10 Key Traits Of A Good Community Leader [infographic]

In any business, it's important to identify who your leaders are. These are the people that hold your group together while maintaining a sense of community and camaraderie. 

What does it take to propel positive social change in business and your community? Wake ForestUniversity's Online Masters of Counseling answers that question for us in their latest infographic, which highlights the key traits of a good community leader.

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Sunken, Lost City of Heracleion Brought to Life in 3D

The ancient city of Heracleion, home of Cleopatra’s inauguration, was thought to be myth, such as the lost city of Atlantis, until underwater archaeologist Dr Frank Goddio unexpectedly came across its ruin in 2001.

Findings of extraordinary wealth were discovered after removing settlement from over 1,200 years ago. More than 64 ships (largest number of ancient ships to have ever been found in one place), 700 anchors, and gold coins and weights made from bronze and stone were some of the treasures, the abundance painting a picture of what is thought to have been the Mediterranean trading hub in its time.

Other historical and well-preserved treasures include many giant, 16 ft statues on the ocean floor, stone blocks with both ancient Greek and Egyptian inscriptions, and dozens of sarcophagi with mummified animals for sacrifice to Amun-Gereb.

Now, after more than a decade of excavation, researchers have been able to create a map depicting the city in its glory days more than 1,000 years ago. With further study on the late Egyptian period findings, better insight into cultures past will continue to be unearthed.

WATCH: Colossal Sunken Statues Of Thonis-Heracleion

For more images please visit:

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Scientists in the Stone Age?

By: Amanda Froelich,

True Activist.

5 stone balls discovered in Scotland (Kincardineshire, Aberdeenshire, and Banff), part of a collection at the Ashmolean Museum, are baffling archaeologists in their purpose.

Dating back to 3,000 and 2,000 BC, the five stones at the museum are just some of over 425 stones which have been found, all featuring peculiar symmetrical patterns.

Composed of different stones like sandstone and granite, they’re intricately designed, and like modern examples of atoms, are geometrically balanced.

Most of the stones are similar in size with a diameter of 70 mm except for a few larger ones up to 114 mm in diameter. The many knobs vary from 4 up to 33 with some of the stones also including spiral patterns.

The five stones in the museum were part of the collection of Sir John Evans  who hypothesized that they had been used during war attached to a thong. However, the lack of damage to the stones would suggest that this isn’t an accurate assumption, as well as the intense preparation to create such a ball for war doesn’t make sense.

Other explanations include that they were possibly used as weights for fishing nets or had a ceremonial role, giving the holder the right to speak.

However, there is another theory: could the symmetrically balanced and intricately carved stones be a model of the nucleus of atoms? Many findings suggest past civilizations were quite intelligent, recognizing star patterns of galaxies scientists are now just discovering and perhaps even utilizing the energy of the universe to move inanimate objects. If such theories were true, perhaps these stone balls were just a small part in understanding the universe; if one had knowledge of chemistry, it would be possible to represent the atomic structure of different atoms, such as in the stones.

At the very least, the embossed symmetrical patterns suggest that the creator of these objects had knowledge of geometry and may even have been able to represent the platonic solids, regular, convex polyhedrons, and regular polygons, with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex.

For now, their true purpose remains a mystery, but speculation continues to broaden perspective.

Additional Sources:

Ashmolean Museum Original Article

Sir John Evans

Ancient Origins

Read more http://www.trueactivist.com/scientists-in-the-stone-age/

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NASA Detects Water on Moon’s Surface

NASA-funded lunar research has yielded evidence of water locked in mineral grains on the surface of the moon from an unknown source deep beneath the surface.

Using data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists remotely detected magmatic water, or water that originates from deep within the moon’s interior, on the surface of the moon.

The findings, published Aug. 25 in Nature Geoscience, represent the first detection of this form of water from lunar orbit. Earlier studies had shown the existence of magmatic water in lunar samples returned during the Apollo program.

