Google is the first major Web company to reveal exactly how much energy it uses—information that will help researchers and policy makers understand how the massive explosion of Internet usage and cloud computing is contributing to global energy consumption.

Google uses 260 million watts continuously across the globe, the company reported on Wednesday. This is equivalent to the power used by all the homes in Richmond, Virginia, or Irvine, California (around 200,000 homes), and roughly a quarter of the output of a standard nuclear power plant.

Q: I'm working full time but want to launch a business. Any advice on doing both?

A: If you're new to business ownership, it's a good idea to start planning or executing your venture while still employed. It allows you to test the idea, as well as build up revenue and a customer base. Some tips:

•Write a business plan. This will help you test out your start-up dream. Project the staffing, expenses and cash flow needed.

Speaking to higher education leaders from across his state last month, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon laid out a new goal for public colleges and universities: funding based on student performance.

“Our current funding approach is disconnected from statewide goals and needs,” the governor said. “It doesn’t give policy makers — or the public — confidence that the money we invest in public higher education … is being used in the most effective way possible.”

A synthetic, temperature-sensitive gel could help surgeons reconnect blood vessels more quickly, safely, and easily. The new gel, successfully tested in rats, could also enable more complex robotic surgery as well as minimally invasive surgery.

There have been few advances in the art of reconnecting blood vessels since French surgeon Alexis Carrel received the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his method of sewing them together. About a decade ago, surgeon Geoffrey Gurtner found himself longing for a substance that could be poured into the tiny blood vessels he was struggling to reconnect in order to prop them open while he sewed them together. "A lot of surgeries require reconnecting vessels," he says. "For two-thirds of operations, this would be helpful."

As the debate in Washington pivots this week from deficit reduction to job creation, progressives and conservatives will be vying to convince the American people that they have the best plan to get America working again. But any jobs plan will fall flat if it doesn’t lay out a strategy for investing in innovation.

Conservative proposals largely echo now-defunct Reagan-era thinking that tax cuts alone can spur the private sector to create jobs. Yet effective corporate tax rates are lower today than they were under President Reagan and are certainly much lower than many of our competitor nations. The same is true of the effective tax rate for top-, middle-, and low-income families. Tax cuts neither created the jobs of the past nor will they create the jobs of the future. Investing in innovation will.

Want to plan your day, your meetings, and your commute better? Factor in how your body and brain may make bad decisions after being worn down from making the right moves earlier in the day.

Did you read that weighty, informative article on "decision fatigue" in The New York Times magazine last weekend? Probably not, if you had to choose between those 5,400 words and Mad Men on Netflix at the end of a hectic day. It's a great article, but a paradox of its own description: a weighty bit of disciplined reading that describes how easy it is to fall into simple indulgences and short-term thinking after work, children, or just life itself has sapped you of your willpower.

"Be flexible in your business model but not in your ideals, and harbor determination."

Szaky founded TerraCycle when he was just a 19-year-old Princeton freshman. The company made worm refuse into fertilizer and packaged it in recycled bottles.

Now, TerraCycle has completely altered its focus, after Szaky saw an opportunity and went for it. TerraCycle's main business is now in 'upcycling' -- the repurposing of used material -- and things are going better than ever.

The first major overhaul of the U.S. patent system in nearly 60 years is about to become law. The U.S. Senate last night voted 89-9 to approve the American Invents Act (H.R. 1249), ending a 6-year battle over how best to reform a patent system beset by increasing delays and costly litigation. Although many major universities and large research-driven companies lobbied for the extensive reform package, some analysts worry it could complicate efforts by academic scientists and smaller start-up companies to commercialize their discoveries.

The legislation, which the House of Representatives approved overwhelmingly in March, "will enable U.S. inventors at universities and elsewhere to compete more effectively in the global marketplace," said a statement from six major university groups, including the Association of American Universities, Association of American Medical Colleges, and the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). They predict it will "improve patent quality and reduce patent litigation costs."

When I heard a friend make the statement “Your startup can’t fail if you don’t quit,” I realized that every entrepreneur should adopt it as their mantra. Pivoting or dealing a new hand is not quitting. If we all take this mantra, we can drastically improve the statistic that over half of new startups fail within five years. Nothing is more discouraging to future entrepreneurs than a failed startup.

