Scientists are finding more evidence that you should probably cut down on your sugar intake. 

A group of U.K. researchers say they've spotted the molecular "tipping point" that could explain sugar's ties to Alzheimer's disease.

Their findings provide further evidence that there might be a link between high blood sugar levels and the memory-robbing disease, though they don't prove that sugar causes Alzheimer's outright. 

People have been exploring the Earth since ancient times—traversing deserts, climbing mountains, and trekking through forests. But there is one ecological realm that hasn’t yet been well explored: the oceans. To date, just 5 percent of Earth’s oceans have been seen by human eyes or by human-controlled robots.

Image: Yogesh Girdhar, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, swims with a "curious" robot he helped build. // Ioannis Rekleitis / McGill University

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, today released the following statement along with an outline of the committee’s top priorities for the 115th Congress.

Chairman Smith: “An active two years lay ahead of us as we have important work to do in the new Congress.  The Science Committee plans to create transparent environmental policies based on sound science and focused on innovation rather than regulation.  The committee will work to make sure every agency research dollar spent works for the taxpayers who fund them.  We’ll work to re-stake America’s leadership in STEM concentrations by crafting critical science education initiatives, and we will conduct rigorous oversight of cybersecurity standards and breaches at federal agencies to ensure all Americans’ private information is secure.

Sustainable economic development is reportedly important to a majority of economic development leaders, yet a triple bottom line approach is not a common practice. Why?

The authors of a recent article in Economic Development Quarterly, “The Triple Bottom Line and Sustainable Economic Development Theory and Practice,” offer some reasons and propose a set of remedies.

One explanation is that TBL practices “may be adopted without the terminology being applied.” In other words, economic developers may be undertaking activities that are consistent with sustainable economic development values but do not carry that label.

Many assume that as a leader and expert in your field, you can meet the technical demands of your role and seamlessly lead your people. But ask any CEO or business leader, and they’ll tell you differently.

While meeting technical demands can be second nature, having the attributes required to effectively motivate, inspire and initiate change in employees, teams and organisations can be a whole other matter.

Far from reducing complexity, the leaders of the digital economy absorb it, test it and change quickly.

A common problem facing many senior managers and executives today in increasingly software-dominated organisations is reconciling a long-term planned strategic vision with the need to deliver value to a customer quickly and adapting to changing circumstances. Popular software development approaches found under the umbrella of Agile can generate near real-time data about bottlenecks and waste in the delivery pipeline. Agile approaches also offer rapid feedback on the fitness of the strategy itself. In the right hands, this data can be used to incrementally and quickly tune the delivery pipeline as well as to refine strategy.

When researchers for a recent IPSOS/USA Today survey asked 45-to-65-year olds how prepared they felt for retirement, 59% responded that they felt very or somewhat prepared. The same percentage said they expected to rely mostly or entirely on their own savings to fund their post-career life. Asked how much savings they had, however, only about a third had set aside even $250,000, while another third had saved less than $100,000. All of which suggests some people could be in for a rude awakening come retirement time. To get a better handle on whether you’re really on track when it comes to retirement, ask yourself these three key questions.

Will self-driving cars have steering wheels? Maybe not, if engineers keep falling asleep. 

Ford's self-driving cars will skip over Level 3 — where cars are automated, but human drivers are still expected to take over if need be — to Level 4, where cars are basically fully autonomous except for extreme conditions. (Self-driving cars that would meet the requirements for Level 5 are still theoretical at this point.) The levels are defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers, or SAE. 

Automotive News reported that Ford came to that decision after its engineers fell asleep, lulled into a false sense of security with nothing much to do while driving Level 3 cars.

Smart-television maker Vizio agreed to pay a penalty this month for spying on 11 million customers. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the company captured second-by-second information on what customers viewed, combined it with their gender, age and income, and sold it to third parties.

How much was the fine for Vizio, which has sales in excess of $3 billion? It was $2.2 million — barely a slap on the wrist.

Companies must be open to radical reinvention to find new, significant, and sustainable sources of revenue.

When Madonna burst onto the scene in the early 1980s, there was little reason to suspect that she’d have more than her allotted 15 minutes of fame. But in the three decades since her debut album, she has managed to remain a media icon.

Her secret? “Madonna is the perfect example of reinvention,” Janice Dickinson, renowned talent agent, has said. Fittingly, the name of Madonna’s sixth concert tour was “Reinvention.”

Whether we realize it or not, our communities have an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Whether it’s a networking event at a local chamber of commerce or a venture capital firm investing in a startup company, each activity that facilitates entrepreneurial growth is a component of this ecosystem. Some indicators of the entrepreneurial ecosystem have direct ties to startup growth (e.g. venture capital investment), while others are indicators necessary to build-out capacity (e.g. talent attraction and education).