M3 imaged the lunar impact crater Bullialdus, which lies near the lunar equator. Scientists were interested in studying this area because they could better quantify the amount of water inside the rocks due to the crater’s location and the type of rocks it held. The central peak of the crater is made up of a type of rock that forms deep within the lunar crust and mantle when magma is trapped underground.

“This rock, which normally resides deep beneath the surface, was excavated from the lunar depths by the impact that formed Bullialdus crater,” said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.

“Compared to its surroundings, we found that the central portion of this crater contains a significant amount of hydroxyl – a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom — which is evidence that the rocks in this crater contain water that originated beneath the lunar surface,” Klima said.

In 2009, M3 provided the first mineralogical map of the lunar surface and discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. This water is thought to be a thin layer formed from solar wind hitting the moon’s surface. Bullialdus crater is in a region with an unfavorable environment for solar wind to produce significant amounts of water on the surface.

“NASA missions like Lunar Prospector and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and instruments like M3 have gathered crucial data that fundamentally changed our understanding of whether water exists on the surface of the moon,” said S. Pete Worden, center director at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Similarly, we hope that upcoming NASA missions such as the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, will change our understanding of the lunar sky.”

The detection of internal water from orbit means scientists can begin to test some of the findings from sample studies in a broader context, including in regions that are far from where the Apollo sites are clustered on the near side of the moon. For many years, researchers believed that the rocks from the moon were bone-dry and any water detected in the Apollo samples had to be contamination from Earth.

“Now that we have detected water that is likely from the interior of the moon, we can start to compare this water with other characteristics of the lunar surface,” said Klima. “This internal magmatic water also provides clues about the moon’s volcanic processes and internal composition, which helps us address questions about how the moon formed, and how magmatic processes changed as it cooled.”

APL is a not-for-profit division of Johns Hopkins University. Joshua Cahill and David Lawrence of APL and Justin Hagerty of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., co-authored the paper. NASA’s Lunar Advanced Science and Engineering Program, the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at Ames and the NASA Planetary Mission Data Analysis Program supported the research. NLSI is a virtual organization jointly funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington, to enable collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of NASA lunar science programs.

For more information about NASA programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Read more http://www.trueactivist.com/nasa-detects-water-on-moons-surface/

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How to get fresh water out of thin air

Fog-harvesting system developed by MIT and Chilean researchers could provide potable water for the world’s driest regions.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In some of this planet’s driest regions, where rainfall is rare or even nonexistent, a few specialized plants and insects have devised ingenious strategies to provide themselves with the water necessary for life: They pull it right out of the air, from fog that drifts in from warm oceans nearby.

Now researchers at MIT, working in collaboration with colleagues in Chile, are seeking to mimic that trick on a much larger scale, potentially supplying significant quantities of clean, potable water in places where there are few alternatives.

Fog harvesting, as the technique is known, is not a new idea: Systems to make use of this airborne potable water already exist in at least 17 nations. But the new research shows that their efficiency in a mild fog condition can be improved by at least fivefold, making them far more feasible and practical than existing versions.

The new findings have just been published online by the journal Langmuir, a publication of the American Chemical Society, in a paper by MIT postdoc Kyoo-Chul Park PhD ’13, MIT alumnus Shreerang Chhatre PhD ’13, graduate student Siddarth Srinivasan, chemical engineering professor Robert Cohen, and mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley.

Fog-harvesting systems generally consist of a vertical mesh, sort of like an oversized tennis net. Key to efficient harvesting of the tiny airborne droplets of fog are three basic parameters, the researchers found: the size of the filaments in those nets, the size of the holes between those filaments, and the coating applied to the filaments.

Most existing systems turn out to be far from optimal, Park says. Made of woven polyolefin mesh — a kind of plastic that is easily available and inexpensive — they tend to have filaments and holes that are much too large. As a result, they may extract only about 2 percent of the water available in a mild fog condition, whereas the new research shows that a finer mesh could extract 10 percent or more, Park says. Multiple nets deployed one behind another could then extract even more, if so desired.