Why do most startups fail? There are a thousand reasons listed by pundits across the media, but most of them agree that the number one reason is NOT running out of money. The number one reason is that the founder quits. Of course, they may be quitting because they ran out of money, but good entrepreneurs tell me that running out of money is most often an “excuse” rather than a “reason.”

Making a snowman seems simple enough. You roll the balls of snow around until they are the size you want, and you stack them. Once they’re stacked, decorate your new snowman as you see fit. However, one inventor has decided his frosty deserves to be patented.

In an article in the current issue of the journal Climatic Change Letters, Boston University researchers have estimated the impact near-term increases in global-mean temperatures will have on summertime temperatures in the U.S. and around the globe.

The “2°C global warming target” is in reference to the current international efforts to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases and limit human-induced global-mean near-surface temperature increases to 2°C (3.5°F) relative to the pre-industrial era, three-fifths of which has already occurred.

This Sunday, the Globe runs one of its occasional "Big Help" special sections focused on careers. For my weekly column, I posed two questions to a bevy of social media consultants, CEOs, human resources executives, and recruiters:

1. What should candidates be doing with social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs to improve their chances of getting a job?

2. What shouldn't they be doing?

COLLIER COUNTY — After identifying serious gaps in the way economic development is handled in Collier County, a private consultant is recommending big changes.

The draft strategic plan for economic development calls for new structures, new roles, new responsibilities, new leadership and a new shared vision for economic development.

The plan identifies 10 bold goals to achieve over the next five years:

■ Be a community of one voice toward a new vision.

■ Engage broader and deeper leadership in economic development.

■ Recruit 10 new non-retail companies a year, creating 1,000 new jobs with wages 10 percent above the county’s average.

How many times have you participated in a brainstorming session, only to be underwhelmed by the utter lack of follow up?

Unfortunately, in most businesses, this is often the norm.

Here's why:

1. The output of the session is underwhelming.

2. No one has taken the time, pre-brainstorm, to consider follow-up.

3. No criteria is established to evaluate the output.

Download the PDF

There have now been more than 10,000 Kickstarter projects funded, with more than $75 million dollars pledged and a 44% success rate. This lightweight model for "crowdfunding" has caught the attention of the White House, which specifically highlighted how entrepreneurs are using Kickstarter to access capital -- and how President Obama's new "American Jobs Act" could extend that access to more high-growth companies.

With high unemployment rates and the critical need for job creation, performance indicators for economic development activity are needed now more than ever.

Richard A. Bendis, President and CEO, Innovation America and Les J. Cranmer, Senior Managing Director, Studley, Inc.  (Fall 2011)

The four legs of the economic development stool: attraction efforts (luring new employers to an area); retention efforts (keeping employers in the area and assisting them to grow); reinvention efforts (providing assistance to employers undergoing change — think Bell Labs, Kodak, Polaroid); start-up growth efforts.

We are living in a world of instantaneous communication where you have to say it and make it stick – quick - or the opportunity is gone.

Think about it: If you’re trying to communicate in this digital age, then you’ve noticed that our attention spans are short. Twitter makes us think we can get the gist of “it” in 140 characters or less.  But not just that; those of us who have worked with children were either frustrated or discovered the art of quick and powerful lessons. Have you ever tried to teach a roomful of 6-year-olds? My hat is off to the professional educator because in my opinion, a 6-year-old’s attention span seems to shift every 2 minutes.  And that’s perfect.

A guest post by Cheryl Craigie of  The Manageable Life

It seemed so easy at first, didn’t it?

Your blog posts came fast and furious. You were excited and inspired. The words came easily.

Then one day you went to your creative well and it was dry—not damp, mind you, but Sahara Desert dry.

As a survivor of the “dry well syndrome,” I can tell you that that this happens to all of us at some point. But it’s not you, it’s your brain.

Tiny companies that form on kitchen tables and nurture dreams to be the next Facebook needn’t always buy a one-way ticket to Silicon Valley if they want to get big.

Seedcamp, Europe’s most well-known accelerator fund, is bulking itself up as the alternative institution for promising technology companies intent on world domination. It is a go-to network for startups in far-flung regions like the Balkans who want to access expertise and funding, but for practical reasons like money and distance, can’t apply to rival accelerator fund Y Combinator in California. (YC takes hundreds of applicants from all over the world each year.)