Computer Grades Wikipedia Entries

Science Codex, August 4, 2014

Wikipedia the free, online collaborative encyclopedia is an important source of information. However, while the team of volunteer editors endeavors to maintain high standards, there are occasionally problems with the veracity of content, deliberate vandalism and incomplete entries. Writing in the International Journal of Information Quality, computer scientists in China have devised a software algorithm that can automatically check a particular entry and rank it according to quality.

Jingyu Han and Kejia Chen of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, explain that the quality of data on Wikipedia has for many years been the focus of user attention. Its detractors suggest that it can never be a valid information source in the way that a proprietary encyclopedia might be because the contributors and editors are not under the direct control of a single publisher with a vested interest in quality control. Its supporters suggest that the social nature of contributions and edits and the online tracking of changes is one of Wikipedia's greatest strengths rather than a weakness.

Nevertheless, it would quiet the detractors if there were a way to quantify the quality of Wikipedia entries in an objective and automated manner. Now, Han and Chen have turned to Bayesian statistics to help them create just such a system. The notion of finding evidence based on an analysis of probabilities was first described by 18th Century mathematician and theologian Thomas Bayes. Bayesian probabilities were then utilized by Pierre-Simon Laplace to pioneer a new statistical method. Today, Bayesian analysis is commonly used to assess the content of emails and to determine the probability that the content is spam, junk mail, and so filter it from the user's inbox if the probability is high.

Han and Chen have now used dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) to analyze in a similar manner the content of Wikipedia entries. They apply multivariate Gaussian distribution modeling to the DBN analysis, which gives them a distribution of the quality of each article so that entries might be ranked. Very low-ranking entries might be flagged for editorial attention to raise the quality. By contrast, high-ranking entries could be marked in some way as the definitive entry so that such an entry is not subsequently overwritten with lower quality information.

The team has tested its algorithm on sets of several hundred articles comparing the automated quality assessment by the computer with assessment by a human user. Their algorithm out-performs a human user by up to 23 percent in correctly classifying the quality rank of a given article in the set, the team reports. The use of a computerized system to provide a quality standard for Wikipedia entries would avoid the subjective need to have people classify each entry. It could thus improve the standard as well as provide a basis for an improved reputation for the online encyclopedia.

Source: Inderscience Publishers

http://www.sciencecodex.com/wiki_ranking-139094

Tough Facts About Computer Security

Five Security Myths Debunked

Vipre Security News, July 2014

Myth #1: No One Would Want To Hack Me,
I Don't Have Anything Worth Taking
…or contacts that would make us a specific target of a criminal. However, what many people are unaware of is most of cyber threats are internet-wide fishing expeditions by automated bots looking for vulnerable computers and networks.

Contrary to what you might think, the criminal behind the bot simply wants to use your device or its storage as a remote unit for contraband material (such as child pornography) or as a zombie/slave in denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on Web sites.

Myth #2: Services Such as Tor and VPNs Make Me Completely Anonymous
Tor is free software that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. It offers tremendous anonymity from companies that harvest your data, your ISP, and even the government to a degree.

A VPN encrypts all of your traffic so you can be sure your communications are secure.

However, these and other services are not foolproof. A skilled and determined hacker can decrypt just about anything!

Myth #3: MAC Filtering and Disabling SSID Will Protect my Wi-Fi Network
Both of these strategies will provide some protection but will not stop a hacker or piece of malware from breaking in.

MAC (Media Access Control) filtering basically permits or denies network access to specific devices through the use of blacklists and whitelists. It is mostly futile against serious hackers or botnet.

Equally futile is hiding your wireless network’s SSID (Service Set Identifier). It may keep your nosy neighbor from seeing the name of your network, but as soon as you use your wireless network, you send your SSID name over the air anyway.

Myth #4: Incognito Mode Protects My Privacy
Incognito mode does protect your privacy -- but only from other people using your computer. However, it does not protect you from everybody and everything on the Internet. Even though you're warned each time you open an Incognito window, many people still think that browsing in Incognito mode means they can't be tracked, their ISP can't see what they're browsing, or they're somehow anonymous to the party on the other end of their connection. Unfortunately, none of the above is true.

