NASA IS HELPING CLEAN UP THE CALIFORNIA OIL SPILL FROM MAY.

NASA IS HELPING CLEAN UP THE CALIFORNIA OIL SPILL FROM MAY.

Dirty waters Now we can see Pollution from the Sky

A view of an oil polluted beach from the AVIRIS-NG instrument

Santa Barbara is still cleaning up the oil spilled onto its beaches in May, and it’s getting help from a surprising source.

NASA, more known for its off-world endeavors, is helping to track the oil spill from the sky, using a plane equipped with the Next-Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (also known as ARVISng). The first generation ARVIS was used to track oil in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon disaster that spilled over 125 million gallons of oil into the water.

The amount of oil released in the Santa Barbara spill — caused by a broken Plains All American pipeline near the coast — is much lower (over 100,000 gallons), but is still significant. Experts estimate that the cleanup will cost $69 million. But in order to clean up the oil, you have to know where it is. That’s where ARVISng comes in.

Oil can be difficult to see on water and even on beaches, where it can seep into the sand. But ARVISng is a spectrometer, an instrument that measures tiny differences in light is absorbed or reflected off objects or materials. By taking measurements of tar balls (nasty accumulations of oil) on the beach, researchers were able to get a baseline reading that they could use to look for oil from the plane, using the ARVISng instrument.

The researchers hope that methods like this could help responders working on other oil spills in the future. With oil production expanding into sensitive areas like the Arctic ocean, we’ll need every tool we’ve got.

INSIDE THE ZUMWALT DESTROYER

INSIDE THE ZUMWALT DESTROYER.         

THE U.S. NAVY'S MOST FUTURISTIC WARSHIP FINALLY HITS THE WATER.

Zumwalt In Maine

 The U.S. Navy's Zumwalt destroyer, the most technologically advanced warship ever built and the first of its eponymous class, was set to be christened October 19, but then politics intervened. Late last month, the U.S. Navy finally launched the Zumwalt from a shipyard in Maine (though without a baptismal spray of champagne). Popular Science reported on the Zumwalt's incredible strength and stealth last year; check out the details, including how the warship might have changed the course of a historic Korean War battle, in our October 2012 cover story.

I went to Raytheon's Seapower Capability Center in Portsmouth, RI, to get a look inside the futuristic destroyer. The Zumwalt isn't there; it's waiting at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Instead, I'm here to see a mock-up of the bridge, the command center where sailors send and receive communications, plot courses, direct weapons, and generally see to the operations of the ship.

Zumwalt In Maine

 The U.S. Navy's Zumwalt destroyer, the most technologically advanced warship ever built and the first of its eponymous class, was set to be christened October 19, but then politics intervened. Late last month, the U.S. Navy finally launched the Zumwalt from a shipyard in Maine (though without a baptismal spray of champagne). Popular Science reported on the Zumwalt's incredible strength and stealth last year; check out the details, including how the warship might have changed the course of a historic Korean War battle, in our October 2012 cover story.

I went to Raytheon's Seapower Capability Center in Portsmouth, RI, to get a look inside the futuristic destroyer. The Zumwalt isn't there; it's waiting at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Instead, I'm here to see a mock-up of the bridge, the command center where sailors send and receive communications, plot courses, direct weapons, and generally see to the operations of the ship.

Mock-up Of Zumwalt Bridge

Apart from the metal staircase on the left side, at first glance the bridge could be mistaken for a modern office of a graphic design firm. Rows of computer stations, each with three monitors, all face toward three large projections of the Zumwalt's location—in this demonstration, the ship is parked off the coast of South Carolina, vigilantly guarding Fort Sumter.

My guides frowned upon Star Trek comparisons.

Besides the usual keyboard, trackball, and touchscreen, each computer station has a joystick. A Raytheon employee told me the joysticks aren't yet mapped to any function, but they could be configured to pilot drones. Poking around the central screen at one of the stations configured for weapons, I found a display map, flight paths, and a series of concentric circles representing incoming vehicles: gray for initiating contact, yellow for warning, and red for opening fire. More information about specific systems (the weapons used, sensors, engines) appears on the side monitors.

