Biosciences is a burgeoning sector in New York, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities wants to be at the forefront.

The New York-based company is launching a new startup space for life science entrepreneurs and early stage biotech companies. The initiative, dubbed Alexandria LaunchLabs, has up to $25 million in a seed fund ready to back prospective tenants.

A young dolphin that found itself stranded on the beach was carried back to the ocean by a kayaker in Namibia this week.

The juvenile Benguela dolphin, also known as a Heaviside's dolphin, was scooped up by Naude Dreyer of Pelican Point Kayaking from Paaltjies Beach near Walvis Bay and deposited back in its natural home.

Image: http://mashable.com

Online business-to-business marketplace Expert Market has put together a ranking of the global cities where people clock in the most hours worked each year and have the worst so-called work-life balance.

The site compiled information on the biggest, most important cities globally, then ranked them by the average total hours worked each year, using data from Swiss banking group UBS.

When Gabe Otte went to college, he already had an Apple internship under his belt. In undergrad, his computer-science professors told him to diversify and pick out another area to focus on so he wasn't bored in class, so he chose biology.

Now, at 27, he just got $5.5 million in a seed-funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz's bio fund to build out a blood test that screens for the earliest signs of cancer. Founders Fund, Data Collective Venture Capital, and Third Kind Venture Capital are also in on the round.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

A study by Nesta and the NCVO says the sector should put money into skills and capacity-building to help generate revenue from this source

More investment is needed in skills and capacity-building to increase the number of charities that use crowdfunding to generate revenue, according to a new report from the innovation charity Nesta and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The report, Crowdfunding Good Causes: Opportunities and challenges for charities, community groups and social entrepreneurs, says crowdfunding can help projects that would otherwise struggle to get funding, as well as increasing the amount of volunteering, improving transparency and helping to find new ways to increase awareness of social issues.

Image: http://www.thirdsector.co.uk

It’s been more than four (very long) years since the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the JOBS Act) made its debut, with much fanfare, in the White House Rose Garden. And on May 16, 2016, the official date of the emancipation of investment crowdfunding in the US, Title III of the JOBS Act was officially kicked off, following years of procrastination and hand wringing by the SEC.

Though I have been a strong advocate for breaking down all regulatory bottlenecks in the way of capital formation for our country’s SME’s, I was not in a celebratory mood on May 16. In fact, I was not even in the country.

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com

When a job seeker offers a prospective employer access to a reference, there's a good chance that person will give the hiring manager an earful of helpful information. Yet Cynthia Hedricks, chief analytics officer of SkillSurvey, a reference checking technology firm, says not many studies have been done on the impact this feedback has on hiring decisions or how it might predict a candidate's job performance.

Sometimes it’s clear that the writing's on the wall for an organization: Things aren't going well. And during those times it’s even harder to communicate and lead.

Whether a company figures out its end vision is unattainable without the help of a deep-pocketed investor, or if it simply sees the financials and understands that the run rate is coming to a close, these are pivotal and emotional times for individuals at the top. More importantly, they're the hardest moments to strategize.

Connor McCormick began his freshman year of college with a specific goal for himself: Start a business by the end of first semester.

McCormick, now a junior studying business administration, did just that. In fact, he has two businesses, one in parking analytics and the other in storytelling.

"I wanted to go to a school where that kind of entrepreneurial thinking would be promoted," he said. "It turns out that's really, really hard to find."

The latest entrepreneurship study has some good news for the U.S. economy: startup growth is healthier than it's been in years. 

Each year, the Kauffman Index study measures entrepreneurship growth in 40 cities nationwide. The study is focused on output rather than input, which means it's looking at factors like business density, new companies, and growth rates. The study also measures entrepreneurship at the national, state, and metropolitan level.  

One of the myths I often hear as an advisor to many entrepreneurs is that their lifestyle would somehow be better if they could more easily find other people’s money to build their startup. They don’t realize that according to statistics, more than 90 percent of satisfied entrepreneurs use bootstrapping, since other people’s money always comes with strings, most of them negative.

You don't need to be told that leadership takes presence. But in my experience, leaders today have arguably fewer opportunities to show it.

Particularly if you head up a digital business or lead teams spread out across multiple locations, you're faced with generating "remote" influence at the same time that the people right there in your own office need to be kept motivated, too.

