The U.S. isn’t producing enough highly skilled graduates in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields to meet the country’s workforce needs. To remain competitive in an increasingly globalized world the U.S. needs to step up its own production of STEM graduates and amend its immigration policies to better recruit the best and the brightest from abroad.

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A team of researchers from the U.S. and China has used 3-D printing to create a realistic model of a cancerous tumor.

The model could aid in preclinical research by providing a way for drug developers to test new compounds. The model, which consists of a grid-shaped scaffold of fibrous proteins coated in HeLa cells--an immortal line of cervical cancer cells originally derived from a patient in 1951--could also help scientists better understand how tumors develop, grow and spread throughout the body.

Image: 3-D tumor model designed from gelatin, alginate and fibrin to imitate the fibrous proteins that make up the outside of a tumor.--Courtesy of the Institute of Physics  

As a tubby teen, I distinctly remember reading The Science Fiction Weight Loss Book, an anthology of short stories collected by the late, great Isaac Asimov. In one of them, a family—all of whom could stand to shed a few pounds—are trapped inside a computer-controlled home, which has decided the best way for them to lose weight is to never leave the house. The artificial intelligence, its algorithms askew, slowly starves them.

Image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Kitchen_g272-Refrigerator_p91061.html 

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, May 23, 2014 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Silicon Valley beat previous winners Boston, New York and Vienna to become the world's most innovative city in 2014, in the 8th annual Innovation Cities Index released by global innovation agency, 2thinknow.

Behind the San Francisco - San Jose area, this year's winners for the global innovation economy in order were New York, London, Boston (past winner), Paris, Vienna, Munich, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Seattle in the global top cities. Regionally, San Francisco - San Jose won in the Americas, Seoul won for the first time in Asia, London won in Europe and Dubai came first in the Emerging region for the second time. Sydney beat long time Australian winner Melbourne for first place overall, and 17th globally.

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Fueled by an influx of younger residents and healthy regional economies, steady population growth hasn’t yet slowed across many of the nation’s urban centers.

Updated population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau Thursday highlight the country’s fastest-growing cities, showing many continue to welcome notable tallies of residents. Areas with strong energy sectors, retirement destinations and those attractive to young people, in particular, are experiencing large increases.

Image: Houses being built in Odessa, Texas. the nation's second fastest-growing city. AP/Pat Sullivan 

Starting a business can be a scary thing. You give up the stability (albeit perceived) of a steady income with benefits. You put your career on hold. You sacrifice significant time and energy for the first several years just to get up to your former corporate salary. You enter a risky area where most people fail within five years.

Two summers ago, in 2012, St. Ignatius High School student Ryan Linker was looking for a way to earn some extra cash. So he decided to start his own car detailing business. “My parents were bugging me to get a job,” he recalls. “My dad suggested I start some sort of business. He did car detailing as a kid and knew it pretty well and he said he could teach me.”

Image: http://freshwatercleveland.com - ST. IGNATIUS HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT RYAN LINKER - BOB PERKOSKI 

In a startup every employee is a cowboy or cowgirl. And that’s a good thing. What truly matters isn’t who does what, but rather how they do it. What matters is that stuff gets done.

Then you grow. You add people. Complexity ensues. Your business with a few people focused solely on making things happen naturally develops a number of different ways to do the same thing. Some are effective, some not. When things get a little out of control you create processes to drive consistency and build leverage.

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I’m a big fan of telecommuting – and so are most employees. But not all telecommuters are created equal and some employees (and entrepreneurs) need a little extra help to get the most out of working at home. A new study by PGI found seven types of telecommuters, each with their own strong suits and weak points. Here’s a closer look.

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These were questions posed by the new Google Glass chief Ivy Ross in an open Google Plus letter this past week. She however failed to answer them in the same breath, simply remarking that “no one has really tried to answer them with a product like this before.” There are good reasons for this.

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EFF is proud to participate in the launch of a new guide to alternative patent licensing. The guide was prepared by the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property & Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law School in partnership with EFF, Engine, and the Open Invention Network (OIN). Written by Stanford students Marta Belcher and John Casey, the guide provides a high-level overview of defensive patent aggregators and defensive patent licenses. We hope it will be a useful starting place for companies trying to navigate the patent landscape.