And that's the bridge. Nineteen sailors per shift will control the ship from here, and computers will do the rest. The Zumwalt is expected to have a crew of only 154, about half that of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers currently in service. What makes this possible is a tremendous degree of automation. Everything, from the valves leading to the showers to the turrets for the guns, is hooked into what's called the Total Ship Computing Environment. (My guides frowned upon Star Trek comparisons.) Rather than feeding the raw data from a pressure sensor in a pipe back to an engineer, the relevant computer responds accordingly, and then informs the crew member watching the pipes that the change happened.

Crew members will live relatively well. At the lowest rank, there will be four sailors per stateroom (and bathroom). The ship design calls for libraries and lounges, and there's additional sleeping space and room for other military personnel the Zumwalt might want to take aboard for special purposes. More on that later.

The Brains Of The Zumwalt

All this computing power comes from large boxes (see image above) called Electronic Modular Enclosures. Each of the 16 on board the Zumwalt contains 235 electronics cabinets, consolidating a lot of computer systems into a larger module that's protected from the rigors of life at sea. Inside the enclosures are many parts available to commercial businesses, like IBM Blade servers, which are much cheaper and easier to replace than rugged equipment specially made for naval use. Navy vessels are expected to serve for decades, but computer technology moves much much faster than that. To upgrade the electronics on the Zumwalt, individual modular enclosures can be pulled out, replaced by more modern parts, and reinstalled with much less fuss than renovation usually entails.

The ship's electricity comes from gas-powered turbines, which together generate up to 78 megawatts of power. Under normal conditions, the operating systems of the ship and the engines use only 20 of those megawatts, so the ship has 58 left over for weapons. Especially future weapons: Railguns and lasers, both long in development for the Navy, could find a home on board the Zumwalt, which has more than enough electricity to meet these weapons' intense energy demands.

Zumwalt Missile Ports

Of course, future weapons alone do not a warship make. The Zumwalt will enter service armed with two long-range guns that fire guided artillery shells up to 72 miles away, two smaller guns to protect the Zumwalt from ships that get too close, and 80 different missile launch points, grouped in 20 sets of four. You can read more about the Zumwalt's weapon systems in our October 2012 feature.

It shows up on radar as nothing larger than a small fishing vessel.

Having the weapons to hit something is, at most, half the battle. Stealth is just as important. The Zumwalt's weird construction—sharp edges and sloping surfaces—mean that, according to Raytheon, it shows up on radar as nothing larger than a "small fishing vessel," despite being 610 feet long and displacing 15,000 tons of water. It has both the medium-frequency sonar typical of surface ships and the high-frequency sonar common in submarines. The onboard radar can simultaneously perform broad sweeps and narrow scanning. There's also a system of electronic eyes that catch both visual and infrared light and then analyze the images to determine if anything seen is a threat and warrants notifying a sailor on watch.

Besides the tools for naval battle, the Zumwalt has a helipad big enough for either two helicopters or a helicopter and a vertical-takeoff drone. There's enough room on the Zumwalt to house two helicopter or drone crews, as well as room for two helicopters' worth of special forces, if need be. The V-22 Osprey, while a staple of vertical takeoff and tricky deployments, is too large and heavy for the Zumwalt's landing pad, but for most purposes, helicopters will be fine. Thanks to the ship's sensors, defenses, and stealth, it might very well get special forces into otherwise difficult-to-reach places.

Zumwalt Undergoing Construction

Star Trek Into Darkness, released this summer, features a warship called the Dreadnought that's heavily automated and designed to run on a very minimal crew. When, toward the end of my visit, I asked my hosts at Raytheon what they thought of this comparison, I was met with a hearty chorus of "no comment."

The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, seems ready for the science fiction comparisons. It looks like the first commander of the Zumwalt will be Captain James Kirk.

BLACK SOLAR CELLS REACH INCREDIBLE NEW EFFICIENCY RECORD.

BLACK SOLAR CELLS REACH INCREDIBLE NEW EFFICIENCY RECORD.

