PRINCETON, N.J. -- Gallup's analysis of political party affiliation at the state level in 2015 finds that 20 states are solidly Republican or leaning Republican, compared with 14 solidly Democratic or leaning Democratic states. The remaining 16 are competitive. This is the first time in Gallup's eight years of tracking partisanship by state that there have been more Republican than Democratic states. It also marks a dramatic shift from 2008, when Democratic strength nationally was its greatest in recent decades.

DENVER – Mon., Feb. 1, 2016 – Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) and LiveWell Colorado today launched Imagine Colorado, the nation’s first-ever statewide open innovation challenge. Imagine Colorado is seeking bold ideas from Colorado residents in response to the challenge question: How would you connect Colorado’s youth to a healthier lifestyle

Washington DC - A newly released research paper warns that employers and policymakers are in danger of ignoring the potential of today’s adult workers to meet near and middle term skill shortages in the workplace.(See attached.) The paper“Workforce Futures: Working Adults and the Workplace Revolution” by Garrison Moore and Robert Bowman, directed to employers, employees educators, policy makers, is a rigorously researched document that includes more than 30 charts and graphs clearly illustrating the sometimes-arcane world of labor market statistics concerning working adults.

The findings point out the myths of many popular beliefs while clearly demonstrating from the data the real facts and attainable solutions to the current skills shortages found in the American workforce.

The six hour flight from Tel Aviv was late so I rushed through Heathrow to catch my connecting flight home to Birchrunville. Facing another nine hours in an airplane, I was happy to have snagged a business class seat. Then I boarded the American Airlines flight and my mood suddenly changed…

Beat up old-style seats. No place to put anything. No fancy privacy pods, no outlets, no cool video. Actually no video at all until the flight attendant came by with her hands full of electronic equipment for me to assemble and create my own video screen. Very weird.

Christine Ortiz is taking a leave from her prestigious post as a professor and dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start a radical, new nonprofit university that she says will have no majors, no lectures, and no classrooms. Many details about the new university are still undetermined, she says, but the basic idea is to answer the question, What if you could start a university from scratch for today’s needs and with today’s technology?

Image: Christine Ortiz is the dean for graduate education and a professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a conversation with The Chronicle, she discusses her ideas about building a new type of college from scratch.

Yoshua Bengio leads one of the world’s preëminent research groups developing a powerful AI technique known as deep learning. The startling capabilities that deep learning has given computers in recent years, from human-level voice recognition and image classification to basic conversational skills, have prompted warnings about the progress AI is making toward matching, or perhaps surpassing, human intelligence. Prominent figures such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have even cautioned that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity. Musk and others are investing millions of dollars in researching the potential dangers of AI, as well as possible solutions. But the direst statements sound overblown to many of the people who are actually developing the technology. Bengio, a professor of computer science at the University of Montreal, put things in perspective in an interview with MIT Technology Review’s senior editor for AI and robotics, Will Knight.

The single most important skill of a good leader may not be what you think. Although it is important to be visionary and a strategic thinker, a new study suggests that it’s more rooted in their daily dealings with people.

According to DDI, the leader who’s mastered having successful conversations is most likely to do well steering their team and/or their business. "By the end of each day, leaders likely have had multiple conversations with a range of their constituents," DDI’s researchers write. "Each of these interactions will collectively determine their ultimate success as a leader."

When you're a kid, everything is a tragedy. Somebody cut the waffle in half and not quarters? Tantrum. Can't finish a puzzle? There's something wrong with you. Not allowed to go play with the other kids? Your. Life. Is. Over. As a parent, you cannot change this, but you can help your son or daughter bounce back in a way that ensures they also bounce back when the stakes are much, much higher.

Tablets had a rough 2015, according to the latest numbers from IDC and Strategy Analytics. In the calendar year that just ended, the tablet market was down by as much as 10.1%, with an estimated 206.8 million tablets shipped last year, says IDC. That’s down from 230.1 million shipped in 2014. Things are a bit better (but still not great) if you go by Strategy Analytics' numbers, which say 224.3 million tablets were shipped in 2015 compared to 242.2 million in 2014—a decline of only 8.1%.