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Question: As an employer, what ONE quality do you look for in every team member you hire and why?

Work ethic

“You can be the smartest and most technically gifted candidate that I’ve ever met, but if I can’t detect that you’ll do whatever it takes to succeed in your job and help drive the organization’s growth, I probably won’t take a chance on you. Self-starters with indisputably strong work ethics are almost always a safe investment.”

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Old Dominion University seeks an Executive Director of the Center for Economic Development to establish and lead the activities of the Center for Economic Development in order to enhance the economic development of the Hampton Roads area by bringing to bear the capabilities and organizational resources of Old Dominion University. The newly-established Center for Economic Development (CED) will work to enhance the Hampton Roads area through its six working units that include: the Monarch Business Innovation Gateway, the Monarch Accelerator Partnership, the Services Division, the Monarch Innovation Foundation, the Monarch Innovation Laboratory and the Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

Old Dominion University, located in the City of Norfolk in the metropolitan Hampton Roads region of coastal Virginia, is a Carnegie doctoral/research-extensive institution serving 24,000 students in six academic colleges through its 700+ full-time and 500+ part-time faculty, and almost 1,500 full-time and 400+ part-time staff. In 2013, according to the Economic Forecasting Project at ODU, the Hampton Roads region had a gross regional product of about $88B (including about $20B in taxable sales) and civilian employment of almost 760K (and an unemployment rate of 5.9%).

When going into a job interview, candidates prepare to answer tough questions and perfect their elevator pitches. However, a crucial part of the interview process is often forgotten. Interviewees often hesitate to ask questions pertaining to the company and position, but creating a discussion around these topics (at the appropriate opportunities) can show that a candidate is thoughtful, eager, and interested. Here are five must-ask questions to start a dialogue.

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Europe is permanently looking to improve its competitiveness. A consensus has emerged that science, technology and innovation is a prerequisite. There is also a consensus that we are lagging behind on innovation. A lack of synergies between stakeholders has been identified as a reason for this, and the term ‘innovation ecosystem’ has been coined as a way of conceptualise the many and various interactions that are required to get innovation moving.

But why not push this analogy further? Engineers have long sought inspiration for their designs in nature. Similarly, ecosystem-like or ‘ecomorphic’ processes can be the inspiration for boosting innovation. Indeed, the fundamentals of Darwinian evolution are a good place to look for lessons in competitiveness.

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Bahawalpur in eastern Pakistan is known for magnificent palaces built during the British Raj, but in the dusty part of town where most of the 400,000 residents actually live, four dozen farmers have gathered in the decidedly unpalatial concrete building that houses the local branch of the National Rural Support Programme Bank. Their darkened, sun-creased faces testify to the toll of tilling soil in one of the hotter places on Earth (at 11 a.m. in mid-June it’s ­already heading toward 105 degrees); many twist their hair into head scarves, and all don cotton tunics known as kurta.

Image: http://www.forbes.com/ 

This year’s award goes to US-based technology company IBM, which is spending $1bn to build a new division around its Watson supercomputer, and has established a $100m venture fund to back outside application developers to tap into the supercomputer. Watson is humanising big data and striving to analyse worldwide data, 80% of which is unstructured, to offer educated advice or suggestions in the areas of retail, travel and healthcare, at least to start.

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You can sum up most advice given in college graduation address in one “word”: YOLO.

It’s an easy concept to grasp when you’re first starting out in the world with limited responsibilities and limitless potential, but dream jobs can become the daily grind and big plans can easily go unrealized.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com/ 

If you’re like me, your desk is decorated with photos of far-away places: a palm-tree-lined beach, a sunrise over snow-covered mountains, a lush Irish countryside. But, while we may all daydream of taking off to an exotic locale, many of us don’t.

A 2014 Oxford Economics Assessment of Paid Time Off in the U.S. showed 42% of employees with paid time off finished the year with unused days, leaving an average of 8.1 days unused.

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