At the end of January I had the fortunate honor to visit NASA-Kennedy Space Center to participate as a returning Council Member for the LAUNCH Green Chemistry Forum, where to my great and pleasant surprise four of the ten selected innovators were Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funded technologies. Now let me back up for a second and explain a few things before I dig in further.

How are states faring in these two years of modest recovery? Change is never simple. States vary in their rates of births and deaths, “natural increase” (or decrease, possibly), rates of immigration from abroad, and especially in domestic, internal migration. I present four maps, for population change, natural increase, immigration, and domestic migration.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Hey Under30CEO, as you guys know 2.5 years ago we started a travel company because we realized that there was a lot more to life than just sitting behind a computer working.

After a pretty wild ride taking us everywhere from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes of Bali, we’ve now brought hundreds of people to over 10 destinations across the world all to help people truly understand our planet.

We were lucky enough to have a great feature in The Huffington Post come out this week that we know you will like.

Image: http://under30ceo.com

Phone calls. Millennials are allergic to them. I have this conversation Sofa King often that I’m sure each reader who has met me will think I’m talking specifically about you. I’m not. Well, I am. But not only you. Email is efficient.  You can crank out asynchronous thoughts, orders, questions, commands and comments. I email often. I always follow important emails with a call. There is a reason.

I was fortunate to spend an hour with a group of about 30 people and Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC yesterday morning. It was a super interesting and stimulating conversation that preceded an excellent speech that Wheeler gave on his Net Neutrality proposal. Go read it and ponder it. It’s in English (not legalese), is blunt, direct, and at times humorous. And it hits the soundbites that are being used against “the government takeover of the Internet” and “the end of the Internet as we know it” crowd quite effectively.

We tend to think older means wiser, but sometimes the best learning comes from our peers. Schools that use peer-tutoring programs have found the dynamic leads to higher academic achievement, and the relationship between students fosters social development and motivation.

But what about the kind of learning that’s done out of school—what about when you’re looking for a mentor?

A Temple University senior, who heads a digital media company that had work on display at the 2015 Philadelphia Auto Show, said the magic words. “Without the help of Blackstone’s Launch Pad, I probably wouldn’t have got to this point. If it wasn’t for them, I probably wouldn’t be pursuing entrepreneurship the way that I am right now,” said Calvin Miller, founder and CEO of Motorcar Studios.

Image: From left, Michel Masucci, Temple University’s vice provost for research; Stephen Tang, president and CEO of the University City Science Center; Hai-Lung Day, Temple University provost; Amy Stursberg, Blackstone Charitable Foundation’s executive director; and Alisha Slye, national director for Blackstone LaunchPad. — Photo by Gary Krueger/Temple University.

A British biotech company founded by a Nobel prize winner has raised what it says is a record 691,000 pounds ($1 million) via crowdfunding to help launch a stem cell-based regenerative medicine for use following heart trauma.

Cell Therapy, based in the Welsh capital Cardiff, says the medicine has the potential to reduce scarring of the heart muscle caused by a heart attack or failure.

On Thursday, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) re-introduced the Innovation Act, a bipartisan bill targeted at fixing the out-of-control patent troll problem.

This comes not a moment too soon, as patent trolls have begun to target one of the newest areas of innovation and job creation: the crowdfunding industry.

We have all heard about millennials, also known as Generation Y (Gen Y), or a generation that struggles to fit in the job market (because of the crises which give less job opportunities and, most importantly, because of the value gap with the existing corporate culture).

In this article, I want to share with you why I think Gen Yers are made to become social entrepreneurs.

As a new entrepreneur, unless you’re dipping into your own private fortune, you’ll probably have to spend some time fundraising to collect enough capital to start your project.

For most founders, the process is difficult and time-consuming but necessary for the potential life of their business. If you haven’t been through the process before, the experience can be even more harrowing, since you won’t be familiar with the customs and conventions of fundraising.

In a recent episode of "Shark Tank," Kevin O'Leary holds a Bev Boy, a floatable drink koozie, and tells its inventor Kevin Waltermire that it's "poo poo on a stick." "Your name is Kevin; my name is Kevin," O'Leary tells Waltermire. "I'm officially stripping you of your name because this idea is so bad. It is so bad. You do not deserve the name Kevin - you are now called Zonk. Now I'm sorry, man, but I'm out. This sucks."

Image: REUTERS/ Gus Ruelas "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary never refrains from yelling at or mocking an entrepreneur pitching to him.

The recent February issue of Health Affairs, which features a series of articles on innovation, provides us with an opportunity to examine the state of America’s innovation ecosystem for medical technology. This ecosystem has produced a myriad of medical advances, ranging from advanced imaging to molecular diagnostics, minimally invasive surgical tools, and incredibly sophisticated implants. These technologies have shortened hospital stays, reduced the economic burden of disease, and saved and improved millions of lives.

The aviation company Pratt & Whitney is exploring whether technology known as additive manufacturing could be used to develop more compact jet engines that could make commercial airplanes lighter and more fuel efficient.+

Pratt & Whitney already uses two additive manufacturing techniques to make some engine components. Instead of casting metal in a mold, the methods involve forming solid objects by partially melting a metal powder with either a laser or an electron beam.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - Pratt & Whitney used additive manufacturing to create these engine brackets.

Digital advertising is all about relevancy, flexibility, efficiency, and measurability -- at least, that's what we tell ourselves. But it's difficult for brands to wield digital's full power without a clear and current understanding of the underlying technology. This is especially true when dealing with the mercurial world of data-driven creative.

We spent the past year talking to digital advertising professionals of all stripes at brands, media and creative agencies, and found that many extremely capable marketers are actually being held back by a small set of widely held misconceptions about what can and cannot be done. Bottom line: marketers that are unsure of the latest capabilities and how to effectively apply them simply won't innovate.

Google is altering the way it displays search results. Over the next few days, Google Search will begin to dish out health bits of facts with search news. This is Google’s new attempt at health news, in fact, this could be a way to reimagine the now defunct Google Health. This is not a first for Google. Its feet are firmly planted in the health space, having previously launched feature where people can connect to a doctor via video and its.

Small business owners frequently cite that having a mentor is one of their top keys to success. So why don’t you have one? It’s because you have misconceptions about what a mentor looks like and how they can help. Why People Don’t Want to be Your Mentor They Don’t Know You You won’t find mentors by reaching out to strangers since they don’t know you and won’t invest time in helping.

Figuring out how to compensate sales staff is easy — how much in sales did they do last quarter! But what about for your other employees? The rest of your team works just as hard, but their metrics-driven results can be more difficult to gauge. So we posed the question:

“What one tip do you have for creating performance-based bonuses for non-sales staff ?”

What country has the highest cost of living? What about the lowest? Normally, we think about the cost of living in reference to cities, but moving resource company Movehub created an infographic that shows the different costs of living in countries around the world. Using data from Numbeo, the largest crowdsourced database of global information, Movehub was able to create a visualization of how costs change from country to country.

It’s not that you don’t like what you do. In fact, you really enjoy the people you work with and the projects you have for the most part. It’s just that, well, you’re bored.

There, you said it.

This is surely a sign you’re ready to move on from your current position and on to something more challenging—as is looking at job postings and asking people what a recruiter does. But there are other signs that are much subtler.