On July 17, 1902 in the midst of a steamy summer, Dr. Willis H. Carrier developed and later patented the first modern system to provide man-made control over temperature, humidity, ventilation and indoor air. From there, his innovation created an industry dedicated to making the world a cooler place to live, work and play. In celebration of this historic anniversary, here a few facts about Willis Carrier, inventor and entrepreneur:

Even though it’s a people-pleaser, Carrier’s original invention was designed for paper — not comfort. A Brooklyn, N.Y. printing plant challenged Carrier to stabilize the temperature and moisture in the air so the dimensions of the paper would remain constant and the different color inks would line up correctly. This innovation gave birth to the air conditioning industry.

Diving in the waters off the Bahamas sounds idyllic, but a group of scientists isn't doing it to relax. They're on a mission to learn more about endangered whales, and they're doing it by collecting whale poop.

The team of snorkeling scientists is hoping to use whales' feces to learn how noise pollution in the area has affected these massive mammals. Their work is being funded by the U.S. Navy,  which for years has supported this kind of research into the environmental effects of its underwater activities.

Ocean noise could be a hidden danger to marine creatures. "Pings" from military and fishing sonar, the low-frequency drone of constant shipping traffic, the booming of offshore seismic exploration and the sounds of recreational boat traffic all make the ocean much noisier than it once was. For marine species that rely on sound to hunt and communicate, this background noise could be making it harder to find food or each other and could raise stress levels, affecting their health or reproduction.

In 2006, Harvard sociologists struck a mother lode of social-science data, offering a new way to answer big questions about how race and cultural tastes affect relationships.

The source: some 1,700 Facebook profiles, downloaded from an entire class of students at an "anonymous" university, that could reveal how friendships and interests evolve over time.

It was the kind of collection that hundreds of scholars would find interesting. And in 2008, the Harvard team began to realize that potential by publicly releasing part of its archive.

But today the data-sharing venture has collapsed. The Facebook archive is more like plutonium than gold—its contents yanked offline, its future release uncertain, its creators scolded by some scholars for downloading the profiles without students' knowledge and for failing

While the term “technology transfer” doesn’t exactly evoke images of celebrations and merriment, it’s nonetheless an exciting time for a field that, in Oregon, is growing.

Oregon Health & Science University will nearly double the number of staffers in its technology transfer office, from 14 to 27. Oregon State University is adding staffers in its office as well. And state leaders continue to provide cash, as opposed to lip service, to programs that encourage universities to commercial research.

The list below provides insight into what companies have grown from university research (the term “tech transfer” refers to the “transferring” of university-developed products from the laboratory to the commercial market). A quick glimpse reveals that several prominent businesses — among them: Home Dialysis Plus Ltd., Azuray Technologies Inc. and Gamma Therapeutics Inc. — launched from Oregon universities within the last few years.

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center opened submissions for its 2011 tax incentive program this month, through which it will offer up to $25 million in rewards to companies engaged in life sciences research and development, commercialization and manufacturing in the Bay State.

MLSC is a quasi-public created by Mass. State legislature in 2006, tasked with administering the $1 billion allocated by Gov. Deval Patrick's life sciences bill.

"The Program addresses the significant capital expenditures associated with the life sciences R&D cycle and the high costs of translating research into commercially viable products," according to the center's website. "To qualify, companies must receive certification from the Center and must demonstrate both the scientific and economic merit of their expansion plans."

Albany, NY -- Small business owners looking for financing to grow their operations will soon be able to look to New York state for funding.

On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation allowing the use of federal money for the Innovate NY Fund, the New York State Capital Access Program and the Bonding Guarantee Assistance Program.

The Innovate NY Fund, designed to provide venture capital to get early stage companies growing, is particularly promising, said Linda Dickerson Hartsock of the CenterState CEO Tech Center.

The 2011 Forbes Midas List ranked the top 100 venture capitalists based on M&A and IPO exits.

As one of the two women included on this year’s list, it was disappointing to see that only two had made the cut.

This begs the question: Why so few women on the list, and why so few women in venture capital in general?

Why is it important for more women to enter venture capital? The career possibilities are terrific and I believe that more women in venture capital will contribute to growing better, stronger, more sustainable companies.