Solar Panels

Renewable energy is the future. All over the world cities and countries are vowing to go quit fossil fuels and commit to getting their energy fix from 100 percent renewable sources.

One of the most popular renewable options is solar—especially in areas that are, well, sunny. But in order to capture sunlight and turn it into electricity, you need solar cells, also known as photovoltaic cells.

With solar cells of particular interest to researchers, businesses, environmental groups, and just about everybody else, it always seems like there are new advances in research. Just last week, researchers at Aalto University published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology announcing that they created a black silicon solar cell with an efficiency of 22.1 percent. What does that mean, exactly? It sounds good, and Black Silicon would be a great name for a rock band, but how does it compare with everything else in the wide world of solar power?

Here are three of the most common types of solar cells that you might hear about, and what they do:

Crystalline Silicon: These are the solar cells dominating the MARKET right now. In 2011, 90 percent of all solar cells were made from crystalline silicon. They can convert sunlight into electricity at a rate of 25 percent in ideal conditions. This is what other types of solar cells are measuring themselves against. The downside is these versions tend to be bulky.

Thin Film: Thin-film solar cells are less expensive to produce than crystalline silicon solar cells. Made from cadmium compounds, these cells are around 75 times thinner and can absorb sunlight better than silicon. Their flexibility and low weight makes them ideal as unobtrusive energy collectors. So why aren’t they at the top of the heap? Because they aren’t as good at converting sunlight to electricity as their crystalline silicon competitors… yet. Last year in the lab, thin-film technology reached a high of 20.4 percent efficiency. Not bad.

Black Silicon: Black silicon solar cells are similar to crystalline silicon solar cells. Really similar. The difference is that black silicon solar cells are treated so that they appear to be black on the surface. Why is that a big deal? Think of wearing a black T-shirt on a hot summer day. The black color tends to absorb more sunlight, which translates to an uncomfortable summer afternoon for you, but more energy gathered for a solar cell. It’s an attractive option for areas that don’t get as much sunlight but still want to make good use of the light they do receive. Until now, turning silicon cells black tended to undercut their efficiency at turning sunlight into power, however. That’s why the new paper, showing an efficiency of 22.1 percent is promising.

Why Tesla Energy could be the biggest technology leap in 20 years

Why Tesla Energy could be the biggest technology leap in 20 years.

The PowerWall is a life changing product that can bring electricity supply to remote parts of the world.

A lot of people have ideas. However, rarely they are able to execute them and see them to fruition. That's what separates Elon Musk from most technology executives. Yes, we've had the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Larry Page, but Elon is still different in an awesome way.

All of them have spoken about changing the world and perhaps all have done so in their own way. With Google, Larry Page has brought information to the masses with search; with Microsoft, Bill Gates brought computing to the masses and Steve Jobs reinvented how we listened to music, used the computer and the mobile phone.

But all these leaps were possible because of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's prediction back in 1965. Now famously known as "Moore's Law", he predicted that the transistors in the microprocessor will double every year, hence doubling performance without increasing the cost. This spawned the age of the computer, the mobile phone and so forth, which enabled innovations at Microsoft, Apple and Google and many other tech companies.

What Musk is doing with Tesla Energy is not based on Moore's Law. Musk is reinventing the battery. With the solar powered PowerWall and PowerPack, he's decoupling you from the power grid. Yes, this is a massive leap in battery technology, which, by the way, does not follow Moore's Law as it is only restricted to semiconductors.

Musk spoke about the battery and one would not realise how revolutionary his announcement is. Frankly, a battery is not a glamorous product like an iPhone or an iWatch, but its impact will be lasting if Musk can live up to his promise.

So why do I believe this? The answer is simple. The PowerWall, which is a solution made for homes, is an elegant looking battery that stands vertically up against a wall offering 10 kWh in a weekly cycle and 7 kWh in a daily cycle. Tesla claims this solution should be enough to power most homes during peak evening hours. And both solutions cost $3,500 and $3,000 respectively.

