Going out to eat has become a major part of our culture. Frequently eating out and consuming high-calorie foods in large portions at restaurants can contribute to excess calorie intake and weight gain. However, a study in the January/February 2012 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior demonstrates that individuals can eat out and still lose weight.

Investigators from The University of Texas at Austin enrolled 35 healthy, perimenopausal women aged 40 to 59 years who eat out frequently. Participants took part in a 6-week program called Mindful Restaurant Eating, a weight-gain prevention intervention that helps develop the skills needed to reduce caloric and fat intake when eating out. The focus of the program was on preventing weight gain in this population, not weight loss. It is important to prevent weight gain in this population as increasing abdominal waist circumference from weight gain is greater during the perimenopausal years, which in turn increases the risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Even though the focus was on weight maintenance, the researchers found that participants in the intervention group lost significantly more weight, had lower average daily caloric and fat intake, had increased diet related self-efficacy, and had fewer barriers to weight management when eating out.

Pour more funds into basic research. Open up federal data stores. Ramp up technical skills education. Open up export markets. And most of all, unshackle and boost the entrepreneur. These are some of the recommendations in a new report on innovation issued by the US Department of Commerce, in consultation with the National Economic Council.

The Competitive and Innovative Capacity of the United States outlines 10 key action items that policymakers need to undertake or support. The underlying assumption is that it’s up to government action and oversight to make innovation happen. Government can get out of the way or lay the foundation for competitiveness. But there also needs to be more recognition that innovation is something somewhat messy and failure-prone that arises from the grassroots as well, by inspired — or discontented — entrepreneurs, professionals and rainmakers both outside and inside organizations. Often, it’s people going against the grain, against the best-laid plans of policymakers, and even against their own corporate managers’ wishes.

Conventional wisdom says that investors are fleeing biotech and cleantech. So it's surprising to hear that Cambridge-based Flagship Ventures has raised its biggest fund so far — $270 million — explicitly to invest in those two sectors, where companies can require large amounts of capital and long gestation periods.

Flagship managing partner Noubar Afeyan told me last night, "I think the remaining limited partners who want to be in venture capital" — the pension funds, wealthy individuals, and university endowments that give VCs money to manage — "are looking for differentiated strategies, and they're looking for track records."

Infographic provided by Business Opportunities Weblog.

Small traditional businesses? They’re already ‘inside’ the startup world, aren’t they? No. They typically know nothing about such things as Lean Startup, Startup Weekend or Y Combinator, and even when they do, they think it has nothing to do with them. Are they right?

No, they’re utterly wrong.

Small traditional businesses are often the first to complain about the state of the business world, claiming that the market almost unfailingly tends to favour their gargantuan counterparts, who can effortlessly deploy enormous purchasing power and leave the hapless small trader perpetually struggling for survival.

Researchers have discovered a natural hormone that acts like exercise on muscle tissue—burning calories, improving insulin processing, and perhaps boosting strength. The scientists hope it could eventually be used as a treatment for obesity, diabetes, and, potentially, neuromuscular diseases like muscular dystrophy.

In a paper published online today by the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, showed that the hormone occurs naturally in both mice and humans. It pushes cells to transform from white fat—globules that serve as reservoirs for excess calories—into brown fat, which generates heat.

Maryland lawmakers convened today for the 2012 General Assembly session facing a familiar challenge of having to close a projected $1 billion deficit. But Maryland's long-term future will be shaped by how lawmakers act, or defer action, on issues relating to what has to be their overriding priority this year - economic growth and job creation, says Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee.

A core message the GBC is sending lawmakers this year is: ensure that policy actions relate directly to eight core pillars for a competitive state business environment that was published by the Greater Baltimore Committee in a report entitled Gaining a Competitive Edge.

It’s no secret that in the past decade the pharmaceutical industry has been spending more and more on research and getting less and less in return.

One consequence has been the many and varied attempts to remodel R&D operations and to pull in more innovation from universities and young biotech companies.

This is now raising the question of whether there is more value in sourcing early-stage assets externally than doing the work in house, challenging corporate R&D operations to show they are worth the huge amounts of cash invested in them.

In 2010 the consultants Deloitte set out to lend a hand in helping heads of R&D to justify the investment in R&D, carrying out a benchmark assessment of the value of all the drugs in the pipelines of the 12 leading pharma companies and how much had been spent on them to date.

Most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that their primary motivation is to “change the world” and to build something lasting, not to make a lot of money. But the conventional wisdom is that employees work for money, above all else. Yet my own experience, and a recent McKinsey survey, leads me to believe that non-cash motivators may be more effective in the long term than financial incentives.

I agree with Charles P. Garcia, who ties motivation most strongly to leadership, in his book “Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows,” based on this group of more than 600 prominent leaders from every sector of American society. They assert that employees value having strong leaders, who incent them to do their best, just as much if not more than money.

The “crowd funding” craze hit the Internet with a splash a few years ago as a way of harnessing social media to raise money for causes or projects that strike an emotional chord with donors. In New York, sites such as Kickstarter and RocketHub provide a platform for the likes of inventors, independent filmmakers and young fashion designers to get their creations off the ground.

Donors get a nominal payback, such as an early version of a product or a mention in the credits of a film, in addition, of course, to the feel-good perk of helping someone pursue a dream. And the idea has caught fire with dozens of sites exploiting the trend in the U.S. and abroad. Three-year-old Kickstarter says that a million people have backed projects on its platform, donating some $84 million for 13,000 projects.