While some of the organisms that harvest fog do so using solid surfaces — such as the carapace of the Namib beetle, native to the Namib desert of southern Africa — permeable mesh structures are much more effective because the wind-blown fog droplets tend to be deflected around solid surfaces, Park says. Thus, a woven mesh structure resembling a window screen turns out to be most effective. With the right chemical coating, fog droplets that form on the screen then slide down to be collected at the bottom and are funneled into buckets or tanks.

A comparison of the current standard fog-harvesting mesh material (top) and the new version designed by the MIT team (bottom), under identical conditions, demonstrates how much more rapidly water accumulates from the improved version. Video courtesy of the researchers.

Video courtesy of the researchers
The researchers found that controlling the size and structure of the mesh and the physical and chemical composition of this coating was essential to increasing the fog-collecting efficiency. Detailed calculations and laboratory tests indicate that the best performance comes from a mesh made of stainless-steel filaments about three or four times the thickness of a human hair, and with a spacing of about twice that between fibers. In addition, the mesh is dip-coated, using a solution that decreases a characteristic called contact-angle hysteresis. This allows small droplets to more easily slide down into the collecting gutter as soon as they form, before the wind blows them off the surface and back into the fog stream.

While the systems currently deployed in the coastal mountains at the edge of the Atacama Desert tend to yield a few liters of drinking water per day for each square meter of mesh, the theoretical calculations show that newly designed systems operating in the strong winds and dense fogs that form along the Chilean coast at certain times of the year could yield up to 12 liters per day or more, the researchers say.

In collaboration with researchers at the Pontifical Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, the MIT researchers have recently installed a variety of test screens made of different materials on hilltops in a semi-arid region north of Santiago, an area that sees very little rainfall, but which is regularly enshrouded in a strong windblown coastal fog called camanchacarolling in from the Pacific Ocean. The team is currently carrying out a yearlong test to study the durability and water yield of different configurations.

Maria Tou ’14, an MIT undergraduate, worked with the team in Chile, helping to install instrumentation that can observe the fluid mechanics associated with the fog droplets as they collect, grow and coalesce on the meshes.

Large mesh structures, of hundreds of square meters each, could be set up relatively inexpensively; once in place, they cost virtually nothing to operate. They consume no energy, needing only an occasional brushing to remove particles of grit and bugs. “The operating cost is essentially zero,” McKinley says, because “nature has already done the hard work of evaporating the water, desalinating it and condensing the droplets. We just have to collect it.”

Chilean investigators have estimated that if just 4 percent of the water contained in the fog could be captured, that would be sufficient to meet all of the water needs of that nation’s four northernmost regions, encompassing the entire Atacama Desert area. And with the MIT-designed system, Park points out, 10 percent of the fog moisture in the air passing through the new fog collector system can potentially be captured.

The research was supported by a Samsung scholarship, the MIT-Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship and Development, MIT’s MISTI-Chile program, and the Xerox Foundation.

Credits:

http://web.mit.edu

Read more http://www.trueactivist.com/how-to-get-fresh-water-out-of-thin-air/

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Remote Controlled Humans Now a Reality

Every day seems to bring new revelations in the area of neuroscience. Obama’s BRAIN project appears to being paying dividends.

Just in the last month or so, we have learned that scientists have been working on “neural dust” to create a remote-controlled computer pathway to the brain; and that scientists have been successful implanting false memories in mice. This was followed by an experiment at Harvard that enabled a human to remote control a mouse by thought alone.

And, just like that, the next level has already been reached: remote controlled humans … via the Internet.

We recently reported on the release of a secret DARPA mind control program at Arizona State University. Part of that research was focused specifically on the attempt to replicate through language the same results obtained with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which is a way to directly control movements, speech, and one’s perception of reality via electromagnetic waves aimed at the cerebral cortex. Julie Beal also reported on DARPA’s solicitation for portable brain recorders that could eventually be used in every classroom in America. Clearly there is a will to put research into action.

