Some 20 teams of business, healthcare and web-based tech entrepreneurs will pitch and demo their ideas tomorrow at the LaunchHouse’s Tech Unconference.

The Cleveland-area incubator will select 10 teams to make up the inaugural class for its accelerator program, which begins in September and is funded in part by a $200,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Development’s Third Frontier Program.

Teams that are selected will receive a $25,000 investment and resources to help them develop their business.

The Natalie Taylor Scholar Program featured nine Babson College students who presented their service learning projects in the programs annual showcase. This past May the  Natalie Taylor Scholar Program featured nine Babson College students who presented their service learning projects in the programs annual showcase. Students who are accepted into the program must complete a combination of core requirements that are closely aligned to reflect Babson’s values that in order to prepare future leaders to make an impact, they must enable them with the support,tools, and experience necessary in order reshape organizations,industries,and the world in a socially conscious manner. 

The final deliverable, the Natalie Taylor Capstone Experience Be the Change, requires students to develop a project around an aspect of social change, providing the support that encourages participants to augment their passions by turning them into reality in the hopes of creating graduating students who are engaged, socially responsible global leaders.  

A network of porous carbon tubes that is three-dimensionally interwoven at nano and micro level – this is the lightest material in the world. It weights only 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimetre, and is therefore 75 times lighter than Styrofoam, but it is very strong nevertheless. Scientists of Kiel University (KU) and Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) have named their joint creation “Aerographite”. The scientific results were published as the title story in the scientific journal Advanced Materials on July, 3rd. Today (Tuesday, July 17th) it is presented to the public.

It is jet-black, remains stable, is electrically conductive, ductile and non-transparent. With these unique properties and its very low density the carbon-made material “Aerographite” clearly outperformes all similar materials. „Our work is causing great discussions in the scientific community. Aerographite weights four times less than world-record-holder up to now”, says Matthias Mecklenburg, co-author and Ph.D. student at the TUHH. The hitherto lightest material of the world, a nickel material that was presented to the public about six months ago, is also constructed of tiny tubes. Only, nickel has a higher atomic mass than carbon. “Also, we are able to produce tubes with porous walls. That makes them extremely light”, adds Arnim Schuchard, co-author and Ph.D. student at Kiel University. Professor Lorenz Kienle and Dr. Andriy Lotnyk were able to decode the material’s atomic structure with the aid of a transmission electron microscope (TEM).

Medical and technological advancements of the recent decade have finally paved the way to cure one of the most malevolent diseases: the common cold.

Scientists in Australia are using IBM supercomputing technology to simulate the 3D motion of the human rhinovirus and accelerate the development of new antiviral drugs.

Supercomputers such as IBM’s Blue Gene/Q enable such research. Before this, scientists couldn’t run simulations to form a complete picture of the virus; they could only form parts of it. The necessary processing power to include over 3 million atoms of the atom’s shell and the RNA genome was not available until they got the Blue Gene/Q.

Funding news flooded our wire today with so many announcements and releases, it was like swimming upstream in a hurricane to keep up with it all. We’re having to include a lightning round below just to cover all the bases. Grab a life vest, a paddle, and check out what happened today in the maelstrom.

Kiip keeps on trucking with $11M in new investment

Rewards network Kiip announced today that it closed $11 million in a second round of investment. The funding will go towards expanding Kiip’s rewards system beyond gaming, infusing ‘moments of happiness’ into everyday life. Kiip works with game developers, brands, and users to reward gaming achievements with tangible products.  The money will go towards doubling the team, which currently consists of 30 people. The round was spearheaded by Relay Ventures, with participation from previous investors True Ventures and Hummer Winbland. Read more on VentureBeat.

Venture capitalists have renewed their love affair with U.S. research-based start-up companies, according to a new report from the policymaking body of the National Science Foundation.

Private investments in these powerful engines of economic growth plummeted after the 2008 recession, says the National Science Board in a white paper that supplements the 2012 edition of NSF's biennial Science and Engineering Indicators. "But we have begun to see some recovery," says Arthur Reilly, co-author of the report and retired senior director for strategic technology policy at Cisco Systems.

In my role working with startups in the NC startup ecosystem, one of the constant cries and concerns I hear from entrepreneurs is that there is not enough investment capital available, especially for early stage companies.

As participants in a relatively smaller entrepreneurial ecosystem – compared to the mammoth markets of Silicon Valley, Boston and New York – it's an easy conclusion to come to. And the reality is that there is a concerning lack of resident venture funds. However, we all know that entrepreneurs are nothing if not persistent and there continue to be individuals working tirelessly to grow startup ventures which will need capital in order to grow.

Here is a report drawn up by the IMF, OECD and the UN to rank international innovation competitiveness. The authors constructed an Innovation Capacity Index (ICI) that draws on a range of available data to correlate the wide-ranging set of relevant factors, policies, and institutional characteristics which play a central role in boosting a nation’s capacity for innovation. In its 2010/11 edition, the ICI covers 131 countries and identifies over 60 factors that are seen to have a bearing on a country’s ability to create an environment that encourages innovation, such as a nation’s institutional environment, human capital endowment, the presence of social inclusion, the regulatory and legal framework, the infrastructure for research and development, and the adoption and use of information and communication technologies, among others.

