The number of countries providing open access to government data has more than doubled in the past two years, according to figures released in a new report from the United Nations.

The report, the latest in a series of biannual surveys documenting the evolution of electronic government globally, found that 106 out of 193 member countries now make open government data catalogues, or data sets, available to the public, up from 46 countries in 2014.

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Those regularly chided by their dentists got good news on Tuesday, as the U.S. government acknowledged something to which TIME had brought attention last year: there is little scientific evidence that flossing your teeth really makes a difference when it comes to cavities and gum disease.

But if we’ve all just been wasting minutes a day on flossing—which, let’s be honest, few people actually want to do—why did we start doing that in the first place?

JARED LINDZON 08.02.16 8:00 AM If you think the best places to work are also the best places to interview at, you’re sorely mistaken.

Glassdoor, the employer review website that publishes an annual list of the U.S.’s top companies, recently released a list of the 50 best places to interview, and there is very little overlap between the two.

In fact, you’d have to scroll all the way down to the 42nd best place to work, Southwest Airlines, to find a company that made both lists (the airline was ranked as the seventh best place to interview).

Image: Flickr user Mike Mozart

Don’t you wish you could get everyone to do what you want? I know you have. We all have. No matter who you are, your life would be much easier if everyone just did as you asked, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Many of us have been told that persuasion is something that comes naturally to certain people. Some people are just blessed with silver tongues, right?

The Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania announced Monday that it has expanded its Ben Franklin Business Incubator Network to include the Reading-based Jump Start Incubator and 13 others.

Jump Start Incubator is a project of Berks County Community Foundation and Kutztown University Small Business Development Center. Since the program began in 2012, 34 startups have entered Jump Start Incubator. Of those 34, 28 of them, or 82 percent, are still in business today.

Countless people dream of starting a business. And as many people know, one of the greatest obstacles to that goal raising enough capital to make that dream a reality. While most of them have viable business ideas that can lead to significant achievements, very few financial institutions are ready to fund new entities. Startup venture capital remains inaccessible to the average citizen while established entrepreneurs have more than they can handle. Fortunately, with the advent of crowdfunding, aspiring entrepreneurs have new hope in alleviating the challenges of finding funding.

Boston has long been a city of firsts: home of the first U.S. public park, public school and subway system. Rather appropriately then, if perhaps shockingly to most, it has been deemed by the US Chamber of Commerce as the city best positioned to lead the digital economy. This is made more impressive when one considers that Boston barely breaches a population of 600,000 and that it lies so far outside of Silicon Valley’s GPS coordinates. Given its singular makeup, what lessons can entrepreneurs, startups and governments (whether regionally, nationally, or globally) pull from Boston as they build out their own innovation hubs?

Image: http://www.psfk.com

I’ve run my business for fifteen years and take great joy in sharing advice and war stories with aspiring entrepreneurs. The question that consistently comes up in these conversations is: What’s the hardest part of running a business?

And while there are a hundred ways to Sunday to answer this question, I’d like to offer an answer that has taken me over a decade to learn but sits front and center with me in my role as a business owner - emotional endurance.

We are delighted to announce Illumina Accelerator is accepting applications for its next funding cycle in San Francisco. Illumina Accelerator is the world’s first business accelerator focused on creating an innovation ecosystem for the genomics industry. It drives value for genomics startups developing breakthrough applications in therapeutics, diagnostics, agriculture, direct to consumer, synthetic biology, and beyond. Selected genomics startups will receive seed investment, business guidance, and fully operational lab space for six months in San Francisco, starting in January 2017. Applications for the fifth funding cycle are due by September 1, 2016.

We are on the brink of a historic transformation of the energy sector. The landmark energy bill passed by the state Legislature July 31 commits power distributors in the Commonwealth to significantly increasing their use of clean, renewable sources of energy, including offshore wind. By signing this bill, Gov. Charlie Baker has the opportunity to kick start a new industry in Massachusetts, while solidifying the Commonwealth’s position as a national leader in clean energy. The bill requires state utilities to purchase 1,600 MW of electricity produced by wind farms located 15 to 25 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The wind farms will be located in federal waters leased to Deepwater Wind, which is completing the nation’s first wind power plant serving Block Island; DONG Energy, the international leader in offshore wind power generation; and Offshore MW.

