GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world's fourth largest drug maker, has entered into an equal joint venture agreement with Biological-E Ltd., a vaccines company based in Hyderabad, recently. The report has unveiled that the two companies are giving a shot to a six-in-one vaccine.

The companies would conduct a deep research as they are aiming at developing such a combination paediatric vaccine that protects children in developing nations like India. It is being hoped that the combination vaccine could fight not only polio, but other infectious diseases as well.

I had two conversations last week, each of which reinforces a simple phenomenon that I have constantly emphasized over the last five years in my writings.

On Wednesday, I had lunch with Brian Jacobs, General Partner at Emergence Capital. We were discussing our respective startup portfolios, and Brian mentioned that his firm’s preferred stage for investment is when a company has about a million dollars in revenues. Presumably, at that point, the experimentation with product, business model, pricing model, customer acquisition strategy, cost of conversion, and other key issues have settled down. That means, a cash infusion of, say, $7 million will result in a somewhat predictable set of outcomes. Most importantly, the fresh cash would accelerate customer acquisition, and hence revenues.

The value of an advanced business degree is eroding — at least as measured by the rate of pay increases for recipients, according to new research by the Financial Times. Bottom line is that graduates of the top US programs in the mid 1990s tripled their salaries in five years on average, but grads from the same schools saw half that increase in 2008 and 2009.

That can’t feel good — though I’d wager those salaries are still pretty robust to begin with. But there is growing skepticism about whether a masters degree in business administration pays off the way it once did. This decline in pay hikes comes at a time when students pay 7 percent more per year for their degrees. In 2012, the fees for MBA programs were up 44 percent in real terms compared to 2005.

It may just be early adopter tech types who log every step they take or calorie they burn using Fitbits, Nike Fuelbands, and other devices, but that hardly means they’re the only ones who track their health.

About 7 in 10 American adults told the Pew Internet & American Life Project that they track a health indicator like weight, diet, exercise or a symptom. But despite growing buzz around the “quantified self” movement and the explosion of gadgets and apps that help people measure and analyze everything from their activity and sleep patterns to blood glucose levels and other vital signs, just a small slice of health trackers rely on high tech devices.

We often search for happiness, yet we stay stuck in our same routine wishing, hoping, and dreaming for success, change, and happiness.  I wanted to share seven proven strategies guaranteed to dramatically improve your happiness and help you in achieve success in any area of your life, if you apply them.

1. Wherever you are today is a result of what you’ve done in the past.

Take responsibility for the choices you’ve made. Learn from them and move on. Let go of the mistake but don’t lose the lesson. Don’t focus on the pain of your past, focus on your purpose for the future. This frame of mind alone can turn your life around.

I talk to a number of aspiring entrepreneurs every day, and a number of them have the same problem:  They can’t get needed funding to start or grow their business.  “There just isn’t any money out there,” they say.  In reality, there is money out there, but the competition to get it is greater than it’s ever been.  Many of these entrepreneurs or current business owners have a business plan, but just any old plan won’t do anymore.

Here are the top 5 reasons why your current business plan probably isn’t good enough to get what you need.

With a glut of consumer startups struggling to raise funding, startups that serve businesses are becoming fashionable in Silicon Valley again because they have a proven way to make money.

Now new incubators are emerging to help those startups, on the theory that startups with business customers need help that less specialized incubators can’t provide.

The latest one, Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., is planning a new business-to-business accelerator for this spring.

The accelerator will be led by Plug and Play President Canice Wu, a former entrepreneur and executive at Siebel (now part of Oracle), and expects to invest between $25,000 and $100,000 in each of about 20 B2B startups per year. Startups with products are preferred.

The connection between poor sleep, memory loss and brain deterioration as we grow older has been elusive. But for the first time, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a link between these hallmark maladies of old age. Their discovery opens the door to boosting the quality of sleep in elderly people to improve memory.

UC Berkeley neuroscientists have found that the slow brain waves generated during the deep, restorative sleep we typically experience in youth play a key role in transporting memories from the hippocampus – which provides short-term storage for memories – to the prefrontal cortex’s longer term “hard drive.” However, in older adults, memories may be getting stuck in the hippocampus due to the poor quality of deep ‘slow wave’ sleep, and are then overwritten by new memories, the findings suggest.

Most biotech pros will shrug, or chuckle, if you ask whether crowdfunding will transform life sciences financing in the U.S.

This, after all, is an industry where you often need to raise at least $50 million or $100 million to even have a chance at developing a new drug or medical device. Scraping together a few thousand bucks from individuals on the Internet isn’t going to go very far. One venture capitalist recently told me, “there are a lot of things I worry about, but crowdfunding isn’t one of them.”

Still, I’ve come around to the idea that crowdfunding is going to be disruptive for biotech investment. Starting this year, some cash-strapped startups will find this trend to be godsend. Some small investors will feel fleeced. Insiders who have traditionally had all the power over who gets funded will have to make some tough decisions about whether to pool their money with the masses.

It’s a good thing when we’re working on the “right problem”.  There have been many people over many years that have thought long and hard about how to find right problems. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a business (or innovation) ecosystem has developed that challenges and supports the community, particularly the medical device start-up community, to work on those right problems.

This ecosystem challenges entrepreneurs on a variety of conditions.

What clinical need is being met?