Last time I introduced the questions as topics for answers in this five part post series:

1.)   What is the ‘spark’ that ignites the startup of start-up communities?

2.)   How does the ‘start-up’ of startup communities differ—emerging markets vs. developed countries?

3.)   Why is the US entrepreneurial model of experimentation, trial and error and pivoting a death sentence for entrepreneurs in the emerging markets? And what you can do about it.

4.)   How does the culture of risk and failure in emerging markets impact investor DNA—what they finance and what they won’t

5.)   What is Clonentrepreneurship, where is it spreading from and to, and why is it a model for more—innovation, startups, and venture investment?

Angel investors are by definition hard to track down, but digital tools such as The Funding Portal are making it easier than ever for businesses to find elusive private investors.

Angels are wealthy individuals or groups of investors who provide capital to early-stage businesses for ownership equity or convertible debt. Traditionally, funding provided through angel deals in Canada ranges between $10,000 and $300,000, but can be higher depending on the individual funding round.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining. Driven by the recent recession, smart entrepreneurs of all ages are jumping into the fray with new ideas, new recovery strategies, and discarding outmoded business models. I see it most in the newest generation of entrepreneurs (Gen-Y), who were shocked out of entitlement into action by the recession.

Donna Fenn, in her book from a while back, “Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business,” seems certain that Gen-Y will lead the charge, bounce back from the recession, and be big winners. She describes a new generation of entrepreneurs that is highly collaborative, quick and alert when it comes to new technologies, and hell-bent on changing the world in general.

District Mayor Vincent Gray launched FastTrac D.C., a battery of training and networking programs aimed at helping new and emerging entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

“I’m committed to building a new economy in the District of Columbia with strong, resilient small businesses that grow, succeed and create jobs,” Gray said in a statement. “By launching the FastTrac D.C. program, we will help entrepreneurs foster the skills and forge the relationships they need to do just that.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius joined First Lady Michelle Obama and local officials from across the country to announce the next chapter in the Let’s Move! Cities, Towns, and Counties program, which encourages local elected officials to focus on improving the health of their communities.

Secretary Sebelius announced five goals for local officials to achieve within the next year to address obesity and help communities be healthier. These goals align with Let’s Move!’s five basic pillars.

A new report by a national committee of U.S. industry and university leaders details 16 recommendations "aimed at reinventing manufacturing in a way that ensures U.S. competitiveness, feeds into the nation's innovation economy, and invigorates the domestic manufacturing base."

The report was prepared by the 18-member steering committee of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) that was launched by President Obama in June 2011 and co-chaired by Susan Hockfield, now president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Andrew Liveris, president, chairman and chief executive officer of The Dow Chemical Co.

The first morning I met Kevin Crain, a Managing Director at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, he was feeling tired, as he did most days.

We were at a conference Kevin was hosting for the institutional retirement team and a group of their corporate clients. He'd invited me to the event to speak about managing personal energy.

Before my talk, we got to chatting and Kevin mentioned that he'd gotten less than six hours of sleep the night before, and that he didn't often get much more.

Today's lede item comes from HBR intern examplar Carla Yengo-Kahn. It’s tough to be stuck in the middle. The latest Fed report on changes in U.S. family finances between 2007 and 2010 depicts declines across the board, including a 25% drop in net worth for households under age 34 and a 33% drop for those between 55 and 64. But the worst blow by far hits those in between, notes Neil Howe in Social Trends Biweekly: a 54% decline in net worth for families of Generation X, and a nearly 40% decline for younger baby boomers.

By day, Jack Andraka appears to be a normal high school student. But after school, he goes to the lab at Johns Hopkins, where he’s developing a test for pancreatic cancer that is worlds better than what’s currently available. You may have read about him before, now see him talk about his breakthrough.

The number of venture capital funds has declined precipitously – it’s down nearly 50% from its peak, says David Brophy, venture capital expert and Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business – and deals have been slow this year. Says Brophy, “Partners are pulling back because they don’t trust the future – nobody does the moment – and venture capital is a big bet on the future.” So, with Facebook’s ill-fated IPO, does that mean another dot-com bubble is about to burst?

U.S. venture capital firms splashed out more money in the second quarter of 2012 than they have in any quarter since the dot-com boom, according to a forthcoming report from venture capital database CB Insights. (The report will be online here once it’s published.) In all, they invested $8.1 billion in a total of 812 companies, with the mobile and Internet sectors leading the way.

Whether you see this as cause for celebration or alarm depends on your degree of bubble-phobia. The last time funding was this high, in the second quarter of 2001, a devastating crash ensued. There are plenty of people out there who will tell you that the huge valuations for companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Groupon are signs that another pop is on the way.

The trend for Big Data isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Here in Silicon Valley, we’re amid a second California gold rush, but this time, we’re turning nuggets of data, not gold, into dollars.

Big Data is not easy to define. It broadly refers to the idea that a company can mine its data and unlock potentially valuable insights. One profession in particular is poised to capitalize on the trend. This elite and emergent group, known as “data scientists,” claims to hold the keys to unlock the value in a treasure trove of data. As such, companies are pursuing data scientist, even though it’s never been clear what they actually do.