Myth #5: I Don't Need Anti-Malware Because I Don't Do Anything Risky
This is perhaps the biggest and most persistent computer security myth. Even if you think you don’t do anything risky, you are always at risk from threats and attacks. It’s wise to install anti-malware security, such as VIPRE Antivirus. VIPRE combines powerful antivirus and anti-spyware technologies with automated patching of vulnerable software, a firewall to stop malicious web traffic, an anti-spam filter, and a bad website blocker.

http://www.vipreantivirus.com/newsletters/2014/index.html?utm_source=email%3A%20Main%20List%20-%20Jan14&utm_medium=email%20(internal)&utm_campaign=Newsletter%20-%20Aug%202014#techtalk

Violent Pre-Columbian Colorado

WSU Researchers See Violent
Era in Ancient Southwest
By Eric Sorensen, Washington State University science writer, August 4, 2014

PULLMAN, Wash. – It’s a given that, in numbers terms, the 20th century was the most violent in world history, with civil wars, purges and two world wars killing as many as 200 million people.

But on a per-capita basis, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler has documented a particularly bloody period more than eight centuries ago on what is now American soil. Between 1140 and 1180, in the central Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado, four relatively peaceful centuries of pueblo living devolved into several decades of violence.

Two areas diverge in violence

Writing in the journal American Antiquity, Kohler and his colleagues at WSU and the University of Colorado Boulder document how nearly nine out of 10 sets of human remains from that period have trauma from blows to either their heads or parts of their arms.

“If we’re identifying that much trauma, many were dying a violent death,” said Kohler, whose study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Yet at the same time, in the northern Rio Grande region of what is now New Mexico, people had far less violence while experiencing similar growth and, ostensibly, population pressures.

Viewed together, said Kohler, the two areas offer insight into what motivates violence in some societies but not others. The study also offers more clues to the mysterious depopulation of the northern Southwest, from a population of about 40,000 people in the mid-1200s to none 30 years later.

Comparative look at physical trauma

From the days they first arrived in the Southwest in the 1800s, anthropologists and archaeologists have for the most part downplayed evidence of violent conflict among the early farmers in the region. A minority raised the specter of violence but lacked a good measure for it.

“Archaeologists with one or two exceptions have not tried to develop an objective metric of levels of violence through time,” said Kohler. “They’ve looked at a mix of various things like burned structures, defensive site locations and so forth, but it’s very difficult to distill an estimate of levels of violence from such things.

“We’ve concentrated on one thing, and that is trauma, especially to the head and portions of the arms,” he said. “That’s allowed us to look at levels of violence through time in a comparative way.”

Population booms

Meanwhile, Kohler and his colleagues are examining the role of factors like maize production, changes to the climate and growing population in changing levels of violence. A paper of his published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the Southwest had a baby boom between 500 and 1300 that likely exceeded any population spurt on earth today.

Both the central Mesa Verde and northern Rio Grande experienced population booms, said Kohler, but surprisingly, the central Mesa Verde got more violent while the northern Rio Grande grew less so.

Kohler offers a few explanations.

Social structures among people in the northern Rio Grande changed so that they identified less with their kin and more with the larger pueblo and specific organizations that span many pueblos, such as medicine societies. The Rio Grande also had more commercial exchanges where craft specialists provided people both in the pueblo and outsiders with specific things they needed, such as obsidian arrow points.

But in the central Mesa Verde, there was less specialization.

 

Specialized, dependent community less violent

“When you don’t have specialization in societies, there’s a sense in which everybody is a competitor because everybody is doing the same thing,” said Kohler. But with specialization, people are more dependent on each other and more reluctant to do harm.

Kohler and his colleagues also cite Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s thinking in his book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.”

“Pinker thought that what he called ‘gentle commerce’ was very important in the pacification of the world over the last 5,000 years,” said Kohler. “That seems to work pretty well in our record as well.”

Wealth, age might have influenced depopulation

The episode of conflict in southwest Colorado seems to have begun when people in the Chaco culture, halfway between central Mesa Verde and northern Rio Grande, attempted to spread into southwest Colorado.

