Google recently changed its logo a little. Now they’ve changed it a lot. And it’s actually a heck of a lot better, too. I kinda love it.

The idea here is that Google doesn’t need as much of logo anymore as it needs a constantly morphing identity that can quickly resonate across mediums, from smartwatches to apps to browsers. So yes, the typeface is changing (and not a moment too soon, gosh that thing was ugly), but there are also some new elements, some of which can be animated:

Days ago, Branch cofounder Josh Miller left Facebook with little explanation. Now we know what he’s doing next.

The young founder revealed on his personal blog today that he’s immediately starting a new role as the White House’s first director of product. There, Miller explained that he hopes to expand the White House’s existing digital “portfolio,” which so far includes its website and the “We the People” petition service.

Most of us think our pets say a lot about who we are. Why else would we proudly proclaim our loyalty on T-shirts and in online profile pictures? Yet few scientists have rigorously investigated whether our choice of pet reveals anything about our personality, beliefs or lifestyle. Scientific American MIND rounded up the smattering of available research and highlighted some of the more interesting findings in the infographic that starts below and continues on the next pages. Some information comes from peer-reviewed studies, but the bulk of the data derives from huge market surveys undertaken by interested parties in the pet industry, such as the American Veterinary Medical Association, which tracks pet populations, owner demographics and expenditures to follow how pet ownership in the U.S. changes over time. As you will see, these surveys reveal interesting things about people and the pets they love.

Europe’s economy has generated unprecedented wealth over the past century. Part of the success is attributable to continuous improvements in resource productivity—a trend that has started to reduce Europe’s resource exposure. At the same time, resource productivity remains hugely underexploited as a source of wealth, competitiveness, and renewal. Our new study, Growth within: A circular economy vision for a competitive Europe,1 provides new evidence that a circular economy, enabled by the technology revolution, would allow Europe to grow resource productivity by up to 3 percent annually. This would generate a primary-resource benefit of as much as €0.6 trillion per year by 2030 to Europe’s economies. In addition, it would generate €1.2 trillion in nonresource and externality benefits, bringing the annual total benefits to around €1.8 trillion compared with today.

As you may have noticed, here in the United States we’re well into our never-ending presidential election season. Personally, I find it an appalling process.

Here we are, trying to elect the person best able to lead the world’s most powerful country at a time of great turmoil both domestically and around the world. Yet the system currently in place is more geared to winning a pandering contest than to actually finding a good leader, much less the great statesman…or stateswoman…we so desperately need to guide us wisely through these difficult times.

Do you daydream about quitting your job? Walking out and never looking back? Tess Vigeland did. As a host of public radio’s Marketplace, Vigeland was a familiar voice to millions of listeners who tuned in each day to hear her talk about personal finance. After 11 years in the role, Vigeland decided to quit—and she didn’t have the safety net of another job waiting in the wings.

Congratulations. Your startup made it through its first challenging years, and you’re seeing positive returns. But, there’s always room to grow. Is it time to hire more salespeople, or should you invest in customer relationship management (CRM), productivity software, or another technology that can improve your business?

A lot of time, effort and money goes into the creation of new drugs. A new game Big Pharma, which came out Thursday, is giving users the opportunity to see for themselves by running a virtual pharmaceutical company.

Not unlike Big Pharma in real life, one of your biggest priorities is money. It’s up to you whether or not you want to sacrifice efficacy to make cheaper products and yield more profit.

Chances are you’ll want to, unless you’re fine with being a loser.

If there’s one thing that’s a nearly universal anxiety among cities, it’s brain drain, or the loss of educated residents to other places. I’ve written about this many times over the years, critiquing the way it is normally conceived.

Since brain drain seems to be a major concern in shrinking cities, I decided to take a look at the facts around brains in those places. Looking at the 28 metro areas among the 100 largest that had objective measures of shrinkage – in population and/or jobs – between 2000 and 2013, I looked what what happened to their educational attainment levels.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Suppose you’re going into a meeting and taking over leadership of a team or initiative where those you will be leading have been involved and active previously.

Or maybe you have been thrust into a job assignment that’s new territory for you.