As it is a 100 kg, 51.2 inch tall solution, it can fit in any home. It gets its energy from solar panels that will be installed on a terrace or roof so basically, yeah, it can fit anywhere. Also if you feel, 7 kWh or 10 kWh is less, you can daisy chain up to 9 PowerWalls together for up to 90 kWh.

The math is simple. Your fridge consumes the most power. On an average, it will consume 4.8 kWh per day according to Tesla. If you're in India, particularly in Delhi, you probably have an AC too, which will consume a similar amount of power if used all day long. Other things like your laptop, lights and TV can all be covered within 2 kWh and that's also an extreme number.

So we're talking about two PowerWalls costing $7,000 or around Rs 4.5 lakhs for a fully autonomous renewable energy solution for which Tesla will service the product for 10 years. Just do the math on your monthly electricity bill and figure out the ramifications of what Elon Musk is offering you.

This is an economic solution for an upper middle class family in New Delhi, and comes with massive environmental benefits. Leave redundancy, Tesla Energy is perhaps about self sufficiency.

Just imagine this product being in the remote parts of the country that are not connected to the grid - those remote parts of UP where Rahul Gandhi spent his time at homes that don't have electricity supply. The PowerWall will eliminate this. This is a life changing product, not for India, but for the world. The remote parts of Africa could be energised with this fully autonomous battery solution.

Musk's ambition for this project is boundless. With the Powerpack, Tesla is providing solution for industrial purposes that is infinitely scalable. It has 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale to 10 mWh or higher. This is potentially a micro grid, which can power a city or more. According to Musk, with 160 million PowerPacks, you could power the entire US and with 2 billion PowerPacks, the entire world could run on limitless renewable energy. Imagine that.

Have your say. You can comment here.Musk has already started the journey as he is building a GigaFactory, the first of many, in Nevada. This battery technology has the potential to change the world like no other product and you probably don't know about it because it is a battery - and it's not glamorous.

It is also ironic that Tesla, named after the legendary Nikolai Tesla, started off as a car company and is finally taking a leap towards energy, something that Tesla was known for. Nikolai would be smiling somewhere up there.

10 Interesting Facts On India That You Had No Idea About.a

10 Interesting Facts On India That You Had No Idea About.

"India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only."

These are not our words. These are the words of the great Mark Twain. And here are 25 Indians facts to support his statement:

The human calculator:

Shakuntla Devi was given this title after she demonstrated the calculation of two 13 digit numbers: 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 which were picked at random. She answered correctly within 28 seconds. 

The human calculator

The father of India's missile programme had visited Switzerland back in 2006. Upon his arrival, Switzerland 

declared May 26th as Science Day.

Science day in Switzerland is dedicated to Ex-Indian President, APJ Abdul Kalam

In September 2009, India's ISRO Chandrayaan- 1 using its Moon Mineralogy Mapper detected water on the moon for the first time.

Water on the moon was discovered by India

Shampoo was invented in India, not the commercial liquid ones but the method by use of herbs. The word 'shampoo' itself has been derived from the Sanskrit word champu, which means to massage.

Shampooing is an Indian concept

At an altitude of 2,444 meters, the Chail Cricket Ground in Chail, Himachal Pradesh, is the highest in the world. It was built in 1893 and is a part of the Chail Military School.

The highest cricket ground in the world

It took a total of 2,57,00,000 man hours for completion and also weighs as much as 50,000 African elephants. A true engineering and architectural marvel.

Bandra Worli Sealink has steel wires equal to the earth's circumference

Mawsynram, a village on the Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, receives the highest recorded average rainfall in the world. Cherrapunji, also a part of Meghalaya, holds the record for the most rainfall in the calendar year of 1861.

The wettest inhabited place in the world

The 2011 Kumbh Mela was the largest gathering of people with over 75 million pilgrims. The gathering was so huge that the crowd was visible from space.

Kumbh Mela gathering visible from space

India has the largest postal network in the world with over 1, 55,015 post offices. A single post office on an average serves a population of 7,175 people. The floating post office in Dal Lake, Srinagar, was inaugurated in August 2011.