“They were resisted,” Kohler said, “but resistance was futile.”

From 1080 to 1130, the Chaco-influenced people in southwest Colorado did well. In the mid-1100s, there was a severe drought and the core of Chaco culture fell apart. Much of the area around Chaco lost population, and in 1160, violence in the central Mesa Verde peaked. Slightly more than a century later, everyone left that area, too.

“In the Mesa Verde there could be a haves-versus-have-nots dynamic towards the very end,” said Kohler. “The people who stayed the longest were probably the people who were located in the very best spots. But those pueblos too were likely losing population.

“And it might have been the older folks who stuck around,” he said, “who weren’t so anxious to move as the young folks who thought, ‘We could make a better living elsewhere.’” Older, or with too few people to marshal a good defense, the remaining people in the Mesa Verde pueblos were particularly vulnerable to raids.

At least two of the last-surviving large pueblos in the central Mesa Verde were attacked as the region was being abandoned. Some of their inhabitants probably made it out alive, but, said Kohler, “Many did not.”

https://news.wsu.edu/2014/08/04/wsu-researchers-see-violent-era-in-ancient-southwest/#.U-GNle8g-1t

Rx for America's Awful K-12 Education

The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Summary of the book (probably from the book’s jacket cover):

Economist Herb Stein famously said that something that can't go on forever, won't. For decades now, America has been investing ever-growing fortunes into its K-12 education system in exchange for steadily worse results. Public schools haven't changed much from the late 19th century industrial model and as a result young Americans are left increasingly unprepared for a competitive global economy. At the same time, Americans are spending more than they can afford on higher education, driven by the kind of cheap credit that fueled the housing bubble. With college graduates unable to secure employment or pay off student loans, the real-world value of a traditional college education is in question.

In The New School, Glenn Harlan Reynolds explains how parents, students and educators can, and must, reclaim and remake American education. Already, Reynolds explains, many Americans are abandoning traditional education for new models. Many are going to charter schools or private schools, but others are going another step beyond and making the leap to online education—over 1.8 million K-12 students already.

The New School does not prescribe a one-size-fits-all solution for education. Americans require a diverse system of innovative approaches—each suited to a family’s needs and spending potential. But with the profusion of online education, school choice, and even a return to alternatives like apprenticeships and on the job training, Americans hold the power to lower costs and improve outcomes from the ground up.

Customer reviews:

5 Stars

An excellent, modern view of education from a producer and consumer

By Johnny & Riza on January 5, 2014

Heh. A blogger known for his brevity produces a substantive view of both K-12 and higher education -- in 103 pages.

I had read both of his Broadside books. Between that and reading Instapundit, many of the ideas in The New School are familiar. But I would still highly recommend buying a copy for yourself and one to pass around to parents you know and any open minded teachers.

Reynolds is an expert on the topic as he is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, married to PhD Psychologist Dr. Helen Smith, yet the perspective of New School is much more about his role as a consumer of education for their daughter and for the bloggers' desire to assemble elements into social and political patterns. The joy of the book is its academic cred without the academic's diffidence (or turgid prose...)

I don't think I need post a spoiler alert that there are problems in education. But it is a huge, complicated, interconnected system with the distortions of more than a hundred years of government involvement. It is easy to choose one failed facet (for me it is Teachers' Unions) to hang all the deficiencies upon. New School broadens the concerns and adds significant new concepts.

Reynolds's Instapundit writings cherish modernity, and the "New" part of the "The New School" is to rescue 21st Century students from a 19th Century Prussian model which was imported to train good 20th Century factory workers.

"On his return, [Horace] Mann extolled the Prussian model in his seventh annual report. This met with some resistance, as "critics accused him of wanting to establish a 'Prussian-style tyranny' in the schools, arguing that the Prussian model was based on a presumption that the government was wiser than the citizenry, while in America the presumption was the reverse. There was considerable basis for this complaint. Prussian theorists regarded public education, and higher education as well, as an institution of 'police' and a way of making students 'useful as future tools,'" -- but Mann's idea ultimately caught on for the most part. Mann wanted to remake society, and he wanted to start with children. In his turn of phrase, "men are cast-iron, but children are wax." Just as the Prussian model had as much to do with political and social ordering as with teaching and learning, so it was with Mann's Americanized Prussian model."