In fields ranging from genomics to quantum physics, researchers are increasingly using data-intensive computing to generate new insights and discoveries. Because of the volume of data involved in this research, scientists often store, analyze, and share it in the cloud. By leveraging the nearly infinite scale and tremendous computer power available in the cloud, they also are developing novel analytics tools and conducting more open and collaborative research that is accelerating the growth of scientific knowledge.

Please join ITIF's Center for Data Innovation for a discussion of how government can support data-intensive science, promote the development of open science, make research more accessible, and foster greater collaboration between the United States, Europe, and other global research partners.

In this interview, @davemcclure highlights the importance of taking a niche approach when launching a product. We touch on the main differences between @500startups and @ycombinator before analysing the growth and customer acquisition methods that help startups grow.

From companies to clubs to causes, groups most likely to succeed, today, need to keep top talent engaged by encouraging the nimble formation of self-organized teams to tackle opportunities and problems faster and better together.

Those who can actually recruit the right team and be the glue that holds them together must have the reputation for being mutuality minded. How? By creating opportunities, with and for others.

For entrepreneurs, it’s likely to get much tougher to raise money from venture capitalists (VCs). The stock markets have been volatile lately and IPOs have been horrific, as seen with deals like Square (SQ). In fact, there were no offerings in January!

So what to do? Well, I’ve been talking to a variety of VCs recently and the consensus is mostly uniform – that is, the current environment will likely take a while to improve. In other words, it is critical for entrepreneurs to have a realistic funding plan and to also be sober about the revenues. Snagging new customers will probably get harder.

Alphabet, the holding company formed by Google last fall, handily beat analysts’ expectations in its quarterly earnings report Monday. The results sent the company’s stock soaring in after-hours trading, helping it topple Apple as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.

The Mountain View, Calif. firm generated $21.3 billion in revenue, beating Wall Street estimates of $20.8 billion. Earnings were $8.67 per share, beating estimates of $8.09 per share. The company attributed its strong revenue growth to search ads, YouTube and programmatic advertising.

It's February 1, meaning it has been a month since the vast majority of Americans who made New Year's resolutions to exercise more began a new fitness regimen. For those teetering on the edge of falling off their resolutions, Johns Hopkins has developed a few pointers.

There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to exercise. Whether someone should buy into a new exercise fad or program depends on his or her interest, motivation and fitness level, according to Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine. The key to maintaining regular exercise is to identify types of workouts that are both fun and suit individual health needs.

Remember the Washington Consensus? After years of false starts and dead ends in solving development challenges, new formulas now incorporate bold entrepreneurial components. The result is that for the first time in many decades, ending extreme poverty is less of an elusive goal.

Take the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for example. Its new model for 21st century development borrows from a startup’s guide to success – such as the notion of proof-of-concept funding and consumer data-driven iteration.

With unemployment in Britain sitting at just 5.1%, fewer people than at any time since before the financial crisis are out of work right now.

However, there are still 1.77 million unemployed people in the UK today, and they're all looking for a job.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

A new batch of student groups and programs are looking to make some positive change at the UO and in Eugene, but they need a little help to get the job done.

That’s where DuckFunder, the university’s new crowdfunding platform, comes into play.

From Feb. 1 to March 3, DuckFunder will host seven crowdfunding projects on its website. This will be DuckFunder’s first round of crowdfunding campaigns after its successful debut with the UO’s Summer Academy to Inspire Learning program raised 116 percent of its fundraising goal.

Image: http://around.uoregon.edu

In the last few years there has been a fair amount of commentary in business forums on digital disruption, and how technology is changing the way we interact with our service providers, friends and customers.

A few well-known examples are Uber (taxi company that owns no taxies), AirBnB (accommodation provider that owns no real estate), Slack, Skype, Wechat (communication providers that own no telecoms infrastructure), Google and Apple (software vendors that don’t develop the majority of the apps they sell), Kickstarter (funding provider that provides none of the funding), Twitter and YouTube (media and content providers who don’t produce their own content) and Amazon (retailer with no customer-facing retail premises).

Many entrepreneurs are so focused on finalizing their innovative product or service that they procrastinate on the formalities of forming the requisite new company until later. Unfortunately, waiting until later will dramatically increase the risk of losing ownership of the solution they worked so hard to complete in addition to personal and family assets.