While I’ve always been pretty outgoing, it took me some time to create the kind of leadership presence that could inspire the people who work at my company—and it's always a work in progress, especially as the daily features of modern business crowd in. I used to get frustrated, for instance, when employees texted me about something I thought they could easily figure out. I felt I deserved an office.

Image: Flickr user Nick Kenrick

What separates strategic, visionary thinkers from the rest of us? And why do we tend to worry about our ability to remember names—or where our keys are—rather than loss of cognitive memory that makes great performers?

These were questions that puzzled Sandra Bond Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas—Dallas. She wondered if high-level cognitive function could be taught or improved and set about figuring out how to do so.

Image: Flickr user Liz Henry

Arguably the most critical industry in the new economy, information is also often the cruelest. It is the ultimate disruptor of jobs and growth, blessing some regional economies but leaving most in the dust. Overall, the sector accounts for almost 3 million jobs, but it has only added a paltry net 70,000 jobs over the last five years. The overall numbers mask a loss of about 200,000 jobs in newspapers, book publishing, broadcasting and telecommunications, while employment in software publishing, data processing and other tech-driven information jobs has expanded by a modest 240,000 jobs (manufacturing, by comparison, has produced three times that amount in the same period).

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Among the big themes of this year’s presidential campaign is the growing gap between America’s rich and its poor. The issue has provided fuel to Democrat Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

And it’s a theme that increasingly defines the city of Boston, with its booming innovation economy — and its growing number of people struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder.

A visit to Fan Pier on the waterfront in the heart of South Boston’s Innovation District provides a view of the city’s economic boom.

Image: The gap between the rich and the poor is a theme that increasingly defines the city of Boston, with its booming innovation economy -- and its growing number of people struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder. Here's construction in the heart of South Boston’s Innovation District in March. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Early on, after Facebook launched its Feed feature, the product team at Facebook was trying to understand how to engage and retain users. What the product team noticed is that IF a user got to 10 or more friends in 14 days, there was very high likelihood of this user sticking around for a while.

The team had a hypothesis that 10 friends collectively generated enough interesting activity to populate the user’s feed and to keep him or her coming back. For Facebook, 10 friends has literally become a magic number, because, while the exact mechanism behind it wasn’t clear, users with 10 or more friends after 14 days didn’t churn.

Image: https://alexiskold.ne

Today, Ohio TechAngel Funds (OTAF), a Rev1 Ventures managed fund, announced the launch of OTAF V, its fifth fund with $5.1 million in commitments. With this fund, OTAF is focused on continuing to help early-stage companies secure critical, early capital while delivering strategic services that help entrepreneurs build successful companies. And the formula is working – OTAF, which was founded over a decade ago, is one of the largest angel funds in the U.S. with investments in over 50 companies. To date, those companies have raised over $500MM in capital from outside sources and nearly 70 percent of the firms are still active today, with five successful exits.

On May 16, the final rules to permit equity crowdfunding that were adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act finally took effect. Under the new rules, companies now are permitted to raise up to $1 million in crowdfunding offerings during any 12-month period from all investors, including unaccredited investors. The new rules fundamentally affect the ability of startups and emerging growth businesses to reach out to the public in their efforts to raise capital.

Five weeks into the federal election campaign, there remains a gaping hole in our conversation around Australia's future economic growth.

Voices are at least united around the need to look beyond our traditional mining economy, yet there is little evidence of a clear vision for the future shape of business in Australia or a road map for getting there. Many other nations such as India, Israel, China, Singapore, Britain and the Philippines have been focused on this objective for decades and have created thriving innovation hubs which engage business on many levels. These early starters are already reaping the dividends.

Image: It takes a village to raise economic growth, says StartupAUS director Peter Bradd.

Xconomy New York —  (Updated, 1:12 pm ET, see below) It’s no secret that one of the biggest things holding New York City’s biotech ecosystem back is lack of lab space for startups. The problem will take a broad effort to solve, not just a few buildings or incubators. But one of the city’s biggest real estate players, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, has announced a plan today to help out.

(Updated w/ comments from Joel Marcus) Alexandria (NYSE: ARE) disclosed two new New York City initiatives: what’s being called “Alexandria LaunchLabs at the Alexandria Center for Life Science—New York City,” and an associated seed fund. LaunchLabs will be a 15,000-square-foot lab and office space that will effectively serve as a startup incubator inside the Alexandria Center, a sprawling campus on Manhattan’s East Side.