One of the least favourite things about raising money from VCs is having to deal with board meetings once you’re funded. Most board meetings suck. I’ve sat through my fair share on the company side. To date, as an investor, I’ve tried to avoid them favouring regular informal interactions.

But since board meetings are inevitable companies and investors need to work better to get the most out of them. Done right, they can be of huge value.

I’ve included some readings on how to do boards right below. In addition, I have prepared a model board package. This draws VERY heavily on the amazing board packages that portfolio company Localmind puts together.

Adam Hasler looks like a footloose millennial. He's worked as a model, waited tables, and lived all over the world. But at 28, there's more to his résumé than meets the eye.

He earned a dual degree in history and international relations at American University. After graduating, he and two partners--boosted by a $10,000 stake from his parents and an investment from a local restaurateur--took over the coffeehouse where he had worked since age 19: Modern Times, inside the Politics and Prose bookstore, a beloved Washington, D.C., institution. "I was 22 and naive," he says now. "We got our asses handed to us." Still, working 16-hour days for weeks on end, "living on cookies and beer," Hasler and his partners increased the shop's revenue in three years from less than $200,000 to $500,000.

These past two years I've been part of AOL Ventures, a group that has tried to think long and hard about re-envisioning the corporate venture capital model and how corporations should interact with startups.

Who knows if we have the right recipe (talk to our entrepreneurs) but I've had the benefit of synthesizing a ton of information from some of the best minds in the space and developed a pretty distinct viewpoint.  The interest in corporate venture activity is at fever pitch, and with more and more corporations looking for perspective, I thought it might be thoughtful to put pen to paper.

What follows is how corporations might want to think about CVC, largely based upon our successes and failures.  I'd note in advance that none of this is terribly novel, it focuses on Internet/media investors and there obviously is a lot more here that isn't written.

We should all be eating more dietary fiber to improve our health – that’s the message from a health review by scientists in India. The team has looked at research conducted into dietary fiber during the last few decades across the globe and now suggests that to avoid initial problems, such as intestinal gas and loose stool, it is best to increase intake gradually and to spread high-fiber foods out throughout the day, at meals and snacks.

Writing in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health, the team offers fruit, vegetables, whole-grain foods, such as muesli and porridge, beans and pulses, as readily available foods rich in dietary fiber.

Dietary fiber, also known as roughage, is the general term of the non-digestible parts of the fruit and vegetable products we eat. There are two forms soluble and insoluble. Soluble (prebiotic, viscous) fiber that is readily broken down or fermented in the colon into physiologically active byproducts and gases. The second form is insoluble fiber, which is metabolically inert, but absorbs water as it passes through the digestive system, providing bulk for the intestinal muscles to work against and easing defecation.

In short order, startup incubator Rock Health has become one of the Bay Area’s hubs for entrepreneurs working on technology ideas that could change healthcare delivery.

Formed last year to test whether the startup accelerator model pioneered by organizations like Y Combinator and TechStars will work in the healthcare industry, Rock Health has already graduated its first class of 13 startups and assembled a high-powered group of entrepreneurs, investors, and other advisors to mentor the early-stage companies in its network. (A second group of startups enters the program this month.)

As a leader in social media, advertising and online influence, it’s surprising that ultra-powerful startup Facebook has managed to remain a privately held company for so long.

However, the high level of success Facebook has reached privately is likely to pay off when it finally files an initial public offering (IPO), which could raise over $10 billion.

The $10 billion IPO, which only three other companies (AT&T, General Motors and Visa) have ever achieved, isn’t very surprising. Facebook is arguably the most successful social network ever created — so much so that it’s transformed from being just a “network” to an expansive platform of communication, gaming, digital commerce and marketing. The reason Facebook was able to do this is because it’s ridiculously popular, serving over 800 million active users per month.

When Vint Cerf talks about Google’s upcoming global Science Fair, you can hear the infectious enthusiasm in his voice.

“I just am a huge cheerleader for getting kids interested in science and technology,” he told VentureBeat in a phone conversation yesterday.

But the Father of the Internet, who is also now a Googler, isn’t simply being patronizing. Oh, look at the kiddies playing with their toy volcanoes, how cute. He truly expects great science and fresh thinking to come from the fair’s crop of intelligent teens.

By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity—defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal—is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer than their children and grandchildren.

The New Year is always a great time to reflect on the many challenges and successes we’ve had, and of course, set some new goals for the future.

At the turn of 2008, I decided I was going to become an entrepreneur and made that my key New Year resolution. The problem was that I really had no idea how or where to get started. Since then, I’ve learned a lot and mostly by trial and error. Now, I’m now on my fourth venture (I’ve documented my ventures on my personal website if you’re interested: tonynavarro.me). To wit, I wanted to share some of my key lessons on getting started for those aspiring entrepreneurs who have decided to make 2012 the year of entrepreneurship.

Rich Bendis has been nominated as a "Top5 Speaker" for 2012 in the Innovation/Creativity category by Speakers Platform. Recognition is based on: expertise. professionalism, innovation within the topic area, testimonials and references, presentation skills and online votes. Rich has spoken over 30 times this year in many Countries, Provinces, States, Regions and Cities around the world on Building Innovative Economies and other Innovation topics. ALL VOTES MUST BE CAST BEFORE JANUARY 14TH, 2012.

Rich would appreciate your vote and asks that you please go to the voting page at: http://speaking.com/top5/ to cast your vote.

Thank You,

Rich Bendis