A floating post office

25 Signs You Need Help Marketing.

Digital Marketing

Marketers find the right audience for your business and convert passive shoppers into active buyers. The most successful companies in the world get ahead of the competition and thrive thanks to quality marketing. 

Even if your business is already growing, it can always grow faster. Marketing can help. If you run a company without a marketing team, or have one filled only with junior associates, here are 25 reasons you may want to recruit experienced marketers or hire an agency.

25 Signs You Need Help Digital Marketin

1. You would rather look at company financials than Google Analytics. Data is powerful, but if you do not know how to harness the power of your website analytics you are severely missing out. 

2. You get overwhelmed thinking about advertising, content and social media. Your business loses out on a lot of opportunity by not engaging in any marketing activities. Of course, you should not make the even graver mistake of hiring an intern to manage all of these things. 

3. Your idea of marketing is a $50 ad in a local newspaper or a $15,000 TV spot. Targeting, you say. What targeting? 

4. You either don’t know what real-time bidding (RTB) or programmatic buying are, or have never heard of them. Surely, advertising isn’t that complicated…. 

Related: Perform Powerful Personalized Marketing in 4 Easy Steps:

5. Your business gets a lot of website traffic but a relatively low number of sales -- less than 1 percent. It is time to polish up your conversion funnel to capture more visitor value. 

6. Your site hasn’t had a makeover since 2012. In fact, you probably haven’t touched it since it was first created. 

7. People have a hard time trying to find your company on Google. You shouldn’t settle for third or fourth position for your own brand name. 

8. You love referral programs such as Uber’s “Give $20. Get $20” but the thought doesn’t even cross your mind about applying that to your business. It is a lot easier than you think! 

9. Email newsletters make you cringe. You are also inclined to hit spam when you get more than one email from a company or its representatives.

10. You rarely survey your customers and simply make assumptions about who they are, what they do, how much they make, where they live, and why they love your brand.

 Related: How Long Before Your Customers Trust You? Two Years.

11. You like the idea of having lots of fans and followers on social media, but have no idea how you would even engage them. Funny cat pictures do not count. 

12. You are unfamiliar with the terms bounce rate, call-to-action, click through, and impressions. You also think that sort of gibberish wouldn’t even apply to your business. 

13. Your sales team has a hard time explaining what you do, how your product or service differentiates itself from competitors and applicable use cases for your offerings. Marketing helps provide collateral and copy so others understand your company a lot better. 

14. You love a good billboard ad and you hate clicking anything on the web. Wait, seriously? 

15. You think you are smarter than your customers. In a day and age where customers have real voice and will not be silenced, you better be prepared to put your ego aside and actively learn from potential buyers.

 Related: 5 Keys to Unlocking the Power of Google Analytics

16. You imagine getting your company into The New York Times is impossible to do. It is hard, but by targeting the right writer with the perfect story angle, you can headline the front page of the business section. 

17. You are not familiar with inbound marketing or outbound marketing. It is all just advertising, right? Wrong. 

18. You enjoy the idea of an endless flow of new customers but regularly forget about engaging your already existing and loyal clients. 

19. You create all of your images in Microsoft Paint or PowerPoint. You believe tools such as Canva and Photoshop have too much going on. 

20. You wonder why YouTube is so popular. That is because brands that spend money on quality video get tremendous ROI. 

Related: 5 Signs That It's Time to Outsource Your Marketing

21. Anything related to marketing is done with a set-it and forget-it philosophy. If it works, why tweak it? Or, if it doesn’t work, give it more time. Unfortunately, you only throw away money this way. 

22. You haven’t heard of Seth Godin, Brian Clark or Dharmesh Shah. You wonder if they are supposed to be reality show stars or something. 

23. You believe companies like Charmin, GoPro and American Express would have grown anyways, without needing to invest so heavily in marketing. You’d be wrong. 

24. You never thought to tie in the ongoing marketing initiatives you have into a larger, structured campaign. Marketing impact multiplies when tactics are complimentary and cohesive. 

25. You hate the idea of a company blog, though you spend a majority of your time reading articles created and published by like-minded brands.

