Want to keep your heart and cardiovascular system healthy for years to come? Keep these meals and snack items away from your cart and out of your regular diet. Save them for occasional indulgences—at most—and replace them with heart-healthy swaps whenever possible. Fast-food burgers The science on whether saturated fats are truly linked to heart disease isn’t entirely clear. When consumed in moderation, high-quality, grass-fed beef may even have some heart-health benefits, says Dr. Regina Druz, associate professor of cardiology at Hofstra University and chief of cardiology at St. John Episcopal Hospital in New York City.

Developing countries are increasingly pushing back against the intellectual property regime foisted on them by the advanced economies over the last 30 years. They are right to do so, because what matters is not only the production of knowledge, but also that it is used in ways that put the health and wellbeing of people ahead of corporate profits.

Communication is key when it comes to success in any field, but especially as an aspiring entrepreneur. Getting an idea up and running requires clear and concise writing skills, whether you’re composing emails or creating presentations.

By honing business writing, entrepreneurs can boost workplace efficiency and productivity, while also building a solid reputation. Luckily, you can improve your writing almost instantaneously with some small tips and tricks, from making time to plan to using more verbs.

American startups are growing at a faster rate than they have been in recent years, according to a new report.

The 2017 Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship looks at the revenue and employment performance of startups, scale-ups and high growth companies.

“Startups that turned five years old in 2016 grew an estimated 75.6 percent in their first five years of operation – from almost six employees when they were founded to more than 10 employees for surviving businesses in their fifth year. This in an increase of more than 5 percentage points compared to 2015,” the Kauffman Foundation said

Did you know that by 2027, most workers in the US will be freelancers, enjoying the flexibility and freedom of being their own boss? This was the finding of the ‘Freelancing in America: 2017’ report, jointly commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union.

Image: https://smallbiztrends.com

Startup growth is on the rise — and not just in San Francisco and New York. 

That's according to the 2017 Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship, a study that measures startup growth at the city, state, and national level.

The study focuses on metrics like the average employment growth at startups, how many companies have scaled up, and how many high-growth startups are in a given area. This year, entrepreneurship grew in 26 of the 40 metro areas measured.

MADISON — Six small high-tech businesses in Wisconsin will receive up to $75,000 each to commercialize their innovations, thanks to the SBIR Advance program’s latest round of funding.

SBIR Advance, the Wisconsin matching grant program, provides assistance to companies in the process of completing federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. This is the ninth round of SBIR Advance funding since this collaboration by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and the University of Wisconsin-Extension’s Center for Technology Commercialization began in 2014.

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, once predicted, “When the rate of change outside the company is greater than the rate of change inside, the end is near.” Yet in my role as business advisor, I often see companies naively ignoring this reality. The smarter ones look outside regularly for evidence of impending change, and treat these as opportunities to jump ahead of competitors.

Today, the move to digital technology is driving marketplace change at a seemingly ever-increasing rate. The pervasive Internet and mobile device access allows instant communication of new options, total sharing of customer experiences, and mass customization, on a world-wide scale. No more hiding behind a cultural stereotype, a well-built brand, or a geographic wall.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com - via wikipedia

In cities across the world, mayors, urban planners, citizens, and, increasingly, tech companies are using powerful new devices and programs to create smart cities, where transportation systems, energy grids, and public services can be monitored and manipulated in real time. We should be careful about how we enable ubiquitous computing to change and control our cities, cautions Anthony Townsend, a senior research scientist at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University and author of Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. As a researcher, Townsend has studied how cities apply technology for the past 20 years. He spoke with journalist Nate Berg for the Business Report.

State- and metro-specific interactive data available at www.KauffmanIndex.org

U.S. entrepreneurial growth in 2016 continued to rebound from the Great Recession slump, across different industries and geographies, for the third year in a row, according to the 2017 Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship.

The report also found that startups are growing more rapidly and reaching scale at higher rates than in the years following the Great Recession. However, despite the rebound in recent years, fewer companies are growing to become medium-sized or larger in terms of employment when compared to the levels in the 1980s and 90s. High-growth companies today create fewer jobs than they did in the past. Thanks to the leveraging potential of technology, revenue and value creation can take off dramatically while job growth lags behind.