Reynolds helpfully points out the Mann's children were homeschooled. But sitting still, forming orderly lines, and moving with bells prepared students for factory work. How much of that transfers to your job?

Another key insight is the comparison to a financial bubble. Consumers are so certain of a return that they use easy credit to pay ever escalating prices without carefully assessing the future value of the asset. Sound like anything? A story you heard? Bueller?

The escalating prices are never spent on instruction. Climbing walls, fancy dining halls take a byte, but the real culprit is administration which is more likely to impede instruction with paperwork and regulation. As the crown jewel California University system faces severe cuts, it seems "diversity" is untouchable:

"University of California system slashes programs and raises tuition, it has created a new systemwide "vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion." This is on top of the already enormous University of California diversity machine, which, as Heather Mac Donald notes, "includes the Chancellor's Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women's Center."

Not that my personal bête-noir comes out well:

"For a long time, the providers of education at all levels have enjoyed a sort of guildlike monopoly. And as economist John Hicks notes, as quoted earlier, "The best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life." Alas, the lives of education providers are likely to be less quiet and comfortable than they have been. When education was in the hands of guilds made up of educators, as it has largely been for over a century, educators unsurprisingly took advantage of their control to arrange things to their liking. That will change significantly in the years to come.
Neither higher education nor K-12 schooling will remain in the hands of the guilds in the future, though we can expect a significant rear-guard action on their part. But the vulnerability they face is that it will become easier and easier for people to avoid the guilds entirely thanks to the new alternatives that technology (and other changes -- but mostly technology) has made possible."

Here's hoping! The New School is full of hope without discarding a serious look at difficult issues. Five Stars.

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4 Stars

If Something Cannot Go On Forever, It Will Stop!

By Kevin Currie-Knight TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on January 13, 2014

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, founder of Instapundit and writer of two other (brief) books on the necessity of education reform, has written a more comprehensive book explaining the how, why, and (kind of) the what next of the education bubble. Unlike some pundits, Reynolds suggests that there is a bubble not just in higher education, but in k-12 education too: a perfect storm of education becoming more expensive, the (economic) value of diplomas and degrees declining, and the technology that makes creating and using new educational forms more and more viable. As Reynolds likes to put it (in the words of economist Herbert Stein), "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." And that is what he sees for both higher education and k-12.

Simply put, the education bubble - like any bubble - bursts when the cost of an investment begins to outweigh the likely return on investment. And, at this point, the cost of college degrees is proving to outweigh the rise in earning potential one gets by getting one. (And if anything, some have argued that increases in earning potential of college degrees owes more to the value of the certification - the degree itself - than the skills gained in obtaining the degree. So, what happens when employers start to question whether they are putting inflated value on the piece of paper and start hiring more people without degrees? Can you hear the bubble bursting?)

Oh, you say; well, education should be about personal growth and not increasing one's future earning potential? Well, sure, but not when it carries a five-figure price tag! (How many consumer services carry that steep a price... and still have willing consumers?) Or, maybe the government should subsidize more? Well, the problem is that like when anything is subsidized, the most likely result is that costs rise to absorb the subsidy. And if we start thinking the rising expenses and diminishing returns of k-12 education isn't terribly problematic because it is tax funded, then it is best to remember who is paying those taxes; answer: all of us. And how is it that we are teaching young people in the 21st century with a public school system that, very sadly, hasn't adapted terribly much in terms of teaching methods from its 19th century roots? Is that sustainable? If something can't go on forever....

