People love to rank U.S. biotech clusters. Most of these reports are full of data on venture financing, patents, jobs, and NIH funding. But many are riddled with flawed and biased methodology, and are usually designed to push a political agenda.

These rankings, which many people take at face value, have been irritating me for a long time. So last week, I decided to ask a few different questions in order to compare the relative strength of biotech hubs we cover at Xconomy.

More than one scientist friend at the University of California at Berkeley has complained to me recently that the stuff coming out of English departments seems pretty wacky. And whenever there is some silly petition before the faculty senate, these friends observe, it is the humanities types who show up to support it, so the scientists and engineers have to go to the meeting to vote the damn thing down. My friends in the English department also whisper in my ear. Those characters in the STEM fields will do anything the corporations want so long as it keeps their labs going. They don't have any feeling for the function of universities in advancing critical thinking; they just want to advance their own careers and train more techies.

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During the past 25 years, I've asked more than 10,000 people where and when they get their best ideas. I get all kinds of answers, but the one that has always fascinated me is "the shower" -- maybe because I also get so many of my good ideas there.

And so, at the risk of overstating my case, I hereby offer you 20 reasons WHY the shower is so conducive to new ideas.

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Tropical regions will be the first to experience unprecedented climate change, leading to significant upheaval for biodiversity and communities, according to a study published in Nature today.   Regions near the equator will be subject to mean temperatures hotter than anything experienced on record an average of 15 years before the rest of the world, putting a strain on their rich biodiversity, which is adapted to stable climate conditions, finds the study.  

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It's a safe bet that this fall's crop of new medical students is the most tech-savvy cohort yet. These are young adults, after all, who've been tapping on smartphones since they were 16, surfing the Web pretty much since they could read.

But how much information technology are they actually getting their hands on in school?

Physicians nationwide are being carroted and sticked into making meaningful use of electronic health records and other health IT, but what about the physicians of tomorrow? Many medical students have never even had the chance to make a note in an EHR, even though the technology will be inextricable from the way they'll practice from now on.

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The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today the release of the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) annual report for FY2013. CIT President and CEO Pete Jobse said, “CRCF helps accelerate innovation and company formation and solves important problems on the local, national and global levels by funding technology research, development and commercialization. CRCF is an important part of CIT’s efforts to advance innovation and entrepreneurship in Virginia.”

In high school, I was on the cross-country running team. I was only a decent athlete, and midway through the season, my coach demoted me to the “B team.” I wanted to prove to him I deserved to be back on the “A team,” so I launched into my first “B race” at a far faster pace than normal.

I was leading the pack almost the entire way, and, even though my legs were burning, I thought that I could win, get a shiny medal, and more importantly, get my deserved promotion higher up the team pecking order. My coach was thrilled by my “all in” performance. Coming down the last ½ mile of the 3 mile race, however, my legs turned to jelly and I fell from the lead all the way to the back. I even threw up at the end of the race. Afterwards, my coach asked what happened.

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In 1990 Peter Senge coined the term “Fifth Discipline” to describe system thinking.  He made compelling arguments why system thinking is so important.  A large community of systems thinkers developed and the practice of systems thinking flourished. One of my favorite references is “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.” It captured many pragmatic aspects of system thinking at the time.

French plans for a 'Google tax' on all digital companies would take the form of a minimum levy calculated on a common base across all EU countries. EurActiv.fr reports.

Two weeks before a European Council dedicated to innovation and the digital economy, the French Ministry of Finance organised a conference on Wednesday (9 October) focusing on the taxation of internet companies.

Entrepreneurs made America the leader of the free world, and only entrepreneurs can keep it there.

That’s according to Steve Case, the billionaire founder of America Online, who is reëmerging as an influential figure in Washington, D.C., and one of the country’s most important technology investors.

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Now what would be nirvana for a growing city? At the top of the list for most people would be the provision of a great quality of life while remaining competitive and achieving sustainable growth.

It’s a priority for many cities across the word, but rarely do they help each other by sharing bright ideas. Novel solutions tend to stay local.

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“I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.” — Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Until my mid-20s, I hated to read. The education system consistently put an authority figure at the front of the room whose main job seemed to be making me read obscure works written by dead white men. On occasion, I found them interesting, but mostly, I just tried to get through them, find something halfway thoughtful to say for a classroom discussion, and barf back whatever the teacher said was important. That was the game, and I played it well.

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If we could better control the physical world, how might we improve our lives? This question is being asked by daring mobile innovators in laboratories, startups and garages across the country as the connected revolution moves from smartphones to the world around us.

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While foreign direct investment is crucial to Ireland’s economy, the Action Plan for Jobs 2013, coupled with a national entrepreneurship policy, has placed the need to stimulate an entrepreneurial economy high on the Government’s agenda. At a macro level, entrepreneurs were responsible for 85 per cent of job creation within the EU between 2002 and 2010. From a local perspective, 67 per cent of all new job creation comes from businesses in the first five years of existence.

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IS a college degree’s worth best measured by the income its recipient makes 5 or 10 years down the road? Is college primarily a catapult to wealth? These were questions implicitly raised by President Obama’s recent proposal that the federal government look at graduates’ earnings when rating schools in an effort to steer students toward the best ones.

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Scientists have identified the part of the brain that gives humans the ability to tell up from down.

The discovery could help in devising treatments for chronic dizziness that are caused by brain disruptions and not inner ear or vision problems, said researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

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With the lifting of the ban on General Solicitation, startups may essentially shout from the rooftops that they are looking for funding — meaning the battle for investment dollars may get more challenging. Most investors seem to favor the lifting of the ban, but have concerns about the burden that the rules place on ventures. (For example, verifying accredited investor status.) There are also concerns about penalties that could be levied against ventures for inadvertently failing to fully and properly comply with the new law. Consequently, most observers advise entrepreneurs to proceed with caution when navigating these uncharted fundraising waters now that the ban has been lifted.

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One of the hottest accelerators in the country, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), is looking for ten game-changing startups to join their next program this winter. ERA invests $40,000 in seed funding and will provide follow-on funding for the startups subsequent rounds.

Ever want to throw your PC out the window because it was taking too long to load a website? You’re not alone. A global survey commissioned by storage device maker SanDisk found that 14% of American respondents have taken their frustrations out on a gadget, while 27% have lost sleep due to slow computer performance. The survey also found the average American has lost 119 hours of free time to computer-related delays in the past 12 months. That’s almost five days a year of your life lost because your computer was stalling.

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I’m sure that every one of us who has been out in the business world for a few years can look back with perfect hindsight and name a few college courses that we should have taken. What’s more disconcerting to me is that I can name a few that weren’t even offered, and more than a few students who graduate are ill-prepared for the real world!

I won’t even try to cover here the ones you didn’t find for your personal life, like managing personal finances and credit.

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