Today, we are trying a special edition of Founder Stories; that we are calling Founder Office Hours. Inspired by Paul Graham’s Office Hours onstage at our last Techcrunch Disrupt, we brought together a group of startup founders in our NYC studio to get feedback and advice. Joining regular host Chris Dixon is Josh Kopelman, managing partner of First Round Capital.

In this first video above, Adam Neary, founder of Profitably, asks whether he should charge for a new product or go freemium. Profitably is a business dashboard for small businesses that pulls accounting data from QuickBooks and helps visualize it. The company is developing a new product around business planning and modeling that traditionally is only available to larger corporations. Should he charge a monthly fee for the new product, or go freemium—give it away for free and upsell to premium features?

Every startup founder I know talks about the chaos of their business, which they usually attribute to that burst of growth that is required to get to positive cash flow. They envision a stable environment after that point, and may have convinced themselves that they will be safer and happier with a livable income, maintaining a loyal but flat customer base.

Sadly, this false perception often leads to the death of their business, or at least the end of their tenure as CEO. I second the message that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “Conquer the Chaos.” Your only choice is to live with it, and find a way to conquer it.

So what does the Durant School of Entrepreneurship, or E-School, curriculum look like? I’m currently trying to reshape our existing entrepreneurship curriculum from the traditional model to the new science of entrepreneurship I see emerging. Below is the high level flow of entrepreneurs, both in the school and I would argue in real life.

Reframe the Idea

Most students struggle to “dream up” a good idea. What they really need is to learn to see the world in a new way. In this phase, we help students break the frame on the world view. The focus of idea generation is to 1) learn to see all kinds of problems around you, 2) learn to see every problem as an opportunity, 3) develop the habit of creatively imagining multiple solutions to these problems (specifically, rather than coming up with and stopping with the first idea, develop the creative discipline to develop and churn through multiple solutions).

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2011 -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NASA, the U.S. Department of State, and NIKE, Inc. have partnered on a unique initiative called LAUNCH. The LAUNCH: Energy Challenge, announced today, formally begins the third module of the LAUNCH program which is focused on sustainable energy challenges for the developed and developing worlds.

LAUNCH's mission is to search for, showcase and support innovators poised for potential large-scale impact on humanity's most pressing sustainability challenges.  Previous LAUNCH modules in 2010 and 2011 focused on Water and Health.  In this module, LAUNCH is searching for entrepreneurial efforts focused on the development of innovative products, services, and programs in the energy sector.  This initiative seeks innovations that can benefit from collaborative engagement with influential government and business leaders who are convened to help accelerate the deployment and adoption of these innovations in both the developed and developing worlds.

“Where’s the beef?” The angry, irascible cry of actress Clara Peller in 1984 – 1985 commercials for Wendy’s burger chain became an iconic slogan of the 1980’s and even penetrated into the Democratic primaries as Vice President Walter Mondale challenged Senator Gary Hart with the same cry. In many ways it established the power of commercials to affect a competitive advantage, although most people fail to recall that Wendy’s burgers were the product. Americans have a love-hate relationship with commercials. Many watch the Super Bowl, not for the football, but to be entertained by the real contest: who will win the commercial shootout?

The commercial marketplace is a phenomenon that we all experience with commercials, obnoxious or not, used as a marketing tool to achieve sales and wealth creation through the buying and selling of products and services. Innovation drives a significant portion of the economy created by that marketplace and is often called the innovation economy. But innovations drive not only the commercial marketplace, but are bought and sold in a marketplace known as the innovation marketplace.

INTERNET buffs are often accused of being flabby couch potatoes. Tell that to the several hundred people who battle it out in Los Angeles on July 29th-31st for the title of the fittest person on Earth. The finalists of the CrossFit Games are the the sturdiest of more than 26,000 competitors from 59 countries who responded to challenges posted on the internet.

The participants filmed themselves lifting barbells and performing calisthenics in busy streets, driveways, or public parks, then uploaded their feats on the web for other aspirants to judge. Few are professional athletes (though sponsorship is growing). Many have careers in physically taxing vocations like the army or firefighting, though a surprising number are school teachers (not just PE, mind you). What unites them is a passion for practical fitness—and the voyeuristic camaraderie of watching others punish themselves through the same task, often against the unlikeliest of backdrops and using whatever (typically hefty) objects happen to be to hand.