The first half of the book or so is devoted to explaining why these bubbles in higher education and k-12 have formed and providing evidence that they've formed (and that more and more people are looking for ways to bypass traditional educational channels, often with the help of technology). The second half or so is a fairly vague outline of what Reynolds thinks will happen next. In fairness, Reynolds is vague because he (correctly) notes that no one really knows what will happen next, and the best we can do is to have some broad ideas of what might have to happen next. Vaguely, Reynolds suggests that both new forms of (what we now know as) k-12 and higher education will have to be less expensive and more adaptable to individuals, and probably something that embraces new technologies in a way that neither existing higher or k-12 education seems terribly interested in doing. (Reynolds seems quite taken by the idea - at least for higher education - that universities maintain their certification and degree-granting role while becoming more open about allowing students to learn materials on their own or at their own speed, possibly even without taking classes in favor of self-study.)

Those who have read Reynold's other books on education will find little new here, and as I mention, Reynolds's prescriptions and predictions are somewhat vague; while that may be disappointing in some way, it is also to his credit. Where Reynolds shines is in explaining (with a fair degree of historical accuracy, I think) the k-12 and higher education bubble and the evidence that it is either bursting already or, where it isn't, it will soon burst. And, also to his credit, he describes all this with a surprising tone of optimism (even though he is an academic).... which gives me (also an academic) a bit of hope that, if we all read and play our cards right, we can come through all of this with something better and stronger than what came before.

http://www.amazon.com/New-School-Information-American-Education/dp/1594037108/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407130763&sr=1-1&keywords=The+New+School%3A+How+the+Information+Age+Will+Save+American+Education+from+Itself.

Widespread Human Virus Newly Found

Novel Virus Discovered in
Half the World's Population
SDSU researchers identified a highly abundant virus that could play a major role in obesity, diabetes.
By Michael Price, San Diego State University, July 24, 2014

Odds are, there’s a virus living inside your gut that has gone undetected by scientists for decades. A new study led by researchers at San Diego State University has found that more than half the world’s population is host to a newly described virus, named crAssphage, which infects one of the most common types of gut bacteria, Bacteroidetes. This phylum of bacteria is thought to be connected with obesity, diabetes and other gut-related diseases. The research appears today in Nature Communications.

Robert A. Edwards, a bioinformatics professor at SDSU, and his colleagues stumbled upon the discovery quite by accident. Working with visiting researcher and corresponding author on the study Bas E. Dutilh, now at Radboud University Medical Center in The Netherlands, the researchers were using results from previous studies on gut-inhabiting viruses to screen for new viruses.

In the DNA fecal samples from 12 different individuals, they noticed a particular cluster of viral DNA, about 97,000 base pairs long, that the samples all had in common. When Edwards and his colleagues checked this discovery against a comprehensive listing of known viruses, they came up empty.

The researchers then screened for the virus across the database of the National Institute of Health’s Human Microbiome Project (HMP), and Argonne National Laboratory's MG-RAST database, and again found it in abundance in samples derived from human feces.

To prove that the viral DNA they discovered in their computer data actually exists in nature, fellow SDSU virologist John Mokili used a technique known as DNA amplification to locate the virus in the original samples used to build NIH’s database.

“So we have a biological proof that the virus they found with the computer actually exists in the samples,” Mokili said.

This was a new virus that about half the sampled people had in their bodies that nobody knew about.
“It’s not unusual to go looking for a novel virus and find one,” Edwards said. “But it’s very unusual to find one that so many people have in common. The fact that it’s flown under the radar for so long is very strange.”

An ancient virus

The fact that it’s so widespread indicates that it probably isn’t a particularly young virus, either.

“We’ve basically found it in every population we’ve looked at,” Edwards said. “As far as we can tell, it’s as old as humans are.”

He and his team named the virus crAssphage, after the cross-assembly software program used to discover it.

Some of the proteins in crAssphage’s DNA are similar to those found in other well-described viruses. That allowed Edwards’ team to determine that their novel virus is one known as a bacteriophage, which infects and replicates inside bacteria—and using innovative bioinformatic techniques, they predicted that this particular bacteriophage proliferates by infecting a common phylum of gut bacteria known as Bacteriodetes.

Gut punch

Bacteriodetes bacteria live toward the end of the intestinal tract, and they are suspected to play a major role in the link between gut bacteria and obesity. What role crAssphage plays in this process will be a target of future research.