 But so far, the ability to remote control an object from a distance with the mind alone has been limited to video games, drones, and the above-mentioned mouse. However, as you can see in the video below, a human-to-human remote link has been established. A researcher was able to control the hand movements of a person jacked in to the “brain net” in a completely different building:

As is typical, researchers are downplaying the technology by stressing that this type of stimulation is only possible through consenting participants. Yet they repeatedly tout how wonderful it is because it is “non-invasive.” With nanotechnology such as that used in neural dust, a pathway can easily be opened non-invasively (or surreptitiously), and control can be achieved wirelessly. Julie Beal has speculated that perhaps this type of wireless control over another human being’s brain contributed to the strange “short circuits” that have been seen in many news reporters. It’s no longer beyond the realm of possibility.

What once was the craziest of conspiracies has now entered the daily news cycle. And there is more to come:

“The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains,” said researcher Andrea Stocco, assistant professor in psychology at the University of Washington.

Rao noted that his study managed “a one-way flow of information.”

“The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains,” he said.

The future is now; all that remains to be answered is whether or not ethical considerations will evolve along with the technology, or will simply be bypassed altogether.

Sources:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/165081-first-human-brain-to-brain-interface-allows-remote-control-over-the-internet-telepathy-coming-soon

http://neurogadget.com/2013/08/28/researcher-controls-colleagues-motions-through-first-noninvasive-human-to-human-brain-interface-video/8604

http://singularityhub.com/2013/08/28/researcher-remotely-operates-colleagues-brain-over-the-internet/

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16 year-old Invents Bio-plastic from Banana Peels Read more

True Activist.

What comes to mind before you discard your banana peel? Certainly not the consideration of its use to reduce petroleum-based pollution and create bio-plastic, yet this is exactly what Elif Bilgin, 16, from Istanbul, Turkey, sought to achieve and successfully accomplished. Winner of the 2013 Science in Action award, Google’s third $50,000 annual competition, she addressed the need for environmentally friendly alternatives with practical resources and easy-to-attain banana peels.

A motivated and compassionate scientist, Elif was driven to find an alternative from petroleum produced plastics to benefit the environment. In her journal she mentions that Thailand discards 200 tons of banana peels per day, therefore the starch and cellulose so important for plastic production could be put to much better use. From her research she discovered that potatoes and mango peels are already commonly used, therefore in Koc High School, Turkey, she began experimenting.

Over the period of two years, her trials using banana peels many times ended with disappointment; 10 failed experiments that created plastics not strong enough or too easily decayed did not slow her down, however. Fueled by past scientist’s determination, she wrote “Even Thomas Edison said ‘I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. Her persistence resulted in triumph with her last two trials, both creating plastics that had features she sought.

Her efficient method of using banana peels was well documented in her online science entry and easily shows how with little equipment, certain plasticizer ingredients, and starch from the banana peels, it’s possible to create a plastic that retains quality and structure long-term. Elif hopes that the use of bio-plastic will be used to replace some of the petroleum-based plastics in use today for such applications as insulation for electrical cables and for cosmetic prosthesis.

Hoping to attend medical school someday, her future holds many bright achievements to be sure; she’ll continue competing as a finalist in the Google Science Fair for the 15-16-year-old category, and will fly, with 14 other contenders, to the company’s Mountain View campus in California.

Brilliant minds of a variety of ages continue to discover alternative methods for sustainable energy; the one question is, who will now apply these practical findings?

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Canon and Nikon vs. Everyone Else: Buying Your First DSLR

To the beginner, there’s a bewildering array of cameras out there these days. They advertise a multitude of features often wrapped up in technical jargon and sales-speak. How do you sift through it all to find the camera that’s right for you? Well, that’s what I’m going to discuss today.

Due to their overwhelming dominance in the professional and high-end amateur markets, most people go for Canon or Nikon, even at their higher price points. Is this necessary, or are there other options on the table which may be better suited to your individual needs?

Before we take a look over all the options, let’s consider what decisions and requirements need to be considered before researching camera systems.

What Do You Need? Why?

The number one consideration when investing in a camera system should be the lenses. Modern digital bodies are ultimately disposable. You’ll likely go through many over the years. On the other hand, time has little effect on well-maintained lenses, and this is where the bulk of your available money should go.