If you won’t take Price Intelligently Co-founder and CEO Patrick Campbell's word on the grand consequence of pricing strategy, heed the wisdom of Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet: “The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power,” says the Oracle of Omaha, ranking it above good management. “If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business.”

Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline (IW 1000/124) announced on August 1 that it will form a joint venture with Google's parent company Alphabet to research and develop so-called bioelectronic medicines.

GSK has agreed with Verily Life Sciences (formerly Google Life Sciences) to create a new company called Galvani Bioelectronics.

The venture will be headquartered in Britain and will receive a total investment of up to $714 million over seven years.

Image: GlaxoSmithKline - http://www.industryweek.com 

GlaxoSmithKline and Alphabet unit Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) made a splash yesterday when they announced the launch of Galvani Bioelectronics, a company that will build upon GSK’s three years of work to develop tiny nerve-altering devices that might one day be used instead of drugs to treat a variety of diseases. The two companies will invest up to £540 million (more than $700 million) over the next seven years, they said, employing 30 scientists at GSK’s research center in the U.K. and at Verily in South San Francisco.

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA – This year, the Tamarack Foundation for the Arts released the results of the first West Virginia Creative Entrepreneur Study to assess the status and needs of the business owners that make up the state's creative economy.

More than 500 creative entrepreneurs participated in the study, citing training addressing marketing and technology, business strategy, and finance as being barriers to the growth of their businesses. The foundation's team has developed Accelerate Your Growth: A Creative Entrepreneur Speaker Series to directly address these needs. 

We’re more than a decade on from the beginning of the cleantech gold rush -- and a lot of venture capital firms failed to strike it rich. 

In this week's show, we tally the boom and bust in cleantech VC, and look at how it compares with other sectors. We're joined by Varun Sivaram, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Ben Gaddy, the director of technology development at the Clean Energy Trust. 

In Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists relentlessly seek the next big thing, firms have hired teenagers as analysts and associates. In Boston, where university students make up a bulk of the population, Rough Draft Ventures backs college startups and hires a new class of student VCs each year.

But the interest in developing VC talent isn't confined to the coasts. As Chicago's ecosystem grows, increasingly Chicago venture capital firms are tapping into university talent.

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On July 27, another cohort of young Singaporeans received their A*Star scholarships for undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral education. They join over 1,400 who have received scholarships over the years. Of these, about 800 are still pursuing their education, while 600 have been deployed. They have a bright future ahead of them, as underlined by Minister for Trade and Industry (Industry) S. Iswaran during the event, as "research and the innovation it fosters will play an even more significant role in positioning Singapore's economy for the future". But we all know it goes beyond research talent.

WILMINGTON, Del. — For decades, many of the nation’s biggest companies staked their futures far from the fraying downtowns of aging East Coast and Midwestern cities. One after another, they decamped for sprawling campuses in the suburbs and exurbs.

Now, corporate America is moving in the other direction.

In June, McDonald’s joined a long list of companies that are returning to downtown Chicago from suburbs like Oak Brook, Northfield and Schaumburg.

Later this month, the top executive team at General Electric — whose 70-acre wooded campus in Fairfield, Conn., has embodied the quintessential suburban corporate office park since it opened in 1974 — will move to downtown Boston.

Image: Mark Vergnano, chief of Chemours, which came close to leaving Wilmington, Del., for the suburbs. Credit Will Figg for The New York Times

After many years of working with angel investors seriously trying to find new ventures worthy of their hard-earned money, I find their frustration often exceeds that of entrepreneurs sincerely looking for financial help. That’s a lose-lose situation, so I’ve given a good bit of thought to how every entrepreneur can improve their odds, and keep investors less frustrated at the same time.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Over the last few months, a lot has been said about the upcoming changes to StartUp PHL and more broadly about city and state involvement in fostering an environment that supports local startup growth.

As a non Philly-native who chose Philadelphia as home for my company, VeryApt, and as a StartUp PHL portfolio company, I thought it would be helpful to give my perspective on the program: how it’s driven Philly’s tech ecosystem and how it can be even better the second time around.

Image: Ashrit Kamireddi, cofounder of VeryApt, at a StartUpPHL event, November 2014. (Photo by Mitchell Leff for the City of Philadelphia)