Image: http://www.kauffman.org

The European Innovation Scoreboard provides a comparative analysis of innovation performance in EU countries, other European countries and regional neighbours. It assesses relative strengths and weaknesses of national innovation systems and helps countries identify areas they need to address.

The 2017 edition of the Scoreboard presents a refined analytical framework. New indicators capture investments in skills, digital readiness, entrepreneurship, and public-private innovation partnerships. In addition, a new toolbox with contextual data can be used to analyse and compare structural differences between countries.

The first country to publish a roadmap on the circular economy is inviting the world to join it in acting sustainably.

Finland is a proactive global actor in this area, creating and facilitating circular economy growth. The country’s innovation fund, Sitra, hosted the World Circular Economy Forum  this year and it has a number of companies promoting sustainability in a range of innovative ways.

Image: https://www.innovatorsmag.com

Hywind is a trial project that includes five wind turbines floating off the coast of Scotland. The energy they produce could power up to 20,000 homes. 

If Hywind proves successful, it would mean that larger wind farms could be installed in much deeper waters, opening up a new frontier for renewable energy production.

Image: http://mashable.com

Another year, another super impressive bunch of photos from the Wildlife Photography Awards.

The winners of the competition, which will go on display at London's Natural History Museum later this the month, were announced on Wednesday.

The 15 photos below are all winners of their respective categories.

The European Commission today published the Mid-term Evaluation Report on the EIT – Europe’s largest innovation community. The Report was carried out to assess the work of the EIT, and examined how the EIT fulfils its mission of boosting innovation and enabling an effective innovation model for Europe.

It confirmed that the reason for the setting up of the EIT and the EIT innovation model remain both valid and unique. Additionally, the Report highlights that the:

In the three decades since Canada pioneered blue box recycling, similar systems have become familiar sights in cities throughout the developed world. But the rise of recycling disguises an awkward truth: only 10 per cent of the plastic produced globally is put back into use. Even in a rich nation like Canada, where all but the most isolated communities can recycle, plastics are recovered at a much lower rate than materials like paper and metal.

Student loans in the United States have become the second-largest category of consumer debt, bested only by mortgage debt. Federal statistics show student debt topped $1.3 trillion at the end of 2016. More than 44 million people owe that money, and the default rate stands at 11.2%. New research from Laura Perna, a professor at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, and her co-authors, tackles some of the pressing issues around student loans. In their recent paper for the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative (“An Updated Look at Student Loan Debt Repayment and Default,”) Perna and her co-authors offer some ideas for students and government. She spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about her research and what can be done to start to get more students in the black.

The college’s announcement today described the incubator as a support for student programming and as a resource for New Rochelle and the county. Iona said the venue, at 748 North Ave., will provide startup support, mentorship and funding to students and other entrepreneurs. The school will host its first incubator event at 6 p.m. on Oct. 24. The Westchester Tech Meetup will allow entrepreneurs and Iona students to discuss business ideas.

Image: Christoph Winkler, founding Hynes Institute program director, speaks at the opening event. - https://westfaironline.com

The Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship is an early indicator of business growth in the United States, integrating several high-quality sources of timely information into one composite indicator of entrepreneurial business growth.

The 2017 report showed that U.S. entrepreneurial growth in 2016 continued to rebound from the Great Recession slump, across different industries and geographies, for the third year in a row. However, despite the rebound in recent years, fewer companies are growing to become medium-sized or larger in terms of employment when compared to the levels in the 1980s and 90s.

Image: http://www.kauffman.org

Gov. Larry Hogan is supporting Elon Musk and his desire to bring an undergrond hyperloop to the East Coast, and it seems like a bit of the Tesla founder’s social media strategy has rubbed off on the Maryland Republican.

On Thursday, Hogan dropped a video on Twitter that quickly circulated suggesting he was onboard with the underground tunnels and tubes holding trains which would be helmed by Musk’s The Boring Company.

Image: Gov. Hogan (second from left) meets The Boring Company. (Photo via Facebook)