A new multi-university study shows that research to delay aging and the infirmities of old age would have better population health and economic returns than advances in individual fatal diseases such as cancer or heart disease.

With even modest gains in our scientific understanding of how to slow the aging process, an additional 5 percent of adults over the age of 65 would be healthy rather than disabled every year from 2030 to 2060, revealed the study in the October issue of Health Affairs.

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What’s in a kiss? A study by Oxford University researchers suggests kissing helps us size up potential partners and, once in a relationship, may be a way of getting a partner to stick around.

‘Kissing in human sexual relationships is incredibly prevalent in various forms across just about every society and culture,’ said Rafael Wlodarski, the DPhil student who carried out the research in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. ‘Kissing is seen in our closest primate relatives, chimps and bonobos, but it is much less intense and less commonly used.

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If UMD researchers are well on their way to creating a robot that can wiggle through the brain to root out the tumors deep within, then anything is possible. Plankton crawled through Spongebob's cranium and now Dr. J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgeon at the University of Maryland School of Medicine; Jaydev Desai, a roboticist at the University of Maryland; and Rao Gullapalli, a radiologist, believe they're developing something that can do the same.

How to make cities better? Why not ask the people who live in them? The Participatory Cities Project asked people how to make their urban homes better, and came up with this extensive list of improvements.

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The Tax Foundation published its annual State Business Tax Climate Index study on Wednesday, ranking the most and least friendly states for companies to do business.

As in years past, the release generated no shortage of media attention. The index serves as a benchmark for comparison and is often cited by elected officials, whether they’re on the campaign trail or looking to lure companies from other states.

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Many of the successful managers and professionals who come back to business school at mid-career are looking for more than honing their leadership skills. Many are stuck in their careers.  They’re looking for direction and support for the changes they long to make in the near future.  But, their networks just keep dragging them back to the past—and they don’t even realize it.

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The managing director of the International Monetary Fund talks with HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius.

In the winter of 1974, Paul Allen showed up at Bill Gates' dorm at Harvard with the new issue of Popular Electronics in his hand. MITS, a company in Albuquerque, had made a home, or "personal," computer and was calling it the Altair.

“Hey, this thing is happening without us,” Allen said to Gates, referring to the home-computing revolution they always jabbered on about. So, as Walter Isaacson records in the Harvard Gazette, the two went into a eight-week fugue state of writing code. Which is how, in the mid-70s, computational legends were born.

As one of TheLadders' original 20 employees, I know first-hand how rewarding and challenging a job at a startup can be, especially when you're new to the workforce. Play your cards right and you will learn more in one year than your friends will pick up in five or more working at larger, more traditional organizations.

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It is an old business adage: About 20 percent of your customers produce 80 percent of your sales. In my book 80/20 Sales & Marketing, I argue that this 80/20 principle also applies to time management, search engine marketing and far more.

The funny thing is that even with sales, business owners often ignore the 80/20 rule.

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In coming Internet revolutions in areas such as education and health care, success will require engaging with the government — something which Silicon Valley has historically been poor at, Steve Case said Thursday at MIT. The AOL Inc. co-founder said that while engineering will "still be really important" in future waves of Internet-fueled disruption, "partnering and networks will be more important."

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Let’s be honest, presentation decks can get a bad rap for being boring, long-winded and just plain painful to look at — but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Presentation slides can actually be fun and engaging, and be the key to delivering a powerful message that captivates your audience. If done right, they even open the door for new opportunities.

At SlideShare we see presentations that inspire us, teach us new lessons and have the power to attract hundreds of thousands of views. Presentations that take on a life of their own share a few simple commonalities that any presenter can leverage. Here are a few tips for building a killer presentation:

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So the metro area that ranks as the hardest hit by the federal shutdown won't surprise you (or anyone else). But how does the D.C. region compare to others around the country? Business data company Esri put together an interactive government shutdown map using data from online residential real estate website Trulia.com, which shows the 10 areas in the U.S. that have the highest percentage of local wages distributed among federal workers.

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A consortium of Minneapolis arts and culture agencies is seeking entries in a competition to produce a $75,000 temporary art installation on the plaza adjacent to the Minneapolis Convention Center for the summer of 2014.

Image: Minneapolis Interactive Macro Mood Installation (MIMMI), the 2013 Creative City Challenge winner.

Gerald Yao and Tori Molnar are part of a growing number of students who've caught the entrepreneurial bug, leading them to ask themselves, their parents and their counselors, "should I stay or should I go?"

Yao didn't enroll in classes for his penultimate semester at Emory's Goizueta Business School, choosing, instead, to gain hands-on experience away from the classroom.

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Every passing month and unanswered resume dimmed Jim Glay's optimism more. So with no job in sight, he joined a growing number of older people and created his own.

In a mix of boomer individualism and economic necessity, older Americans have fueled a wave of entrepreneurship. The result is a slew of enterprises such as Crash Boom Bam, the vintage drum company that 64-year-old Glay began running from a spare bedroom in his apartment in 2009.

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Social media and other types of online networking have revolutionized business. You can connect with customers, clients and partners half way around the world.

But are there times when face to face, or as they are sometimes called, belly to belly meetings are still beneficial?

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Until the recent recession, market research indicated that as many as 90 percent of the roughly 20 million American small business owners were motivated more by lifestyle than growth and money. Since 2008, the desire for profits has trumped passion in 54 percent of new startups, according to a more recent study. It seems that everyone wants to make a quick buck these days.

Being called a lifestyle entrepreneur should be a point of pride, not an insult. The term applies to anyone who places passion before profit, and intends to combine personal interests and talent with the ability to earn a living. This usually means not taking money from equity investors, since investors want fast growth, high profits, and an exit event, to allow investments to be recouped.

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Smart farming startup, SmartFarm has been announced as the winner of this year’s IBM SmartCamp Africa as part of the company’s Global Entrepreneurship program. The competition which was held in conjunction with the Tech4Africa conference and Angel investment network AngelHub. Every year IBM puts together SmartCamp sessions that showcase some of the world’s most promising startups and the companies have to be less than five years old.

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Space Tango today announced that it is now formally accepting proposals for funding and acceptance to its space business accelerator.

Space Tango is the nation's first business accelerator specifically for space enterprises and entrepreneurs, with a goal of assisting enterprises in developing innovations, novel applications and diverse markets.