A few years ago, I first posted about adjustable eyeglasses. Unlike the glasses you’re probably wearing right now to read this site, adjustable glasses don’t have a set prescription and instead allow the wearer to adjust the prescription as needed. This simplicity of design allows one to construct the glasses very cheaply. Medgadget has up a story about another type of these glasses that seems much simpler in design.

Image: http://www.business-opportunities.biz 

Most American business schools draw a distinction between general and specialty (or “field”) journals for specialties such as innovation. The best of the former are dubbed “A” journals, and at many “Top 25” schools, the only publications that count towards tenure are the “A” pubs.

In Canada and other places outside the U.S., the only journals that count are the 45 journals used by the Financial Times b-school rankings It includes the standard "A" journals in management, marketing, accounting and finance, and adds the three top managerial journals, two entrepreneurial journals and a few other less obvious journals. (No innovation journals are included).

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

(BOGOTA) People in densely populated highlands of Africa and South America — who have so far been protected from malaria by cooler temperatures — may be seeing more of the disease as the climate changes, according to a study in Science (6 March).

Mountainous regions with relatively cold climates that are unsuitable for the malaria parasite and the mosquitoes that transmit — but there have been indications, for example from modelling studies, that with climate change this protection will wear off.

Image: Crispin Hughes / Panos 

Castlight Health Inc.‘s initial public offering is a giant win for Venrock and other venture capitalists who pumped $181 million into the San Francisco health enterprise-software company.

Venrock owned 20.6% of Castlight before the offering and 18% after, according to a regulatory filing. Based on Castlight’s market capitalization of $3.45 billion, Venrock’s stake now figures to be worth about $620 million.

Image: Castlight Health Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Giovanni Colella watches as his company’s stock is priced during its IPO, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Friday. Associated Press 

A fast-growing Indianapolis start-up called TinderBox is days away from securing its second investment from the nation's first online venture capital fund, FundersClub.

Just like a year ago, when the sales and marketing software company became the first non-Silicon Valley start-up to raise funds through the site, the money fills a gap in a region lacking the venture capital resources of the West or East coasts.

Image: Sarah Deragon, Portraits to the People

You can’t judge a startup by the looks of its founder — but many potential investors do.

That’s the upshot of a newly published study co-authored by MIT researchers, which shows that attractive men have disproportionate success in obtaining venture capital funding for startups, compared with women and with less physically appealing men.

Image: ILLUSTRATION: JOSE-LUIS OLIVARES/MIT 

Every now and again, you hear about an entrepreneur achieving a solid exit after a single “A” round of venture capital financing.  More often than not, however, venture-backed entrepreneurs go through several rounds of venture financing on their way to achieving the cash-out exit of their dreams.  That said, the dynamics of “B” and other “follow on rounds” do not get as much attention in the entrepreneurial press as the dynamics of “A” rounds.  Thus, some thoughts here on follow on rounds of venture financing.

A new study of math anxiety shows how some people may be at greater risk to fear math not only because of negative experiences, but also because of genetic risks related to both general anxiety and math skills.

The study, which examined how fraternal and identical twins differ on measures of math anxiety, provides a revised view on why some children – and adults – may develop a fear of math that makes it more difficult for them to solve math problems and succeed in school.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/math-paper-mathematics-project-photo-p207887 

There is a wealth of advice out there for startups trying to raise money—and for good reason. Without that first round or seed funding, many great ideas would never become anything more than an idea.

We also live in a highly innovative fundraising environment today, and the attention paid to helping entrepreneurs navigate their options and access capital is critical. As a founder, it’s incredibly exciting to be starting a business at a time when doing so—while I wouldn’t say is “easy”—has never been more possible for so many people.