Examining entrepreneurial ecosystem measurement is an interesting and important research activity for several reasons. First, there is a significant amount of taxpayer investment in play through public financing of small businesses and early stage companies. Second, practitioners and funders are currently seeking ways to expand entrepreneurial activity in order to increase regional prosperity.

Image: http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu

After a long Great Recession hangover, entrepreneurship is finally rebounding in the United States. Entrepreneurs are driving a resurgence of business activity in America—in new business creation, local small business activity, and the growth of small firms into larger businesses.

But underneath this reassuring surface, turbulent shifts are shaping the future of entrepreneurship to be dramatically different than what it is today, or was in the past. We posit that three mega trends will be defining forces shaping the future of entrepreneurship for decades to come. These three trends reflect the changing demographics, map, and nature of American entrepreneurship.

BALTIMORE, MD (February 15, 2017) – The Maryland Department of Commerce; the University of Maryland, Baltimore; Hood College; Washington College; and Stevenson University have endowed a total of $8.3 million in four new research professorships. The endowments were made through the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative (MEI), a state program created to spur basic and applied research in scientific and technical fields at the colleges and universities. The schools raised $4.3 million in private funding for each chair and Maryland Commerce approved matching grants of $4 million to support the endowments.

“The groundbreaking research coming out of these colleges and universities is addressing key issues impacting our communities today, from cancer research to sustainable food systems and biofuels,” said Maryland Commerce Secretary Mike Gill. “We are proud to partner with these world-class institutions to keep our state on the cutting edge of technology and discovery.”

On the Tibetan Plateau in eastern China, 4 million solar panels silently soak up the sun as part of the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park. It’s the largest solar farm in the world, spreading over 10 square miles of the high desert landscape.

The complex sprung into existence in 2013 and has been rapidly expanding ever since. Satellite imagery curated by NASA’s Earth Observatory chronicles its growth from a cluster of panels to a sprawling solar farm that looks like a giant, angular thought bubble as of January 2017.

Image: By January 5, 2017, solar panels covered 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) of Qinghai province. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

For academics and practitioners involved in economic development, quantifying the vibrancy of a regional innovation system can be a challenging experience.  To support these efforts, new research by authors from Cleveland-based venture development organization Jumpstart and Cleveland State University’s Center for Economic Development seeks to do two things: identify key indicators – a grouping of measures representing a broader concept – for describing a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, and establish which of these indicators are most valuable for entrepreneurs. Ultimately, the authors find that three broad indicators – innovation, centers of commerce, and small business hubs – can help measure entrepreneurial ecosystem vitality in a region.

The most valuable innovation is often found at the intersection of firms’ capabilities. Exploiting these opportunities requires a new approach to collaboration.

Innovation in large organisations is traditionally nurtured and deployed internally. As a result, solutions are often inward-looking, missing the chance to seize opportunities and address chronic and systemic problems found at the ecosystem level.

In his 1974 interview with ABC News, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke painted a picture of how computers would change our way of life by the year 2001. One of his many extraordinarily accurate predictions: “Any businessman, any executive, could live almost anywhere on Earth and still do his business through a device like this.”

Now, this prediction about remote working has not only come to life; it’s proved to be more beneficial than the traditional office model for some companies.

Fitting vehicles with comprehensive crash reporting software is a huge opportunity to save lives. It is a crying shame policymakers caved to pressure from privacy advocates and watered down the regulation, writes Nick Wallace.

Nick Wallace is a senior policy analyst with the Centre for Data Innovation, a data policy think tank.

Beginning in October, new EU regulations will require manufacturers to fit all cars produced for sale in the European Economic Area with a device that, when it detects a crash, automatically requests emergency services and transmits data about the location of the vehicle, the direction it had been travelling in, and the time of the crash.

The World Medical Innovation Forum is a global gathering of more than 1,000 senior health care leaders in the heart of Boston. It was established to respond to the intensifying transformation of health care and its impact on innovation. The Forum is rooted in the belief that no matter the magnitude of that change, the center of health care needs to be a shared, fundamental commitment to collaborative innovation – industry and academia working together to improve patient lives.

What’s a guy supposed to do when he sells his first startup to Google for over $80 million, just 2 years after graduation?

Found another company, Flatiron Health (which has so far raised $228 million from, among others, Google Ventures) that is working to cure cancer using big data.

This is the life story, so far, of Nat Turner W’08. Listen to hear him talk with Karl Ulrich about choosing your funding strategically (“taking investment is much more than just capital”), the benefits of being an industry outsider (“I think, honestly, it’s an advantage that we did not come from the industry”), rising healthcare costs (“maybe this crisis, maybe this opportunity will actually give rise to some innovative thinking and some better solutions. We can all be hopeful for that.”), and more.