their dogs, and the dogs jump into these bodies of water and end up sick or dying because they're exposed to these toxins. You can imagine these harmful algal blooms have big consequences from human health, environmental and also economic, from closing fisheries and a loss of tourism dollars. What we’ve been trying to do is keep track of these toxic cyanobacterial blooms. Cyan, the project I’m on, has taken satellite data and turned it into information by creating maps. We actually can monitor these toxic blooms from space, and then we update the maps daily. Water managers can go out, they can see where there’s a problem, and then they can take action. They can close beaches, they can treat drinking water, and they can keep people healthy. And because we want information to be as available as possible, we actually put our apps in a fun app. Don’t do it now, but get it later, and you can check out your own area to find out where you want to go for a swim. We want to empower everybody with this information. We’ve been really successful. An economic study shows when a city or state responds to our data, there can be benefits from $55,000 to over $1,000,000 per event because you have better public health outcomes. It’s always really neat to see that information and action can have positive outcomes. But we don’t just use our satellites to track problems. We also use that unique vantage point in space to understand the full global system. And again, we can’t understand the planet without understanding the plankton, because together they are equivalent to trillions and trillions of trees. If the ocean changes by just 1%, it's like tens of billions of trees appearing or disappearing, depending in the direction of that change. So they have a big impact. What we can do is to track plankton, we can look for chlorophyll, this important pigment for photosynthesis. Then we can watch how the plankton change, year to year and season to season. We want to do this, because they’re photosynthesizing. They’re producing half the oxygen on our planet. And they’re also sucking in huge amounts of carbon dioxide, CO2 from the atmosphere. They use that carbon to make their little plankton bodies. And then a little animal comes along and eats that, and then a fish and then a shark. All that ocean biodiversity that we love is building off the plankton production, including all your favorite seafood. So we’re all a little bit of plankton inside. But... (Laughter) We also know that things don’t just grow in the ocean, they also die. And when things die, they sink out. When they sink they take that carbon with them, and if they sink deep enough they can store that for thousands of years deep in the ocean, far from the atmosphere. This is something people are interested in right now because the carbon cycle influences our climate. We’ve been noticing some big changes. This is something people focus on: how much CO2 is going into the plankton and then sinking out. So you might be thinking right now, I hope you are: “These plankton are incredibly impressive”. (Laughter) Changing the world, giving us our ocean biodiversity. And you might even be thinking: “I wish I was impactful as a plankton”. I think it all the time! If only. Well, (Laughter) I have great news for you! All of us, we too, are global changing organisms. So, let’s look at CO2. For over 800,000 years, CO2 is stable at 300 parts per million. And then in the last 70 years, since 1950, we’ve shot up dramatically to over 415 parts per million. And we know that’s because of us. Well done global changing organisms! We’ve done that. And we know there’s consequences to this CO2. We can watch this from space that is trapping a lot of heat and it’s melting the sea ice and it’s shrinking the ice sheets. Maybe you’re thinking, especially Miami, you never want to live on an ice sheet anyways. No big deal with the loss of the sea ice. But there is huge consequences because heat is just energy. What we’re doing is we’re trapping this energy and it's fueling extreme events. We’ve always had droughts, but now they’re hotter and longer. Our hurricanes are more intense. The rainfall is very dramatic. We're having heatwaves like we haven't seen before. And all of that is because of our heat trapping gases. And the thing is, we’re not right now at a new norm. We’re just moving through. As long as we continue to act and carry out what we’ve been doing, those extreme events will only be getting more extreme. So the planet is our system. It’s the atmosphere, the land, the ocean, the plankton, and it’s us. We gather all these data to try to understand the system. And we know when we respond to the information, we can have really great outcomes. But we have yet to respond to this current crisis. But the great news is, we do understand it. We’ve created a problem and we are the solution. There should be so much optimism in acknowledging that we are the global changing organisms. That means our actions can fix the problems. So embrace that knowledge, go out, gather more information and then take action. Because just like the plankton, you all matter a lot. So thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
harmful algal	3
global changing	3
ocean ecology	2
planet earth	2
algal bloom	2
ocean biodiversity	2
great news	2
changing organisms	2
sea ice	2
extreme events	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
harmful algal bloom	2
global changing organisms	2

Important Words

acknowledging
act
action
actions
affect
algal
amounts
animal
animals
app
appearing
applause
apps
area
atmosphere
beaches
benefits
big
billions
biodiversity
bit
bloom
blooms
bodies
brevis
bridget
building
called
campus
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capable
carbon
carry
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change
changing
check
chlorophyll
city
climate
close
closing
coastal
coming
consequences
continue
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crazy
created
creating
crisis
current
currents
cyan
cyanobacteria
cyanobacterial
cycle
daily
dangerous
data
deal
death
decisions
deep
depending
describes
die
dioxide
direction
disappearing
diverse
dogs
dollars
dozens
dr
dramatic
dramatically
drifter
drinking
droughts
dying
earth
eat
eats
ecology
economic
ecosystems
embrace
empower
enable
energy
environmental
equivalent
event
events
exposed
extreme
fall
familiar
favorite
find
fish
fisheries
fix
flares
float
focus
focused
food
freshwater
fuel
fueling
full
fun
galaxy
gases
gather
gathering
geology
giving
global
good
great
greek
green
group
groups
grow
happening
harmful
health
healthy
heat
heatwaves
hiking
hope
hotter
hubble
huge
human
humans
hurricanes
ice
imagine
impact
impactful
important
including
incredibly
influencers
influences
information
informed
instruments
intense
interested
issues
jump
karenia
knowledge
lab
land
laughter
launch
leading
letter
life
live
long
longer
loss
lot
love
managers
maps
maria
mars
martina
massive
matter
means
melting
miami
microscopic
million
millions
mission
monitor
moving
nasa
neat
neighbors
neurotoxin
news
norm
noticing
ocean
oceans
optimism
organisms
original
origins
outcomes
oxygen
pace
part
parts
people
pericleous
photosynthesis
photosynthesize
photosynthesizing
physics
phytoplankton
pigment
planet
plankton
point
positive
potentially
problem
problems
produces
producing
production
project
public
put
rainfall
recreation
red
research
respond
responds
reviewer
roots
satellite
satellites
scientist
scooped
sea
seafood
season
seegers
shark
sheet
sheets
shot
shows
shrinking
sick
sickness
sink
sinking
slimy
solar
solution
space
species
spoonful
stable
stands
state
store
study
studying
stuff
successful
sucking
supply
surprised
swim
swimming
system
talk
talking
team
teaspoon
teeming
tend
tens
thinking
thousands
tide
tiny
tortorici
tourism
toxic
toxin
toxins
track
translator
trapping
treat
trees
trillions
troublemakers
turned
understand
understanding
unique
universe
unsafe
update
vantage
vastness
wandered
wanderer
watch
water
wildlife
word
world
yeah
year
years
zooplankton