Awards will recognize best practices in university-based economic development  

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO – March 12, 2014 - The University Economic Development Association (UEDA) is currently seeking nominations for its annual Awards of Excellence program, which recognizes cutting edge university-based economic development initiatives from across the country. The Awards of Excellence Program recognizes higher education institutions and their partners who are transforming their campuses into engines of economic prosperity through creative initiatives in five categories:

Pharmaceutical companies have long relied on successfully launching new drugs to drive growth. This pressure is only likely to increase. Patents are expiring and product pipelines are shrinking. Austerity measures in many countries are increasing local and national hurdles for market access. And, at the same time, launches are becoming more numerous, smaller, and more competitive. We estimate that pharmaceutical companies will launch some 400 new products in the next three years, up 146 percent from 2005. Given this changing external landscape, awash with more products of ever greater diversity, it’s never been more important for pharmaceutical companies to crack the new-product launch code.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com/ 

FORTUNE -- In the world of venture capital, health care-focused investors are often thought of as second-class citizens (if they're thought of at all). Their investments are more scientific than sexy, and often require heavy capital outlays with lower-multiple returns.

Image: Bryan Roberts has a lot of reasons to smile, including last week's Castlight IPO - Photo By Gary Wagner

Over the past year, my firm Collegefeed met with more than 300 companies to understand their college hiring strategies and tactics — from employers with large university hiring infrastructures to recently funded start-ups looking to hire fresh grads, interns, and young alum.

Image: http://blogs.hbr.org 

Ogilvy One's Brian Fetherstonhaugh spends a lot of time thinking and talking about careers. Here, he offers a detailed plan for each stage of work life, designed with long-term success in mind.

Having spent over 35 years in business in global firms, I have seen tens of thousands of career trajectories--from the first steps of entry-level millennials to the long journeys of Fortune 500 CEOs.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachd1_618/4585252362/in/photostream/ 

I set out to be an entrepreneur and then an investor. I became a writer almost by accident. Now, I can’t imagine not writing–it’s something I do daily. It’s how I problem solve. And it’s crucial to my continued learning and growth.

In the late 1980s, I started my first company, Feld Technologies, which wrote custom software for companies. This was back when personal computers were becoming popular in a business context. But they were complex. Computer salesmen hawked them speaking a language you didn’t understand, in a style that could have worked equally well on a used-car lot.

Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.

The new findings are part of a growing body of research that has challenged the accepted wisdom that saturated fat is inherently bad for you and will continue the debate about what foods are best to eat.

Image: Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill/PRNewsFoto A new study questions the relationship between heart disease and saturated fat. 

Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, has evolved considerably since it appeared in the western world over a century ago. Folding is simple, easy and cheap. So it’s no wonder that scientists and engineers have begun to exploit it in all kinds of innovative ways. They now use origami to construct everything from molecular machines to space telescopes.

Today, Manu Prakash and pals at Stanford University in California, reveal how they’ve designed and built an origami microscope that is constructed largely out of folded paper and costs less than a dollar to make. And they say their device could revolutionize the way billions of people see the world around them.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com 

When someone introduces me to an “idea person,” I automatically jump to the down-side conclusion that this person doesn’t do follow-up. Of course there are people who are great at getting things done, but haven’t had an original idea in their life. Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both.

I was with IBM in the early PC days when Bill worked with us to provide PC DOS and other software. He was relentless in his focus on getting a project done, and he always assigned himself the toughest tasks. At the same time, he was always pushing the limits of our business relationship with new ideas.

In 1995, Richard Saul Wurman, a renowned architect and graphic designer, called my shop. My friend who referred him gave me the heads-up that he ran some conference I’d never heard of in Monterey called TED. Wurman asked a handful of brilliant questions around the display of information (his area of expertise) and my answers sounded totally dumb. I was self-taught and just starting to bumble my way through defining presentation best practices. In my infancy, I was unimpressive.

Image: http://www.linkedin.com 

More than one-third of higher education students are enrolled in community college--close to 7 million per year. Unfortunately, community college graduation rates are at rock bottom--at the City University of New York, for example, only 40% of students graduate within six years. For students taking remedial courses, the graduation rate is just 26%. What’s at stake? Over $10,000 in annual income compounded over a lifetime, the average difference between what dropouts and graduates earn each year.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net