Why should the lenses come first? Well, first of all, image quality among DSLR sensors is fairly comparable these days. Color accuracy, resolutions and noise levels don’t significantly differ across manufacturers. The number one factor in the quality of images now is the glass that goes in front of the sensor.

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Lenses

What does it mean when buying into a system? You need to consider what are you intending to do with your camera. The lenses you’ll need may dictate the manufacturer options you have available.

If you’re aiming to shoot professional sports, sooner or later you’re likely to need a range of high quality fast telephotos, which limits you to Canon or Nikon. If you’re aiming to shoot portraiture locally as a paying hobby, you don’t necessarily need the crazy lenses and have a wider range of options available.

Maybe you’re looking to get into video, and your main interest is in older lenses with manual focus and iris, and/or you like the soft, uncoated look of the older glass (me too!). If this is your main use case, your options are wide-open with the range of adaptors available.

Basically, consider your aspirations and decide what lenses you’re likely going to need in the end, and if you can afford those prices. It makes sense to invest in the same manufacturer to begin with that you’ll end up using, so you’re not attempting to relearn controls later on.

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Camera Layout

Speaking of controls, schemes for button layouts, menu arrangements, zoom and focus ring directions differ between manufacturers. You need to find one that makes sense to you and is comfortable to use.

You may feel more at home in the Canon menus, or your hand may naturally rotate in the same direction as the Nikon lenses. The Sonys may feel the most comfortable in your hand. The only way to find out is by getting hands-on.

Now, on to the manufacturers themselves. Just keep in mind your thoughts from above, and read on. First up, Canon.

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Canon

The Canon T3i is a good choice for most beginners.

Canon, offering the largest range of lenses of any manufacturer, seems the obvious choice if either you have no idea where you’re trying to go, or conversely are looking to go into something fairly specialized.

From the 65mm MP-E Macro to the 800mm f/5.6L monster, you’re almost certain to find the lens you need in their range. The L (for “luxury”) series lenses are extremely high quality, especially in their latest iterations, and represent the pinnacle of image quality for many users. They’re the everyday workhorse for many working professionals out there, complete with weather sealing.

Their ability to offer this huge lens range may stem from their lion’s share of the DSLR market, at around 30%. This also means that a vast range of aftermarket accessories and third party lenses are also available.

In the filmmaking sphere, their dominance since the Canon 5D MkII started revolutionising filmmaking at all levels in 2008 has meant that the majority of third-party filmmaking lenses and accessories are designed for compatibility with Canon products.

It’s entirely possible to start out relatively cheap with Canon too. A Canon Rebel T3i (EOS 600D) body and anifty-fifty (50mm f/1.8) lens will set you back somewhere around the $700 mark when new. There are four series of models at varying price points, and a healthy used market.

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Nikon

The Nikon D5200 comes in at under $900 with a lens.

Nikon are next in line in the market share wars at around 25%, and are Canon’s biggest competitor. This allows them to get all the same third-party lenses from companies like Sigma and Tamron, which offer good image quality for around half the price of the high-end first party ones.

Nikon’s own lens offerings seem rather complex with a big list of suffixes behind most lenses (the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX? What?), but realistically are sortable and comparable to other manufacturer’s offerings through the focal length, aperture and price point.

Nikon has a long history of optical equipment manufacturing and unlike Canon has used essentially the same lens mount for their cameras since the 1950s. This means that many old Nikon lenses work on new Nikon cameras. If your work allows you to use manual focus, this opens up a huge range of lenses for very affordable prices.

Nikon offers a similar upgrade path and price points on the bodies as Canon, from the entry-level to the professional monsters. Unless you’re going to be heavily into video, where for the time being it’s best to go Canon, the choice between the two manufacturers is really personal preference.

Sony

The Sony A57 offers many features only found in much more expensive models from other brands.

Sony are a relatively new player in the SLR game, but they’ve made professional camcorders and cinema cameras for quite some time. They know their stuff when it comes to imaging. This relative newness to the market is an advantage, however, because it allows them to take risks and add features that the bigger players are unwilling to do.