Or perhaps you are filling in for someone else with extensive expertise, and you, unfortunately, don’t have the same background on the topic or the time you would like to have to prepare.

Image: http://brainzooming.com

Bain Capital Ventures sponsored the inaugural Boston Women's Venture Capital Summit this year. The $80 billion company, most known for being founded by Mitt Romney and investing in Dunkin' Donuts and Staples, is trying to create a more progressive image.

Several partners from Bain appeared on panels and attested to the fact that there are too few women and not enough diversity in venture capital. They also talked about the fact that there were incredible startups, CEOs, and networking opportunities at the summit. They simply didn't know about them before, they echoed.

As a child, I was a terrible sleeper. My parents would often find me awake at 3 AM with a flashlight under the covers reading a Hardy Boy, Nancy Drew, or Tom Swift book. When I was 9-years-old, my pediatrician prescribed an awful tasting medicine to be taken at night, mixed with pineapple juice to mask the flavor. Years later, I found out that the medicine was actually a heavy duty narcotic, sometimes called a “Mickey Finn.” Needless to say, I was just never a good sleeper. In my adult years, I often explained away my sleeping habits by swearing that 4-5 hours of sleep a night was all I needed.

In the future, wearables are going to get smaller, smarter and much more popular in federal agencies, predicts Gabe Grifoni, co-founder and CEO of the wearable technology startup Rufus Labs.

But first things first: Security measures must catch up with the new technology, he told Nextgov.

Image: Apple Watches appear on display, Friday, April 10, 2015, in New York. // Bebeto Matthews/AP

The grass is always greener on the other side. It seems that everyone I know who works in a corporate environment dreams of escaping to become an entrepreneur, and every entrepreneur wishes he or she had the security of a regular paycheck.

As someone who has experience on both sides of this fence, I’m convinced that the move from employee to entrepreneur is far more risky.

Japanese manga and anime are two of the country's most recognizable pop culture exports, with the likes of One Piece and Attack on Titan attracting die-hard followers across the globe. Obsessed fans — often referred to as otaku — pay tribute to their favorite two-dimensional characters in a variety of ways. On the milder side are those with sprawling action figure collections, and others who play dress-up at cosplay conventions. Hardcore otaku take the obsession further: "marrying" their 2D crush, and even sleeping with objects bearing the character's resemblance.

Image: Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Uchimura and his product, Itaspo. It uses sophisticated sensors that allow the pillow to talk when touched.IMAGE: TECH IN ASIA

You can never do anything worthwhile alone without the help of your team. In order to thrive, a business needs team collaboration at its highest levels. This is why we need to build great teams at work. But what does it take to build a better team? Is team building an art or a science?

Image: Sebastien Boyer is the Director of Products at Nutcache, a smart and simple collaborative project management tool for all sizes of businesses with time tracking, invoicing and expenses. 

Transplant surgeons have started using a device that allows them to “reanimate” hearts from people who have recently died, and use the organs to save others. 

The “heart in a box” is a wheeled cart with an oxygen supply, a sterile chamber, and tubing to clamp onto a donor heart and keep it fed with blood and nutrients. Doctors say it may extend the time a heart can last outside the body and is letting them recover hearts from donors who haven’t been eligible before.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/

Like all markets, venture capital markets have boom and bust cycles. These days, the industry is in the midst of a boom, with investment hitting levels not seen since the peak of the last cycle, 15 years ago. But this boom looks very different than its predecessor.

You can tell the quality of an organisation by the quality of questions it asks. Larry Page, co-founder of search engine provider Google, seems to have a habit of asking tough ones, including one enquiring why there are only about 50 “ambitious” venture investors globally. (This piece follows a series looking at Google Ventures here, here and here.)

In the summer of 1994, Jaap Haartsen started worked on what would become a ubiquitous and essential technology - Bluetooth. The 31-year-old Dutch engineer was living in Sweden and working for Ericsson.

He never worked weekends, or more than 40 hours a week. He had a cell phone and laptop, but doesn't recall having Internet at home. Every weekend he immersed in nature with his wife and three young children.