The ecosystem really likes an unmet clinical need, but seems to be content with an under-met clinical need.

Is there a clear strategy for regulatory clearance?

The ecosystem usually prefers the 510(k) path over a PMA path for the US market.

How well can you protect your invention?

The ecosystem prefers inventions having key enabling features that can be patent protected.

Conferences and trade shows bring thousands of like-minded people together and make it easy for companies to build awareness, acquire new leads and sell products. Right?

Not so much anymore.

Conferences and trade shows have become less attractive because the decision makers may not attend, the cost of travel, booths and admission fees steadily increase, while budgets are decreasing disproportionately.

When you gotta go, then you gotta go. Here are some thoughts to take with you:

Hopefully, the first seven ways to accelerate your learning and progress were helpful.  Here are fourteen more to help you build and maintain momentum in pursuit of your dreams and objectives.

1.     Conquer performance anxiety.

Performance anxiety can stop you dead in your tracks.  If the anxiety is extreme, you may not be able to perform at all.  There are techniques for overcoming performance anxiety.  Figure out what works for you and use it religiously.  Seriously, relax!  You’re good.  You just need to believe in yourself and not worry what others think!  It’s easier said than done; I know.

We are at the dawn of a new age of personalized medicine.

Just as Moore’s law transformed computing – and, as a result, all aspects of our professional and personal lives — so, too, will the interpretation of the human genome transform medicine. We are moving from the inefficient and experimental medicine of today towards the data-driven medicine of tomorrow. Soon, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and most importantly, prevention will be tailored to individuals’ genetic and phenotypic information.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, investments in molecular biology, bioinformatics, disease management and the unraveling of the human genome are all finally bearing fruit. Personalized medicine promises to revolutionize the practice of medicine, transform the global healthcare industry, and ultimately lead to longer and healthier lives.

I’ve started a recent series on PR at startups since I get asked for advice on this topic so often. I will put the full list of posts here.

The start of this series was, Should Your Startup Announce Funding?

6 or 7 years ago when TechCrunch was at its peak market share (they are still strong but many more tech blogs have also popped up) there was a term for getting covered there called “the TechCrunch bounce.” If your company was featured there (in the early days of what people called Web 2.0) you were sure to get a rush of 60,000-70,000 new user registrations, a ton of pageviews and interest from a rash of people from investors to people trying to sell you services.

The problem with the TechCrunch bounce was that it often led the the TechCrunch free fall, as in your website’s precipitous decline in traffic and your products fall in users as that same 60-70,000 rushed to try the next product.

Textbook publishers argue that their newest digital products shouldn't even be called "textbooks." They're really software programs built to deliver a mix of text, videos, and homework assignments. But delivering them is just the beginning. No old-school textbook was able to be customized for each student in the classroom. The books never graded the homework. And while they contain sample exam questions, they couldn't administer the test themselves.

One publisher calls its products "personalized learning experiences," another "courseware," and one insists on using its own brand name, "MindTap." For now, this new product could be called "the object formerly known as the textbook."

Three years ago today, on January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs stood on a stage in San Francisco. First he talked about how Apple invented the modern laptop in 1991 and revolutionized the smartphone with the iPhone in 2007. Then he asked: "Is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Something that's between a laptop and a smartphone?" After trashing an existing category of devices – the netbook – Jobs's tone of voice changed. It grew hushed and fervent.

David Landoplans to start working toward a diploma from the University of Wisconsin this fall, but he doesn't intend to set foot on campus or even take a single online course offered by the school's well-regarded faculty.

Instead, he will sit through hours of testing at his home computer in Milwaukee under a new program that promises to award a bachelor's degree based on knowledge—not just class time or credits.

"I have all kinds of credits all over God's green earth, but I'm using this to finish it all off," said the 41-year-old computer consultant, who has an associate degree in information technology but never finished his bachelor's in psychology.

After years on the back burner, immigration is set to command more of Congress’s attention in the coming months, including several provisions important for higher education that are likely to be part of any proposed comprehensive legislation.

Immigration was mentioned only infrequently during the election. But the drubbing Republicans took among Latino voters led to speculation that both parties might be open to overhauling immigration this year. On Tuesday, President Obama will lay out his plan in a speech in Las Vegas.

The biggest questions at the heart of immigration reform -- how the nation’s immigration laws will be enforced, and whether the estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal documentation will be given a path to citizenship -- affect colleges only tangentially. But any legislation that addresses those issues is also likely to include other measures with a direct impact on higher education.

As we are beginning a new semester, I’m excited to share an update on the Wharton Venture Initiation Program (VIP), our educational incubator that supports Penn students.  We accept applications three times a year and, this past December, received 42 applications in Philadelphia and six in San Francisco.

Following the multiround selection process, eight new ventures in Philadelphia and two in San Francisco were accepted and started this January.  There are some very novel concepts in the new batch that include:

The first one is 200 when he predicts what the world will be like in 200 years time. The second one is 3700 when he talks about his plans for a satellite 3700 miles above the earth. But first of all, I'd like to know what's happening about 9ft to our right.

Four or five people are standing there, on the other side of a glass partition, and they're dressed in white overalls and surgical masks. Behind them is a computer showing a number that's counting down in what looks like quite an apocalyptic way. It resembles the set of a movie called Virus or Outbreak but in fact this is what the modern space industry looks like.