With more kid-friendly technology available than ever before, finding a gift that will pry your kids away from smartphones, tablets or computer screens might seem like a daunting task.

But there are plenty of inventive toys out there that will capture kids' attention without gluing them to a screen. From outdoor activities like self-propelled skateboards, pitching machines or jumping stilts to creativity-inspiring pursuits like a soda can robot kit or a simplified circuit board, non-screen gifts can be found at every price range.

Image: RAZOR

A group of eight Western New York incubators are getting $750,000 in funding to create an Innovation Hot Spot aimed at increasing collaboration among the facilities and expanding their programs.

The WNY Innovation Hot Spot is envisioned as a way to turn local incubators into a stronger business development tool for the region and to help students develop entrepreneurial skills. It is backed by $250,000 in state funding and $500,000 in matching funds from its partners, with most coming from the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach.

Image: “We certainly weren’t collaborating like we could. This is a giant step in that direction.” – Thomas Murdock, WNY Innovation Hot Spot’s manager 

Earlier this November, the British-American Business Council’s  New England chapter (BABCNE) hosted an inspiring event in Boston that brought together nine high-ranking foreign diplomats, members of international business associations and business leaders to discuss how innovation can increase productivity and income opportunities through cross-border participation. The fact that the event was organized by Susie Kitchens, HM Consul General of the United Kingdom is no surprise.

“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once,” wrote Ray Cummings in his 1922 science fiction novel “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” which sums up time’s function quite nicely. But how does time stop everything from happening at once? What mechanism drives time forward, but not backward?

In a recent study published in the journal Physical Review Letters, a group of theoretical physicists re-investigate the “Arrow of Time” — a concept that describes the relentless forward march of time — and highlight a different way of looking at how time manifests itself over universal scales.

I remember the night I decided to go completely open book financially with my entire company. At first, I laughed a little, thinking it was a hilarious idea to give people who could easily jump ship and go somewhere else with really sensitive data.

What was I even thinking? Why was I  even contemplating this?

The truth is, my team is extremely dedicated and loyal, at all levels. Each person we hire, as cliché as it may seem, we hire for personality. If they come with some of the skills we require for the position, great, if not, we’ll train them. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit we’re after, not if you can navigate a customer relationship management tool or not.

Biopharmaceuticals are among the most sophisticated and elegant achievements of modern science. The huge, complex structures of these drugs don’t just look extraordinary in the 3-D modeling systems used to design them; they also perform their jobs remarkably well, offering high efficacy and few side effects. And there is much more to come: existing treatment archetypes are evolving and becoming more sophisticated all the time, and continuing research is yielding entirely new types of products. Radically new concepts are making it to the market, such as the cell therapy Provenge, which is used to treat cancer, and, somewhat further out, gene therapies, which offer even more amazing promises of regenerative medicine or disease remission.

I am an entrepreneur at my core. An almost dysfunctional sense of urgency, a deeply competitive streak and a desire to create something new are all attributes that have helped me start, run, scale and sell six different rapid-growth companies over the past 25 years.

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls | Flickr

“The core of every success is a great idea,” says Ann Moore.

The former corporate executive, recently turned entrepreneur, packs a lot of great insights and advice into any interview or speech she does and I’m not surprised that includes our conversation we had last week.

Ann’s business story began over 35 years ago. As a Harvard graduate, she had many initial offers, but loved reading magazines and decided to pursue a career at Time Inc.

Image: Ann Moore, former CEO and Chairman at Time Inc., started The Curator Gallery in 2013. The gallery hosts varying exhibitions with a hope to be known for education and “selling excellent art”.  

Tim Draper, founding partner of VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, didn’t succeed in getting his plan to break California into six more manageable states on the ballot for the last election. But he hasn’t given up on the plan. In fact, he says California’s situation is only getting worse.

Draper said in a talk at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in San Francisco yesterday that three other countries are creating the right climate for businesses: Singapore, South Korea, and Estonia. We’ll get to why he believes that after describing where Draper is coming from.