AK-47s transformed into jewelry and watches, thanks to a chance meeting in a TED hallway

The metal in this watch was once an AK-47. Through the company Fonderie 47, social entrepreneur Peter Thum has helped decommission 45,000 of these assault rifles in Africa. 

The watch looks both futuristic and retro at the same time. A swirl of visible gears and carefully calibrated dials, it charts time in an unusual way — the hour jumps into place at the top, the minute is marked in a semicircle along the bottom, and the seconds swoop above. It’s a statement watch, the kind of piece that people inevitably ask about.

This watch — which at $195,000 is no small investment — comes in a rose or white gold finish. But the metal underneath has a history. Before being crafted into a high-end timepiece, this metal formed an AK-47. Each watch has the serial number of the weapon destroyed to create it displayed across the side. And each purchase funds the destruction of an additional thousand assault rifles in Africa.

This watch was dreamed up by social entrepreneur Peter Thum, the founder of Ethos Water and a TED attendee. Thum calls the AK-47 “the most infamous and destructive gun in the world” and through the company Fonderie 47, he transforms these weapons into jewelry — rings, cuffs, earrings, necklaces and more. The watch is the company’s pièce de résistance.

The idea for Fonderie 47 was born out of a chance meeting at TED2009, when Thum struck up a conversation with fellow entrepreneur John Zapolski. “We met in between sessions in the lobby,” Thum remembers. “Like a lot of people at TED, you meet in the hallways — and then they become people that you know and interact with for the rest of your life.”

As the two talked, they discovered that they had both recently traveled to Tanzania. “I don’t remember how we got to this topic, but the subject of security and guns came up,” says Thum. “We were talking about the AK-47, and we both said, ‘We should talk about this more.’”

The AK-47 is a gun designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov for the Soviet military in 1947. While it has become one of the most widely used shoulder weapons in the world, in Africa it is especially prevalent. Because of its low cost, ease of use and long-term durability, the AK-47 has become the gun of choice for rebels, militia members and terrorists in Africa. (An interesting watch: the PBS Frontline special, “On the trail of an AK-47.”) In April, Al-Shabaab gunmen used AK-47s in a horrifying attack on a university in Kenya that left 148 people dead. The curve of the AK-47’s magazine has become eerily iconic in images from conflict regions.

A stockpile of AK-47s and other assault rifles. Thum makes these weapons the raw material for something beautiful.

Both Thum and Zapolski were concerned about the proliferation of assault rifles in Africa and wanted to come up with an idea to take AK-47s specifically out of circulation. They wondered: could they transform these weapons into something benign — even something beautiful?

“John was thinking about an art installation. I said, ‘I think we should try to make it into something that would live in the world, something that would be a part of people’s lives and that would get talked about,’” says Thum. “The idea evolved from there … We focused on watches because they are also mechanical — but at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of things that human beings make … The AK-47 is not a refined thing. Swiss watchmaking, at its highest levels, is probably one of the most refined things that human beings do. So it seemed compelling to take this object that was about death and destruction and make it into something that was also a machine, but one of beauty.”

Creating this watch ended up being a much bigger challenge than Thum and Zapolski, who left the company in 2012, originally imagined.

“It might have taken us longer to finish the first watch than it took Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel,” says Thum. (History buffs will note that is almost true, though not quite.)

The first issue: figuring out how to get AK-47s in an ethical way. The solution came in 2011, when Thum got permission to transform AK-47s confiscated in Virunga National Park in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This stunning park is in the North Kivu province, a 
seat of conflict since 1998.

Examining  cache of confiscated weaponry.

The next hurdle: getting the AK-47s to the United States, which has strict laws about the import of weapons. “We made a lot of different attempts and tried a lot of different angles, all of them legal,” says Thum. The solution: destroying the weapons locally and then transporting them. “We brought them back in our luggage,” recalls Thum. “We brought them across the border of the Congo and Rwanda, and then checked our bags at the airport in Kigali and flew back to New York.”

And yet, this method led to another challenge — finding people who would work with the material. “The steel looked like junk,” says Thum. “People who make luxury jewelry and watches are accustomed to working with materials that are easier to work with — precious metals like 18-karat gold and 24-karat gold that are soft and have low melting temperatures, With steel, the melting temperature is much higher. Their equipment isn’t really built to work with it.”