Through the launch of his 20 Under 20 Fellowship initiative, billionaire entrepreneur and hedge funder Peter Thiel is engaging in one of the most radical experiments yet about the future of American higher education. He is, essentially, paying 20 of the best and brightest students in the country to drop out of college and, instead, to move to Silicon Valley to pursue their personal entrepreneurial passions for two years. He is bankrolling each of the students to the tune of $100,000 each, hoping that the combination of youth, passion, genius and a significant amount of capital backing will result in truly world-changing innovations. Instead of getting tied down with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, these college students will have two years of freedom to pursue their entrepreneurial passion. Is this the new American dream?

It's hard to ignore that we're currently in the middle of a fundamental change in the way that we think about higher education. A number of significant trends - like the skyrocketing cost of a college education and the emergence of new, distributed models of learning across the Internet - have led many to challenge the conventional wisdom of plunking down $100,000 or more for a four-year college education - especially if that pricey college education means that you'll basically have to become an indentured servant on Wall Street if you ever want to pay off all your student debt. (This assumes, of course, that your last name is not Rockefeller or Forbes or Gates)

At a recent biotech conference, we heard a speaker start his remarks by pointing to the "threat from Asia." He talked about the large number of Ph.D.'s in molecular biology now being trained in China and felt certain that the next stage would be an attempt by Chinese companies to move strongly into the development of new medicines. To the speaker, this was anathema.

But think about that for a moment. Right now, bright young Chinese students are studying hard at their universities. In a few years, they'll burn the midnight oil at Chinese biotech companies or research institutes. They'll work for another dozen years doing experiments and clinical trials—all so they can invent new drugs, which may save millions of lives. How mad should we be?

Many people start businesses because they enjoy doing something a recreationally. Since we’re all told to do what you love, what makes more sense than to start doing as a business something that you love to do as a hobby?

The most obvious example I can think of, are people who start restaurants because they love to cook. Unfortunately, there’s much more to the restaurant business than just cooking. Marketing, staffing, inventory, and customer relations all take up more time than cooking for new restauranteur. So do the unglamorous jobs like cleaning the toilets. Unfortunately, I think that many small business entrepreneurs are not prepared for this reality and this is reflected in the failure rate for small businesses.

An international team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology and involving the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe.

The distant quasar is one of the most powerful known objects in the universe and has an energy output of 1,000 trillion suns — about 65,000 times that of the Milky Way galaxy. The quasar’s power comes from matter spiraling into the central supermassive black hole, estimated at some 20 billion times the mass of our sun, said study leader Matt Bradford of Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Because the quasar — essentially a voraciously feeding black hole — is so far away, its light has taken 12 billion light years to arrive at Earth. Since one light year equals about 6 trillion miles, the observations reveal a time when the universe was very young, perhaps only 1.6 billion years old. Astronomers believe the universe was formed by the Big Bang roughly 13.6 billion years ago.

More than seventy-six million men and women in the United States are presently feeling a major change. That would be the Baby Boomers, and they are the most powerful demographic in history. This represents the largest single sustained growth of the population in the nation’s history.

It also represents the largest group of creative people all alive and kicking – making music, writing books, purchasing and selling, and helping other people.

Your brain is gathering and processing details all the time. Well, this group of individuals, collectively, has amassed an incredible quantity of knowledge: facts, figures, images, ideas, words, and music, all in the course of fifty plus years.

Fundraising is brutal. Actually, according to Paul Graham, “Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup. The hardest part is making something people want.” More startups may fail for that reason, but a close second is the difficulty of raising money.

A while back, I outlined “Most Startups Get No Professional Investor Cash” for startups, listing angel investors as alternative #6. I still get a lot of questions on these mysterious and often invisible investors, so here is another attempt to bring them out of the ether.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's economic development program, which he began to unveil last week, is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or an effort that could create big-time winners and big-time losers among the 10 regions of New York state.

Depends on who you talk to.

First the upside. I called Jerry Kremer, who was an influential state legislator for 23 years. Now he's CEO of Empire Government Strategies, a lobbying firm based on Long Island that focuses on economic development.