Image: Tim Draper of DFJ and Kim-Mai Cutler of TechCrunch at GMIC. - Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

When I started Akosha back in 2009, I knew very little about raising money. I was part of The Morpheus accelerator which helped me get a community around me and for the first time I began to understand the complicated world of raising money. Recently, we raised $5.2 million from Sequoia Capital. Given the mammoth sizes of raises these days, $5.2 million doesn't sound that big, but I feel that there are a lot of lessons which apply universally irrespective of the amount you raise. 

Image: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

Across the globe, there is a tsunami of Baby Boomer retirements. This is good news for them and for the younger colleagues who will take their place. But what does this mean in terms of losing business-critical, experience-based knowledge — what we call deep smarts? One organization reported that the next anticipated wave of almost 700 retirements would mean the loss of over 27,000 years of experience. If that know-how and those skills (or better ones) can be hired on the open market — no problem. Or if the succession planning has been meticulous and a highly qualified successor can step right into the vacancy — terrific.

Most people’s to-do lists are, almost by definition, pretty dull, filled with those quotidian little tasks that tend to slip out of our minds. Pick up the laundry. Get that thing for the kid. Buy milk, canned yams and kumquats at the local market.

Image: Image courtesy of NPR

A quick note: Nature announced yesterday that it will make all of its articles free to view, read, and annotate online. That applies to the historic science journal (launched in 1869) and to 48 other scientific journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Other titles include Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics.

Students don’t have to go to a highly selective college to get a great education and a good job after graduation. With more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the US, there are plenty of options from which college-bound students can choose. However, many tend to rely on name-recognition as a gauge of a “good” college, rather than using the tools at their disposal to find other schools that may better fit a student’s needs. This is why the country’s top-tier schools receive upwards of 40,000 (even 50,000!) applications each year, resulting in single-digit admission rates.

We can be quick to judge others in the workplace—bosses, coworkers, even ourselves—based on our ideas of personality.

But our preconceived notions about personality aren't just wrong, they can be downright dangerous to our health and relationships, says psychologist Brian Little, author of a new book on the science of personality Me, Myself, and Us.

Starting up cannot be a flash in the pan. There are many impediments in the way of an entrepreneur from converting his idea into a successful business. Capital, market research, finding a niche, and identifying a team are some of them. Here are 10 steps that can help an entrepreneur bootstrap a startup and provide structure to the process.

Running your own business is the American dream. Add “work from home” to the mix and it sounds like paradise, right? There are certainly plenty of upsides to running a successful (emphasis on “successful”) business from home. However, many entrepreneurs find themselves lost, overwhelmed and overworked.

If you’re a swimming fan and you’re not taking advantage of the growth of the sport, then you’re just treading water.

The coaching and lessons market within the United States is huge, and it’s growing year over year. Currently, there are over 400,000 USA registered swimmers, and tens of millions of swimmers taking lessons every year. Why not use this growth and combine it with your entrepreneurial spirit? That’s exactly what SwimLabs is doing.

Image: http://swimswam.com

Despite all the startup accelerators and education programs out there, it’s hard to name any in the suburbs that target an older, more experienced demographic. That could be about to change.

TechSandBox, a year-old co-working space in Hopkinton, MA, is making plans to start an accelerator program that would admit about eight companies and provide funding and mentorship for three to four months. Barbara Finer, who leads the nonprofit organization, says it’s still early in the development process.

Federal spending on scientific research hasn’t kept up with inflation in recent years, and it’s made it harder for researchers to fund their work. Some of them are turning to another source: crowdfunding. But this funding source raises new questions for scientists.  

Susan Nagel, a researcher at the University of Missouri, studies the health impacts of chemicals used in fracking. Last year, she found remnants of these chemicals in Colorado streams near where fracking spills had occurred. 

Image: George Leikauf of the University of Pittsburgh is trying to help sequence a mouse genome through crowdfunding. REID FRAZIER ALLEGHENY FRONT