The owners of startup businesses in the greater Iowa City and Cedar Rapids area can, at times, be too quiet for their own good -- much to the detriment of others who are hoping to start their own companies, said Tom Chapman of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

“There are times you are too humble and afraid to tell your stories,” Chapman told a group of about 50 people at the Startup Stories Breakfast Wednesday at the Pappajohn Business Building on the University of Iowa campus.

Applied Materials, the world's leading supplier of manufacturing equipment to chipmakers, has announced a new system for making one of the most critical layers of the transistors found in logic circuits.

Applied Materials' new tool, announced at the Semicon West conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, deposits a critical layer in transistors one atom at a time, providing unprecedented precision.

As chipmakers scale transistors down to ever-smaller sizes, enabling speedier and more power-efficient electronics, atomic-scale manufacturing precision is a growing concern. The first chips with transistors just 22 nanometers in size are going into production this year, and at that size, even the tiniest inconsistencies can mean that a chip intended to sell at a premium must instead be used for low-end gadgetry.

China’s recently announced 12th five-year plan aims to transform the world’s second-largest economy from an investment-driven dynamo into a global powerhouse with a steadier and more stable trajectory. The plan affects domestic and foreign companies in all industries. To help senior managers decode and understand its provisions, we analyzed the potential impact on 33 industries. Two dimensions stood out: the effect on their profit pools and competitive landscapes. (For a detailed look at this analysis, see the interactive exhibit, “The economic impact of China’s 12th five-year plan.”)

The plan’s likely impact on profit pools was categorized as either favorable (for example, sensitive to an increase in domestic demand or specifically targeted for special treatment), unfavorable (subject to restrictive policies), or neutral. For the effect on the competitive landscape, we looked at the intensity of regulation.

FORTUNE -- Not long ago, creativity guru Todd Henry recommended to one of his consulting clients, a high-ranking manager, that he set aside one hour a week to generate new ideas -- "one hour, predictably scheduled, no exceptions and no violations," Henry says in his book, The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice. "This is not time to do work. This is time to think about work."

That executive's reaction, Henry recalls: "He fired back at me, 'What?! You just want me to sit around and think?!"

In today's wired, 24/7 business climate, most people can relate. Who has time to sit and ponder? Yet, Henry writes, companies pay employees, particularly leaders, for the value they create, and "you can create infinitely greater value for the company in an hour of skilled, focused thought about critical problems than by responding to your email slightly faster."

A new study gauging the impact of consuming more fish oil showed a marked reduction both in inflammation and, surprisingly, in anxiety among a cohort of healthy young people.

The findings suggest that if young participants can get such improvements from specific dietary supplements, then the elderly and people at high risk for certain diseases might benefit even more.

The findings by a team of researchers at Ohio State University were just published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.  It is the latest from more than three decades of research into links between psychological stress and immunity.

If the country would like to generate more jobs for people, they must also create more businesses with openings for people to take. That is why The Huffington Post has shared a few ideas on how the government can help entrepreneurs jumpstart job creation.

1) A 30 percent refundable tax credit for members of accredited angel groups for investments in U.S.-based startups. This credit would be refunded in the first fiscal year the investment is made.

Encouraging angel investment is not only good conceptually, but there’s precedence for its ability to increase funding for innovative companies. In British Columbia, where a similar program was instituted, 80 percent of angel investors who received the credits increased the amount of their investments. Ultimately the program also benefited taxpayers, with every $1 of angel tax credits resulting in $1.41 of additional tax revenue from the recipient companies.

The €3.2 billion public-private partnerships (PPPs) programme set up at speed in response to the financial crisis, is to be the new model for research and innovation funding, the European Commission has announced.

A third - €418 million - call under the partnerships programme is due to be launched later this month. Industry has applauded the PPPs, and in particular the flexibility, lack of bureaucracy and fast and efficient approach. “Even though the PPPs were set up in an emergency, it turned out to be a model with excellent efficiency and speed,” Wolfgang Steiger of the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, said at a conference on the partnerships in Brussels this week.