Further details about crAssphage have been difficult to come by. It’s unknown how the virus is transmitted, but the fact that it was not found in very young infants’ fecal samples suggests that it is not passed along maternally, but acquired during childhood. The makeup of the viral DNA suggests that it’s circular in structure. Further laboratory work has confirmed that the viral DNA is a singular entity, but it’s proven difficult to isolate.

“We know it’s there, but we can’t capture it quite yet,” Edwards said.

Once the virus is isolated, he hopes to delve into its role in obesity. It’s possible the virus in some way mediates the activity of Bacteriodetes colonies, but whether crAssphage promotes or suppresses obesity-related processes in the gut remains to be seen.

The virus might also be used to prevent or mitigate other diseases affected by the gut such as diabetes
and gastroenterological maladies.

Once these processes are better understood, Edwards envisions one day the possibility of personalized medicine based on this virus.

“This could be a key to personalized phage medicine,” he said. “In individuals, we could isolate your particular strain of the virus, manipulate it to target harmful bacteria, then give it back to you.”

http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news.aspx?s=75082

Theories of Leadership

Leadership has been described as "a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task".  For example, some understand a leader simply as somebody whom people follow, or as somebody who guides or directs others, while others define leadership as "organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal".

Studies of leadership have produced theories involving traits, situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma, and intelligence, among others.

Early Western History and the Trait Theory

The search for the characteristics or traits of leaders has been ongoing for centuries. Philosophical writings from Plato's Republic to Plutarch's Lives have explored the question "What qualities distinguish an individual as a leader?" Underlying this search was the early recognition of the importance of leadership and the assumption that leadership is rooted in the characteristics that certain individuals possess. This idea that leadership is based on individual attributes is known as the "trait theory of leadership".

The trait theory was explored at length in a number of works in the 19th century. Most notable are the writings of Thomas Carlyle and Francis Galton, whose works have prompted decades of research.  In Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), Carlyle identified the talents, skills, and physical characteristics of men who rose to power. In Galton's Hereditary Genius (1869), he examined leadership qualities in the families of powerful men. After showing that the numbers of eminent relatives dropped off when moving from first degree to second degree relatives, Galton concluded that leadership was inherited. In other words, leaders were born, not developed. Both of these notable works lent great initial support for the notion that leadership is rooted in characteristics of the leader.

Rise of Alternative Theories

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, a series of qualitative reviews of these studies (e.g., Bird, 1940; Stogdill, 1948; Mann, 1959) prompted researchers to take a drastically different view of the driving forces behind leadership. In reviewing the extant literature, Stogdill and Mann found that while some traits were common across a number of studies, the overall evidence suggested that persons who are leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in other situations. Subsequently, leadership was no longer characterized as an enduring individual trait, as situational approaches (see alternative leadership theories below) posited that individuals can be effective in certain situations, but not others. The focus then shifted away from traits of leaders to an investigation of the leader behaviors that were effective. This approach dominated much of the leadership theory and research for the next few decades.

Reemergence of Trait Theory

New methods and measurements were developed after these influential reviews that would ultimately reestablish the trait theory as a viable approach to the study of leadership. For example, improvements in researchers' use of the round robin research design methodology allowed researchers to see that individuals can and do emerge as leaders across a variety of situations and tasks.  Additionally, during the 1980s statistical advances allowed researchers to conduct meta-analyses, in which they could quantitatively analyze and summarize the findings from a wide array of studies. This advent allowed trait theorists to create a comprehensive picture of previous leadership research rather than rely on the qualitative reviews of the past. Equipped with new methods, leadership researchers revealed the following:

• Individuals can and do emerge as leaders across a variety of situations and tasks.
• Significant relationships exist between leadership emergence and such individual traits as:

 

·         intelligence

·         adjustment

·         extraversion

·         conscientiousness

·         openness to experience

·         general self-efficacy

While the trait theory of leadership has certainly regained popularity, its reemergence has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in sophisticated conceptual frameworks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership

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Afterword by the Blog Author

The blog author has a separate theory of leadership.  A genuine leader is endowed with certain traits that are rare and unmistakable.  Among these traits there must be a lifelong autodidactic curiosity as well as a suspicious dislike of flattery.

