Key concepts

• Architecture
• Engineering
• Materials science
• Structures  

Introduction

Have you ever noticed that some big doorways—especially in old buildings—have arches over them? Arches have been used in engineering since ancient times. In this activity you'll test the strength of a naturally occurring arch shape: the shell of an egg. So grab some leftover Easter eggs and put them to good use in trying to answer the following question: Just how much mass can an eggshell support?

Image: Strong as eggshells? Learn about how the arched shape of an egg makes it shell stronger than you might expect! George Retseck 

When I started my company, I became CEO by default. I had no idea what a CEO really did, but I was the one in charge, so the title fell to me. Needless to say, I wasn’t performing my duties well.

Since then, I’ve learned that being the CEO doesn’t just mean signing checks and giving the final stamp of approval on projects. Your day-to-day tasks will vary depending on your field, but if you want to learn how to be a great leader at a young age, do what any experienced CEO does.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Want to be the next Richard Branson or Elon Musk? Or maybe you want to build businesses like Panera, Chipotle or Levis? One thing they all have in common is their innovative spirit, strong branding and courage to test the limits. Below 5 tips on how your small business can stand out from the crowd. 

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

A while back I talked about how and where to find a co-founder in “For a Startup, Two Heads are Always Better Than One”. The feedback was good, but some readers asked me to be a bit more specific on attributes that might indicate an ideal startup partner. Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for.

Flying high above the ground with a GoPro-equipped drone will give you the best seats in the house — hands down — during a fireworks show.

A remote-controlled quadcopter outfitted with a GoPro camera captured the footage, above, in Fillmore, Calif. It's a new way to enjoy the dazzling light shows without actually putting yourself at risk.

 

The future of higher education is a constantly moving target.

Everything from the emergence of MOOCs to new learning styles and mounting financial and sustainability pressures are impacting the education landscape. Every day higher education leaders are developing new strategies to leverage across these developing challenges and opportunities.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

There’s a new secret to get your child to behave at the dinner table—cut up their food and they’ll relax.

A new Cornell study published in Eating Behaviors, found that when 6-10 year old children ate foods they had to bite with their front teeth— such as drumsticks, whole apples, or corn on the cob— they were rowdier than when these foods had been cut. “They were twice as likely to disobey adults and twice as aggressive toward other kids,” said Brian Wansink, Professor and Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.

While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

In the last few years tech companies have jumped on the wearable tech bandwagon with popular gadgets like the Fitbit or Samsung’s Gear Fit. There are also hundreds of fitness apps taking the smartphone world by storm. The importance of health technologies is becoming more prevalent as everyone, from athletes to housewives, have realised the need to track calories and steps using an app or a wristband.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25384802@N08/4952166117 

As an entrepreneur who's attending college, I am often approached by classmates who are seeking to start their own business. Some have great concepts, yet when I ask them what they’ve done to advance their ideas, the answer is usually nothing.

Anyone can start a business, regardless of his or her age. After growing my own companies and mingling with successful entrepreneurs, I’ve come to realize that most entrepreneurs share these are five common characteristics:

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Do you have what it takes to innovate? I'm not talking IQ, degree, or job title. I'm talking the curious confluence of behaviors that come with the territory of being someone who turns top of the line ideas into bottom line realities.

1. You come up with great ideas in the shower and car

2. You like to stay up late... or get up early... or both

3. You're comfortable with ambiguity and chaos

4. While your ducks are rarely in a row, they're happy most of the time

5. You're not worried about failing

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Technology news is full of incremental developments, but few of them are true milestones. Here we’re citing 10 that are. These advances from the past year all solve thorny problems or create powerful new ways of using technology. They are breakthroughs that will matter for years to come.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/ 

Y Combinator's next batch of startups will get a bigger up-front investment, but the funding won't include any of the venture capital money that may have created problems for some of the entrepreneurs in the incubator program. YC President Sam Altman told me this morning that the new deal structure will give every startup accepted into the accelerator $120,000. YC gets a 7 percent stake in each company for that investment

Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Y Combinator President Sam Altman announced a new funding package startups in the accelerator. They will get $120,000 in exchange for a 7 percent stake in their company, but there will be no VC money involved which is a break from past practice. 

The Top 10 U.S.-based venture capital funds, based on amount of capital raised during the first quarter of 2014, pulled in $7.3 billion over eight venture capital firms. Accel Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson each raised two funds. When it rains it pours.

The first quarter of 2014 was a record-breaking quarter and serves as promise that venture capital, as an asset class, is on the ascend. The amount of capital raised in the fourth quarter was up 81 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013, and up over 100 percent from the first quarter of 2013. Moreover, the first quarter of 2014 marks the strongest quarter for venture capital fundraising since the fourth quarter of 2007, when $10.4 billion was raised.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com 

Cultural fit, bundling potential and a focus on work force optimization.

If your healthcare startup meets all or even two of these criteria, you’ll have a better than average chance of attracting attention from GE Healthcare.

Mike Swinford, President and CEO Global Services at GE Healthcare, explained the thinking behind three recent acquisitions as well as how the companies helped GE make more money.

Image: http://medcitynews.com - Mike Swinford of GE Healthcare explains the improvements his division has helped hospitals make, due in part to recent acquisitions. Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2014/04/three-ways-increase-chances-getting-acquired-ge-healthcare/#ixzz2zjfPZWm3 

Don’t look now, but the transition to a mobile-centric computing culture in the U.S. is now certified.

Let’s check some new data points that represent several crossed Rubicons in the march toward Mobile Nation:

For the first time, most Americans in every age group are smartphoners. According to new stats reported today by Nielsen, the age group threshold was crossed in the first quarter. Fifty-one percent of the holdout group — those over the age of 55 — now possess a smartphone, so age is no longer the big factor it was in smartphones’ march to dominance.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Asteroid tracking organization B612 Foundation recently released a really cool visualization showing observable asteroids as they hit Earth’s surface over the last 13 years.

B612, which refers to itself as a sort of planetary defense unit, used data collected from a global nuclear weapons test network to create the visualization. The network was intended to track instances of nuclear explosions and such, but as you can see in the video embedded below, of the 26 massive explosions the network picked up, all were actually asteroid impacts — meaning there are more asteroids hitting the planet than we realize.

Image: http://venturebeat.com - B612 Foundation 

There’s been an ongoing conversation in Silicon Valley about what value VCs actually bring to entrepreneurs. About a year ago leading cleantech investor Vinod Khosla penned a piece in which he took to task VCs about what they really knew or understood about building a company. At the time he wrote:

A lot of VCs, especially those from the more financially oriented firms, do more harm to startups than good when they get themselves on company boards without ever having built a company themselves, or seeing one from the inside. What value can a VC as board member add to a company? We constantly ask our young guys…. “What have you done to earn the right to advise entrepreneurs?” I don’t want entrepreneurs to get inexperienced advice on important matters.

Licensing is unlike exchanges in the normal marketplace because intellectual property licensing occurs entirely in the intangible domain. Normally when you are negotiating a deal you’ve got something, a product or a device, the other party wants it, and you agree on a price that is high enough that it fulfills your desire and low enough that the other person gets value out of the deal. That’s fairly straightforward. Those negotiations happen every day. We all do them, and so they feel very familiar. Doing them at a larger scale just means a larger scale.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

It really does happen. Sometimes, your piece of art or design is copied by someone else. Maybe it ends up in a gallery window. Maybe it ends up in the windows of retailers across the world.

But you are just one person versus the world. What can you do? We asked Stacy Lefkowitz, Director of Legal Services for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, who deals with these situations every day.

Image Courtesy of chanpipat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net