Thum found an initial collaborator in a friend of a friend, a blacksmith who proposed building a forge to heat the steel to a high temperature. He then pounded the metal using an anvil and hammer into molds, in order to create usable parts. Because the effects of the economic recession were still being felt at the time, Thum says he actually had an easy time finding factories willing to take the project on.

Thum landed on the name Fonderie 47 — “fonderie,” because it’s French for “foundry,” and “47” for “AK-47.” In 2011, he began talking to investors — including many from the TED community — and offering the first products.

The brand has grown steadily ever since. James de Givenchy created a collection for Fonderie 47, and the watch was designed by Adrian Glessing and produced by Swiss watchmaker David Candaux. Every purchase funds the destruction of more AK-47s.

“As of the end of last year, we destroyed a little over 45,000 assault rifles in [the Congo and Burundi],” says Thum.

Before becoming jewelry, these weapons are destroyed locally. Fonderie 47 works with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mines Advisory Group to destroy weapons.

The real value here is that these guns are unlikely to be replaced. “There’s a significant difference in the economic value of the AK-47 in Africa versus the global trading price,” says Thum. “The upper end of the price range for an AK-47 type weapon is $534 and the lower end of the range is $349. So if you look at the value of 45,000 AK-47s that are legacy weapons, it would cost between $15 and $24 million to replace them.”

In the summer of 2012, Thum and his wife, actress Cara Buono, had the idea to take things a step further and create products made out of weapons secured in the United States. They founded a new brand, Liberty United, to make pendants, charms and rings.

“The idea was very similar,” say Thum. “We partnered with American cities and police departments to give us guns from buyback [programs] or evidence that had been released from crimes. We take guns and bullets as material and transform it.”

So far, Liberty United is working with police departments in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Syracuse, New York; Cook County, Illinois; and Newburgh, New York. The price of these pieces tends to be lower, and the design is overseen more tightly by the company, as fabrication is done in New York and Rhode Island

Liberty United is a different spin on the same idea—this line of jewelry is crafted from the metal of weapons collected by buyback programs in the United States.

Both companies physically transform weapons. But beyond that, both also have at the core of their business model funding further work to defuse violence. Fonderie 47 gives financial support to Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate that secures and destroys weapons in Angola, Cambodia, the Congo, Libya and Iraq. And Liberty United funds a variety of youth education programs in cities, including the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network’s Youth Violence Reduction Partnership and the Syracuse Model Neighborhood Facility’s Journey 2 Manhood Program.

This makes sense, as Thum is one of the pioneers of the social entrepreneurship movement. “When I first came up with the idea for Ethos Water in 2001, there was almost no information about companies like this,” says Thum, noting that Ben & Jerry’s, Newman’s Own and The Body Shop were virtually the only companies out there with a social good component at the time. “We’ve gone from very few of these companies as examples to almost every college and business school having courses taught on social entrepreneurship.”

The fact that people are learning about social entrepreneurship has the domino effect: it gets people interested in starting these businesses, creates more demand on a consumer level, and pushes large companies to enter the arena too.

Ethos Water got Americans to think about the global water crisis in a way many hadn’t before, says Thum. “It was a tool that used consumerism to flip a switch in people’s minds about the importance of the issue by getting them involved at a very light-touch level,” he says. (Watch his talk on social entrepreneurship from TEDxSMU below.) “The idea for Fonderie 47 is similar. The gun issue in Africa is one that hasn’t received the same kind of attention in the United States as other issues. I think in large part because it’s complicated and not easy to solve.”

He continues, “The good thing about the growth of this field of people becoming social entrepreneurs — whether they are doing so in a pure non-profit environment, a pure for-profit approach, a hybrid business, or by trying to alter large organizations — is that each idea can be viewed as an experiment.”

He’s excited to see what happens with Fonderie 47 and Liberty United. “The more experiments you run, the more people you have trying, the more likely it is that one of those people will come up with a recipe that makes a change.”