Below the leader is the sherpa, a more common role that involves extensive subject matter expertise combined with an integrity and loyalty that are at least partially instilled by the society in which the sherpa is immersed.  Deputy sherpas (“sous-sherpas”) are aides and assistants in training to the sherpa.

Below the sherpa is the steward, who accepts responsibility for maintaining a facility or capability or corps.  Stewardship is a well-documented capability emphasizing ethics and accountability.  It has a particularly long history among Christians.

National Transportation Safety Board

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine accidents, pipeline incidents and railroad accidents.  When requested, the NTSB will assist the military and foreign governments with accident investigation.  The NTSB is also in charge of investigating cases of hazardous materials releases that occur during transportation.  Deborah Hersman was appointed as NTSB Chairman in July 2009. Christopher A. Hart was designated Vice Chairman on August 18, 2009 for a two-year term. He then became Acting Chairman after Hersman stepped down. The agency is based in Washington, D.C.  As of 2013, it has four regional offices around the country and runs a training center in Ashburn, Virginia.

History

The origin of the NTSB was in the Air Commerce Act of 1926.  The NTSB was established in 1967 as the federal government's primary accident investigation agency for all modes of transportation – aviation, highway, rail, marine and pipeline. The core of the new agency was composed of the Civil Aeronautics Board's Bureau of Safety (The CAB retained its economic regulation of the airline industry until it was closed on December 31, 1984, due to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978). Originally established with strong ties to the Department of Transportation, these ties were later severed under the Independent Safety Board Act of 1974. The organization receives its authority from Chapter 11, Title 49 of the United States Code.  It has investigated over 140,000 aviation incidents since its establishment.

Investigations

The NTSB is normally the lead organization in the investigation of a transportation accident within its sphere. However, this power can be surrendered to other organizations if the Attorney General declares the case to be linked to an intentional criminal act, although the NTSB would still provide technical support in such investigations. This occurred during the investigation of the September 11, 2001, attacks when the Department of Justice took over the investigation.

An investigation of a major accident within the United States typically starts with the creation of a "go team," composed of specialists in fields relating to the occurrence. This is followed by the designation of other organizations or corporations as parties to the investigation. The Board may then choose to hold public hearings on the issue. Ultimately, it will publish a final report and may issue safety recommendations. The Board has no legal authority to implement, or impose, its recommendations. That burden falls upon regulators at either the federal or state level or individual transportation companies.

The NTSB has primacy in investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States (the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is always a party to these investigations, but the NTSB is the investigating agency). For certain accidents, due to resource limitations, the Board will ask the FAA to collect the factual information at the scene of the accident; the NTSB bases its report on that information.

The NTSB may assist in incident or accident investigations occurring outside the United States under certain circumstances. These may include accidents or incidents involving American-registered or American-owned civil aircraft or aircraft with U.S. manufactured components in foreign air space.

The NTSB will also on occasion provide technical and other advice to transportation investigative boards in countries that do not have the equipment or specialized technicians available to undertake all aspects of a complex investigation.

The NTSB's authority to investigate other transportation accidents varies by mode. For example, it investigates highway accidents "in cooperation with the States." For marine investigations, jurisdiction between the NTSB and the U.S. Coast Guard is prescribed in a detailed Memorandum of Understanding between the two agencies. For those railroad and pipeline accidents it chooses to investigate, it has primacy.

A little-known responsibility of the NTSB is that it serves as a court of appeals for airmen, aircraft mechanics, certificated aviation-related companies and mariners who have their licenses suspended or revoked by the federal government. The Board's determinations may be appealed to the federal court system by the losing party, whether it is the individual or company, on the one hand, or the FAA or the Coast Guard, on the other.

The Safety Board maintains a training academy in Ashburn, Virginia, where it conducts courses for its employees and professionals in other government agencies, foreign governments or private companies, in areas such as general accident investigation, specific elements of investigations like survival factors or human performance, or related matters like family affairs or media relations. The facility houses for training purposes the reconstruction of more than 90 feet of the TWA Flight 800 Boeing 747, which was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after it crashed on July 17, 1996, following a fuel tank explosion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transportation_Safety_Board