For example, due to their translucent mirror technology where the mirror stays fixed in place during shooting, the $700 Sony A57 can shoot 10fps stills at full resolution. The equally-priced current-generation Canon, the Rebel T4i/EOS 650D, manages only 5fps, a moderate boost from the Rebel norm of just 3.7fps.

Because Sony make Nikon’s sensors, resolution and image quality in-camera is on par with the top two as well. Image stabilisation is achieved at the sensor too, as it floats on gyroscopically stabilised mounts. Since lenses then don’t need IS in them, they can be made smaller and lighter than their competition.

Quality of the lenses is very good too; not quite up there with the high-end Nikkors and L glass, but comfortably above the equivalent Sigmas and Tamrons. If you don’t feel that you’re going to need the uncompromising quality of the expensive Nikon/Canon glass, Sony are a strong contender for those who want feature-laden cameras on a budget.

There is a potential issue with using Sony cameras for strobist photography, however. Sony are big fans of keeping everything as proprietory as possible, and so their hotshoes aren’t always compatible with other brands of flashgun. Something to look into of if you’re heading in that direction. Check the compatibility with strobes and PocketWizards when you’re testing cameras in the store.

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Pentax

The Pentax K30 offers excellent value for the cost.

Pentax seemed to disappear for a while after the switchover to digital SLRs, but have been steadily working under the rader, putting out excellent bodies at reasonable prices. The Pentax K5 puts out beautiful images from its Sony sensor, and now there’s a Pentax K5 II and a Pentax K5 IIs without a low-pass filter.

They have a strong feature set including 7fps burst rate and accurate low-light autofocus and still retail for only around $1100. The Pentax K-30 is even more impressive, with the same sensor as the K5, on-sensor image stabilisation and 6fps burst at only around $650, less than half the price of an equivalent Canon or Nikon camera.

Value isn’t even the biggest strength of the Pentax DSLRs. That’s reserved for, well, strength. Built like tanks, with full steel and magnesium-alloy bodies and total weather sealing across the entire price range, it’s no surprise that Pentax is the preferred brand of many combat and military photographers.

Not only this, but like Nikon, Pentax didn’t change their “K” lens mount with the introduction of autofocus, meaning a huge array of lenses and adaptors are available for the system. This is great if you’re an old-lens enthusiast.

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Sigma

The Sigma SD15, like all Sigma SLRs, using the interesting Foveon sensor.

Last up is Sigma, who make a solid third-party lens range for the above manufacturers, but their DSLRs are something of a wildcard. Using a three-layer “Foveon” sensor, they dispense with the need for a Bayer filter altogether.

While this should make for extremely high colour accuracy since there’s no algorithmic averaging involved, no tests I’ve seen have noticed a particularly overwhelming difference between the Foveon sensors and standard Bayer-type ones.

At 12-14 megapixels, they’re also have oddly low resolution for modern SLRs. Sigma have an unfortunate tendency to triple the real resolution of the sensor in their spec sheets and advertising by pretending that the three-layer sensor has three pixels for each actual pixel.

Perhaps to their undoing, they currently use a proprietory “SA” lens mount which restricts the choices of lenses to only Sigma. This is unfortunately as Sigma has made DSLRs for a long time that use a Nikon lens mount.

With such a small market share, third-party equipment is minimal.

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Conclusion

It seems to me that there’s an option for everyone out there. Canon and Nikon make up the top of the field with the features and accessories available, but due to the names these come at a higher price.

Sony puts out an impressive performance and novel features at a competitive price if you’re willing to sacrifice some compatibility. Pentax offers extreme durability and excellent value with the native fit of cheap K mount lenses stretching back decades. Unfortunately, while Sigma is interesting, it doesn’t seem to be a wise system to start a long-term investment in.

I hope this round-up helped those of you looking to make your first DSLR purchase or even those wondering what other options are out there.

Comments? Questions? Hit up the comments below!

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