Guest post by Brian Smith, Managing Director, Grayhawk Capital and Conference Chair, Invest Southwest –VCIR Fall 2011 Conference.

As this year’s Conference Chair, I am pleased to announce that Invest Southwest and Venture Capital in the Rockies ("VCIR"), the two premier entrepreneurial and venture capital conferences in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain region, are partnering to present the Invest Southwest – VCIR Fall 2011 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona on November 2nd - 4th. Innovative, cutting edge technology startups and promising growth stage companies will be showcased to more than 300 venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs, and service providers.

There has been endless hype about the so-called clean economy-from both ends of the spectrum. It has been called both “a compelling aspiration and an enigma” and it has been difficult to assess. Discussion has frequently been short on facts and long on anecdotes, speculation, assertion, and partisanship. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that cleantech can be employed as a key and visible function in some companies and as a less-visible adjunct within others.

To help shed light on this problem, Brookings released today a highly-anticipated study entitled “Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment.” It is an endeavor to create a definition of the clean economy and quantify its significance.

Researchers at universities, similar to employees of medical device companies, are accustomed to assigning patent rights to their institution in an employment agreement signed during the hiring process. What may not be as obvious is that many non-academic hospitals are now including intellectual property (IP) rights in their physician employment agreements.

Hospitals, especially large hospital systems composed of a multitude of individual hospitals, are realizing the large revenue source that medical device licensing can provide. For example, here is a subsection of Edwards County Hospitals Intellectual property employment policy:

’Any work of authorship or invention created by an employee during the scope of his or her employment with Edwards County Hospital shall be considered the property of Edwards County Hospital, including any patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, or other intellectual property right in such work of authorship or invention.’

If you own a high-tech company, Louisiana wants you to help its economic development. To prove it, the state has enhanced its Digital Media Tax Credit program and extended its Technology Commercialization Tax Credit program to attract more media and research companies.

Senate Bill 123 enhances the Digital Media tax credit program, which offers tax credits of 25 percent on qualified interactive software production in entertainment, healthcare, engineering and other sectors, by offering a refundable, rather than a transferable credit. The change is intended to allow participating companies to receive a significantly larger benefit from the program without extra cost to the state for a given project.

The numbers are out for venture capital fundraising for Q2 2011, and, according to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the data confirms the queasy feeling that entrepreneurs raising money have felt in their guts this year.

In Q2 2011, only 37 funds raised money, which is the 2nd lowest number  in any quarter since the bubble burst in 2009. In Q3 2009, 34 companies raised money.  In terms of dollars, the 37 funds raised a total of $2.7 billion, well below the 42 funds that raised $7.5 billion in Q1 2011 and the 3rd lowest total since Q1 2009, edging out the $2.1 Billion raised in Q2 2010 and $2.3 Billion in Q3 2009.

The first half of 2011 saw only a total of 76 funds landing new capital.  That’s the lowest number of funds receiving inflows of cash since 1995.  1995? That’s, like, 3 bubbles ago?

A combination of a sensor-infused wristband and a smartphone app will provide nudges for healthier living, based on your behavior.

Just an hour ago on stage at TED Global, Jawbone announced the grand project they've been quietly working on for years: A wearable band called Up, which is infused with sensors and smartphone connected, allowing you to track your eating, sleeping, and activity patterns.

"The CDC says that for the first time in history, lifestyle diseases such as diabetes are killing more people than communicable diseases," Travis Bogard, Jawbone's VP of product management, tells Co.Design. "We're trying to solve that problem." The Up's sensors collect data about how much you've been sleeping and how much you've been moving. That data is then fed into a smartphone app, which also takes in information about your meals. (You enter meal data manually, in part by taking pictures of what you've eaten.) Based on all that information, the smartphone program provides "nudges" meant to help you live healthier, day by day. For example, if you haven't slept much, when you wake up the app might suggest a high-protein breakfast and an extra glass of water.

Wanted: the next Mark Shuttleworth. While South Africans are tou

ted as naturally entrepreneurial, a closer analysis of the country’s small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) reveals that many of these are not entrepreneurial by design, but rather by necessity.

For small businesses to have a tangible impact on the local economy and generate sustainable jobs that enable import replacement, we need to somehow cultivate a culture that encourages individuals to identify opportunities or gaps in the market – and capitalise on these.

Shawn Theunissen, the head of corporate social responsibility at Growthpoint Properties and Property Point, says business incubators have a critical role to play in this regard.

Instead of replicating existing SMMEs, incubators need to encourage entrepreneurs to find their unique selling point and carve out a niche in the market.

If you’re curious about all things Google+, you’re in luck. The project’s technical lead, Google engineer Joseph Smarr, is currently hosting an online question and answer session about the service — and he has already shared a number of details about Google+’s development, technology, and plans for the future.

On Monday, Smarr opened himself up for questions on Q&A website AnyAsq.com, a Y-Combinator-backed site reminiscent of Formspring.me where users can invite others to “ask me anything.” People sign in to post questions on AnyAsq through their Twitter accounts, but a host’s responses can be longer than 140 characters.

I’ve always wondered why every executive meeting has to be one hour in length, or longer. That’s probably a tenth of your day spent on one issue. It better be a critical one, because you have a hundred others waiting. I believe you can be much more productive, as well as a more effective leader, if you approach most meetings as mentoring opportunities, and limit them to five minutes.

In a traditional meeting, another person presents you with multiple options, and you make the decision. With the five-minute mentoring approach, the mentee asks for your support in their decision, or asks for your insight on the considerations for them making a future decision. Which approach do you think is more fulfilling for them, and best for your company in the long run?

The time limit has more to do with setting an expectation that the meeting is not for solving the problem, but coaching on the parameters and the approach. If you are a problem solver by nature, this requires you to change your mindset from giving the “answer,” to helping someone

Looking back in time, there effectively were no consumer tablets in the beginning of 2010. Sure, Microsoft had Tablet PCs for nearly a decade prior, but these were heavy, had relatively short battery life and suffered from a desktop operating system that wasn’t optimized for mobile use. It was Apple’s original iPad, debuting on store shelves in April of 2010, that kicked off the current tablet frenzy. Since then, companies have jumped into this hot market, hoping to score some of the estimated 53.5 million tablet sales that research firm IDC expects this year alone.

As headlines go, much too often, so goes traditional economic development support. The success of much of the commonwealth’s existing business support networks and financing programs are measured by, and thereby biased toward, companies making large employment announcements. So we asked a very simple question—who actually created the new jobs in Pennsylvania over time? It turns out the answer is rather startling.

Team PA commissioned an extensive study of all Pennsylvania companies to help identify the net job producers over a multi-year period of time. The report revealed that employment growth is highly concentrated among a surprisingly small number of companies, and that those companies are almost exclusively not the companies sending out press releases with big job numbers.

The debate over whether we’re about to run smack into a second Internet bubble is getting as heated as a Nancy Grace interview (in the Valley version, Tot Mom is played by mobile startup Color).

There are some signs that bubble 2.0 is here: the huge valuations for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Zynga and Groupon; a wealth of over-funded me-too startups,; and a wave of summer web IPOs. But there are also some strong indicators that it’s a bit different this time around: the frenzy is concentrated on social media rather than Internet companies across the board, and investors aren’t spending the same amount of capital as they did in bubble 1.0, since the costs of building web startups is rock bottom now as compared to the late 90’s.

How many times have you been asked this question in the last year? Losing your phone, whether between your couch cushions or (like most Apple employees) at a bar, is a common headache. But finding your phone is another story, one that usually requires a bit of serendipity or the kindheartedness of a good Samaritan.

Today, mobile-security startup Lookout, which specializes in Android smartphone protection, released an infographic on the lost-phone phenomenon--namely, the 10 worst places to lose your phone, and the top U.S. cities for smartphone loss or theft.

According to Lookout's data, the No. 1 city for cellphone loss, based on the percentage of its population, is Miami. No doubt that season of the Jersey Shore factored into the outcome. (Who could've possibly been sober in the MIA during the weeks the MVP were present?) New York City comes in second, followed by Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Philly, Dallas, and Chicago are all in the bottom half.